I’m as sensitive and defensive as they come so i absolutely understand hackles rising at outsiders such as sarah boxer daring to pronounce on the brave new world of vloggery.

In her defence, i did get the feeling sarah was necessarily writing for the unwashed uninformed masses who haven’t even heard the term. That’s why i think she stuck to comparing the average vlog *content* as being like TV, not the technique or technology.

In general i agree there, but i’m a knee-jerk admirer of the emperor’s clothing the moment anyone *else* presumes to criticize.

I dont think Boxer would deny that the *potential* for vlogs is of course light years improved on TV. It’s just that for today it is still somewhat at the raw self-conscious stage as everyone grapples with basic filming technique and realises just how hard it is to come up with half-way decent content with any consistency. Self-regarding prose is easier to ignore because we’re all familiar with that. Self-regarding vlogging is a new phenomenon and we’re necessarily at the polite early stage where none of us wants to throw stones.

I’m not familiar with the big name vloggeria so i wouldnt know when i’m looking at royalty, but there’s nothing wrong in these delicate early days in lapsing cliquish and a bit self-congratulatory to keep the flame alive.

It’s still a small world – hence incestuous – and fiercely self-protective as it works out the implication of vlogging and its mind-boggling potential and fulfilment.

I’ve never placed too much store on self-awareness – market forces and ones peers tend to deliver any useful wake-up calls or coups-de-grâce. Whati do admire – which you have – is the ability to spot where oneself could have done better and use that instinctive self-dissatisfaction to never settle for one’s *own* 2nd best.

Boxer was writing for a general public whereas you n your readers are the inner sanctum aristocracy, perched on the very branches of the Tree of Knowledge.

You see at which stage it all is: folks still only getting used to the finer points of filming technology not to mention the child-like satisfaction of pointing cameras at ones pals and burbling to an uncritical audience at the time. Playback reactions are another matter and therein will lie the speedy maturing of vlogging.

Content? Plenty of time to get critical and picky about *that*. In fact, i don’t expect to see any dramatic demands or improvement in this area for at least 6 or 7 months – maybe more since it’ll have to come by natural selection and unspoken consensus from *within* the ordinary vlog mass community and not as a result of any article by the likes of Ms Boxer. Nor, incidentally will demand for (or dismissal of) worthwhile entertaining content come about as a result of any internal pontificating from on high and *that* should be worth watching.

All very anarchic and exciting and no need whatsoever to grow up too fast.