P&O Cruises Pacific Islands VLOG | Noumea, Maré, Vila
In her channel description, YouTube video producer and poster, Tiyana Jovanovic, offers the following greeting to potential viewers:"Hey guys! Welcome to my channel, where I vlog about the awesome things I do, food I eat, places I go, and people I meet. If your'e interested in travel, veganism, or social change then hit the subscribe button!"
And, in fact because I AM interested in food, travel, and people, especially when they are awesome (or even just medium awesome), I did. I'm also interested in reasonably attractive young women and very much in how they perceive the world and explain it to others - and I'm absolutely interested in how people use YouTube to accomplish such things. So, I 'hit the subscribe button.' I'm Tiyana's 3,878th subscriber, or so the little 'stat' field on her channel's info area indicates. We are now somehow connected, you and I,Tiyana :)
OK - These are some nice videos and this is a thoughtful young person. I like her posts, particularly the more recent ones. And, hey, she's only just about 20 years old (How do I know? I saw listed and I took a quick look at her video post of 10 months ago titled 'FIJI for my 19th Birthday VLOG'). Is she doing any serious exploring in this? C'mon! But frankly, it's charming that she's playing at the game of travel documenter and interesting that she has the means and time at this tender age to be off exploring the world. And yes, she's doing some rather touristy things. The 'native' demonstration of how to open a coconut with a sharpened stick under the palm thatch roof, for instance. I still haven't made up my mind about all of the footage of her girlfriend and traveling companion who seems to enjoy shaking her swimsuit clad rear end at the camera just a bit too much. Not that I feel the need to cramp your style, girls.
Has YouTube turned me into a voyeur? Would I admit it? Whatever... I am occasionally intrigued , though, by witnessing the kind of stranger's personal vacation footage that this birthday video comes off as, even though it's presented on YouTube as something for the world to see. And THAT, I think is one of the wonderful and perplexing things about YouTube. All of this new media is available to us, allows us to do the very things that professional journalists and entertainment producers do, and gives us access to an audience, or at the least a platform from which an audience might become aware of our material and accept our invitation to view it. Clearly, I see this birthday video less as an important travelogue about FIJI as I do a sort of unintended documentary about how a couple of young girls, intoxicated with the freedom of being out exploring the world, choose to take advantage of today's media to preserve and share their experience. So thanks for a perfect example of something I am struggling to understand, girls!
By the way, this video in 10 months of being posted only drew some 1,667 views, including mine.
I'd like to point out that, perusing the titles of this young woman's videos and having sampled some snippets of her later work, it looks to me like she has matured and grown into the role of self styled videographer nicely in the period of close to a year since her Fiji birthday opus. I just looked at 'What I ate today backpacking Europe | Easy, Vegan & Healthy!' Hey, this one probably won't win any awards, but the subject is clear, down to Earth and important - her treatment of it is mature and informative - and the video, itself, works just fine. I enjoyed watching it and learned a bit, too. You can't ask for much more than that from a 20 year old's art. Actually, from anyone's.
So how did I come to this kids videos? THAT's kind of interesting, too. Well, I like to watch videos about travel, and travel to South Pacific islands, especially. Over on the right hand side of my screen, where YouTube offers one videos that he might be interested in (based on the software's tracking and analyzing of what he's watched in the past) was a video offered to me titled 'P&O Cruises Pacific Islands VLOG | Noumea, Maré, Vil' As this one opens up we see the same, early approach to videos as the birthday piece... and there's the same girlfriend getting her rear end into the shot early on, too. Actually, there's another girlfriend here, as well, and somehow, in this vido, the 'Girls Gone (just a little bit) Wild' spirit is charming and infectious. They are SO into the high of their freedom and one another's companionship... there are some nice shots of Noumea, New Caledonia, too. And there's a nice reggae track behind the shots of the gorgeous beaches and to-die -for, aquamarine crystal clear water.
So why then, did this particular video draw 1 million, forty thousand views (as of this writing), while the later, more serious, and more worthwhile videos drew only in the 1 to 4 thousand views range? I'm not sure, but at 2 minutes and 32 seconds into the video our producer and star explains that "we found this secluded little beach and decided to get naked and have a little fun." and so..... <<<NON-PORNOGRAPHY WARNING!!!>>>... you do see, for a second or two. a young woman: attractive, but not a contender for those magazines and videos, you know the kind, who is wearing only flip flops as she clambers over the coral rock toward the ocean... and even though her gait is somewhat ungainly, you do get a full-on look at her naked ass... and then, it's back to more properly attired 'girls just wanna' have fun' footage as this 5 and a half minute video winds up and finishes.
So you tell me; is it the somewhat interesting, but truly, very pedestrian tourist footage? is it the charming insider's look at 3 young women thoroughly enjoying their coming of age, right of passage, getaway trip, or is it What's Her Name's bare ass, that got the attention of over a million viewers. Ah YouTube! I've got as many questions about it, as the many clues it offers me about our lives and times :)
POST SCRIPT: YouTube channels function as blogs, allowing viewers to comment on the videos and on other viewers comments. Here's one that this particular video precipitated. I find it interesting...
"Martin Carré 5 days ago
