YouTube is hell
Video content creation is its own punishment. YouTube somehow makes it worse.
Much ink has been spilled about social media and its purported effects on happiness. The case against Instagram is that its picturesque lifestyles are lies. Facebook and Twitter, meanwhile, get dinged for equating one’s importance to their number of followers and likes. But I’d posit that if you want to harm your self-worth, sharing work on YouTube is the surest way.
It starts with an age-old problem: breaking into a creative field is hard, no matter the skill. Whether you’re composing music, painting watercolors, or writing poetry, success takes perseverance and luck. Most people give up before breaking through. Encouragement improves the odds; indifference (i.e., lack of engagement) makes it hard to stick to one’s guns — perhaps more so than negative reviews.
Of course, there are crafts where the upfront investment is minimal, so indifference doesn’t sting much. For example, you don’t need to pour your whole self into taking funny photos or writing satire in 280 characters or less. In the same vein, there are hobbies that are labor-intensive but enrich us no matter what: a hand-knit beanie that didn’t get enough upvotes is still fun to wear. But video content is a different animal: it is remarkably difficult to produce and its entire raison d'être is lost if it doesn’t get views.
The complexity of the medium is not YouTube’s fault. What I fault them for, however, is that they deliberately thrust authors into a global popularity contest — and offer no reprieve. You can use Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook to hang out with friends without knowing who’s the highest-ranking influencer of the week. On YouTube, view counts are all there is — inescapable and in-your-face:
Even in the privacy of your own channel, you’re being compared: to the right of your video, you see similar clips from strangers, along with their scores. The takeaway is simple: there must be something wrong with you if you can’t compete with a person flipping off their dog.
Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate platforms that don’t pit you against the world in a zero-sum contest for clicks. Substack is a good example: no one knows how many subscribers I have and how that compares to the guy next door. We might never strike gold, but the platform doesn’t rub our noses in it — and doesn’t compel us to imitate the antics of whoever is at the top.
From a different point of view: youtube is a broadcasting platform. You tune in to the personalised stream of what algorithm thinks is best for your viewing pleasure.
My youtube landing looks like a local cable tv variety at 3am, with most popular video clocking 230k views (amazing japanese repairmen „jeans”) from 5 years ago. Just below that is a watercolor painting timelapse from Marcos Beccari with around 1.5k views and some low fi jazz bootlegs follow.
I have a theory that there is a viable way of using youtube, one to which algorithm caters to - the long tail that is. There are people who can watch cable only at certain times, and they are as well interested in venetian gondolas from XV century, or anti-garroting safety systems (thanks for that!).
I know that these people gather in the corner of the dancing parlour and support themselves. And in comparison to the center of the action where millions are - they do something tangible, even or rather despite the fact that it’s quirky and exotic.
This is a powerful advantage of youtube. Broadcast yourself as if noone is watching.
I've recently thought about this as well. I love videography. It's my favorite hobby. I have two YT channels, one in Croatian, and one in English, and they have maybe 200 subscribers between them. I don't feel entitled to have more - nobody owes you anything - but I'd like to! But, I don't want to optimize for virality. I'd like to make interesting and creative videos that reach an aesthetic and narrative goal I have in mind. And the worst of all is: my taste is developed, so I know how far away I am from achieving that goal. I know exactly how much I suck!
Anyways, videography is difficult and it's not at all easy to get views, even if you have "quality".