Live and learn

I have been encouraged by people to do a YouTube channel for many years but have been hesitant to do it for a number of reasons

• I personally don’t care much for the video format when it comes to leaning new hairstyles. I prefer photo tutorials and will skip embedded videos when I read blogs or forums.
• The hair channels seems to be crawling with disgusting hair fetishists and I have no desire to cater to a crowd that routinely steal mine and other longhairs pictures and posts them as their own (Some even put a © on stolen images. Seriously.)
• There are so plenty of good channels (A million bad ones too) so I would have very little to “offer” anyways.
• YouTube comments are where brains go to die.
• Maybe my biggest argument is that it seems there is a world of difference in the reactions between photos and videos. On picture tutorials you will see a vast majority of positive reactions although you will always have the occasional “I don’t get it?!1” on a crystal clear how-to. Even when someone posts pictures of horribly abused hair, people have the heart to post encouraging comments and helpful hints. Videos? OMG the criticism! Viewers even act like you should be appreciative they took the time to post how much they hated the videos.

Since most people seemed to have been perfectly happy with my pictures and picture tutorials, what the [bleep] was I thinking staring a YouTube channel?

I just wanted to prove my philosophy that long hair is easy and versatile is true and that knee length hair really isn’t that much work or trouble.

I thought by disabling ratings and comments on the video, people would get the hint that I wasn’t interested in criticism. In the last work I put in on the video I thought of mentioning in the long braiding sequence (That I didn’t speed up because I wanted to show exactly how long/short it takes to braid my knee length hair) that I didn’t want comments or criticism. I changed my mind because it felt “provocative” to order people around like that. I decided to put in the text about how uncomfortable it makes me feel to be watched and felt it would explain that I’m insecure about the whole thing.

Guess that was a humongous fail to assume people would get that?

So based on the criticism I received in the blog comments and on my email, I should change… Everything. That’s right; my first attempt of a video was such a horrendous eyesore that there is nothing likeable about it.

(I especially “enjoyed” the complaints about Bloggers comment feature. Because that is something I can change, right? That’s Bloggers issue and I can’t do a damn thing about it.)

So yea, apologies to the sweet people who encouraged me and who genuinely just wanted to see me handle my hair, but I think this will be my first and last video.

Speaking of sweetness I have this one to mail today. I had planned on getting something from one of the little specialty chocolate stores in the city and figured if I was out early, I wouldn’t be trampled by the Christmas-stressed crowd. Well, it turned out that everyone else had the very same idea?! Wow. Seriously, they need to find a way to weaponise those vicious old ladies with their strollers. Ow.