#they sure know who I am on AskHistorians! because I ban them if they don't!

[itmeansapricot]

hey i read the post about abby cox's video and (with the caveat that im just a history-enthusiast, and therefore have no real 'skin in the game') i was interested in your annoyance with historical bloggers like Bernadette Banner. do u think they misrepresent stuff? i watch some of those bloggers sometimes but i don't really know how reliably to take them. i do, on the other hand, tend to pretty much buy in to what i read on /askhistorians -- i find in general it's hard for an amateur who doesnt have historical analytical training and/or time to read monographs to gauge reliability/expertise, particularly in pre/early modern stuff

No, it is honestly 95% just that I am a bitter and jealous hag. I have been ever since Blogger. The way to get attention then was to actually sew things and then have photoshoots somewhere nice and show them off on your blog, and since my blog was mostly my research into things like terminology (my blog was one of the first places anyone posted about the polonaise being specifically NOT an anglaise with the skirts hiked up!) and my translations of the Galerie des Modes fashion plate captions, I did not get a lot of attention. I was a student and then a precarious worker so I didn't want to buy fabric, and I didn't really have friends so I also didn't have people to meet up with for picnics or other events. It was definitely the whole Instagram Culture problem before Instagram existed. When my book of patterns came out, nobody really cared and several of the BNFs of costuming declined to review it even for a free copy or did review it really lukewarmly. Then everybody transitioned to Instagram which ramped up the Instagram Culture problem.

Then everybody transitioned to YouTube and I was like, okay, I could get back into the game because I have lots to talk about. But there are two major problems with trying to make YouTube videos. One is that it takes an incredible amount of time to write, film, and edit them - you have to make Doing YouTube your hobby, and I spend so much time on AskHistorians (thank you for reading AskHistorians!!!) and on writing projects that I can't do that. The other is that I have a very flat affect and I just cannot manage the video-essay-talking-head manner, so the whole time I was editing and posting the few videos I made, I was cringing intensely at myself ... and then nobody really wants to watch them ... But ultimately the issue is that I just don't prioritize what I would need to prioritize to be a successful costuber, and I don't put in the work to learn techniques for making good videos. I cannot expect to excel if I do not practice a good deal!

The other 5% is that, yeah, they can be a bit shallow. They're just not aimed at me, though - their videos are decent introductions to e.g. the Gibson Girl, historical sewing techniques, pockets, etc. but I have pretty intense knowledge about lots of fashion history, but particularly the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, which is what they talk about (particularly, like, 1880s-1910s for some reason). There also seems to be a lot of analyzing film costumes for accuracy, which can be an interesting topic (I have a whole tag on it), but ultimately it tends to be pretty repetitive and again, I have loads of my own opinions there. I also CANNOT watch video essays - I had to watch Abby's for the other post with the sound off and captions on - I would rather read blog posts.