When browsing YouTube, I can’t help but wonder how users who are not song artists can reach millions of views for their videos. A secret to their success? They have the gift of talking to themselves in way that reveals their personality.
In other words, they vlog their lives.
When the challenge of vlogging for a couple of days went up for grabs during newspaper story discussion, I eagerly took it. Having been apart of my friends’ vlogs several times, I thought it would be cool to make my own.
The problem was that my life is not any more interesting than the life of a normal human being. In fact, my days can usually be boiled down into three words: eat, sleep and swim. And a bit of studying in between.
I immediately began planning out the next few days, filling them with fun activities that would give the impression that I have a social life.
Groggily waking up on a Friday, I began vlogging with an introduction. Deciding that I could not function properly at 5:10, I resumed when I arrived at the pool.
I misjudged how funny I must have looked, carrying my phone at arm’s length as if I were taking a group selfie with only myself; upon my arrival at swim practice my friend quickly asked what I was doing, and my cheeks turned red as self-consciousness consumed me.
Noticing that my vlog was already boring, I eagerly said ‘Hi Brad’ to one of the coaches on deck and began asking how his morning was. Unfortunately, he turned around and said, straight into the camera, “My name is Matt.”
Despite my efforts to try to make the vlogs interesting, they were filled with the same friends who avoided talking excessively and me saying “so … yeah.”
But lucky for me, after a gruesome workout, my teammates and I were abnormally hyper. We somehow managed to turn a conversation about swimming into one about school rivalries, which gave the vlog personality; my friends were randomly giving shoutouts to their high schools.
The next day, though, vlogging grew increasingly tedious; I vlogged even less, recording a grand total of two activities, swim practice and a dinner at Santana Row.
When my vlogging series came to a close at the day’s end, I was relieved for several reasons.
Vlogging, for one, ate up my phone’s battery rather quickly (my battery level dipped under 10 percent over three times throughout the experience).
Secondly, the judgment was overwhelming. It was barely noticeable at first, but soon the “Why are you talking to yourself?”s and “Those people are staring at you”s made me second guess whether I wanted to continue the challenge.
Finally, vlogging prevented me from living in the moment. Although my vlogs lacked consistency and had more awkward silences than talking, having to talk to my phone diverted my attention away from my friends, whom I’d rather talk to.
After trying to vlog for myself, I’ve developed a serious amount of respect for vlogging YouTubers. I am baffled by the their ability to talk to their cameras in public without being self-conscious. Maybe it’s because they actually have interesting lives that don’t consist of only swim practice and homework.
But don’t be discouraged from my failure to vlog. For all you thirsty souls who want more of a challenge than 200 likes on your Facebook profile picture, try vlogging. You might just get 2 million views on YouTube.
