Click or Miss: Is Vlogging Harder Than It Looks?

Once a week for over four months I’ve posted a piece critiquing the week’s vlog offerings.

While I attempt to be critically optimistic, sometimes it’s hard. Between the incessant like and subscribes and the overwhelming lack of surf footage in some of these videos, it’s easy to fall into a pessimistic rut, blaming the bottlenecking of marketing budgets for the overall swarm of ‘bad’ content.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of lazy outputs from surf vloggers on Youtube, but ask yourself this: how would you feel if you had to spend every day creating some form of digestible digital content? I for one know morning coffee runs and general daily routine are about as entertaining as your local turtle race. Yes, we all love watching surfing, but that only accounts for a minority of time in these creators’ day. While major Youtube stars careers are centered around entirely around content, these are athletes—people who have spent the majority of their lives training to be the best at one sport, who have just recently been told they have to turn into Youtube stars/marketing strategists/merch salesman as well.

Please don’t think I’m over here crying a river for pro surf vloggers. I’m merely stating that after four months of dissecting the space, it’s worth noting that churning out weekly content (likely without a production team), based solely off of ones athletic prowess is a lot harder than it looks.

With that, here’s to a more exciting surf Youtube in 2021. Click (or miss) below.

Click- Floater Lessons On Oahu’s East Side
Channel Subs: 9.05k
Video Views:  7,246
Like/Dislike Ratio: 164/1

We’ve just examined the benefits of reading tides correctly, and while the written word is a great medium for description there is no better proof than the above clip. Zeke knew that the incoming tide would make this East Side set up dish out a few ramps, but did he know he’d land a contender for floater of the year at 7:53?

Miss- Ungodly Trading Hours With Nathan Florence
Channel Subs: 9.05k
Video Views:  80,640 (16,128 views/day)
Like/Dislike Ratio: 1,629/23 or 70.8 likes per 1 dislike

Backdoor turned in to a right sand bank last week allowing more than enough fun sessions to go around. While this clip doesn’t feature anything special surf wise, we do get some insight into Nathan Florence’s psychotic sleep schedule. Due to the time change between HI and NYC, the stock market opens at 3:30 AM Hawaii time. This means Nate (who reportedly boasts quite the robust portfolio) has to wake up and set his trades for the day before going back to sleep at 4:30. While I’ve definitely done more for less, this is a level of dedication I could never fathom.

Click- Would You Like The Tour?
Channel Subs: 724k
Video Views:  282,125 (56,452 views/day)
Like/Dislike Ratio: 8,727/76 or 114 likes per 1 dislike

Turns out life at Pipeline IS all its cracked up to be. Jamie gives you the full tour of his (and likely your) dream home, showing you everything from his recovery jacuzzi to his shore break board collection. Really though, there’s only a few people in the world who would describe a winch with more excitement than a souped up, blacked out Caddy. Jamie is thankfully one of them. If you’re looking for a more ‘standard’ J.O.B vid, click here.

Click- Ever Heard Of A Birthday Edit?
Channel Subs: 983 subscribers
Video Views:  1,207 (172 views/day)
Like/Dislike Ratio: 40/0

Surfers love seeing clips of themselves, so for Ford Archbold’s birthday recent birthday, Metal Necks’s Matt Tromberg gifted him a compilation edit of some of his best waves from over the years. Click to watch him along with the rest of the Metal Neck crew get down at home and abroad, and remember: just cause you can go to Newport and record yourself making weird noises, doesn’t mean you should. Leave that to the professionals, please.

Click- Is Crosby Getting Better At Art?
Channel Subs: 983 subscribers
Video Views:  18,046/3 (6015.33 views/day)
Like/Dislike Ratio: 517/5 or 103.4 likes per 1 dislike

While neither Cola Bro won the WSL’s event at Newcastle, Griffin got a 9th and Crosby beat Gabriel in Round 1 with a Cola Bros sticker on his board, which I’d count as a win. On another note, the pair have posted board painting videos before which were, uhhh, questionable. Here’s to vloggers improving their arts and crafts skills throughout the rest of 2021.