To Video or Not?

Since I started this journey over a year ago, I’ve watched almost every YouTube video on RVing out there; and there are a lot. Now I didn’t pay attention to the industry prior to this, but since the pandemic lockdown there has been a shit load of people hitting the road for a more interesting life.

At my new job I tend to have a video going as background noise while I work; it helps sometimes for sure. This week I started to do a lot of thinking around this topic “video blogging”. Is it something I should consider? People who do it well can make a living; am I the type of person who could do this?

The videos that were from the time of the pandemic were much more informative about the full-time nomad lifestyle. It didn’t feel obvious that people were creating the videos just to make money, for sure there is nothing wrong with that, it’s how a lot of these full-timers keep going. But the video content seemed more engaging. Now I see a difference in the quality of the content of the videos.

Back then, the videos were about sharing the experience of living full-time on the road. There was a pattern of creating a video a week and for me, this was great, lots of content to help me learn about this lifestyles. For someone new to the idea of being a nomad, ok, not new, but having the idea of it come back around, these videos were really helpful. Now that we are out of the pandemic and things are settling back down, the videos have become shorter and more about “clickbait” to keep the page views up so they can keep the YouTube dollars rolling in.

Clearly, not everyone falls into this category, but most I’ve seen do. I am looking at a YouTuber I’ve watched before and the videos now are very short compared to a year ago and the titles of the videos are very much about “click bait”. There was one I watched yesterday, the video was “we quit” we’ll tell you why. It had nothing to do with quitting RVing, they sold their pull behind Jeep for another vehicle.

So what does this have to do with this blog post? Well, let me tell you. Do I want to become like thousands of others out there trying to create short, meaningless videos to just get clicks? I see it everywhere; Instagram is full of people now trying to create this false sense of “fame” without actually doing anything; god, what did the Kardashians do to us?

Ok back to me. Beyond the fact that creating videos take time and maybe that is why people’s videos are becoming shorter and mostly repurposing content ideas from a previous year, I actually think the written word is more engaging. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve watch tons of videos and they have helped, but I like to tell “long-winded” stories and you just can’t do that in a video; I also think my voice sounds like crap on video. My interpretation is, it’s like feeding the beast to keep getting page views. Yes, they seem to be enjoying the RVing life, but how much are they enjoying the road if all the time they are trying to “feed the beast”?

I know myself, I would easily lose interest and again, do I have anything different to share that hasn’t already been told by countless others? I guess that is what I have to find out. Writing to me is a way for me to get all the thoughts that are circling my brain out. Some of it may be useless thoughts as some of my close friends probably can attest to, but I enjoy putting pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard to share something interesting that happened in my life, it’s like a public journal, but without the sexy bits.

So, for now I think I’ll be keeping it in the written word and hope that will be still interesting for people. I think there is a good balance to be had with the experiences you have and sharing them with the world and not focus on sharing with the world the experiences you create to feed the beast.