Andrew Bravener has been vlogging (parts of) his life on YouTube since 2007
It's painful for Andrew Bravener to look back at old videos of himself. But it's not home movies of eating solid foods for the first time or elementary school recitals that make the 21-year-old from Oakville, Ont. cringe - just clips he uploaded to his YouTube channel AndrewBravener three years ago.
In his first video blog entry, an 18-year-old Mr. Bravener sits in front of an unmade bed and speaks in hushed tones (he didn't want his parents to hear him). In the eight-minute stream-of-consciousness video, he shares the story of when a gay man flirted with him during one of his shifts at Shoppers Drug Mart. Like any "Dear Diary" log, it is a bit rambly, over-the-top self-reflective and - particularly because it's a snapshot of teenage life - generally embarrassing.
While traditional journaling - and even long-form personal blogging - has declined in favour of quick hits from Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, the act of diarizing is far from dead. It's just taken on a new form - albeit one with a interesting drawback.
As subscriber counts and page views steadily rise on vloggers' personal YouTube channels, so too does the level of self-censorship. It makes sense: The more people who are reading (or in this case, watching) your diary, the less you want to spill your guts.
In his recently released book Watching YouTube, Michael Strangelove, an adjunct professor of communication at the University of Ottawa, says even when the vlogger is at home alone with his webcam, what he reveals can never be as raw as what he'd share in a written diary.
"When you turn on a camera in the privacy of your bedroom, you're not alone, and that changes your performance immediately. Inescapably, you're with the YouTube audience," he says.
Mr. Bravener's first vlog entry was initially viewed by only a few people, but in the past three years, he has made his way to the No. 33 spot on YouTube's Most Subscribed list for Canada.
And while his good looks prompt many comments such as "ur so hot i love u lol" and questions about his relationship status (Google Analytics tells him his viewership is mostly teenage girls), the recent graduate from Sheridan College avoids delving into his love life on camera.
"It's almost business professional," he explains. "Anything I say is logged. I try to keep things like that. I don't talk about other people. I talk about myself."
Paradoxically, even while vloggers closely manage the image they present online, they all strive to be perceived as "authentic," Prof. Strangelove says.
Katrina Gallo, a YouTube user from Fredericksburg, Va. who has almost 12,000 subscribers to her channel walllofweird, has vlogged at length about everything from her wedding to details of buying a house, but it's still just a tiny, edited snapshot of her life, she explains in a video entitled "The Real Me."
"I show so little of myself in my videos and there's people who seem to think they know everything about me after seeing just a three-minute clip of my life. ... You know what I'm comfortable sharing with you and that's it. This is the real me," she says.
Prof. Strangelove says videos like that - many of which have identical titles as Ms. Gallo's - are common among vloggers, who make them in part to counter accusations that they're too produced.
"They aren't being honest enough. They're not revealing enough. There's this deep drive to be true to the audience in representing themselves," he says.
Vlogger Daniel Shim, a 20-year-old psychology student from Chatham, Ont., says the top request from his viewers is that he share more details about his personal life.
When he drops the name of a friend in a video, "people mass e-mail me, tweet me, post messages on the wall of my Facebook fan page" asking for more, he says. They've even asked him for his parents' names.
But despite their demands, in his two years of vlogging he's steadily moved away from sharing intimate details.
"I'll never involve any kind of topic that would bring something out of my personal life," he says.
Mr. Shim has more than 136,000 subscribers (he's ranked No. 12 in Canada) to his YouTube account shimmycocopuffsss and another 38,000 more on his other account, ShimmyHeartsYou. He believes the reason he has so many subscribers is because his posts are general and therefore "relatable." His ultimate goal, he says, isn't to reveal skeletons in his closet, but simply to entertain.
So why bother keeping a video diary if the individuals self-censor so much?
It's simple, Prof. Strangelove says. Many vloggers - including Mr. Bravener and Ms. Gallo - acknowledge being shy "in real life." They get lost in a sea of other people, ideas, and discussions. But on YouTube, they can carve out a place for themselves.
"In the past, [diaries]were a monologue, and now they're a screaming cry for a dialogue," he says.