Where Cake Happened - Part 5
- Kepplemarsh
- Jan 31, 2024
- 4 min read
In my first year I posted 96 vlogs; in my third that fell to a paltry 19. What had once been effortless had become a struggle: where previously the challenge had been keeping things to myself, I now found myself fighting for any substance at all. Vlogger’s block. Frankly, it didn’t bother me much. I’d had my prolific phase, it was only natural things would begin to wind down.
In 2018 I graduated from Falmouth University, which is astounding considering my cavalier approach to attendance and coursework. Much like my A Levels, I pootled along getting the result I wanted with the bare minimum of effort. The original quiet quitter, that’s me. After that I got a job and moved away from home and have since been pretending to be a real, proper adult - but here we diverge from the story of Kepplemarsh, since I never vlogged any of that. I made a couple of videos between 2018-2021, and nothing since. And that’s alright.
Post-Kepplemarsh
If you type ‘Falmouth University’ in to YouTube, not a single Kepplemarsh video shall appear. That probably has something to do with the fact that I’ve made 99% of my videos private, but it also represents my having moved on, metaphorically as well as geographically. Other students will make mistakes and vlogs, and that is as it should be. The reason I hid my videos is simple, I’m 6 years older and find them fucking embarrassing. The more nuanced version might be to say I’ve matured as a person and don’t feel the videos represent me any more, but honestly, the cringe was a big factor.
The problem with being a ‘uni vlogger’ is that your content has a built in expiry date. After graduating, what next? For me the answer was very little. But there are a few loose ends to tie up before we put the chairs up on the tables and turn off the lights.
First, there is one exception to the impression of desolation I may have conjured about my poor abandoned YouTube channel. In early 2020, when the world shut down and there was nothing else to do, I made a mini return. From late March until the beginning of May, when Covid was on the rampage and at its maddest, I livestreamed almost daily - never to more than about 15 concurrent viewers, and usually to significantly less, but I rediscovered some of the joy in that month and a bit. I have very fond memories of those streams, despite the context of what was happening in the world. It was just nice to hang out with some of my friends at a time when hanging out was a lot to ask.
Of the online friends I made through the early days of Kepplemarsh I have lost touch with many, and any contact I do have tends to be sporadic. I think that’s the nature of online friendships, or possibly it's just life. The person with whom I started making videos at the age of 14 and who had been my best friend let me down badly with a series of choices that left me unable to regard him as a friend any longer. And that's life too.
Finally, I must mention that I am much happier now than the version of myself I describe in these posts. That guy had a lot of work to do on himself, and I’m pleased to say he did it. Perhaps there’s still some work to do, and perhaps there always will be, and perhaps that’s okay.
I’ve gone back and forth over whether to publish these posts or not. Are they self-indulgent? Have I glorified a middling success of younger days? Am I oversharing, again? I think the answer to all these questions is yes, to varying degrees. Probably the biggest vanity is in dithering over it at all - agonising over something I wrote for myself and that a maximum of about 5 other people will ever read. So fuck it. Publish and be damned.
The future
You’ve just read 7,000 words about events that took place close to ten years ago, but on a kepplemarsh.com domain that still exists in 2024. So what’s up with that?
I never consciously stopped making videos, there was no moment of solemn resolution when I decreed no more. I just… didn’t make any more. One day I put the camera down and simply didn’t pick it up again.
I may never touch Kepplemarsh again. Or, I may return to it with a new and prolific lease of life. I suspect the reality will be somewhere in the middle. I’d like to do something with the channel - not daily vlogs, those days are over - but I do miss having the creative outlet. And possibly, just maybe, I miss the pretence of being Kepplemarsh.
I did make a new video a couple of months ago. It’s not public, but since you’ve been dedicated enough to read this far I'll link it for you here:
And because 10 years is a long time, and because I don’t think I’ve ever made good on the promise of the Kepplemarsh tagline (for those wondering, it's pure nonsense, I needed something to fill the space on my channel banner), I present to you a very large, very messy cupcake I made for the occasion:
-Neil
31/01/24