Why Are Nomad Videos Popular?

It seems odd that videos by "nomads" are so plentiful and popular on places like yoob toob, (aka, You Tube.) It is easy to explain why they are produced: for advertising income.

But why would anyone want to watch this drivel? The videos are amateurish -- the makers don't even understand the medium of video. They shouldn't just sit in their car, and give the viewer a talking head to look at.

Or they talk about their rig -- which is only interesting to the 0.1% of the audience that has the same rig, accessory, or problem.

Or they show themselves heating water or talking about whether their breakfast will be porridge or corn flakes.

Many viewers are armchair travelers who like romantic escapism about pretty scenery. Many nomad vloggers have drones that show the van sauntering down a curvy road, with mountains and lakes in the background. That is quite engaging to the viewer because it helps them think, "Ahh, I too could be doing that." That's fine, but they should really go to old-fashioned 'text and postcard' blogs, rather than vlogs. (The photography is better in the old-style blogs.)

And why all endless harping about converting a van? Hasn't that been vlogged about, to death, by now?

Is there a modern bourgeois fascination -- bordering on voyeurism -- with down-and-outers?  It is possible that the interest in 'nomads' in vans is similar to our interest in survival stories, war stories, historical novels about perilous times, or Jack London stories about nature 'red in tooth and claw.'

Perhaps the viewer suspects something important missing in their life and searches to clarify it. If so, this seems healthy and admirable.

From “A Krutch Omnibus,”  page 31, 

when all men are as materially comfortable as some few men are today, then the comfortable masses will discover what the comfortable few have discovered already, which is of course, that comfort seems enough only when one happens not to have it.

Here is another quote from Joseph Wood Krutch, this time from his biography, "Johnson": 

Many men, oppressed with a sense that most of life is [mere illusion] and trivial, have sought in various ways to make contact with 'reality'.  To some, that has meant hardship in remote places; to some, as to Thoreau, solitude and simplicity; to still others, it has meant the search for God in mystical experience.  To Johnson it meant reminding himself of the struggle for existence on the most elementary level, refreshing association with people who knew, as he did, what it was to be close to illness and to want.

Therefore I hope people peeking in on the down-and-out in their converted vans will recognize the value of what they are looking for, and will branch out into a wider search which does them or somebody else more good.