Instagram, YouTube and Tik-Tok are filled with random, somewhat entertaining videos. One of my favorites happens to be the 5-Minutes Craft videos: a YouTube channel for crafts and life hacks.
The videos are mind-numbing, and most do not work. For example, there is a video posted where they “fix” someone’s broken iPhone screen with toothpaste. Even if the videos do end up working, they are absurd, and would probably be less expensive if one just bought what they needed rather than making it. Although they can be excessive and untruthful, I’ve realized I admire these creators and their content.
I found out that 5-Minute Crafts came from a 2016 Russian company called AdMe, which focused on digital advertising and content distribution. Later that same year, it developed into TheSoul, which launched the 5-Minute Crafts YouTube channel. TheSoul apparently has 550 employees and produces 1500 videos a month.
They make 1500 videos a month, meaning they need 1500 creative, unique and bizarre life-hacks and crafts. 5-Minute Crafts have a life hack for everything you could think of. There's a hole in your wood dining table? Grab sunflower seeds and glue them in the hole, sand it down and paint it over — it looks exactly like how you would think. Blow drying your hair but it is taking forever? Set up a clothesline, pin your hair to it, and grab a fan! Most likely, your hair won’t dry, and if it does, it will look bizarre. And yes, these are all real examples of 5-Minute Craft’s life-hacks.
These crafts and life-hacks are the strangest things I come across on my social media, however I find I never skip them. I laugh at how ridiculous they are and admire how creative the creators must be.
I am not sure how the work life really looks for their employees, but I have used my imagination to guess.
Imagine sitting at a desk with other workers brainstorming possible crafts and life-hacks. Think of all the creativity that backs these ideas. Who would've thought to remove the yolk from a sunny side up egg by vacuuming it? These people think outside the box, and no, their ideas don’t often work, but I admire the creativity behind them.
One of the main reasons I find the creativity behind 5-Minute Crafts so appealing is because it catches everyone's attention. They take everyday issues that happen to people all around the world and try to solve them. I think it is interesting to see how many issues we have, and how many of them 5-Minute Crafts try to solve.
These videos are also intriguing because there are so many of them. The workers for 5-Minute Crafts must be constantly thinking of new issues to cover, which must be so draining. As a student in the arts field, I know how exhausting and hard it is to try to think of multiple creative ideas and execute them the way you imagined. 5-Minute Crafts do this repeatedly, never failing to be creative.
I know these crafts are used to make a lot of money off short, tightly-packed videos, but I think I will always respect 5-Minute Craft videos. They rarely work and are extremely questionable sometimes, but the creativity and dedication behind these videos captures my attention just the same.
