"POV" and "a day in my life": why these formats hook us so hard

You're scrolling, and suddenly a video opens with "POV: it's your first day at a new school." In a split second, you're no longer a viewer, you're inside it. Right after, another one offers to follow "a day in my life," from morning to night, of someone you don't even know. And weirdly, you stay. These two formats have become a language of their own online, and their success is anything but random.

The "POV" (point of view) works thanks to a very simple psychological trigger: identification. Instead of watching a scene from the outside, it places you in the first person, as if the camera were your own eyes. Your brain loves this, because it's wired to project itself into other people's stories. The format hands you a role, a viewpoint, sometimes even an emotion to feel, and that little game of "what if it were me?" is far more engaging than a video that talks to you from a distance. It's express fiction, playable in a few seconds.

The "a day in my life," on the other hand, leans on the opposite effect but one just as powerful: staging the everyday. No stunts, no Hollywood plot, just a wake-up, a breakfast, some commutes, a few dead moments. Except that, filmed, edited and paced, the ordinary becomes hypnotic. You recognize a part of yourself, you quietly compare your own routine, and you taste that slightly voyeuristic pleasure of peeking into someone else's life. It's reassuring: it suggests that even unremarkable days can be worth telling.

Ultimately, these two formats answer the same need from different angles: feeling connected to others and giving meaning to your own life. The "POV" lets you live a story from the inside, the "a day in my life" shows you that your life too is a story. Nothing magical here, just levers of identification and storytelling that humans have always used, recycled into vertical video. Knowing them also means stepping back a little: enjoying the pleasure of the scroll without forgetting that what you're watching always remains an edited, hand-picked version of reality.