Linda Holmes writes about how blog culture was once sharing your whole lives with strangers on the internet — and how those strangers soon began to feel entitled to that personal information. She makes the point that YouTubers have recreated that culture through a different medium.
What came out of that moment in blog culture, for a lot of people I knew, was a renewed commitment to controlling what they talked about and what they didn’t. The ultimate skill of navigating a social media presence, to a great degree, is seeming to talk about everything while not talking about everything at all. There are a lot of people who will show you their dog, but not their kids. They won’t tell you charming stories about their husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends every day, because they don’t want you to feel entitled to know where somebody went, or whether they’re in the hospital, or whether you’re fighting. And if they’re very good at it, you don’t notice.
I have had videos by some of these life bloggers (or vloggers) recommended to me by YouTube. It’s an intimate look into someone’s existence that can feel a bit too close.
