Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment of YouTube Vlogging

Introduction The video blog (vlog) has been a staple for YouTube since its inception. Diary-like vlogs depict an individual facing the camera speaking straight to the viewer about personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings (Raun) as well as sharing everyday life (Lange, Kids; Kennedy “These”). Vlogs propelled YouTube into a participatory culture-driven media era (Jenkins; Burgess and Green; Strangelove). Notably, the context for creating and distributing vlogs substantially influences their creation and sharing. Commercialising vlogs through algorithms that promote certain content over others, collecting user viewing and behavioral data, and selecting ads to run with particular content based on user data all invite continued questions about vlog authenticity (Adams; Kennedy “These”). Based on an ethnography of early YouTube vloggers and videobloggers operating outside of YouTube, this article argues that neither YouTube nor the idea of the vlog are stable entities but rather may appear vastly different according to the parameters from which they emerged. This article draws on evidence collected during an ethnographic project that principally ran from 2006 to 2009, with additional research conducted at specific points until 2018. The original project included conducting 152 interviews and maintaining two video sites (one on YouTube and one off YouTube using a WordPress blogging site, both called AnthroVlog). I posted weekly to both for one year. I also viewed and analysed hundreds of videos, and examined selected changes on YouTube. I joined YouTube in May 2007 and was therefore focussed on YouTube’s early adopters who had joined the year prior or even as far back as late 2005. I also interviewed members of the early videoblogging community off YouTube. Videobloggers in this group staunchly believed that they should have control over their work and thus avoided YouTube, at least at first. In addition, I participated in and travelled to ten in-person YouTube gatherings across the United States (and one in Canada) and I video-recorded interviews about participants’ experiences on YouTube. This footage resulted in an ethnographic documentary entitled Hey Watch This! Sharing the Self through Media which was publicly released in 2020. An advantage of a long-term ethnography is that it enabled me to observe crucial changes, such as the site’s metamorphosis from a video-sharing site to a monetised platform that de-emphasised community features and deployed algorithms to identify content that would be profitable from an advertising perspective. When viewed across this history, it is apparent that the site called YouTube and the vlogs within them have never been entities with singular definitions or connotations. This article revisits the hopes and dreams of early vloggers on YouTube and videobloggers off YouTube, while also envisioning future pathways toward vlog creation, distribution, and sharing. It takes a past/future, historical/posthuman approach and concludes by exploring possibilities for crafting usable and meaningful video-sharing spaces. This article draws on posthumanism to reimagine vlogging futures by diving into and theorising vlogging pasts. Posthuman Lens Posthuman theory offers an intriguing way to reconsider theoretical understandings of YouTube and the vlog genre. A helpful framework is found in the work of N. Katherine Hayles, who acknowledges that the posthuman is a complex and heterogeneous concept that is basically a “point of view” (2). In this version of posthumanism, the mind itself is a collection of information that could theoretically exist outside of the body. It could even become instantiated in technological devices or media (Hayles), including—I would argue—in vlogs. Visions of the posthuman include myriad concepts. This article will explore two dialectics proposed by Hayles that fall somewhere between stereotypical posthuman visions of a merged superconsciousness or “singularity” and a more fragmented mosaic of nodes existing across a distributed but connected collective. One dialectic is a spectrum from material presence to absence, and the other is a continuum ranging from random noise to patterned information. To illustrate, when a body persists, say in an interaction, it continues to be present and is thus located on the presence end of the presence/absence dialectic. Further, in terms of the randomness/pattern dialectic, there is a repeating pattern of the body’s presence across the interaction. When we view a vlog, we have now moved to the absence part of the presence/absence dialectic because the creator’s body is not present, only a sign that represents it—their vlog. Hayles is interested in how these dialectics interact. She believes they both interrelate and lie in tension in potentially infinite ways. When the presence aspect of the presence/absence dialectic encounters the randomness end of the randomness/pattern dialectic, Hayles says we are witnessing mutation. For example, if a person’s genetic code is changed, the body is still present but the pattern that was there before has now been unpredictably disrupted and moves towards the random end of the randomness/pattern dialectic. Similarly, when YouTube changes over time, the pattern that was YouTube is disrupted and moves away from being a stable platform and more toward an entity containing various changes, such as the way monetisation altered the original pattern of YouTube. Hayles draws on science fiction to analyse these concepts. She uses Greg Bear’s novel Blood Music to illustrate a posthuman instantiation in which these dialectics are in tension through mutation. In Bear’s novel, an inventor creates biochips that evolve until each one achieves a level of intelligence, taking over the body of their inventor. Later on, a consultant named Michael Bernard also becomes infected with the intelligent biochips who reintegrate his consciousness into a collective. Bernard tries to hold on to his original identity by telling the intelligent biochips that he is Bernard. After making numerous copies of his consciousness, the cells explain: “There are many BERNARD.” Each BERNARD is a replication of the original mind of Bernard whose body is still present but undergoing change. These copies are mutations, or in posthuman terms “alters”, of a being once known as Bernard. The patterned mind and body of Bernard have been disrupted and changed in random, unpredictable ways. The convention of using capital letters is a clever way of showing sameness yet important difference between the original entity and the collection of altered copies. Media exhibits a type of posthumanism because it extends an idea of a person beyond their body and includes replications of the original creator, as instantiated in a particular work. For example, when a person vlogs, the vlog and its representations of its creator persist in the ether even though the creator’s material person is absent during a viewing of the vlog. What is present is a representation of a creator from a certain point of view. As Goldhaber notes in his work on the attention economy, media enable creators to enlarge “the size and scope of your own mind”, as viewers read a text or view a video or vlog even after a creator’s passing. Goldhaber’s writes and I add a few clarifications in brackets: Since the creators’ own mental processes recur to a substantial degree in viewers’ minds as viewers watch the videos, having attention can make the creator’s mind live again, in a way. It is perhaps the closest humans can come to life after death, as well as to expand life while still living. Vlogs as posthuman “alters” contain patterned replicas of creators’ ideas and thoughts. Yet information in representations also mutates over time as a video may be changed or new comments may be posted to it, thus modifying its reception and interpretation. For example, YouTube may remove original underlying music that conflicts with new copyright rules. Vlogs thus mutate. YouTube is seen as a single entity when in fact there are many YOUTUBEs, to use posthuman nomenclature. The YouTube that I researched before and during the acquisition by Google had certain rules, parameters, time limits, video styles, forms of participation, and commercialisation pathways that differ considerably from the types that exist today in an environment with algorithms, influencers, vacillating commitments to moderation, and other conventions. Indeed, there is a different YOUTUBE continually being produced, as some 500 videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute, not to mention the number of videos that are also being deleted (GMI Research Team). In the fourth quarter of 2024, some 9.5 million videos were reportedly removed from YouTube (Ceci). The YOUTUBE that ushered in 2024 was demonstrably different from the YOUTUBE at the end of that year—and this is only one data point of change. Friction often occurs when the human meets the posthuman. For instance, when we as human researchers generalise about YouTube as a platform or the “vlog” as a genre, we gain and lose analytical vitality, especially over time. Using the term “vlog” serves a practical shorthand for understanding one type of online video, albeit one with many sub-genres and flavours including vlogging in specific communities such as the trans community (Raun), family vlogging (Kennedy “Arriving”), commercially-motivated vlogs, influencer-based vlogging such as beauty vlogging (Berryman and Kavka “I Guess”), and nontraditional experiments such as negative affect vlogs (Berryman and Kavka “Crying”), just to name a few. Yet, every vlog is created within a techno-sociocultural-commercial context that renders one VLOG as potentially very different from another VLOG, each of which were created amid platforms with varying configurations. Kennedy (“Arriving”) makes a similar point, arguing that vlogs are a form of identity construction that happens not only through crafting a video but in relation to the platform, its technologies, and other participants. For instance, one set of VLOGs may have been produced before the instantiation of algorithms while others were created after. Some VLOGs were created when time limits were 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or were temporally unlimited, prompting questions about how they were conceived, edited, and crafted. In these examples we are not speaking of single genre but rather of a paradigm or framework for conceptualising a particular type of media. Now that we see how posthumanism may inspire reframing the VLOG as a paradigm, it is time to revisit the experiences of early vloggers and videobloggers to understand what is gained and what is lost by conflating different techno-sociocultural-commercial VLOG paradigms across time and space. Histories of the Future When I began studying vlogging, I spoke with both videobloggers who had their own Websites off YouTube and vloggers who were excited to share their work on YouTube. I discovered similarities and differences between the two groups. Early videobloggers emerged from practices of blogging. They had worked out compression techniques to display videos on their own Websites prior to the emergence of YouTube in 2005 (Lange, Kids; Lange, Thanks). Berry, who researched early videoblogging practices, distinguishes between videobloggers who created and maintained their own blog, and vloggers, or people posting YouTube videos. Berry argues that the term vlog on YouTube eventually connoted many types of user-generated content in video form. She notes that in academe a fair amount of conflation exists in the use of videoblogging and vlogging on YouTube (Berry; Burgess and Green; Lange, Thanks). Early videobloggers were initially quite wary of using YouTube in part because they wished to have control over their content, and to them YouTube was a closed system that did not allow freedom in technical terms to realise their artistic visions. Early videobloggers were also reluctant to join YouTube for some of the same reasons that early YouTubers cited when they eventually migrated away from YouTube a few years later, in 2009-2010 (Lange, Hey; Lange “Media”). Videobloggers outside of YouTube characterised the site as filled with unsafe commentary, poor-quality videos, overemphasis on commercialism, and lack of control over their own work. Similarities existed in terms of using the vlog communicatively, and ideally one would meet other creators in person. Both videobloggers and vloggers were curious about monetisation but were concerned about its potential impacts on the act of vlogging. Both groups also placed intimate, small, and quite personal things in their videos because the goal was to relate to other people. Important insights emerged from my interview with Jay Dedman, a white, male, ex-television producer in his thirties who co-authored the book Videoblogging (Dedman and Paul). Dedman was an important figure in the videoblogging community who was dedicated to helping others express themselves through video. I interviewed him in my home in 2006 with his partner Ryanne Hodson, who was also a prominent member of the early videoblogging community. As Jay Dedman said in his interview when describing videoblogging: “it’s like personal voice without any worry about permission or commercialism”. I observed that both vloggers and videobloggers sought to improve their work technically and artistically and often taught others or shared tips and ideas as their work matured. Early videobloggers’ concerns about YouTube’s commercial agenda and hateful commentary were later cited by YouTube study participants as reasons for becoming disenchanted with or leaving the site. YouTube vloggers complained about the site’s extremist atmosphere, the way that commercialisation created competition between people who wished to use vlogging to be social, the impact of YouTube’s algorithms on delivering unwanted, extreme, and offensive content, the burnout that occurred among those who tried to keep up with the algorithm to earn income, and the generally excessive advertisements being thrust on viewers (Lange, Thanks). In interviews, YouTubers also said that Internet sites frequently exhibit a kind of life cycle in which people need the sites intensely for a time but ultimately their interests change or newer sites emerge and creators migrate to new sites, as many study participants did when they migrated to Twitter after struggling with challenges on YouTube (Lange, Hey; Lange “Media”). Invoking posthuman nomenclature, the YOUTUBE that vloggers on the site first encountered when they arrived, made friendships, garnered an audience, and improved their work, was not the YOUTUBE that they eventually left. Many early YouTubers whom I spoke with were very interested in meeting up in person. I observed vloggers becoming disenchanted with YouTube, reducing their posts, and sometimes leaving altogether. I asked participants whether or not YouTube was “over” in a social media sense. At a meet-up in Santa Monica in 2009, for example, I interviewed a documentary filmmaker who asked that we refer to her by her channel name of K80Blog in the research. K80Blog was a white woman in her late twenties who was a documentary filmmaker and who often engaged in humorous vlogs and observations. She vlogged about going to YouTube gatherings or the dentist, and riffed on amusing topics such as having a bad hair day. She typically received thousands of views on her videos. In response to my question, she observed that YouTube was moving away from supporting sociality and pivoting toward intensive advertising. The site’s aggressive commercialisation was the main reason that people in her YouTube social network were becoming less interested in the site. She stated: Yeah, I think YouTube is on its way out. I think it’s because it became so corporate and there’s so much about advertising that I think a lot of people are turned off. And maybe just the novelty of it has kind of worn away. Ryan, another YouTuber whom I interviewed at the same meet-up in 2009, shared similar ideas about YouTube’s commercialisation. Ryan was a Filipino male in his mid-twenties who wanted to be remembered for vlogging on socially important topics such as gay rights and voting. His videos garnered several thousand views each, including one posted in 2011 called I hate what youtube has become, in which he argued that YouTube videos were becoming increasingly mean-spirited or filled with sniping. He traced the beginning of YouTube’s downfall back to 2008, with the relatively new partner program which invited certain popular YouTubers to participate. The asymmetry of invited participation prompted envy and vexation over why seemingly less talented but more commercially popular YouTubers were admitted into the monetisation program. He saw YouTube’s metamorphosis into a commercial video-streaming site as disappointing because it decreased the opportunities for, as he put it, “normal” people to post videos and create communities. In response to my question about whether YouTube was “over,” he predicted: YouTube is still gonna go strong. But it’s not going to be mainly from user-generated content. It’s gotten more commercial, you’ve seen all the ads pop up a lot more. As a community-based, kind of social media thing YouTube is pretty much done. But as a place for people to find interesting videos and videos that may be promoted by YouTube, it’s not gone yet. But it may be. Someone is bound to make a service that is more user-friendly, and whenever someone finds or adopts that area people will move on. In most ways, his prediction came true. YouTube continued to “go strong”, but in a more commercial way. He was hopeful that another site might emerge that had more of the qualities that he and the other early YouTubers whom I studied were seeking when they first arrived on YouTube, and which the site had initially supported. At the same time both K80blog and Ryan observe that Internet sites, even popular ones, appear to have a kind of shelf life, such that after intensive use, people move on to newer sites that offer more of what participants are seeking in the moment. I would argue that pockets of community still exist on YouTube, but one needs to know where and how to find them. An important part of what made the YOUTUBE that these creators saw as distinctive were the friends whom they cultivated and interacted with on the site. As friends left the site, it became a different YOUTUBE for them, one which was less appealing and less socially focussed. Future Pathways Although human researchers cannot (at present) study a perceptually infinite number of YOUTUBE or VLOG instantiations, we can describe relevant aspects of the paradigm that we believe influence the production, sharing, and viewing of media. Unpacking and comparing historical paradigms over time avoids teleological assumptions that the site could only have played out as it did. Comparing YOUTUBE alters also provides a space to explore what creators wish to change or retain for usable sites that facilitate vlogging. According to the early YouTubers whom I interviewed, one of the things that made the site so appealing was that they could connect with other people who had similar interests, shared a passion for amateur video creation, were curious about monetising a successful channel, or were going through similar difficult times. People who experience tragedies or who have highly specialised interests often have difficulty meeting others in their immediate geographical vicinities that share comparable challenges. Having a popular site such as YouTube enabled them to considerably widen the possibilities of connection, given niche interests or uncommon tragic circumstances. However, such connections with wide populations came at a price. Personal, vulnerable videos typically received a mixed bag of commentary. While some remarks were supportive and even launched life-long friendships, other commentary was hateful and cruel. YouTubers often expressed resignation that they were receiving a free service that Google provided through its commercial data collection and advertising strategies. YouTubers often mourned the days before the site’s intensive monetisation. Such thoughts were shared by one early participant who asked to be referred to in the research by her channel name of lemonette. I interviewed her at a meet-up in Marietta, Georgia in 2007. Lemonette was a middle-aged white woman from the South who often shared her personal thoughts from a camera mounted on the dashboard of her car facing her in the driver’s seat. Her often humorous take on life garnered her a following. She typically received several thousand views on her videos, and she enjoyed YouTube’s social aspect. In 2013, lemonette posted a sub-genre of vlog that I have referred to as a “return video” (Lange “Media”), or what she called a “comeback” video. In the video, she says she no longer posts on YouTube but keeps up with friends via Facebook. She says that YouTube became less “fun” for her when the environment shifted to bragging about “how many views you got”. Although she still appreciated receiving kind comments which garnered a warm feeling, they also prompted guilt for not posting videos. It is interesting to observe YouTubers posting vlogs in which a declaration or admission is made that YouTube has lost its appeal and their participation has cooled, but they often leave the door open for a possible return to social forms of vlogging. In interviews and videos, vloggers waxed nostalgic for YouTube’s “former glory” based around amateur creativity and connection. However, I agree with Cunningham et al. that it is not necessarily productive to think of YouTube’s trajectory as a rise and fall from grace, especially since some of its issues emerged very early on. Instead, it is perhaps more productive to look across instances of YOUTUBE to see what characteristics seem to be ideal versus undesirable. Long-term problems with extremist and violent videos as well as hateful commentary are well known on the site (Basu). YouTube has vacillated in its commitment to moderation, seeing a recent turn toward loosening its policies. Previously, a video with more than one fourth of its content labeled as prohibited (such as “derogatory language and misinformation”) would be removed entirely from the site. The new policy, which reportedly went into effect in December 2024 without public disclosure, allows a video to contain up to fifty percent of prohibited content before being removed (Bouranova). Such loosening of moderation has also been recently reported by Meta, the corporation that owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as X, formerly Twitter, which was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022 (Bouranova). Conclusion Early YouTube vloggers appreciated the site’s large, open, and public structure and saw it as a way to facilitate video-sharing, improve one’s work, connect with others who shared niche experiences, exercise their creativity, communicate their point of view, and possibly monetise their work. Many interviewees believed that the way the site’s monetisation rolled out created competition and friction between creators. In addition, the algorithms that identified commercialisable videos also prompted extremist videos, misinformation, and other unfortunate content. YouTube’s vacillating commitment to moderation policies made the site feel unsafe for many, who left. At times YouTubers posted return videos leaving the door open but saw the current instantiation of the site as a hostile space (Lange, “Media”). Posthumanism is a useful tool for thinking about sites such as YouTube and how they influence vlog types, as well as how vlogs are created and shared. It is convenient to speak of a site by conflating all of its ongoing, changing versions as it mutates over time. This conflation in part emerges because proprietary sites do not disclose their inner workings, nor are changes always announced. From a human processing perspective, this conceptual conflation is necessary for observing, researching, and analysing how a site is used. At the same time, applying a posthumanist lens clearly shows that something is lost when we conflate all versions into a single concept. As researchers, we can address this problem by carefully relating the circumstances under which data are collected, to contextualise salient changes and impacts. Not all information will be available, but at least relevant circumstances such as monetisation, algorithmic workings and results, cohorts of participants under study, types of videos examined, how vlogs were collected for research, and issues of policies such as moderation, are all factors that may be outlined when analysing vlogs. Early YouTube vlogging experiences and values suggest potential solutions. These include deploying sustained moderation and using regulation and taxation to fund new sites that are less dependent on popular commercialism to succeed. Such tactics typically lead to smaller niche groups, but what made YouTube successful was its wide availability. One countermeasure might be to create aggregation interfaces (Zuckerman) that enable participants to cross into and receive information about activity on a range of smaller online communities, to ensure plurality and access to diverse ideas. Examining YOUTUBE and VLOG forms from a posthuman perspective invites much broader thinking about what participants may want from a video-sharing site and prompts reflection on how past histories may yield clues to the future of video-sharing. References Adams, Caitlin. “‘It’s So Bad It Has to Be Real’: Mimic Vlogs and the Use of User-Generated Formats for Storytelling.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 9.2 (2022): 22-36. 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