Why waste so much time laying thousands of words on a page, and conveying to your followers, the thoughts that haunt you, when you can simply press the recording button on your smartphone, and do it much faster and even simpler? This was the question of a vlogger from Romania, related to those who still choose "to live on a blog", and who refuse to waste their time on the keyboard... I have some answers to this question but, I will offer them to you, not her.
First of all, I choose to continue to be active on the blog, and not on a vlog, because I like to write. I've loved this since I was little, at one point I even dreamed of writing a book, and as long as I have functional fingers I will write, especially on this blog.
The second reason why I choose the blog, to the detriment of the vlog, is the fact that I like to write but also to read. Even though I don't read books as much as I did ten years ago, I still like to read, lately the materials consumed being mostly the articles here, and reading daily I feel the need to write so the two somehow tie together. Hence I am more inclined to open a word page, or an editing one on my blog, instead of hitting that record button on my smartphone's camera app. To sum up the two main reasons on why I blog, and don't vlog, it's because I like complicating things. Simple means boring for mine monkey mind...
A blog can contain a thousand faces, or people all around the world, vibrating in all sorts of colors, and chances are that you, as an author, will never appear in front of an audience, on that blog. However, there are cases where people pay to access the articles of famous bloggers and that means that words still sell. Instead, in the case of vlogs, in the vast majority of cases you are the one who plays "in each episode", a single main actor playing different parts, wearing pretty much the same make up, while when blogging you can change that make up quite often. Believe me, if you saw me every day, you would surely get bored of me.
I don't know if you've ever felt this, but I often get the impression that the posts I write are somehow palpable, that they have a consistency that I don't think a vlog will ever have. I believe, at the same time, that written, and then read, information remains much more easily imprinted in the reader's memory, and arouses more attention from them than a vlog can. Of course, these factors largely depend on the consumer of this type of content, but in my opinion, printed words are easier to imprint in memory.
Moreover, every time I write for a post, I feel that I am working on it, I feel that I am making an effort and that the effort will be rewarded. Both by you and by the neuro chemical system of my brain that never forgets to give me the dose of dopamine I need, after finishing each article, and this always varies depending on the effort made to write that article. Vlogging is much easier, and easy tasks don't reward its doer too much. At least not the way I see it.
It may seem strange to you, but many times when I write something to be posted I already feel a commitment and engagement from you, and sometimes I even imagine what questions might arise, other times answering them even before they are addressed. If I did a vlog I would feel much more alone and I would have the impression that I am talking to myself. I haven't posted any vlog so far, except for a few amateur footage on DTube a couple of times, but even the thought of speaking in front of a camera, without an audience or other people around me, discourages me.
I mentioned in the introduction that I like to write and read, and I learned this at an early age but, at the same time, I consider that a blog stimulates others to read as well. Even though most might be in almost the same situation as I am, reading books from cover to cover less and less by the year, the blog keeps reading alive, and that is very important, in my opinion. We already have a lot of things that work based on voice commands and autopilot, we will probably have cameras that will read us and allow us access to all kinds of locations, in a few decades technology will probably be able to read our thoughts, and answer us to the most hidden desires, so we need as many reasons to read as we can create in our try to avoid dehumanization at much as possible.
I did not write this post with the intention of demonstrating somehow why the blog would be superior to the vlog, because I have no reason to do so, I consider more that I did it to remind me why I choose to do this every day, why I want to do it for many years from now, what keeps me connected to the keyboard, and not to a recording button. I have no intention of creating a superior blogging image, and a lower vlogging one, or to dis vloggers.
The way I see it, vlogging will gain more and more users by the day, and nothing against that, it’s just that I don’t think it will do that for the detriment of bloggers. It's two different niches that we talk about, with two types of consumers that very often don't mix liquors. Chances are that you probably own a kindle, and that you have used it a lot but, that doesn't mean that people aren't still buying paper books. Same with audio books. There's a client for every product, I used to say quite often. There's a reader for every blog, and blogs won't die that soon. I know it...
Thanks for attention,
Adrian