We outsource our lives to vlogs.
While reality shows might be incredibly popular they don’t aim at convincing us that it presents reality, but there is a form that takes real life and presents it in Instagram filter for everyone to see — vlogs.
Mentioned Instagram might have an even greater amount of viewers, but we all know how easy these days it is to make a photo of anything and add a filter so it will look gorgeous, we know it is a lie. Vlogs are different, they want us to believe we can live the lives presented to us on the screen. So while we have specific goals, so is the range of the topics in vlogs. It seems to be as wide as aspects in which we want to thrive. From usual suspects like travelling, filming and simply being rich and famous, we can find many very specific ones. Do you want to be a doctor without borders rather than never leaving your country? There is a vlog for that. You imagine yourself being a car mechanic and earning money with your sweat rather than stress? There is a vlog for that. You want to taste every fast-food on earth, it will come without surprise that there is a vlog for that.
This is a phenomenon that shouldn’t go unnoticed, and as it comes to us as a given that there can be a story being told about everything — what kind of a story are we looking for in vlogs? Affirmation of our dreams. It is easier to get along with our tough lives when we keep saying to ourselves — just a few more years and I will do the things that I always wanted! That’s the old way! When we simply dreamed about our future, deep down we knew that we are not fully honest with ourselves, we didn’t examine the requirements to the life that we want to pursue, so we are safe for a longer time. Today we can see our dreams in vlogs and answer about where are the discrepancies between what is shown and real life are way more difficult to tell.
So which dreams are worse: the unfulfilled ones or the ones that upon examining show their imperfect, often ugly nature?
How many goals that you have achieved have really been so good as you have imagined them? Few? None? That’s because nothing is simple, especially life. We tend to live in our heads rather than learn to live in the world of reality. Struggles in the novels are interesting, but somehow you are not happy when you don’t have an umbrella during a heavy rain. In our lives, we look at the top of the mountain and we don’t see the path to it. We say — How stupid I was — when we find out that our partner isn’t perfect. But we only say it, we don’t examine why we haven’t seen it earlier, oh maybe we did, but it was unpleasant, so as the very next thing we do is adjust the dream so we can keep dreaming. No one who is … could be a good match for me. That seems to seal the leak.
Vlogs are the worst part of that — they present themselves as real, very real. We can even touch our dreams — we can meet the person behind a vlog — and they will be very happy to reinforce our feeling of reality, that’s because they are in this same prison.
They are not allowed to show anything really bad. Of course, minor and not-often adversities are good, again for raising realism and making them a bit more interesting. As long as they keep smiling, everything is ok. Real problems are not easy to show. Most often they have to be hidden.
Dreams can become nightmares.
One of the most popular wishes is to be a rich and famous singer, that would be a perfect job, wouldn’t it? Army of fans, fast cars, no matter where you find yourself you are a VIP. There is a popular South Korean singer Taeyeon that during a Korean Big Brother said that she wouldn’t want for her daughter to have her voice, as it could lead her to become a singer. That’s scary, if she says so, why then she is a singer? Because she had to. If you want to know more search for slave contracts.
But that is extreme. Yet for more popular vloggers their content is their source of income. And as for every source of income, most grow dependent on it. Think about all the sports champions that have earned sums that we would assume are more than one can spend in a lifetime and later live in poverty.
For humans everything is relative. And the most relative is happiness.
And even though happiness is relative. We tend to want the same beautifully collored, exciting, full of success life. That’s exactly what vlogs are showing us. 10 minutes of precisely chosen shots. Nothing exciting happening around? Let’s show the city, how great it is, how everyone else there is also enjoying their life. Shots often better than from a high-budget documentary. Oh, and the music, we can not forget about it, who wouldn’t want an iced coffee when such a motivational music is playing.
Maybe it will, or even is, possible to live the life that doesn’t exist if we don’t question it. Or maybe we should ask about the parts we don’t see. I hope that wouldn’t just burst the bubble and leave us unfulfilled. I hope that could lead us to a path for real happiness, the way it is, with its lights and darks, relative, relative to us.
