What we see is what we get

(...)if you post a vlog of yourself, there'll always be a couple of comments saying that you "love the sound of your own voice", that you're Narcissus himself, showing off. In short, you're nude, or a flasher. Now, I don't disagree with these comments - I've been brought up in this culture too, I internalize its values. But while I agree that showing yourself too much or too proudly can be a sin and a vice, it's a vice to which I personally feel very indulgent, very lenient. It's an important vice, a virtuous one.(...)I personally really want to know what someone looks like. I'm a big fan of situatedness and embodiment. We are not just brains in jars, we're humans in bodies, with faces and histories and accents. Culture is not a neutral stream of abstractions. But when text is king, we're tempted to think of it that way. Text is so utterly useless at conveying what someone's like in person, where they're coming from, how they fish around for ideas, how intelligent or attractive or confident they are. Our culture has only had video for a few decades, and is only now seeing a widespread publishing platform for "the people's video" in the form of the internet and vlogs. So I think we're going to have to recalibrate our ideas of what it's decent and indecent to show.(...) - Momus' Click opera