Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: vlogging

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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Minna’s Dream Computer Office

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Currently, my office is my couch with my laptop on my coffee table and my keyboard on my lap–along with my cat sometimes. Such as right now. He is standing on my knees (on top of my faux fur throw) and staring at the vicinity of my face. I don’t know why he’s not sleeping or lying down, but he is energetically licking his fur. Probably because I just fed him. I expect he’ll curl up in a ball in a few minutes and take his tenth nap of the day.

He is sniffing the air as I eat my lunch-which includes mayo and grilled chicken. Now, he’s loafing on my lower legs and probably about to fall asleep. I love this about autumn; he wants to get nice and cozy. In the spring and summer, he fucks off and does his own thing. Which is fine as well, but I do like a warm cat on my legs. He is a short-haired cat, but he gets nice and fluffy in the winter.

I have a computer room. I got a swank desktop in order to play Elden Ring, which was really smart. They drop the specs for the PC  less that two weeks before the game was released (ten days, I think), which was not nice of them. They don’t care about their PC players, though, and never have. When Dark Souls came out, PC players petitioned for a year to get the game on PC (there is no PC port for Demon’s Souls, sadly). When the port finally came out, it was, as the kids say, hot trash. It was nigh unplayable. Thanks to a modder, durante, dsfix was born. That’s the saving grace of PC gaming–you can mod the hell out of anything. He made it so the game ran smoothly and did not freeze-stutter all over the place. I tried running it without dsfix and it was horrid. I think he ended up with a job in the industry because of the dsfix? Or that might be an urban legend. But he is a god among men for saving Dark Souls: Prepare to Try and we will always praise his name.


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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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Girls on Film

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Today’s post is supposed to be on fun (following my self-set schedule), but it’s not going to be on something fun so much on…well, let me just explain in my own, sweet, meandering time. I want to start vlogging because it’s what all the hip, happening kids do these days. Even though I’m an old, aching crankster who wants you to get off her lawn, I want to give it a whirl. Why? There are several reasons. One, many people don’t want to read longform posts these days. I understand because people are busy, not as interested in reading, blah, blah, blah. It makes me sad, but I acknowledge the reality. Personally, I don’t want to watch a video of someone talking about something and would rather just read it, but I think I’m in the dwindling minority these days. Two, I used to be a performer back in the day. I was with Theater Mu, and then I started doing solo performance pieces. It was hard work, but it was so damn rewarding. I would feel as if I was going to throw up ahead of time, but then I’d be riding high afterwards (followed by a crash, damn it). The several minutes after a performance was exhilarating, and the applause was just the icing on the cake.

I am a writer. I have said before that it’s in my blood, but I’d give it up in a heartbeat if I could be on stage. I wouldn’t want to give it up, obviously, but if I had to make the choice between writing and performing, it would be the latter every time.* I loved being in front of a crowd, and I fed off the energy of a live performance. Don’t get me wrong. I love writing, obviously, and I can do it copiously day after day (though I will admit that some days, it’s hard to crank  1000+ words a day), but the interactivity of it is limited. I write my posts, then I publish them and send them off into the ethers. I may get a response; I may not, but there’s no immediate reaction to it. On the other hand, when I perform, the stakes are so much higher. I’ve forgotten my lines while performing, and it’s the worst feeling in the world. I’ve delivered flawless performances and have received standing ovations, and it’s the ultimate high. Seriously. Noting has felt as good as the applause I’ve gotten for my performances. Not sex. Not getting good grades in school. Not finishing the Sword Form (though, to be fair, that’s more a subdued and sustained feeling of bonhomie). Not eating a whole pint of peanut butter fudge ice cream (back in the days when I ate dairy).

I remember one performance in a workshop where I received the best reward when I finished my monologue–silence. Oh, I know everyone’s about the standing O, but there’s nothing like that moment of stunned silence at the end of a performance which indicates that your audience is so absorbed with what they’re experiencing, it takes them several seconds to transition back into reality. I remember another for a dyke event in which I stripped down to my panties and received a thundering standing ovation at the end of the piece. I remember another that gave me so much trouble as I was writing it–it was a performance from my heritage culture (Taiwanese) for children, and the kids loved it. It was worth every gut-wrenching moment of writing it just to have that experience.


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