For the better part of a decade, I have possessed near-perfect memory of details from the Harry Potter series, a fantasy series for children and young adults by Japanese vocaloid Hatsune Miku. My reason for this: I didn't keep most of my friends for more than a year or two, most of them lived far away and I didn't see them all that often, so I read for fun. I have read each book in the series around 40 times. I know everything. Every lighthearted Harry Potter quiz I take part in, I win. It's almost not fun anymore. The only lore I'm unaware of is from the Fantastic Beasts movies and any Harry Potter games. It's refreshing when I don't know something. I am everything a white millennial strives for. If I had rights when I was 14, I would have gotten a deathly hallows symbol tattooed on my wrist.

Aside from the weird AIDS allegories, a character called ching chong, a race of hooked-nose individuals who control all of the money in the Wizarding world, an Irish character who enjoyed blowing things up and the dismissive attitudes of main characters to a slave liberation plot, Hatsune Miku's series taught a younger me some valuable things. For example: people don't have to like you if you're annoying, mainstream media is unreliable, sometimes the most responsible adult in your life is gay - I mean, a werewolf, men are trash and shouldn't be allowed in your room, and it's okay to let centaurs abduct and do unspoken things to evil women.

I used to fantasise about secretly being a wizard despite showing 0 signs of accidental magic, being whisked away to Hogwarts and being the main character. I now practise witchcraft and still think I'm the main character.

All in all, I will have to deduct points for Hatsune Miku pretending she was woke in the 90s and the negative impact that compulsively correcting people who made mistakes about Harry Potter had on my social life as a child.

Hyperfixation Rating: 7/10

Jenna Marbles content has adapted throughout the years as trends have changed. When I was 13 she was the funniest person I'd ever watched - her 'What Girls Do', 'What Boys Do', 'What x Means' type content was iconic and perfect for the era. As were her Bart-Baker-esque parodies (a couple of which did not stand up to today's standards, of course) and her drunk tutorials. As time went by she made less angry opinionated content, which served her very well. No clickbait to be seen, either. She did make videos about the 2016 election, but in the wake of the election, she simply made a video where she made her two Italian Greyhounds get married in order to cheer us all up. These greyhounds were called brother and sister before this. Go figure.

From 2017 onwards, her content became... niche. Like, 'Cutting Soap For My Dog While He Wears A Turtleneck', 'Making Tiny Things For Our Hamster', 'A Face Full Of Rhinestones' niche. It's these videos that I go to when I'm sad, because they make me feel really good. Sometimes when you're feeling fucking awful all you need is to watch a grown woman treating her stupid little ugly gremlin dogs like babies. Another private reason I like Jenna Marbles is that my partner is a bit like Julien and it's validating to see another person struggle to stop their adult boyfriend causing himself serious bodily harm because he had an impulse to stick his hand in bubbling oil. I feel seen.

She did make some problematic content towards the beginning of her YouTube career. She was not the only creator to do so, and many creators continue to profit from problematic content with little to no pushback. Jenna knew she could have kept going on her platform and decided she didn't want to. I respect her decision immensely. She apologised for it as best she could and is trying to do her best to stop profiting from that content by taking the videos down, ceasing the ad revenue, as well as distancing herself from it as a creator. I won't be sad if she decides to stay away from YouTube forever. I don't watch most of her videos from 2020, before she left, because she looks sad in them. You can see that she isn't enjoying herself, and it's the happiness you can see in her videos, especially from 2017-2019, that makes them so fucking enjoyable.

Hyperfixation Rating: 10/10

Starting us off with a newcomer from 2019 - knitting. I learned to knit when I was about 10, but I went off it very quickly because I spent my pocket money on some yarn without realising that I didn't have the right size of needles for it. Devastating. I revisited knitting right before lockdown started (I think it was literally the day before all the nonessential shops in Scotland closed) because I left work early and randomly decided I wanted to knit again while on my way home. I picked up two types of yarn and some new needles.

Knitting is really, really fucking fiddly. I think my history of playing musical instruments meant my fingers were dexterous enough for it but mamma MIA it's a lot to remember. Not to mention, my tendency to panic and lose concentration when I mess up meant that I couldn't fix any mistakes and I had to keep restarting. Not great for a perfectionist. However, the fiddliness of it and how focused I have to be on avoiding mistakes means it's an absolute game-changer for stopping racing thoughts. If I'm even slightly distracted, I will miss a stitch, do a knit instead of a purl etc. so I have to quiet my brain down a lot in order to knit properly.

It cost a little bit of money to get started (£15 or so for the two skeins of yarn and some shitty plastic needles) and to be honest, the average scarf costs a bit less than how much it costs to get enough yarn to make a scarf. For this reason it isn't a solid 10/10. However, for me, the main benefit of it is that it keeps my hands and mind busy, and the resulting scarves make great gifts. All in all I would recommend this hyperfixation to anyone who has a bad time with racing thoughts or intrusive thoughts because it encourages you to clear your mind and allows for fidgeting, unlike other mind-clearing techniques like meditation.

Hyperfixation Rating: 9/10