Semi-colon Soup and Ampersandwiches

I found myself bouncing (and bounding) across various YouTube videos yesterweek and I happened to stumble upon a young woman's "vlog." Yes, her vlog. She regularly sits in front of her webcam and for anywhere from three to six minutes, she updates you on her life. Here's what I did today. This is what I think about Jonathan in class. I'm doing this and that this weekend. And as much as I didn't care one bit whatsoever, I watched. All three minutes and forty-eight seconds of it. And I have yet to discover why.

Vlogging. Who honestly would regularly watch these videos. Sure, one could make the argument that people watch them the same way I did - stumbling across them. And sure, one could go one to argue that I could have easily stopped it but didn't and that they must possess some inherent enjoyability. And sure, one could argue that I actually have bookmarked it and will check for updates regularly. But honestly, who else would watch these?

What does the internet world (hereafter webfam) care about what some seventeen year old is doing and thinking day after day after day? Does there happen to be a following for such vlogs out there in the webfam (hereafter compunity)? Or am I the only one watching these?

The following is my beef with vlogs. I have serious beef with this new (uncharted?) enterprise. However, to be fair, in addition to my beef, I will also add my cheese with vlogging - the things I find positive about it.

Beef #1 - While blogging is self-indulgent, self-focused, and self-involved, vlogging just cranks this dial up too far for me. "Not only do I demand that you avail yourself to my thinking, my agenda, and my perspective, you must look at me too now. If I didn't have your attention with my words, I will certainly now - now that you can see what posters I have on my dorm room wall behind me and speculate what school I go to."

Beef #2 - The word "vlog." It's hard to say. And it doesn't follow the same formula as "blog." Web Log takes the last letter of the first word "B" and combines it with the second word "Log." B + Log = Blog. If "Video Log" followed the same formula, it should be "Olog," not "Vlog." Furthermore, a "video log" is still on the web, isn't it? It's technically a "Video Web Log," thus it should really be "Oblog."

Beef #3 - No one cares.

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Cheese #1 - Vlogging does have the potential for sing-alongs and video shorts that regular blogging does not. Also one could do puppet shows (Gene and Oliver puppets?).

Cheese #2 - One can "blog" visually to a set soundtrack. In other words, vlogging can capture audio. I would do something with Emo music. You know, that cool genre which is a shorthand for "Emotional." It could capture the emotional ethos of my vlog. Emo is nice. But again, Emo was so two months ago.

Beef #4 - No one cares.