My Pet Peeve of ASL Signers | ASL Ponderings

Video: https://youtu.be/wq_CMxh1oTA

Hello! Welcome back to ASL Ponderings. I was actually planning for my next video to be of my Alaska trip but I felt I had to do this before that one. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves about things in general. And this is something that always been a problem. Over the past few days, I’ve seen it pop up more and more often than it has in the past for some reason. It’s really irritating to me when people do vertical videos. I do not understand why people do this! I really don’t. If you don’t use sign language, whatever, I don’t care. That’s your own problem. But when you use sign, you limit yourself! With it being horizontal, you can move around quite a bit. While vertically… You’re limited to barely past the width of your body.

My video has pretty good framing, but that’s only because the camera is far away from me. A lot of people actually do it while holding it in their hand, so it’s a lot closer to them. How does this help? It’s shaky, you’re stuck signing with only one hand, and it’s extremely constricted. If you look at the picture on the side, you can clearly see why I’m annoyed with vertical videos. If you want to do this for your personal Facebook feed, I DON’T CARE. But when you’re posting on YouTube… Don’t. When you post in a Facebook group, like ASL THAT!… Don’t! It’s really annoying.

For those who don’t know, ASL THAT! is a Facebook group that’s specifically for ASL. It was established for people to discuss how to sign a word, ask if this is the right way to sign something, or ask if a certain word has a sign, and if it doesn’t, ask for the creation of a sign. It’s basically for discussion about ASL. Which is great! I love it, I have posted a few times in that group myself, because I wanted to ask about a sign for some words. Or give my sign for a specific word, or suggestions, etc. I really, really, really don’t understand WHY people respond in the comments with vertical videos. Why!? Especially when it’s so close to your body! Why?!?

[GIF: Stop! Film horizontally.]

It’s really not that hard to do. And. If you’re using a phone, you often set it up vertically, which is what I think is the largest cause of vertical videos (plus social media like Snapchat). If you set it up vertically, it’s a lot more difficult to keep it there, because it will keep sliding down. If you turn it horizontally… It’s a lot LESS difficult to make it stay up. So… Can you just stop doing vertical videos? Please? For my sanity, please? (And everyone else’s!) Thanks for reading my little rant. Leave your comments below the video what your thoughts are on this bane of our modern-day existence. And I will see you next time!