The Gown We Can't Take Off

More 'Choices', Less Freedom.

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I clicked into a random gaming video.

The YouTuber had hundreds of thousands of followers. I watched him play for a while, and his gameplay was painfully bad. I had an annoying feeling that came out of nowhere suddenly: He didn't even seem to realize what he was doing wrong, and just kept blaming the game and the devs.

I closed the YouTube tab, frustrated, like a rage quit from another 'stupid' gamer. I started thinking: how many of the people watching him are actually much better analytical thinkers than he is? Maybe someone just finished ten hours at a law firm. Someone else spent the day writing code, building financial models, doing research, designing something, or solving problems at work. They get home exhausted, open YouTube, and watch this guy fail at a fairly obvious problem.

So, why does YouTube seem to have so few "intelligent" people?

Actually, being bad at a game doesn't mean someone is stupid. Becoming a successful YouTuber itself requires abilities that traditional schools and companies often don't measure very well: storytelling, timing, charisma, consistency, understanding audiences, emotional value, and the willingness to expose yourself to public judgment. And having an impressive degree or a prestigious job doesn't automatically make someone intelligent either. Different parts of society are simply selecting for very different kinds of people.

Traditional prestigious careers tend to reward a fairly recognizable package of traits:

• Do well in school
• Accumulate credentials
• Delay gratification
• Avoid catastrophic mistakes
• Get into a respected university
• Get into a respected company

The creator economy rewards another package:

• Be interesting
• Take risks
• Put your face on camera
• Produce constantly
• Survive embarrassment
• Learn what people actually pay attention to
• Accept that thousands of strangers may judge you
• Build something without knowing whether it will work

There is intelligence involved in both worlds, but they are filtering for different things.

Success makes change scary

And perhaps there is another filter that appears once someone succeeds in the first world. The more status you accumulate, the harder it becomes to do something that looks like moving backward. Imagine spending your childhood competing for grades, getting into a good university, earning a difficult degree, landing a prestigious job, and finally becoming the person your family and peers always expected you to become.

Then one day you decide you actually want to make gaming videos.

Technically, you have more options than before. Psychologically, you may feel like you have fewer. Because leaving your career doesn't only mean giving up a salary. It is like giving up your 'successful' social identity. You have to explain yourself to your parents, your classmates, your colleagues... And maybe to yourself: "You went through all of that just to do this?"

The risk is no longer purely financial; it becomes reputational. And suddenly the education and achievements that were supposed to expand your freedom can start defining the boundaries of an acceptable life.

The story of Kong Yiji

That is what made me think about a Chinese internet trend of recent years: Kong Yiji (孔乙己).

Kong Yiji is the title character of a 1919 short story by Lu Xun. He is a poor scholar who never passed even the lowest level of the imperial exams. In the tavern where the story is set, laborers in short jackets drink standing at the counter, while men in long gowns, the clothing of the educated, sit down in the room next door. Kong Yiji is the only man who drinks standing up in a long gown: a dirty, torn one that looks like it hasn't been washed or mended in ten years. He is too poor to sit with the gowns, and too proud to become one of the short jackets.

The gown was his identity as a scholar. Even when his actual life had collapsed, he couldn't really separate himself from what it meant. More than a century later, Chinese internet users revived that image with the idea that a degree can become "the long gown that I cannot take off": something that raises you up while simultaneously making certain kinds of work feel beneath the identity you have acquired.

Sometimes status becomes a cage precisely because we value it. The cage is originally from the environment, and gradually forms and grows inward. It is built out of expectations, sunk costs, other people's opinions, our own pride, and a fear that choosing an unconventional life means wasting everything that came before it.

What tired viewers want

Or maybe I'm just overthinking. The exhausted professional watching that gaming video may not even want a more intellectual video. After ten hours of thinking, maybe the last thing they want is to think harder. After all, watching someone else play a game is one of the easiest ways to switch off after a stressful day.

So perhaps the system makes perfect sense.

During the day, one group of people is rewarded for optimizing credentials, productivity, precision, and professional status. At night, another group is rewarded for optimizing attention, personality, entertainment, and emotional value. And the first group comes home and watches the second.

Platforms don't particularly care which group is "smarter." YouTube describes its recommendation system in terms of things like appeal, engagement, and viewer satisfaction. If people click, stay, enjoy themselves, and come back, the content has done its job.

People choosing the safe road never try

So maybe my original irritation at that YouTuber was pointing at the wrong person. There is somebody I considered stupid who managed to get hundreds of thousands of followers. Good for him, honestly: He took the camera, made something, and found an audience.

The more interesting question is how many capable people never try something they genuinely want to do because it doesn't fit the life they believe they are supposed to live. How many people who could become filmmakers, musicians, writers, YouTubers, founders, craftsmen, researchers, or something we don't even have a respectable job title for instead choose the path that is easiest to explain at a family dinner?

This doesn't mean everyone should quit their job and become a creator. Stability has real value; most risky projects fail. Professional careers can be meaningful, intellectually satisfying, and genuinely loved. And many people simply have no desire to put their lives online. There is nothing wrong with choosing the safe road.

What feels strange is when the road was never consciously chosen.

When somebody spends twenty years becoming successful according to a definition they inherited, then becomes too afraid to find out whether they would have defined success differently themselves.

Maybe the modern long gown isn't education.

Maybe it isn't Wall Street, Silicon Valley, medicine, law, consulting, or any particular career either.

Maybe the long gown is the belief that once you have become a certain kind of person, you have to keep performing that person forever.

And sometimes having more to lose can quietly mean becoming less free.