From Blogging to Vlogging

Growing up with a brother 9 years younger than me, that’s a huge gap of knowledge transfer and a whole new world to learn about the new generation. Last night as I was at a TETHER session with the Sarawak Bloggers core team and a few new young blood, I realised how much blogging has changed. We were seated at a long table. Half the table are us, the 30 and above with our beers in hand talking about health. The other half, is the group of active social media users. The group that talks about YouTube, Instagram, cinematography, digital nomad and mostly there’s this new word called Vlog or V-log. I still have no idea how to pronounce that word.

Looking at them playing around with their phones, taking videos or “stories” for their Instagram, my mind was asking myself “What was I doing or where was I when I was 20 years old?”.

This morning I got my answer. I was learning how to customise my blog template.

The journalists or reporters in the olden days have to buy pens and papers to write an article before it gets published. During my parents days, the typewriter came out. By punching their fingers real hard on each character key on the keyboard, the words are neater and readable to everyone. Then the evolution of keyboards went on. While I was growing up, there came the computer with softer keyboards to type on. My pap bought me my first desktop when I was 13. I signed up for computer class at the school opposite mine. A two hours class once per week for 5 years. That’s how I fell in love with computers, I think mainly I enjoy typing because I mastered touch-typing. Since then, I started this blog.

When I begin to plan for my first solo trip 4 years ago, I was searching high and low for travel tips and all that I can know about the place including getting to and around there. I wasn’t looking for photos, I wasn’t looking for Q&As, I wasn’t looking to book flight tickets and accommodation. I was looking for an informative blog post from someone who travelled there. Switching from multiple tabs opened at my Firefox, I screened down for details. I remember there was only one blog that answered to all my question. Mind you it’s not some ulu place, it’s a touristy island. That guy wrote in such detailed manner that I was so engrossed onto his blog. Reading from one post to another.

Fast-forward to today, lesser and lesser people write. They vlog. As per Wikipedia, vlogging means video-logging. You make a short video, edit, post and share. So instead of cracking your head to find that word to describe something, you talk. You explain verbally. You video your travel and let people watch and feel as if they’re there with you. It takes lots of hard work and persistency to produce a video. I can’t even hold the camera steadily when video’ing, what more to say editing them and putting pieces of moving motions together. I think I’m more traditional because I enjoy photography and writing.

Video is great, don’t get me wrong. It did the same knowledge transfer and some things just can’t be explain using words. It helps people with short attention span. Imagine those who doesn’t enjoy reading in the olden days, what happened to them? They are the ones that got left out. They were forced to read like how we dislike being forced to memorise our ancestors name from the history class in school. With vlogging, these people now can enjoy this knowledgeable world without being miserable.

So to end this post, I think I have to admit that vlogging is the new thing to look forward to because everyone is different but I shall continue with my blogging.