Vlogging selves
Something is happening online. they are still called “vlogs” or video blogs but the contents have become intensely personal. they follow long threads of tales that lead to epic narratives as the vlogger does not remain alone but is linked with other vloggers. it is as if the story of one is pushed by a similar story from another. or, they take turns in sharing episodes in their lives until their vlogs assume the excitement of a melodramatic tv series or drag as some series do.
Immersive and participatory, these vlogs are supported by social media apparatuses and applications. You can watch and remain the anonymous viewer or you can be a ringmaster, sending “stars” or even monetary support or contributing to the “convo” or conversation. Or, you could critique or lambast the vlogger and his content. “Bash” is the term used for that. While “bashing” may sound derogatory, it does not diminish the power of a vlog; in fact, any form of bashing is bound to make the post “viral” and, by the implication of that word, spread immensely, in this case, online.
How does one become part of a vlog? Like any online image or presentation, it begins with how an image or actions attract a viewer. With millions of posts online, one or two can bring you to follow their characters, or track the development of a picture or a person. The old adage about ads being intriguing work for vlogs. The political incorrectness of a statement or slogan can even be the beginning of one’s affair with a vlog.
Everything starts with surfing online. Triggered by a narrative, the algorithm of social media takes over and manages the flow of things.
During the height of the pandemic, streaming movies and music and those short and sweet vlogs provided the comfort zone for a population grappling not only with the lockdown but also with the steady news about daily deaths from the virus. In my case, at breakfast, I would search for travel vlogs. One particular vlog was about an English couple that had chosen to navigate the many rivers of England with their locks, which allowed flat boats to reach woodlands and remote sites. I wrote about this vlogging couple. The husband being a TV and theater actor provided most of the narrations, which were wittily wicked.
Not all vlogs benefit from succinct and swift subtitling and narrating. The nature of the vlog itself—private made public, the confessional turned into a social act—does not demand fluidity in performance nor does it require any acting skill. If there is a common element in these implosive vlogs from the Filipinos, it is the candor and naiveté, unfiltered, warts and all, coming straight into your senses.
There is this transgender from one of the island provinces of Bicol. S/he lives in a small house, impoverished. S/he dresses plainly, eats dried fish with her bare hands. Constantly eating, she talks with morsels of food showing from her mouth. Lately, she has developed a narrative—that of a woman looking for her male partner. She walks barefoot in her neighborhood, the surroundings dank and dirty, the overflow of the seawater flooding the streets around them. But, in one of the previous episodes, s/he raises funds for an old man, abandoned and living alone in a tiny hut. An impossibly poor person coming to the aid of a hopelessly poor soul.
Composite vlogs portray a new if not disturbing profile of migrant women. These women seem to share an origin given their accent and inflection. It is not clear if they are all married to American white males but they look well preserved even as they retain that simple unmadeup physicality of rural women. In an episode, they show us what seems to be the latest in the US of A: “Pamamasura” (dumpster diving). These women walk the streets at night in search of disposed household items, a practice common in Japan years ago among migrant workers. But in another episode, we see the women proud of their finds: fruits and other food items. From their conversation, we hear how they are going to dispose of what had been disposed of —they will sort out these food items (there are chocolate candies and bars sometimes) and check their expiry dates and send them to any of their deserving followers. Behind therefore a deviant behavior, we glean a positive act.
How rational is this narrative? Is there ever a chance for these narrators to step back a bit, ask themselves if what they are doing makes sense?
In the book Autoethnograpy. Understanding Qualitative Research, by Tony E. Adams, Stacy Holman Jones and Carolyn Ellis, the concept of narrative rationality, following Walter Fisher, is defined: “Humans are storytellers in search of narrative rationality—stories that are plausible, trustworthy, reliable, and ‘true’ to experience.”
Are these women coming from homes of such abject poverty that migration and the consequent marriage into households situated in developed, wealthy communities cannot banish memories of deprivation? That, at each turn, they always feel the need to look for surpluses and funnel them back to their subsisting human groups?
The glory days of fake news are over. Welcome to the brave, new world where everyone does not only have a 15-minute share of fame but brief moments of acceptability that they can sustain so long as their number of viewers escalates by seconds and they can share their bounty with virtual constituents.