- http://www.youtube.com/bfvsgf
- http://www.youtube.com/ctfxc
- http://www.youtube.com/user/shaycarl
As you can see, the first two have around 500,000 subscribers, whereas the latter has nearly 1,000,000 subscribers, so obviously they have a large impact on today's social media networking today. With the feature of the "demographics" of YouTube, where it gives you the statistics of each video, it's really interesting to see which type of people watch these videos. I randomly searched a vlog video from the ctfxc channel and got these following statistics:
Top demographics
- Female, 13-17 years
- Female, 18-24 years
- Male, 13-17 years
Top locations
- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
It's really interesting to see this since our focus is on the youth subcultures, which is generally encompassed around the age from 12-18. If you guys have the time, I would recommend checking out this interview of the "ctfxc" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDcfZiUhDA4 (Note: There are other videos of other vloggers that I have not covered, such as mysterguitarman). Also note that these channels have people from totally different backgrounds: Charles from CTFxC is a part of a rock band, as his father was, the family from ShayCarls is that of a Mormon family, and the couple in the bfvsgf are your typical New Jersey people. With all these different subcultures presented, I think one of the main reasons why people are drawn into these videos is to look at different people's lives, and subsequently different subcultures. I personally know that I won't be travelling around Europe or across the country every day, as does Charles does, so having that "middleman" which is the vlog provides me that sort of entertainment. I know this is similar to the idea that was brought up in the hip-hop discussion: Because the majority of rap listeners are white suburban kids, one of the reasons they listen to this, we hypothesized, was to take a glance at the life of the "ghettos." And because these videos are roughly 10 minutes each, it doesn't consume all of my time (However, each of these channels have roughly 800-1000 daily vlogs, so catching up might take awhile).
What do you guys think of this concept of vlogging? Does it bring together people from different backgrounds, and even subcultures?
I think vlogging is a great way to learn about different people and subcultures and it definitely brings people together. With vlogging, it's more personal; there's no middle man there to manipulate the message. What's important, however, is that with vlogging, and other social mediums for that matter, we shouldn't just use it as our only source of cultural connection, we should be inspired to go out into the world and learn about these cultures ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dalena in that vlogging is a very good way in giving people tastes of other cultures. I do not know how deep it could possibly be, as I personally am not an expert on either blogging or vlogging, yet I would imagine that there would not be that much relevance in watching these videos, as once they achieve a relative sort of popularity it would migrate to the people just broadcasting themselves. Just another sense of social media.
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