Feeling this, The Spirited Man

I’m not quite sure that I’m recommending this Youtube series, The Spirited Man, simply because I’m not sure I even understand it accurately.

But I am feeling it and thinking about it a lot. So check it out or not.

The series is by Casey Neistat’s brother Van. If you don’t know those names, that’s normal. Casey is a YouTube celebrity which is a kind of celebrity that gets massive traffic and yet often goes unknown to the general public. I mostly don’t know the names of any of this category of celebrity even though they often have billions of views (Casey has more than 3 billion).

Anyway, the thing that’s holding me back from fully recommending this YouTube channel is that I don’t understand two things.

First, I don’t understand if “The Spirited Man” is going to turn out to be a pun and the whole channel is going to end up being about substance abuse. The problem with that is that I keep hearing the phrase “Spirited Man” and feeling something deep in my core yell, “That’s me!” But I haven’t struggled with substance abuse, so I’ll feel kind of dopey if I’ve so thoroughly misunderstood the point.

Then second, I’m not totally clear on the gendered nature of this. Occasionally Van will clarify, “The spirited man or the spirited woman.” The way I hear either term seems ungendered to me. Everyone can be spirited and the things that you get spirited about could be gendered without diminishing your spirit. But maybe Van sees it differently.