The romance should be the story in a romance movie

March 9, 2024

YouTuber Caroline Winkler put a video on YouTube in February 2024 titled "The DATING STORY I never thought I'd put on the Internet" (actually, It's called "How I found love despite being an IDIOT, part 2" but... whatever). In it Winkler chronicles how she - eventually - met her boyfriend and how the courtship played out.

It is a sweet video. Maybe the sweetest I've seen on YouTube and certainly the sweetest that is about dating. Almost all dating-related videos I find on YouTube are either dating horror stories or different types of dating advice videos that deserve and one day will get their own article.

So Winkler's video stands out. Not only is it sweet, it is exceptionally well told. It is entertaining. This is remarkable since the video is largely just Winkler talking to the camera, occasionally interspersed with older videos of Winkler talking to a camera, or just looking at a camera, or screengrabs with a Winkler voice over.

For longtime fans of Winkler that's probably not strange but the first video of her I'd ever seen was part one, and, frankly, her overall repertoire of videos is not my bag. It seems to consist mostly of home decor videos and things like that.

The gist of the story starts about halfway through the video when she starts dating a man she calls Roomba.

It's an excellent romance story where the story is in the romance. There's no convoluted plot twists, no overheard half-conversations where drama is caused by one of the parties misunderstanding what he or she heard. It's just the challenge of finding common romantic ground without driving away or otherwise losing the other person.

Yet that's all it takes to create tension and dread and emotions and viewer buy-in.

It's a sweet video. I think you'll enjoy watching it.