My latest obsession is watching vlogs on Youtube. I’ve always been a fan of reality TV, especially when it gives you insight into someone’s way of life that is very different from my own. My favorites when I was younger were MTV’s Made (also just an inspiring show), The Girls Next Door, 16 and Pregnant, and The Amazing Race. I’ve never been a fan of shows with gratuitous drama however, so that was always a major downside to a lot of reality TV shows. Holly Madison (one of the Girls Next Door) actually wrote a book about her experiences and revealed that Hef ironically wanted his show to appear “wholesome”, which explains part of why I liked it so much! I guess he didn’t want it to be a “Girls Gone Wild” type of situation.
Nowadays, the hot new form of social media is vlogging, and I think it’s starting to eclipse blogging. My favorite thing about vloggers is that they are perfectly normal people who share pieces of their lives on the internet. I get my reality TV totally drama-free, commercial-free, plus I can pick the topics that interest me out of tons of content. My current favorites (or ahem obsessions) are:
- Homemade Wanderlust: She’s a former engineer from Alabama who vlogged through hiking the Appalachain Trail and most recently the Pacific Crest Trail.
- Simply Mander: I followed her on tumblr and when she began vlogging I was seriously impressed by the quality of her work. She does healthy eating, crossfit, Olympic Lifting, and lives in Florida.
- The Ginger Runner: Not a regular vlogger but has fantastic videos about ultrarunning and hosts a weekly live interview session with ultra athletes.
- Less Junk, More Journey: Family who lives full-time in an RV and explores lots of National Parks and other outdoor activities with their toddler.
- Stephanie Buttermore: Health and fitness (body building-ish) content by a woman who just got her PhD in cancer research.
- Obese to Beast: He lost a ton of weight and and has a great personality, more healthy eating and fitness plus crossfit.
- Wonderfully Ale: Flight Attendant and Mom, for some reason flight attendants have been fascinating me lately.
- Jenny Ernst: Another Flight Attendant who also talks about meal prepping for healthy eating on her trips. She is also just very organized in general.
- Kara and Nate: They have been traveling around the world for a couple of years now and vlog about it. Lately I’ve been watching their older videos on the Everest Base Camp trek.
I think you can tell my interests pretty easily from that list: basically fitness, healthy eating, and travel. I also really love HGTV so I could see myself getting into some DIY videos. Another topic I enjoy, strangely enough, is cleaning videos; they really do inspire you to clean your house (something I tend to avoid). The people who make them seem to really enjoy the cleaning process and it’s oddly satisfying to watch a sped-up version of cleaning a house.
I’ve also thought about starting my own YouTube channel; however, I am not in the least photogenic or charismatic, which is something most successful YouTubers have in spades. I think I would enjoy the filming and editing process, at least. Vloggers are also putting themselves out there in a major way, which is a pretty big con. I can imagine the pressure to maintain a good image with makeup/hair done, a tidy house, and the million other imperfections that can easily be spotted by viewers. Not to mention the embarrassment of filming in public, which is much worse than just taking pictures like a blogger.
The pros include the fact that it’s pretty obvious that vlogging is becoming a huge, potentially lucrative field of social media. I don’t think most people make much money off of the ads on YouTube. The real money comes from sponsored videos, affiliate links, Patreon, creating fee-based courses, etc. Patreon is a very interesting phenomenon to me because it allows people to let their viewers choose whether or not to pitch in money. The basic premise is that someone works hard to create amazing content, puts it out there for free, and then proposes that people who enjoy the content offer payment for it. You would think that nobody would pay but surprisingly there are a lot of supporters for some creators (including a few that I mentioned above). I also just have to say that I am insanely jealous of the people who make a living by doing really awesome, cool stuff and creating crazy good content off of those experiences. Clearly they’ve worked hard and deserve it, but man is that the good life. There’s definitely a part of me that envisions retiring early and just living that life (obviously minus support from paid content)!
Anyone else have favorite YouTube channels or considered starting one yourself?