What to talk about in a vlog
A vlog is present tense — what you are doing now, what is on today, what already went wrong. Here are 48 written to be answered mid-day, to a camera, without stopping to think.
Right now, this minute
The ones you can answer walking, driving, or waiting for a kettle.
- What would you swap off today's list if someone offered you a nap instead?
- Which part of today would you fast-forward through if you had the remote in your hand?
- If today had a title card across the top of the screen, what would it say?
- Which song has been doing the heavy lifting for you so far today?
- What's the most ridiculous thing currently within arm's reach of you?
- What are you about to eat, and who do you have to thank for it?
- Which object in the room you're in right now are you quietly glad you own?
- What are you wearing today, and what does it tell you about how today is going?
- What was the first thing you did this morning, before you were properly awake?
- Where exactly are you sitting right now, and why here and not somewhere else?
- What's the state of the room just outside the frame?
- What can you hear right now that you'd stopped noticing until this second?
- What have you been putting off since the moment you woke up?
- Which tab have you had open all day without once reading it?
- What is broken in your setup right now that you've decided to just live with?
- What's the unopened message you're pretending you haven't seen?
- What's the pettiest thing that has irritated you so far today?
- Who is the first person you'll tell if today goes the way you want?
- What are you walking into straight after this, and how do you feel about it?
- What is the first thing you'll do the moment you shut the laptop today?
- What has to happen in the next three hours for today to count as a win?
What today is actually for
Gives the footage a spine, which is the thing most vlogs are missing.
- What are you going to do this afternoon that future you will thank you for?
- What does tomorrow need to do differently from today?
- What's the honest answer to how today is going, rather than the one you'd give a client?
- What's the smallest decision you've overthought so far today?
- Who have you spoken to today, and who have you deliberately not?
- What are you doing today that nobody watching this would ever guess?
What already went wrong
The most reliably watchable material you have, and it is free.
- Which thing on today's list do you already know is going to be a fight?
- Which part of the rest of today are you dreading, and can you say why out loud?
- What went wrong this morning that you're still slightly annoyed about?
- Who are you avoiding replying to today, and how long has it been now?
- If someone followed you around for the rest of today, when exactly would they get bored?
- How would a nature documentary narrator describe what you're doing at this exact moment?
- If you handed today over to someone else right now, what would you warn them about first?
- What are you doing today purely because you get to, not because you have to?
- What went right this morning that you nearly didn't notice?
- Who has already made today easier for you without being asked?
- What is working today that you were genuinely worried wouldn't?
When the day goes quiet
For the dead hour every vlog has. These carry a static shot.
- Who deserves credit for the part of today you're about to take credit for?
- What did you say yes to last week that you're paying for today?
- What are you pretending to be fine about today?
- What do you need right now that you haven't asked anyone for?
- What did you snap about today that wasn't really about that at all?
- What are you avoiding today because doing it would mean admitting something?
- What part of today would you edit out, and who are you editing it out for?
- What are you working on today that you've never shown anyone here?
- What are you hoping nobody asks you about before the end of today?
- What are you starting today that you won't see the result of for months?
The hard part isn’t answering. It’s choosing.
Spin it, then film whatever it lands on. You get the question you would have scrolled past, which is usually the one worth filming.
Press spin. You do not get to pick.
Does any of this actually work?
Vlogging has a documented start date, and it is older than most people assume. Guinness World Records credits the first video blog to Adam Kontras, posted 2 January 2000, following his move from Columbus, Ohio to California “in pursuit of a career in show business”; it also lists him as holder of the longest-running video blog as of 4 May 2016. The widely repeated detail that the first post showed him sneaking a cat into a hotel appears only in blog summaries and we could not verify it.
The vlog is the genre where people actually say something about themselves — and a bad day does not cost you. Ferchaud and colleagues (Computers in Human Behavior, 2018) content-analysed a stratified random sample of 24 videos from each of the ten most-subscribed YouTube channels and reported that “the most common videos are vlogs… with vlogs being more likely to contain self-disclosure than any other video genre,” and that “the effect of self-disclosure does not depend on disclosure valence.” We read this at abstract level; the publisher page blocked full access. Our inference: if negative disclosures did no worse than positive ones on perceived authenticity, then questions that permit a bad day are not a risk to be managed.
The fumble you are still thinking about is not what viewers remember. Gilovich, Medvec and Savitsky (JPSP, 2000) put 15 targets in an embarrassing T-shirt in front of 64 observers, with 30 controls. “The average estimate made by the targets was exactly twice as high as the average accuracy rate of the observers,” with a mean overestimate of 23 percentage points (95% CI 9–38). Note this, because it is usually misquoted: the 23% is the size of the overestimate, not the share of people who noticed. The study was in person, not on video.
A question list cannot make an uneventful day interesting, and pretending otherwise is the main reason vlogs get abandoned. If nothing is happening, the honest options are to film on a day when something is, or to make the nothing the subject deliberately and say so. What does not work is narrating an ordinary day as though it were remarkable — the gap between the two is the thing viewers leave over.
Last checked 21 September 2026.