Sick of Q & A Vlogs

OK this concept was pretty cool when only one or two youtubers were doing it, but now it’s just ridiculous. Q & A vlogs are videos made by YouTubers to create basic interaction with their viewers. Usually they post some sort of question on the first video of the series or use their social networking connections (twitter, facebook, photobooth) or the opposite of opening up the video to questions from the viewers. I like the idea of community interactivity, but at the same time I come to youtube for entertainment, and sometimes these videos are sheer blah and boring as dirt. They forget to make the videos their own and not just piggyback off of another’s idea. Anyways below are the latest videos from those I deem the stars of Q & A videos and those I deem the posers.

Stars of the Q & A Vids…

iJustine’s Ask I.J.

Internet darling iJustine started her most popular video series Ask IJ about a year and half ago. She’s done so well for herself in the videos that she even has her own catchy theme song to go along with those videos. Though sometimes not the best videos to watch, she does try to mix it up everytime she does the Ask IJ videos. She is also pretty good at selecting unique questions and answering them in entertaining ways.

Brittani’s Shout Out Sunday

Started 9 months ago, BLT pops up every Sunday with the latest Shout Out Sunday video. What I like about these are they are quick and BLT’s quirky and perky nature gives you a quick laugh to start out your day. She also seems more sincere about her fans than others.

SwiftKarateChop’s Ask Swifty

He’s been doing this longer than most posting the first one back in ’08. And its become almost his signature bit. The questions are just straight up random and seem to be off of the boards of 4chan and just as bad is the way Swifty decides to answer them. These are really quick, but always totally worth the watch.

Shane Dawson’s Ask Shane

Ask Shane is one of the newer Q & A vlogs that I actually like. Shane’s regular Saturday vids are usually long at 8-9 minutes, but his Ask Shane vids are much shorter, but still packed with his classic Dawson humor.

Vlogbrother’s Question Tuesdays

This one is only done by John Green of the Vlogbrothers and since the schedule change it’s not even on Tuesdays anymore. But I have to say he has the most insightful answers to the questions out of all the YouTubers. It’s become common for John to pick a recurring theme to do Question Tuesday for and then gets a multitude of questions about that theme. He then tries to answer as many as possible (definitely more than the average 3 by others) in his 4 minute time limit.

The Posers…

Nayders07′s HEY

Nadine’s HEY isn’t really a Q & A vlog, but it sort of uses the same concept. She instead has a “variety show” that stars you. It has a lot of potential to be good, but so far the first two episodes have just been ok-tolerable. I really hope she can find a way to make it stand out, because the idea seems like a step in the right direction.

OlgaKay’s Ask OlgaKay

Olga’s version of the Q & A vid, is more modeled after Justine’s. She even has a theme song, that is slightly not as good, but written by fellow YouTuber Davedays. The thing I like about it, is that she created her own community like vlogbrothers did called Moosh Army. She also seems very sincere with her fans, but the one thing that I don’t like is the blatant advertising for some product at the end of everyone of these videos (mostly Skullanimals).

Nigahiga’s Dear Ryan

I have to say this is one of the signs that the nigahiga videos have gone down in quality lately, they’re just not as funny as they used to be. At least Ryan as his own shtick with basing a single viewer question as the basis of his next sketch video.

KassemG’s AsKassem

I have to admit when Kassem G isn’t playing a character he’s really boring on camera. Then have him answering questions for 5 minutes straight and its a snooze fest. He recently tried to change it up, by having crazy green screen graphics show up, but its mostly a distraction and takes away from the video. I love his work on other videos, but these AsKassems are doing it for me.

TotallySketch’s Ask Sketch

TotallySketch does by far some of the best videos on the web. Michael Gallagher should not be sitting down answering random twitter questions, it’s just straight up boring and not exciting at all. Also the way he enunciate the questions is slightly creepy.

LisaNova’s Daily Bag

LisaNova straight up sucks at vlogging. The fact that she has two extra channels that she neglects and puts little effort into is a sign of this. Lisa’s Daily Bag of Something I Find Interesting, was suppose to be her turning point for vlogging. It was suppose to be her own little Oprah Show, but many things about it didn’t work. She just kind of blabbed on for a long time about certain topics and those topics definitely isolated her audience. Also doing it daily, with 6 minute videos was a little much, she has since given up on all of this. But I guess third time a charm Lisa.

Catch Up On… Shane Dawson

Shane Dawson is probably the king of crude comedy on the web and no matter what terrible thing he says, we keep coming back for more. Shane hails from Los Angeles and makes various skit videos every Saturday starring himself. He developed various ridiculous characters that are supposedly based on people from his past. His comedy is full of stereotype jokes, sex jokes, celebrity disses, and whatever else pops up in his head. Amazingly each video revolves around a life lesson that Shane explains at the end, and it shows just how real he is. And yeah, the following videos should be viewed with caution, just saying…

Catch Up On… Black Box TV

So when you think YouTube, right off the bat the first thing you think of is comedy. It’s a cesspool of funny clips and comedians, but if you want a challenge of trying to get viewers there’s another genre you can try, drama. It takes a lot more to pull off drama on the web, you can’t pull it off with plain old amateur filmmaking and being silly. One attempt at it was 2009, A True Story, which used a kind of Blair Witch-style camera footage to tell their story about an alternate reality 2009. Now a collaboration between MeTonyV, Sxephil, and JoeNationTV are working on these single episodic sci-fi horror videos. They are like a quicker more adult version of Goosebumps. The channel launched late this summer and there are only 3 episodes in “Season 1″, but they promise to have more coming this fall. Besides these videos, the commentary returns to old YouTube style comedy with side comments on how each one was made.

Episode 1: Starring sxephil

Episode 2: Starring iJustine

Episode 3: Starring Taryn O’Neill

Catch Up On… JulianSmith87

I told you I would remember to do a specific Catch Up On… for Julian Smith. I haven’t followed him for as long as the other YouTubers featured so far, but his comedy is just pure amazingness. Julian specializes in sketch comedy setting up a new ridiculous random scene week after week. He is definitely one of the premiere filmmakers on YouTube, way beyond amateur abilities and almost professional looking. He has a certain style with a certain light haze to all his videos. But what’s great filmmaking without great content, Julian is a funny dude who can do comedy that is a step above normal YouTube level. But enough of all of that, look for yourself…

w/ cameo from Smosh

w/ cameo from Brittani Louise Taylor

w/ cameo from Ray William Johnson

Catch Up on… The Station

The Station was a project set up between YouTubers to make more collaboration videos. The original lineup has changed drastically since it’s inception, but has been reduced to the core members of LisaNova, ShayCarl, KassemG, and hiimrawn. To tell you the truth, The Station have gone downhill since sxephil and Shane Dawson left. Even though their comedy only promotes a few giggles these days, the quality of their productions are the highest on YouTube. So here’s a few videos from the past year from The Station…

As catchy as this song is, I hate how its basically an ad for Planet Hollywood in Vegas