Throw Another Vlog on the Internet Fire

YouTube is home to two parallel worlds. While most visitors drop in to watch the latest viral clip or tune into their favourite channel, a minority of users are part of a community of video bloggers, or vloggers. They spend much more time on the site, commenting, messaging each other, posting response videos and building their subscriber base.

Imagine your most active and annoying Facebook friend fidgeting, stuttering and rambling into a low-res camera, and you've got a good picture of most vloggers. Like personal bloggers, the majority of vloggers don't specialize in any topic other than themselves. I find them almost uniformly unwatchable.

Natalie Tran, or communitychannel, is the singular exception. The 20-something Australian university student is one of the most celebrated vloggers on YouTube. In her videos, Tran chats to the camera between short skits in which she plays every character. Tran has a huge following, with more than 10 million channel views.

Personal content is the side of the Internet that my parents' generation finds incomprehensible. I, on the other hand, am a connoisseur of the inane. I love personal blogs. I look forward to new photos of Heather Armstrong's dogs, even though I don't know Heather Armstrong. I read half a dozen parenting blogs, though my own parenting days are likely a decade away. I'm happy to read about what you had for lunch, especially if there's a photo. But even I can't watch more than 15 seconds of most vlogs.

Part of the problem is that video feels too much like real life. YouTube is less like reading a tell-all memoir than being forced into conversation with someone on the bus. Once your neighbour starts talking about their marital problems, you get uncomfortable. Tran keeps her videos pretty upbeat, and though she tells a lot of anecdotes, she doesn't reveal all that much about herself. Though I've seen dozens of her clips, I don't know who she's dating, who her friends are, or anything about her mental health.

My other problem with vloggers is how vulnerable they can seem, spilling their guts to the camera. When I find an awkward pre-teen boy talking about the kids who hit him at school, I cringe mostly because I'm imagining how much hate mail he's about to get. But while Tran's humour is self-deprecating, there's no doubt that she's had practice defending herself, especially from racist commenters. Whether you're a fan of the medium or not, watch that video, like half a million visitors before you, and see if you can keep from cheering.

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