Chapter 5 - Vlogs and reality
This post is a continuation
of the previous topic, elaborating reality in vlogs with more examples
and thoughts.
Through social media it is possible to create a custom persona. This means that one can pretend to be or do things they normally don't. For example this girl who made everyone (including her family) believe she was on a holiday for five weeks, or these students who created a pretend social influencer and gained over 10.000 Instagram followers within two weeks. These experiments illustrate, again, how easy it is to make the audience believe nearly everything through social media and modern technology.
Constructing a specific reality is possible through selection and omission. The selection of the things we do want the audience to see, omission of what we don't want them to see. Pretty straightforward. Obviously, for vlogs it is kind of necessary to cut and edit fragments, because no one would want to watch a 12+ hour video of every little detail of someone's day (probably they’d have no followers, and if they have they’d complain about the length). Also, a viewer 'connects' with a specific creator through the values they represent, and the trends they express. If a creator represents authenticity and sincerity they are instantly more realistic.
A vlogger who expresses this sincerity is Laura Brijde, a sporty 21-year-old from the Netherlands who lives in Spain. I'm referring to a specific vlog called Scammed for 1.270 Euro's & blood everywhere | Vlog #103. In this vlog she loses 1.270 euro's as she is scammed by a fake Airbnb account, and then she also clumsily falls hard on her head, leaving a gaping gash on her head. Obviously this isn't the most joyful of information and footage to share with her audience, but she explains that she decided to share this 'bad day' to show that not everything in life goes well or is perfect. Sharing this vlog (and on Instagram) creates sympathy with their audience, and the comments she got were all for her to feel better soon, or to hopefully catch the guy who stole her money. It could be argued that sharing ‘bad’ events like this is a way of selling a brand, but I’m going to leave that topic for now.
Regarding sharing values there is a vlogger/YouTuber called Mascha, who became vegan about a year ago, as she wanted to do it for personal health reasons. I am mentioning this example because her reasoning makes me a bit uneasy. Being vegan is a lifestyle and a mind-set, it means using or consuming no animal-products and a good reason to do it is for the animals, the environment and health. Mascha does it for her health, which is good, yet she still happily shows her new leather purse to the audience. Ouch.
Furthermore, she has shared a few shots of her body, comparing how much slimmer she got and how much weight she lost from eating as a vegan. She claims to have lost over 10 kilograms, which is great for her, but then her audience (especially younger ones) might think that a vegan diet is the way to get slim and healthy. Which, honestly, is a bad way of promoting veganism. On the bright side, every extra vegan is great. I just believe that it is important to educate the audience, and herself, properly.
This vlogger also often constructs her information in a perfect way. She visits her hairdresser quite often ,getting her hair dyed and cut and extensions and all that. Last week she posted an image on Instagram, posting her new hair-do and #gift. Meaning that she didn't pay for her expensive do, which is an example of her self-established fame. She promotes her hairdresser to her followers in exchange for a free hair-do.
I don't think there are
benefits to presenting a fake reality or persona. Of course, it must be fun to
make everything just a tad bit more exciting or interesting for the audience,
but then as long as it is clear what, where and how. And as many vloggers are
celebrities getting recognised, it would be pretty awkward if they have just
posted something which ends up not true and one of their viewers catches them.
In a way, the audience has come to trust the ones they view, to tell and
represent the truth.
To finish this post I’m doing a little throwback to the topic created around Essena O'neill a while ago, she had a lot of followers on Instagram, but deleted her account because 'Social Media isn't real'. However, it seems that she didn’t manage and is back on Twitter these days. Do you remember this throwback?
Lesson: The truth is more like a question to yourself. How do you portray yourself on your social media channels? Do you tell the truth, or do you leave out any information or events? Do you think it’s lying to be selective and omit in social media, or has it more to do with digital citizenship? Write to me in the comments!
Also check out the Twitter-page related to this post @IamVlogged
Through social media it is possible to create a custom persona. This means that one can pretend to be or do things they normally don't. For example this girl who made everyone (including her family) believe she was on a holiday for five weeks, or these students who created a pretend social influencer and gained over 10.000 Instagram followers within two weeks. These experiments illustrate, again, how easy it is to make the audience believe nearly everything through social media and modern technology.
Constructing a specific reality is possible through selection and omission. The selection of the things we do want the audience to see, omission of what we don't want them to see. Pretty straightforward. Obviously, for vlogs it is kind of necessary to cut and edit fragments, because no one would want to watch a 12+ hour video of every little detail of someone's day (probably they’d have no followers, and if they have they’d complain about the length). Also, a viewer 'connects' with a specific creator through the values they represent, and the trends they express. If a creator represents authenticity and sincerity they are instantly more realistic.
A vlogger who expresses this sincerity is Laura Brijde, a sporty 21-year-old from the Netherlands who lives in Spain. I'm referring to a specific vlog called Scammed for 1.270 Euro's & blood everywhere | Vlog #103. In this vlog she loses 1.270 euro's as she is scammed by a fake Airbnb account, and then she also clumsily falls hard on her head, leaving a gaping gash on her head. Obviously this isn't the most joyful of information and footage to share with her audience, but she explains that she decided to share this 'bad day' to show that not everything in life goes well or is perfect. Sharing this vlog (and on Instagram) creates sympathy with their audience, and the comments she got were all for her to feel better soon, or to hopefully catch the guy who stole her money. It could be argued that sharing ‘bad’ events like this is a way of selling a brand, but I’m going to leave that topic for now.
Image: Youtube screenshot - Laura's unfortunate accident
Regarding sharing values there is a vlogger/YouTuber called Mascha, who became vegan about a year ago, as she wanted to do it for personal health reasons. I am mentioning this example because her reasoning makes me a bit uneasy. Being vegan is a lifestyle and a mind-set, it means using or consuming no animal-products and a good reason to do it is for the animals, the environment and health. Mascha does it for her health, which is good, yet she still happily shows her new leather purse to the audience. Ouch.
Furthermore, she has shared a few shots of her body, comparing how much slimmer she got and how much weight she lost from eating as a vegan. She claims to have lost over 10 kilograms, which is great for her, but then her audience (especially younger ones) might think that a vegan diet is the way to get slim and healthy. Which, honestly, is a bad way of promoting veganism. On the bright side, every extra vegan is great. I just believe that it is important to educate the audience, and herself, properly.
This vlogger also often constructs her information in a perfect way. She visits her hairdresser quite often ,getting her hair dyed and cut and extensions and all that. Last week she posted an image on Instagram, posting her new hair-do and #gift. Meaning that she didn't pay for her expensive do, which is an example of her self-established fame. She promotes her hairdresser to her followers in exchange for a free hair-do.
Image: Instagram The hair-dothat was a present
To finish this post I’m doing a little throwback to the topic created around Essena O'neill a while ago, she had a lot of followers on Instagram, but deleted her account because 'Social Media isn't real'. However, it seems that she didn’t manage and is back on Twitter these days. Do you remember this throwback?
Lesson: The truth is more like a question to yourself. How do you portray yourself on your social media channels? Do you tell the truth, or do you leave out any information or events? Do you think it’s lying to be selective and omit in social media, or has it more to do with digital citizenship? Write to me in the comments!
Also check out the Twitter-page related to this post @IamVlogged
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