MRirian or Magibon is the young woman that everyone on YouTube is talking about. Just how does she get such incredible viewing figures for her apparently content-less videos, in which she stares at the camera hypnotically, and says nothing at all? The buzz of comment continues to get louder and louder, ranging from baffled to loving to frustrated to filthy to hateful. But what is her motivation? Is she playing us for fools?

This article is addressed to all those who comment that MRirian is “taking us all for a ride” or “playing us all for fools” as we watch her stare at the webcam. A lot of people seem to believe she’s a manipulator who actually planned the whole thing in advance. Think about it rationally now – isn’t that just stretching the bounds of credibility a little bit too far?

Fortunately there’s a much simpler explanation.

OK just go along with this imagined scenario for a moment?

You’re feeling a bit bored one evening. You log on to YouTube to maybe see what’s happening. You’ve made a few YouTube videos in the past, but your viewing figures have been nothing special. You can’t really think of anything much you’d like to say or do, but you want to make a video just for fun, so you make a video of you just staring at the cam for a couple minutes, the way those anime Japanese girls do that you so much admire.

Then maybe you go to sleep and don’t think any more about it.

Next day you think, maybe I’ll just check into YouTube see if anyone watched my video? You see the viewing figures 20000 what? And over the next week you see your viewing figures rise to half a million. You read the comments and there’s loads of nasty stuff there, better not read that anymore, it’ll just bring you down. But those view figures keep going up and up! After 10 days, they’re up past a million. You find yourself making money from the partner program! And maybe even you yourself can’t understand why everyone’s watching that video you made just for fun when you were a bit bored one evening.

That video of you staring at the webcam and doing nothing much?

Now tell me – and be honest now! – what do you think your next video would be about?