Over the weekend I “dropped” a new YouTube video on my channel (you can see it here, or by visiting my “YouTube” page in this website’s menu). It ended up getting a little flurry of interest (1,800 views in the first three days), prompting a friend to tell me that if you pay attention to what’s hot on the internet, you can actually get attention. That makes sense. What’s so hot? Dark academia. Of course, my video really moves to dark academia adjacent, to what happens to real people when they try to teach religion and run afoul of “doctrine.” There’s a real disconnect here because if you earn a good Ph.D. you’ll be taught to question everything. If you’re a doctrinal believer, you’ll question nothing.
I stopped posting on YouTube a few years back because my cheap camera no longer worked. It lost about three episodes I shot and, discouraged and too busy with writing projects, I gave it up. I started again because I realized my phone was capable of recording and I had a holder that would stop it from slipping. So why not? Topics aren’t really a problem, but shooting and editing a video take a lot more than the eight minutes that result from it all. Finding the time to edit, and learning how to edit in iMovie, are tasks in themselves. And I’m an old dog. Still, I miss that classroom audience. I’ve been told that blogging is passé, and podcasts take even longer to record.
Some people make a living vlogging. In fact, “YouTuber” can be a profession. Those who succeed are often young. And let’s be honest, a middle-aged white guy in a book-lined study is a tired trope. Well, it is, in reality who I am. A teacher at heart, I now try to imagine a virtual audience. When I first started doing YouTube videos I had a very difficult time imagining an audience. I fumbled a lot—I don’t script my videos. If you’re interested in scripted I’ve got this blog right here. The bump in interest in my dark academia post doesn’t translate to my other videos about my books or related topics. Still, those are the things I know best and so it’s easiest to talk about them. And possibly reinventing yourself. I guess that’s what I’ve tried to do here. Sloppily, stumblingly, but nevertheless, I’ve been changing my identity. My YouTube channel’s not that active, but if there’s interest I can explore further reflections on dark academia.