Yes I’m jealous, I’ll admit that from the start but having watched probably a hundred or more YouTube videos of people reviewing airlines and seats, I’m starting to get a tad frustrated with them all.
Sure, it looks amazing but the smugness of some of these guys is really off-putting. They bandy prices around as though everyone has £5K just ready to spend on an eight hour flight and don’t seem to understand the privileged position they find themselves in.
Sure it’s our subscription and patreon and views that help them out but they rarely seem grateful that we do it. The thanks given at the conclusion of the video is said with a ‘look at how brilliant I am’ tone and then that smug grin which says I’m here and you aren’t. I’m sure that some of them work very hard but they fail to remember that it’s their life and we can only watch it, not join it and after a while it starts to grate.
Some videos are just not interesting. Loo reviews are, by the by, the same. It’s rare they find one that’s bad, not in business or first class at any rate. The food is usually good in those classes as well and after hearing someone bang on about caviar and the fact it’s the ‘08 Dom Perignon, that’s being served, you get it rammed home even harder that this is a different league.
Let’s face it, when most of us travel, it’s in economy. Yet very few actually use economy when they travel so to the ordinary person, how relevant are the videos? How many of us can access a lounge or get priority boarding? Or get an upgrade because hey, they’ve been recognised.
I watch the videos because I love travel but I do wish the vloggers were a little more grounded, less full of themselves and, on occasion, less superior. If the crew does it’s job efficiently, stop complaining that they “weren’t very chatty”. They aren’t there to make friends with you. And stop moaning about the contents of your amenity kit with your “Oh, there should have been an eye-mask included!”. Be grateful you’re getting one to go along with the hundreds you already have and give it a rest.
Yes, I’d love to be able to do the same and I have no idea how they manage it but I repeat again, they need to knock the smugness down a peg or two, think about how the majority of us travel and concentrate on that.
But glamour sells and I guess that people want to see what they can only dream of.
So dream away.
PiecesOfPatrick 