I don't know if I would take as much of a hardline stance, sometimes body language and expression and tone can give you a fuller feel about the person and where they are coming from and whether or not they are full of shit. But yeah, they are time consuming and there is WAY too much self-important VLOGing going on now, it's tiring to see how everyone is so ready to sell themselves cause it is much easier to get lazy peoples attention with a video than with an article.

As for the ability to manipulate, mindless forms of entertainment are the worst for that :-P