Video blogging, or vlogging, has become a popular Youtube trend in the last few years. Several vlog channels have emerged and some Youtubers have even created second channels strictly for the purpose of publishing vlogs. These vlogs possess a certain level of intimacy that other genres of videos may lack. Beauty tutorials are directed at those who may want to try out a different look. Video game play-throughs are dedicated to enthusiasts who may feeling like watching how a game unfolds before spending $60 on it. Those people have information about something and are there to share it with their audience. However, vlogs- even those stemming from main channels- may not have an audience at all. Michael Wesch explains this in his article "Youtube and You: Experiences of Self-awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam", saying, "Like a soliloquy shouted into the ether or a message in a bottle set adrift at sea, these vlogs have no specific addressee... They are videos of people sitting alone in front of their webcams and just talking to anybody and everybody who care to click on their video," (Wesch).
Vlogs are real and raw, and their creators are free to film whatever they'd like without having to stick to the label of their main channel, should they have one. Vloggers are welcome to talk about their problems, their dreams and accomplishments without judgement- because they don't know if anyone's even watching. But we are watching. And that makes us feel good, as though we're a part of a secret club.
You don't know it, but I'm rooting for you, we think to our computer screens, willing the person on the other side to feel our empathy.
Wesch goes on to say that vlogs foster a sense of community that was deemed long gone with the emergence of social media, which hasn't been around long enough to have such a negative impact, in my opinion. We start with Facebook, which allowed us to connect with distant relatives and old friends in a new, user-friendly way. People begin posting daily updates on their lives, which becomes tedious- so Twitter is formed, allowing us to post about whatever we want in short snippets. Instagram gave us the option to broadcast our lives through pictures and videos without having to say anything at all. And along came vlogs. They encapsulate various aspects of each social media platform. Each vlog tells a story in itself and yet is only a small portion of a larger scheme, inviting us back again and again.
But how do they do it? How do they intrigue us day after day?
In a word? Clickbait.
And what is clickbait you ask?
Think about the last time you were scrolling through Facebook. You see an article and the description reads, "Couple receives terrible service at restaurant. What they do next will shock you!". And then you spend ten minutes clicking off pop-up ads only to find out they left a very generous tip because they were good people. Not what you were expecting, right? Well, that's the purpose of clickbait. To get you to click on the article or video and watch or read through the entire thing in the hopes that there will be some turn of events, some payoff, to make the three minutes you just wasted "worth it".
Clickbait is the Internet's cliffhanger.
Wesch, Michael. "Youtube and You: Experiences of Self-awareness in the Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam." Explorations in Media Ecology 8.2 (2009): 19-34. Web.
