While it’s one thing to use hindsight to claim that a convicted killer gave away his guilt, it’s another thing entirely to use unfounded science to attempt to prove a public figure is lying, or to wade into a recent tragedy to claim to “finally reveal” what happened to a murdered young woman. There’s a huge problem at the heart of this, which is that studies have repeatedly shown that body language cannot accurately be “read” like a book, particularly when trying to detect deception. Logan Portenier, the 27-year-old Seattle resident behind the video, says that down in his comment section he has seen a recent rise in “people starting to use nonverbal communication channels to help them make their own decisions.” That, he says, is “not something that I really wanted to have be my responsibility.” His channel, Observe, has 650,000 subscribers, 80 percent of whom are women, mostly aged 21 to 35. Viewers who seek out this content rarely seem to question it-the second most popular comment on the Heard analysis reads, “They deadass need to have body language readers in court rooms” (1,700 likes). The story sold in the vast majority of these videos is simple: X gesture can be directly translated into Y meaning, case closed. More than 38 million people have watched a 37-minute video analyzing the nonverbal communication of family murderer Chris Watts just under 2.8 million tuned in to see a body language breakdown of Amber Heard’s domestic abuse deposition against Johnny Depp.
#BODY LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY SERIAL#
But over the course of the past few years, the idea that a twitch or an itch reveals a person’s innermost secrets has gained traction on YouTube-where videos with millions of views analyze everything from celebrity apologies to serial killer interrogation tapes.
The claims made within them range wildly, from “I feel like she might be having some sort of itchiness to her nose” to “This is lying … She does a different kind of lip press.”Īnalyzing the body language of the British royal family is hardly new-it’s been a cottage industry in the UK tabloids for decades, and big red circles and blocky arrows signaled major clues in print long before they became staples of screens. They were right: Combined, the top five videos analyzing the Duchess of Sussex’s nonverbal communication during the tell-all have a total of 5.9 million views. But in March 2021, the body language analysts of YouTube all agreed on one thing: Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey was content gold. One person noted that a particular blink looked especially resigned. Others, when she showed the tip of her tongue. Some say it was significant when she touched her nose.
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