Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: blogging

I’m too old for this shit

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My brother may want to do travel vlogging, so I’ve been helping him (I do work for him). I’ve been looking at popular travel vloggers and seeing what theye had in common. I’m doing it for my brother, yes, but I’m also doing it for myself. I know that blogging is dead, and, hell, even vlogging/YouTube are on their way out. It’s all about the TikToks and the Insta-worthy moments. I don’t use either of those, even though I do have an Instagram. I don’t use my Facebook any longer except to message K. Twitter is a trash fire, and I deleted my account a while ago. I check in on Bluesky once every blue moon (heh), and I find I don’t miss social media in general.

I find that Discord has replaced it, and we’ll see what happens when it goes *sigh* public. Which means it’s going to go to shit pretty soon. I mean, it’s to be expected because we can’t have nice things, and Discord was pretty nice to use.

Anyway. I have toyed with the idea of doing YouTube, knowing it probably won’t go anywhere. My YouTube channel, I mean. I am realistic that I am too old, too scatter-shot, too much of a dilettante, and just too, too much. There are many reasons  I haven’t done it, but one of the main ones is that I just cannot stick to one subject. And that’s very important because the internet is broken up into many, many different niches. You succeed by finding a niche within a niche and flogging the hell out of it.

Here are some of the things I noticed that the hot travel vloggers had in common. In no particular order and just from watching on a cursory level half-a-dozen or so very popular vloggers, here are the things that they all have.

1. Cult of personality

The strongest through-thread of all these videos was the personality of each content creator. They were all distinctive and immediately recognizable, and their personality was their brand. Sure, they went to very interesting places and had really amazing experiences, but the focus is on them. When I think back to the snippets of videos I watched, I don’t remember much about the places–but I can easily recall each of their personalities.

For better and for worse.

I did not like most of them from a personal standpoint, but I could see the appeal. Most of them were very outgoing, gregarious, friendly, and bubbly (for lack of a better word). They were, for the most part, white, and good-looking. Or at least average-looking. Mostly guys, and some of them were plain-looking. The women I saw, though, were all attractive. Take that for what you will*.


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New gooals for a new year

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I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I have tried them in the past, but I find it too much pressure. It’s because the tendency is to go big and to go hard for a week or so and then fall off. It’s why gyms sell so many memberships in the first few weeks of the year (and probably why they make them yearly.  Or at least did. I’m hoping that’s an outdated mode of operation).

In addition, it’s artifical to set it up to do things differently in a new year. I get it. It makes sense to have a fresh start in a fresh year. And there is something about mentally tearing off that December page that signifies the end of an era. Especially since for me, last year was the first whole bonus year that I had.

The beginning of 2022 was me coming to terms with still being alive. Then, Elden Ring was released at the end of February and that was the next six months sorted. Time flew and before I knew it, it was the end of the year.

2023. It seems so weird to write that. I do have a few goals that I would like to reach in the new year. It may just be a matter of semantics, but I have decided that goals are better than resolutions. The latter are too declarative and like a fait accompli. It feels much more like pressure, which I don’t need. The latter are more like suggestions or rather, something to aim for. Plus, it can be year-long rather than just doing it in discrete moments. Discrete, not discreet, by the way. That was one of my pet peeves when I was using Craigslist personals, by the way (yes, I’m that old). People saying they wanted ‘discrete’ lovers, not ‘discreet’ lovers. Not that I was going to help someone cheat on their partner, but if I were, I certainly was not going to do it for someone who could not discenrn discrete from discreet.

So. What are my goals for 2023? I have three. Well, more than that, but three serious ones. The not-so-serious ones are to get laid and get paid. Well, the former, anyway. I have not had sex in quite some time, and I started thinking about dating before I ended up in the hopsital. Seriously, it was a few months before my medical crisis that I was girding my loins to return to the apps. Obviously, that was put on the backburner after I left the hospital. I had other things I needed to concentrate on.

Now, however, it’s been over a year and I’ve gotten a clean bill of health. I’ve had it for a year. I’ve been back to my old self (or some facsimile of) for nearly a year as well. I have no desire to be with someone because that brings out the worst in me, but I am ready to have sex.


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Turning love into a chore

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I taught myself to read when I was four. Even before that, though, I was enamored with writing. My mom likes to tell the story of how I would ‘read’ the newspaper when I was two–while holding it upside down. I knew how to read by the time I went to school, and I was in a special reading class with one other kid in the first grade. We both read several levels higher than the other kids, so we were pulled out and sat down in a room on our own. The details are cloudy, but I seem to remember that we were allowed to read pretty much whatever we wanted. So, less a class and more an independent study.

I read the Little House on the Prairie series, which was one of my favorites. Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read each book several times and was enamored by her life on in the wild. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that she was an unreliable narrator (every story she told was how great she was and how much more clever she was than everyone else). I cannot blame her because why wouldn’t you center yourself in books you’re writing about your life?

I did some Googling on her when I got older, and it was grim. She became a Republican, decrying social safety nets, even though her youngest sister was on welfare. That really put a damper on my enjoyment of the books, I’ll tell you that much.

I also decided to read the dictionary when I was in the third or fourth grade. I got bored around I, but that didn’t stop me from calling my bullies ‘unintellectual imbeciles’. Hey, cut me some slack; they were really mean. Then, in ix grade I decided to read the longest book I could find. That would be War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy. I got halfway through it before giving up when I couldn’t keep the names straight. Everyone had a half-dozen nicknames, and I had no clue what was going on. I also read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and hated it. Why did Hester Prynne get all the crap for sleeping with John Proctor? And why is she so adamant about protecting him? And, yes, I know that’s part of the purpose of the book. Didn’t stop me from hating it.

I started writing creatively when I was seven. I don’t remember any of it, but I’m sure it was brilliant. I wrote a murder mystery in fourth or fifth grade, complete with very shitty illustrations. Look, drawing is not my forte. I can’t be expected to be good at everything. But the story itself was solid and indicative of my mentality–revenge is best served.


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A whole new world

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Blogging is dead, RIP, blogging. I’ve known this for a few years, but I’ve resisted it because writing is my medium. I can say things in writing I can’t vocally and I’m much smoother in the delivery, as well. Obviously, it’s easier to form a coherent thought and I can go back and polish what I wrote. In person, I’m awkward and have the tendency to blurt things out that are better left unsaid after biting my tongue for hours.

For the new year, I’m contemplating podcasts or vlogging. I thought about it before my medical trauma, but I dismissed it for several reasons. One, I hated how I looked and sounded. Even though I know that others find me visually/aurally pleasing, I don’t. Back in the day, I would avoid having my picture taking because I hated my looks so much. When I was in college, my friends made it a game to see if they could catch me with their cameras (this was before phone cams were ubiquitous) and I’m pleased to say they never caught me.

After my medical experience, I suddenly didn’t care any longer. My voice was hoarse and raspy from having a tube shoved down it and I looked like hell, obviously, but I no longer cared. I had to buy new glasses because it’s been several years since I had my eyes examined. I was going to do it and then the pandemic hit. So my sight wasn’t great, anyway. Then, when I woke up from being unconscious, I made an eye appointment for a month later (because that’s how long it took to get an eye appointment). When I went to look for frames, I started by looking at my norm–black frames, either rectangle or oval. Or half-rims. I wasn’t hyped about any of them, but I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, either. I mean, they’re just glasses. But then, I saw a pair of frames that were black with white polka dots and the top bit was white with black polka dots. They were plastic and had cat eyes, and I instantly fell in love. I thought they were too outre, so I looked at other frames. But I kept ahold of them and couldn’t stop thinking about them. One arm was black with white polka dots and the other was white with black polka dots. Each arm has a little pink heart on the ‘hand’. After ten minutes, I gave up looking at other frames because this was the one I wanted. It’s Betsy Johnson, which I did not know beforehand. I loved them and they made me feel good about myself.


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Blogging is dead. RIP, blogging.

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I have been a writer all my life. I started writing (very bad) poetry when I was six or seven and wrote my first short story (along with really bad crayon illustrations) for elementary school. It was a murder mystery set in a school in which the unpopular girl is murdered. I don’t remember by whom, by probably the popular girl. Or maybe it was the other way around. It was probably the other way around, actually, knowing me.

I spent most of my free time reading and writing. It was in part because that’s what I enjoy doing and in part because I had no friends. I was a weirdo with many home issues–and I was (and am) Asian before it was trendy. There were people who were friendly enough to me, but no real friends. I think it’s also because I was so downtrodden by the time I was seven (when I first thought about killing myself) that I wouldn’t have accepted any overtures of friendship even if they were offered.

So I retreated into the fantasy worlds of the books I read and the ones I created. I always had a storyline going in my mind–at least one, but usually several. I found the real world lacking so I was grateful to escape into my mind. And the books I read when I was younger ranged from Trixie Belden to The Scarlet Letter. I read the latter when I was in fifth or sixth grade just because it was in the library, I’m betting. I hated it. Even at that age, I thought Hester got a raw deal. Also, why was she shielding the priest? It turned me off Hawthorne. I also tried to read War and Peace around the same time because it was the biggest book I knew of. I gave up on it halfway through because the names were confusing me. I didn’t realize connect that everyone had a half dozen nicknames so I thought they were all new characters. I never bothered to pick it up again, which has not bothered me one whit.

In college, I made the conscious decision not to read dead white men any more than I had to. I had one white dude tell me it was just as discriminatory for me not to read white men as it was for the entire educational system to only have people read dead white men. Putting aside the fact that I am just one person and it’s a false equation, I retorted that I bet I had still read more dead white men than he had writers of color. He had nothing to say to that. I would still say the same to anyone who questioned me about it now. I’m also not saying I wouldn’t read white men–just that I would need an awfully good reason to do so.

I started writing fiction because there was no one like me in the books I read. Back in the aughts, Asian women became hot. But, it had to be first generation Asian women who were SUFFERING. They had to be married to asshole men and be downtrodden in their lives. They had to have abusive mothers as well and they were absolutely not allowed to have any joy in their lives. Basically, The Joy Luck Club writ large. I remembered I was in Modern Times bookstore (RIP) is San Francisco with a friend, leafing through the new Asian books, when I was pushed to exclaim, “If I never see another book about three generations of miserable Asian women, it’ll be too soon!” My friend was embarrassed, but I was pushed to my limits with the notion that Asian women could only star in books if they were miserable the whole time.

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Am I too old to be new?

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Blogging is dead. I know this and yet….

The written word is my forte. I am at my best when I can take my time and put some thought into what I’m saying. It’s why I prefer email to texting as well. I like the asynchronous nature of the medium and if I need to be more immediate in my communication, then there’s messaging and the phone for that.  I hate texting and refuse to do it for the most part, by the way.

I’ve been talking to my brother about making videos. He does it for his realtor business and he’s been urging me to do cooking videos. He’s willing to help me out. When I mentioned that if I were going to do videos, I’d want to do something I liked doing rather than hated doing. Yes, it would be funny for me to do cooking in the dark or something like that, but if it got popular, then I would have to continue cooking. I have thought about doing a cooking channel based on me finding delicious and simple gf/df recipes, but….

Some background. I have watched many cooking videos. 90% of the ones I’ve seen are women. They start out with an interminably long story about how they went to Target with their kids and bought more than they thought they would. I. Don’t. Care. This happens on cooking websites as well. A ten-paragraph long intro to the recipe. I know why they do on websites (because they want to keep you there), but I hate it. I also don’t like it on YouTube when they give their spiel (“like, share, and subscribe!”) at the beginning rather than at the end.

I do understand that they’re trying to create a community and make connections. I know that on YouTube, it’s about personality. And that is where my problem lies. I hate all that crap. I don’t mind a bit of sharing, but ten minutes upfront is way too much. I don’t care about your kids; I really don’t. My brother really liked My Drunk Kitchen and urged me to watch. I didn’t find it funny at all. Then again, I’m very anti-drinking, so there’s that.

Side Note: I hate most comedies–sitcoms, romcoms, etc. I’m much more for conversational humor than pratfalls, gags, and actual jokes. I also hate shouting and exaggerated reactions, which cuts out three-fourths of YouTube. One prime example of someone I hate is jacksepticeye, an Irish guy, who does games. I thought, “Oh, I like British people. I like games. This will be cool.”

Friends, let me tell you, it wasn’t cool. He screams at the top of his lungs all the time in a very grating voice. Putting aside the screaming, I just don’t trust anyone who is at that level of agitation all the time. It’s not real and he’s doing it for the clicks. I mean, that’s why everyone on YouTube does what they do, but there’s a way to do it authentically that doesn’t blow out my eardrums or make me roll my eyes.

Here is quite possibly one of my favorite food YouTubers. Jun’s Kitchen. He’s Japanese and really good with his knife skills. He’s one with nature and animals as is obvious by his interactions with his cats. He doesn’t talk much during his videos and while, yes, he does do that slice of life thing, it seems integrated with the videos–not just an addendum because it’ll get clicks. He only posts a video every month or so, but he has a large fan base.


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