Now that you’ve v-logged it’s clear why you are against the border-fence: you’re not a white American. I’ve informed vdare.

I think that means I’m extremely antisocial.

Also, I think your comment about the lack of a makeup artist was well taken. The glare from your cheekbones might have damaged my retinas. I’m still seeing afterimages when I close my eyes. A little talcum powder wouldn’t hurt, good buddy!

My initial instinct here was to defend video blogging on the basis that I tend to prefer seeing an expert lay out his views on a topic in verbal form than in op-ed form – for example, we had Ali Ansari come into the Department of War Studies recently and I think the value-added over, say, reading one of his newspaper pieces was substantial (though perhaps not over reading his books). However, the more I think about it, the value-added stemmed largely not from Ansari’s presentation itself but from the lengthy Q&A session that followed on, which is the sort of thing that tends not to be present in a “vlog”.

Also, I tend instinctively to associate solo video blogs with either a) teenage shut-ins or b) people whose house is a compound and who have urgent things to tell you about the radio waves the UN is trying to transmit into their heads.

I suppose the problem is that in order for the video format to meet the criteria for effectiveness (at least the criteria I would suggest, which would involve relatively in depth treatments and the involvement of more than one party in order to allow new ideas and routes of discussion to emerge during recording), it might be argued that it comes pretty close to ceasing to be “blogging” at all. I mean, if a blog consists of, say, a series of pre-recorded interviews or one-on-one discussions, is it still really a blog, or is it just a collection of… stuff?

But don’t turn gay.

Er, yeah: True to type as an urban wordnerd, my sartorial sense is substantially more developed than my pecs, so I think I’ll just spare both myself and the readers any such spectacles.

And then turn gay.

Or in the alternative, videoblog shirtless. A detailed examination of the seedy underbelly of the welfare state can only be improved by a coeval examination of your underbelly.