SomethingAwful: Youtube and Vlogging Every Day in April

Every year, thousands of Youtube users participate in VEDA, "Vlog Every Day in April." While its purpose might be to promote community ties, compel users to practice making Youtube content and, of course, drive up interest and pageloads on Youtube itself, it mostly turns into a horrible collision between vanity and inaptitude. Many of these people have nothing to communicate but, on top of that, lack the means to communicate anyway. The question is: why do they do it? Why expose themselves for so little?

Mr. Destructo book and film reviewer Mark Brendle attempted to answer this question, and eventually I tagged in to try my best to help understand these often accidentally funny, alarming and vulnerable people. It's at once a heartening and disheartening spectacle. People yearn to connect, dazzled by the possibility of finding accidental celebrity just for being themselves — educated by a television culture that runs on such a self-evident and free-form paradigm — but they lack the means to make a connection, as well as ideas alluring enough to establish one with others. Also, the videos are pretty funny.

Click here to read the article at Something Awful.

Special thanks to Andrew Miller for arranging the numerous embedded VEDA Youtubes, as well as Kak, JHVH-1 and BlastYouVileWoman for finding many videos and, lastly, Beowulf LaGrange and Chandelier Stuntin (aka Woodmuffin) for writing blurbs for the article.