Subverting the Vlog 🚞
On turning life into content
blog.seventy-three // We just released our third episode of the season today. It’s a pretty personal story, documenting an intercontinental, long-distance relationship—and the early stages of a creative business. You can watch the film here.
I’ll talk about it in a little bit more detail below. For now, two quick housekeeping things.
First, our Summer Block Party is coming up on Saturday, July 19! The event page will be going live with more details in the next forty-eight hours—we’ll be sending email invites to all current annual Creator Mag subscribers first.
Want to come? Tickets (aka our new magazine) are available now! Upon purchasing your copy, we’ll add you to the event list.*
Second, I had a quick question for ya—this will help inform when we send our newsletters:
Housekeeping over. Scroll on for a new installment of Five Things I Think (I Think).
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we reviewed Flich’s wonderful challenge video ‘Speedrunning the Flute.’ You can read it here.
One :: I think I took this season’s theme quite literally. Here’s what I wrote in blog.fifty-five, back on May 4:
To me, the question (“WHERE DID YOU GO?”) might be about where one physically went this season, but also the depths to which one mined their own consciousness, too.
Because our perspective shapes how we view our lived experiences—and might even become the reason why we tell our stories in the first place.
Well, for this episode—our third of the season—I decided to answer the question rather directly, as I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland in April.
If you started reading my blogs in 2024, you probably know that my girlfriend, Vicky, got a job in Geneva last September. It was a pretty crazy moment: We’ve navigated a lot of transitions over the last five years together, yet over the course of two weeks, we had to make a slew of life-changing decisions.**
Do we stay together?
Do we do long-distance?
Do I stay in Los Angeles, where we were living at the time?
Do I move to Switzerland with her?
Personally, I have a lot of mixed feelings on turning life into content, which I’ll get into in a sec. But I decided to tell this story in particular starting in February, sixty-eight days before I was set to see Vicky next.
She’d told me over the phone that the thing she missed most about living together was hearing about the day-to-day things going in my life—however boring they may be. So I began writing her near-daily letters about what I was up to, all in an effort to better capture the mundanity.***
Sure, the story was nominally about my flight to Geneva in April. Yet it also was an excuse to share everywhere I went in between, including simple trips from the studio and to the grocery store, with someone who means quite a lot to me.
Two :: I think yearning to bridge a gap in your personal life is more than just a good reason to tell a story—it's a beautiful impetus to do so. I know I’ve referenced the talk I saw Daniels (the directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once) give at South By Southwest 2024 multiple times in this space, so apologies in advance.
Yet something they said has stuck with me a great deal. They revealed that writing the film was actually a personal attempt to bridge what they perceived to be a growing generational gap between themselves, their parents, and their parents’ parents.
Making an entire, feature-length movie might, on the surface, appear to be an inefficient (at best) and ineffective (at worst) way to communicate earnestly with our loved ones. Nonetheless, the process of sitting down to write, forcing ourselves to sift through our memories and reflect critically, helps us derive meaning, and craft a purposeful message.
In the greater context of our highly-online world, Vicky and I are pretty private about our relationship. By pursuing this story—and putting it out there on the Internet—I didn’t want to violate that privacy, or mine this sacred thing we share for some views.
The flip side of that: Writing these letters and, ultimately, translating the project into a film drew us closer, in a way. Even as we’re far apart.
Still…why then upload something to YouTube? Well, we’ve all heard the generalizations of creative endeavors being a “rollercoaster ride” with plenty of “highs” and plenty of “lows.” It’s why the whole imma vlog while i build this thing genre is so big on YouTube right now.
My goal was to subvert that genre while giving an actual behind-the-scenes glimpse at the quotidian.**** I’m less worried about convincing the viewer that we’re real people and more focused on telling the story of a human simply trying (somewhat messily) to manage the gray areas of this thing we call “relationships,” going after his own personal goals all the while.
Three :: I think we’re approaching each release of our magazine like a mini-season of television. Imagine if you could watch as your favorite writers, photographers, and designers worked together to make an edition of Rolling Stone or The New Yorker.
Interviews, adventures, and behind-the-scenes mini-docs play out on the magazine’s channel. It all culminates with a new issue, featuring reported stories and original essays curated and crafted by the newsroom.
That was the direction we set out with upon relaunching Creator Mag. And like any television show, the idea was that some seasons might feature standalone episodes—typically more off-the-beaten-path installments that tell their own self-contained story instead of advancing the overarching plot.*****
While it almost feels anti-YouTube to not stay “on brand,” I’m glad that we were able to share this story when we did, following our interviews with Daren and Kat. We still have a long way to go in constructing these miniseries—and are already discussing some production pivots for next season—but it’s been cool seeing the vision start to come together, eight videos in.
Four :: I think filling in the gaps is vital…to a point. A friend of mine—a creator in her own right—once mentioned that she loved reading our writing in the magazine, but in order to really get people to care, we needed to keep the interest levels up in between seasons. This meant focusing more on telling “the stories behind the stories.”
You’ve probably noticed that we spend a considerable amount of time doing this across the newsletter and our various channels. Which is great! And I credit a lot of the growth of this here creative neighborhood to that practice.
I do believe, however, that in order for this whole flywheel to spin, the stories themselves still need to be good, as they’re at the center of this whole thing. That takes energy, time, and development, all of which can become in short supply if you use them all up elsewhere.
Five :: I think this might end up being my favorite album of the year. Yes, I’m taking this last mini-essay in the exact direction you probably thought I would. I absolutely cannot wait for the new Clipse album, Let God Sort Em Out, which releases on Friday.
Real ones know I’m a big Pusha T guy. But reuniting with his brother, Malice, for their first joint album since 2010? Pharrell executive producing the entire thing, which was recorded in Paris?? Album cover designed by the legendary artist KAWS??? The pettiest of petty beefs with Travis Scott???? Kendrick, Tyler, John Legend, and [checks notes] Stove God Cooks features?????
I’ll be at weddings both Thursday and Friday, so we’ll see when I can find time to sneak out and give the record a whirl. But if the awe-inspiring scope of their rollout is any indication, then the Clipse might have an all-timer on their hands.
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
* Use code “SZN6FREESHIP” at checkout to knock off shipping costs! Block Party attendees will be the first to receive their copies in person.
** Graduating during COVID, long-distance once already, the like.
*** I'd be lying if I said this wasn't inspired by the Vlogbrothers ‘Brotherhood 2.0’ series.
**** Vicky suggested I use this word. She is currently taking French classes, after all. It’s a good word!
***** Atlanta is one of the best examples of a show that constantly churned out incredible standalone episodes—“Teddy Perkins” and “Woods,” to name a few.