This past week, I continued and concluded the filming for my personal “week in the life” video. Additionally, I have been considering the theories that I want to use to drive my analysis. Throughout the life of this project, I have come across intersections with gender, surveillance, performance, authenticity, and others. It is impossible to highlight each of these tangencies, and I want to pick a few instead. After making the vlog for myself, I was exposed to the intricacies of performance and how it may help or hurt perceptions of authenticity. I re-read Goffman’s “Performance” and began thinking about sincere and cynical performances in the context of vlogs. So, that is the direction I want to finalize. And, I want to have an overarching question in the back of my mind that asks, how is this unique to the Millennial generation? What about this concept can be illuminated by studying our generation and vloggers?
The answer is, to me, that Millennials and the rise of vlogs complicate the standard idea of front and back stage performances in an effort to be more authentic. When I was making the video, I felt a strange pressure to act overlysubdued and share particularly difficult things from my days, rather than keep a positive attitude the entire time. This was interesting to me – it is as if the vlogger is performing to seem like they are in the back stage, a stage that is more authentic and stripped of the front stage social performances that Goffman discusses, when they are actually broadcasting to millions of people. There is a new intersection between the traditionally back stage and the traditionally front stage that arise from vlogs, all driven by authenticity. More authenticity, for the most part, means more subscribers and more income. In order to appear in the back stage as if they are not performing, vloggers must inherently perform. In my case, that involved downplaying the boring parts of my day and highlighting the difficult times to seem relatable or authentic to an audience. I was acting to give the impression that I was not acting, and being constantly upbeat and happy, in my opinion, does not give off that feeling. I wanted to be more serious or dull, at times, because it felt like a more accurate representation of a person in the back stage. That being said, the audience knows there is a certain performative nature to these videos, but it just cannot go too far or it will seem inauthentic (like the lonelygirl15 scandal). To me, it suggests that Millennials are now okay with blending the front and back stages more and are fascinated by watching back stage performances for entertainment.
Moving forward I will be compiling my footage into the actual video, using editing techniques and music to, again, give the impression of a more authentic vlog. I’ve never done this before, but I’m excited to begin. Then, I will write my analysis paper that goes more in-depth on the above takeaways and general assessment of vlogs and their sociological meaning.