“It makes me feel less alone”… The success of “corona vlogs

• Since the start of containment, many Internet users have documented their life at home on YouTube or Instagram to keep busy. They collect their videos under the name of "corona vlog" or "quarantine vlog".
• "I make these videos to share with my loved ones the highlights of my day, so that they feel less alone and to feel me a little closer to them during this long period of isolation", explains the user Seb Jam.
• "In these times of confinement, filming yourself on a daily basis appears to be an existential issue (...) Making a vlog will simply allow some to feel that they exist", analyzes Michael Stora, psychologist and psychoanalist specialized in the digital world.

"I will give you my little modest advice so as not to be bored ..." Since the start of confinement, Seb Jam has decided to feed his little YouTube channel with a logbook of his daily life in confinement. "I told myself that I had to try to find something in my day that I could share with people, at least one thing, and try to take advantage of this period to be a little creative," explains the forties, responsible for building maintenance in a Parisian cultural establishment.

For several days, like Seb Jam, very many Internet users have been documenting their lives at home on YouTube to keep busy, as the country barricades itself and puts the lives of its citizens under bell. Forced to stay at home because of the coronavirus, many “Sunday” youtubers have therefore decided to overcome boredom by posting “homemade” content on the famous platform. Many of them list their videos under the name of "corona vlog" or "quarantine vlog", "vlogs" (contraction of "video" and "blog") being very popular formats on YouTube and Instagram which mix in general, stories of daily life and experiences at home.

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"It's so that my loved ones feel less alone"

This content has literally exploded since the start of containment. Because making a vlog is relatively simple. "It requires few resources, it's easy to do from your bedroom or from your living room," says Aline, a high school student who launched a YouTube channel a few days ago "to try to stay in touch with the world outside ”since the closure of all schools. She explains in particular how she organizes herself to follow the distance courses and also gives some tips so as not to get too depressed. "I wanted to do this to keep myself busy. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm going to say, but it's my little ritual of the day… ”

The vast majority of these “vlogging corona” are neither celebrities nor influencers. Some videos only have a few hundred views, and some accounts are followed by only a few dozen subscribers ... This is the case for the YouTube channel created by Seb Jam. "I make these videos to keep a video memory of this historic moment, to share with my loved ones the highlights of my day, so that they feel less alone and to feel a little closer to them during this long period isolation, "he explains. "It also makes it possible to laugh at a dramatic situation, laughing at the confinement we say to ourselves that it is not so serious, it plays down drama, it makes it possible to lower the tension, to think of something other than the litany of the dead that Jérôme Salomon [director general of health] serves us every evening at 7:30 pm… ”

“Filming yourself on a daily basis can appear to be an existential issue”

Telling about your moods, detailing your schedule, the dishes you are going to prepare or the series you are going to binge-watcher represent, in themselves, little interest for those who are other side of the screen. So why feel the need to talk about yourself and show others your daily life? “It is obviously a way of feeling less isolated. But, basically, it joins the evolution and the importance that we attribute to the status of the image in our society, analyzes Michael Stora, psychologist specialized in the digital world. The image is not only an aesthetic representation, nor an appearance, it is much more. Filming yourself on a daily basis appears to be an existential issue, all the more so with the idea of ​​sharing conveyed by social networks. With confinement, "many people who live alone are probably going through an existential crisis, and vlogging will simply allow them to feel like they exist."

For some, it is also a way to play down the situation. “The video will allow us to come and seal deep anxieties. Because with confinement, we are all more or less referred, sometimes in a rather violent way, to our own history. And the others, those who look at us, appear in a way like ghostly presences which come to reassure us, like a mother comforts her child ”, adds the psychologist and psychoanalyst.

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It is not only in France that we note an increase in the number of apprentices "vloggers". A Spanish biology student, Little Dreamer also feeds her YouTube channel every day to share her life in quarantine. A little ritual that she has instituted since she was a recluse and that gives her "serenity". In the United States, the “corona vlogs” are also very numerous, and sometimes very followed, especially those who provide advice to help overcome confinement with children. “Social networks are helping many people in their daily lives to live through this period of confinement. They finally allow us all to keep in touch and therefore to be "alone together", "concludes psychologist Michael Stora.

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