I noticed the irony in all of this. It wasn’t about how anyone read vlogs, it was how you (JD/Jared) decide which VLOG to read, and then everyone attacked you for it, instead of contributing their criteria.
For me, Bob’s vlog…it has text so I just skip the vlog and read the text which takes me a minute. I get annoyed with people’s signing style but in no way would I encourage people to change their style or personality, not everyone can be an elaborate B.S’er who are usually the best storytellers, especially in ASL. B.S-ing is not a bad thing, there is nothing wrong with adding color to stories, but people do get annoyed. As for me, I just take the story at face value. People over-exaggerate as well as “under”-exaggerate stories all the time, and they do this with their thoughts too. I think everyone should have patience and keep comments to themselves. Why is it of any importance that your time was wasted? The person took the time to create a b/vlog post and you chose to look at it, so why complain about your time being wasted? Since you are a human editor, is your time is wasted on all posts you have to look over?
Since everyone is obsessed with saving time…..
1. I suggest people write a brief outline of what they want to say and keep it short…if it’s too long, make it shorter. Do several practice runs. Watch yourself after you pick the best draft. Improve it. Jared, you kept looking at your notes repeatedly at a conference, which was a major no-no. Several practice runs would have enabled a smooth presentation. I’ve given presentations in class and I know people want it flowing. This also applies to hearing people and they are not supposed to stop and pause that often. See, I’m attacking your presentation style when perhaps you were not familiar with the rules of “speech” (in the sense of giving presentations).
2. Try to be passionate about what you are talking about. This unfortunately means the use of facial expression because it is an important part of ASL. Many hearing folks have this problem as they will talk in a monotone voice, I don’t even know if that is acceptable but people complain about it, fortunately, I just ask my interpreters to color their signs a bit to make it easier for me to follow. I suppose you can be too passionate about your VLOG, which makes it more annoying.
3. Try to improve your ASL skills. No one is perfect at ASL, so we all can keep on improving, and I don’t mean just at conversational ASL but as presenters to an audience. It’s a very different style of communication when you talk with a few friends and stand up to an audience of thousands. (VLOGS get that many hits) Just because you never learned formal ASL grammar and rules, doesn’t mean you can just sign however you want. I consider writing blogs a way to improve your English, so why can’t we do the same with ASL. For some people, it is a taboo to give constructive feedback on ASL, but that’s how I learned in the first place. Improving ASL does not mean just being a “spelling” cop in the sense that a sign was used incorrectly, but in the formation of structuring your thoughts.
4. Regardless of what Jared says, you do not have to spice up your VLOG; even this can be a waste of time and just “fillers” to extend the time of VLOGS. In college, JD collected some quotes and posted it on his closet but the kind of society we are in, we cannot just sum up everything in 2 sentences or less.
I probably could throw out a quote for every occasion but what is the point of that? No thoughts are conveyed that way. I want some serious context so that I can reflex on things, and do not need all these little details that some of the vloggers tend to give not really relevant to what they are talking about.I’d rather VLOGs be filled with thought provoking stuff but that is me, and that means getting in detail about stuff. I think MOST of what is posted within the deaf blogosphere are just social commentaries. Social commentaries are vastly different from philosophy, but unfortunately, most people don’t know what philosophy really means. Social commentaries can be interesting but is it really thought provoking? Facts can be interesting but thought provoking? We wouldn’t all want to be scientists and live a life based on facts and statistics.Instead of stating your own criteria, you can say that a VLOG is successful by the number of comments posted wither it is negative or positive. I probably could write a very insulting post and a hundred people will comment. It works too well in this society because we all are geared towards in getting a reaction out of people. Which post do you think would get the most comment say if IKJ accidentally knocked down a child compared to a post announcing that a deaf person has created a nonprofit organization?
5. You can have the mentality that you want to challenge people. It doesn’t have to be negative at all. Jd’s post was a challenge issued to vloggers to help improve the quality of vlogsXXXXX “communication style/mannerisms.” How would you feel if there was a vlog out there that said we all must unite and rally? I wouldn’t give this kind of cheerleading any thoughts at all. If someone plays the devil’s advocate and challenges me on something, I am likely to do something about it and comment on it.
