Before Facebook took the crown as the most popular way to avoid actual productivity at work and fill up an insomniac’s sleepless nights, there was YouTube. Well, there still is YouTube, but other social media seem  to have caught up in terms of addicted users.

But, I have to admit, there’s nothing that can quite compare to watching people broadcast their lives. Uploaded photos, “about me” descriptions, and even podcasts just can’t compare to actually seeing a video of a person’s most exciting/mundane/hilarious/tender/disturbing moments. Proof: See one of my favorite YouTube posts of all time. (Yes, I know you’ve probably seen it and think it’s corny, what with Steven Tyler bellowing in the background, but Christian the lion makes me cry every time I see him wrap his huge furry paws around his long-lost owners!)  And there is no way any other form of social media could adequately capture the emotion of that moment. 

The great thing is, if you’ve got even a phone that takes video, a webcam, or the massive, 15-pound video camera of the 80s, you can connect and share your life with people you’d otherwise never communicate with. YouTube has an unprecedented ability to link well-known public figures like politicans and celebrities with us Average Joes as well the ability to link random people to other random people – sometimes those are the best viral videos, let’s face it! I’m sure you’ve seen countless YouTube video blogs that people obviously recorded with the camera on their computer, and as blurry and stangely close-up to the blogger’s face they are, some of them are full of a person’s deepest secrets and vulnerability, roll-on-the-floor hilarity, and even history-making moments.

Almost everyone I know has posted or at least been involved with in a YouTube video. But, despite how I’ve gushed about it here, I actually have not ever posted a video on YouTube. Maybe because, before I found myself getting so much enjoyment out of other people’s videos, I never thought people who didn’t know me would be interested in seeing my husband propose to me on a cruise ship or my then-2 pound kitten curl up with our 70-pound pit bull. (These are two of the handful of videos I have actually taken over the past few years.) But the more I think about it…I’ve watched other people’s “mundane” life moments on YouTube and been completely enthralled. So why not?!