Blogging and Mankind

The Interwebs are good for a few things, and these include pictures of scarcely clothed women, talking cats and - presumably in a number rivaling those of said women - people who like to invite people into their everyday life. This is called Blogging.

See, when I started this blog, I tried to make it interesting enough for people to read, dealing with topics I (and others I know) like and that I have fun doing research for, at least providing my readers with (more or less) useful information. You can argue that the topics I choose are interesting, but that's a story for another day.
What I have is one kind of a blog - giving information on various topics and sometimes showing original content - but there's another kind of blog, and that's what I like to call: The Open Diary.
The author offers a detailed insight in his life, his doings, his interests and his emotions. There's the sports blog dealing with cycling or the local soccer club, there's the occasional blog on everyday family life of the God-loving suburbian family, and there's the emotion-laden depiction of the real-life outcast dealing with his cynical thoughts on life and mankind. So far, so Web 2.0.Those blogs are interesting to some and have every right to exist, I believe (even if I might mock some of them on occasions). [more after the jump]


Now, with YouTube and mobile phone cameras, people not only have to rely on photos of themselves doing their laundry. Blogs and videos began to merge and became video blogs, or Vlogs. Again, some of those can be interesting enough if the topic allows it.

But when people begin to describe their lives on blogs, literally publishing diaries, it's where I tend to draw a line. It's interesting if you're, say, a rockstar depicting life in a recording studio - something that's not ordinary, if you get what I mean. It might even be interesting if you have a funny style of presenting your rather standard life, just to spice things up a little. But if you're not funny, not interesting, not extraordinary people soon enough will ask themselves:
Why?
Why should I be watching you assembling your bed?
Why should I find the stuff your cat does interesting?
Why are you showing me this?

The answer is simple: People are voyeurs.
Our own life can the dullest and least eventful life ever, but we always find some other life we can watch and make fun of.
Now you might be asking: 'But Major Awesome, you magnificent person, isn't that a bit harsh? Surely, that's not the main reason why we watch boring vlogs about nonsense?', to which I'd reply: 'Yes, yes it's harsh, but truth is harsh. And thanks for the compliment.'

But really,  that's all there is to it. Take Big Brother, for example. The concept - a few idiots living in a house together, exposed to the world with every footstep - is one of the largest media phenomenons in the history of television [citation needed]. The watchers at home are driven only by their voyeuristic nature, expecting to see the morons on TV either bash their heads in or hump their brains out. But then again, these are events, more that we can say about many blogs/vlogs on the internet.

So what is it that made me produce this rant on mankind? Why, it's all because of small-time British impro-comedian Elise Harris and her juicy insights in her London-based appartement life with her piano playing cat (sorry, not as funny as it sounds) and a guy called Ollie The Bean. She recently moved to another flat and is now also accompanied by mice and rats and a nightclub; she likes to perform in a comedy club in two-week intervals; she writes poetry and designs mugs and t-shirts as a past-time activity; and she likes to talk in an obnoxious high-pitched fashion (to be fair, she obviously didn't choose her voice) with lots of hand swirling and lots of looking-past-the-camera. Oh, and she looks like Michael Jackson, people say (it's true when the lighting is right).
Now what does Elise do?

She does stand-up comedy in Brighton.
She talks about her freaky hand, showing us her Simian line and explaining the phenomenon on other famous celebrities.
Being bored, she cooks omeletts in her unfinished kitchen, swatting flies with her bare hands.
She assembles a bed all by herself. (What, you think I was kidding when I mentioned that earlier?)
She describes vegetables.
She collects wigs, I guess...?

Alright, I have to be honest here - I didn't really pick the most flattering videos (except for the stand-up bit maybe); Elise also has a lot of other stuff going on, like videos from travels and festivals. But let's look at the facts: She has 3059 subscribers, up to 400 uploaded videos, and has been going on since mid-2006. I honestly can't grasp where all that numbers come from.
Evil tongues might assume that she got attention through cleavage and giving her breasts plenty of airtime, but then again: exposing ones 'flabby arms' (/quote) might be counterproductive, even if bewbs are involved somehow. Witness:



So now you might be asking: 'But Major Awesome, you suddenly not so magnificent internet stalker, why did you go through all those videos if you fail to grasp the excitement and use behind it all? Just turn it off already!'

That's the problem: I can't. I'm only human.