In this vlog, Tom thanks his new subscribers and reflects on the meta‑trend of creators blogging about blogging and now vlogging about vlogging. He then poses a central question to his audience: what cues cause viewers to decide, often within a split‑second, whether to continue watching a video or abandon it? He notes that video length can be intimidating, but even short videos can lose viewers after an early moment. Drawing on Malcolm Gladwell’s thin‑slicing concept from Blink and his own doctoral research on first‑impression processing, Tom asks viewers to share the specific factors—visual, auditory, contextual—that trigger that instant “yes” or “no” judgment. The vlog ends with a brief sign‑off.
Chapters
Well, good morning, it's Tom. First of all, I just wanted to thank all my new subscribers. It's very heartening to have so many folks subscribe to my videos and to leave me such really nice, warm, supportive comments. So thank you so much, I really appreciate it. You know, in the early days of blogging, I've been blogging for about 3 years, and in the early days of blogging, one of the things that bloggers joked about a lot is that blogging about blogging was kind of, it got to be a bore. And a lot of us blogged about blogging quite a bit. Now I notice that a lot of us are vlogging about vlogging. So I thought maybe I'd keep the tradition going with one more, one more vlog about, about vlogging. And the question, actually, I have a question for you that I wanted to ask. And the question is, how long do you watch a video for? You know, I know all of us click on a video with mostly with the intention, I guess, of watching the video all the way through. Now, sometimes when we see the length of a video, and I know because I have produced some long videos, it can be a little off-putting. 14 minutes, 18 minutes, 23 minutes. I saw a video yesterday that was, I don't know, I think I remember seeing that it was 183 minutes long. But so there's the length of the video that kind of gives you an idea about whether or not you're going to watch it all the way through. But often even short videos, you know, you start to watch them and then you— something happens. And this is the question I want to ask you about, the something happens part. Can you talk about the— what it is about a video that leads you to make a decision to either watch it or not watch it? And if my reaction is at all typical of what others do, there's just a moment when you kind of go, "Yes" or "No." And it's that moment that I'm interested in. This is a follow-up on an idea from Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, and the idea is called thin slicing. Gladwell talks about how in, in a lot of situations we have this sort of intuitive way of making up our minds that guides us. And, you know, will make a decision about things very quickly. I did my doctoral dissertation on getting to know other people, and it turns out that the very earliest moments of any interaction are extremely important because of all of the processing, all the— all of the intuitive and associational kinds of things that come into mind. So the thing I'm interested in this morning, one of the things I'm interested in this morning is what is it that you think adds to your, is factored into your decision about watching or not watching a video from that, from the very earliest moments of seeing it. So, a vlog about vlogging. I'm gonna try not to vlog about vlogging too much. Thanks very much and see you again soon. Bye.
