YouTube’s top creators are burning out
polygon.com
polygon.com
I think that most people who judge themselves by their accomplishments will run into this at some point. You'll get there, only to find out that there is no 'there' there.
Philanthropy seems like it might help. It can feel fundamentally impossible to be happy or content, when you mix a demanding always-on schedule with the very human desire to always be looking for more. But we also live in a world where many people never even have the opportunity to pursue happiness, and what about their hopes and dreams?
It is vicariously rewarding to see someone else learn how to do something and get excited by their newfound talent. And every hour of your time that you donate is an hour that you don't have to spend under the pressures of your audience or your thoughts.
The key is not to feel good about the accomplishments themselves, but about getting there. If getting there does not make you happy, then it might be the wrong accomplishment you are after.
More generally, this is about systems being preferable over goals.
It is a little shocking finding out that well, no, I can be unhappy even working in my dream job. I am not always going to be comfortable. There are going to be things that I have to face that don't coincide with the reality of my childhood.
It's okay though. You're going to be unhappy and uncomfortable. I don't think it would be normal to be happy all the time. There are people who have it harder and who make it through.
Some things have a universal comfort - I think a lot of times with my generation that a universal comfort is nostalgia. For me personally, it's going outside, breathing in the air, and just appreciating nature.
I think philanthropy should come naturally... I get a sense (especially here) that people are "outrage philanthropic" where they get overwhelmed by the state of society rather than focusing with a smaller more profound contribution. Even charity organizations sometimes seem disconnected. I think there are a lot of spontaneous, mundane things that can be done that help people and it doesn't have to be all about appearances or some preconceived notion of philanthropy.
> For me personally, it's going outside, breathing in the air, and just appreciating nature.
For me that has been the most important part and the reason I cannot live in cities anymore; whenever stuck or stressed, I hike up a mountain or through a forest. It solves everything; it is exercise but it also shows that my stressors do no matter in any scheme of things. If I am stuck in some code issue, I will not be after I am done walking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
We have a strong tendency to revert to our internal happiness set point, in the face of success or failure. So the trick is to learn to change that set point, which mostly doesn’t depend on things outside ourselves.
There's no guarantee to that - no universal right.
Dunno, I fell into Existentialism before I dropped out of whatever pointless liberal arts state university I was needlessly going to. They had a good library, so I guess I owe them that.
This applies very generally to human nature, people think that there's some magic thing that if only they get that, things will be awesome. In reality, you will very quickly normalize that away.
An 18 year old with a clapped out Renault Clio is happier about that than Mr Jones is about his Jaguar. We lose the ability to be happy with things that once made us happy.
What I've realised is that we only sense change. A positive change is good, a negative change is really bad, and staying constant is nothing at all. Just like in physics. Constant is constant no matter the absolute level.
My personal goal is to regularly introduce small positive changes in my life, avoid big changes, and resist expanding to fill my means so that (hopefully) I won't have to endure negative change. It's working pretty well so far. My outgoings are a fraction of some of my friends and yet I'm just as, if not more, happy with what I have.
I pulled on that intellectual thread and learned that this is exactly what you would expect based on the research. Achieving your goals only achieves short-term happiness, and if you base your happiness on that, eventually you are going to reach a goal that stops your happiness dead.
You have to find the things that make you happy, and none of them have a long-term impact. They are the things you can do to maintain a consistent level of happiness, if you put in the consistent work. For me, the biggest impact on my happiness is regular meditation and regular exercise. Research also supports gratitude journaling and philanthropy. Simple. But NOTHING has a long-term impact.
To reiterate, the things that work are the things that give you a little boost of happiness every day, and if you find the right ones you can get to a level that is good for you through constant maintenance.
This doesn't mean achieving your goals is unimportant. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a dogged persistence when it comes to achieving goals. But I don't expect them to make me happy. The key is to recognize that your goals reflect your values, the things you believe are important whether or not you expect them to make you happy.
Purchase your happiness separate from your goals, it's much cheaper that way.
The word "happy" is related to luck and chance -- like 'happenstance' -- and used to mean something like "fortunate." [see 'Hamlet' - "We are happy in that we are not overhappy... on Fortune's cap we are not the very button..."] Whereas lately, it's come to indicate an emotional state somewhere in the vicinity of joy. Even so, the word's earlier use points up something key about high emotional states : they are fleeting and fickle, just like the strumpet Fortune.
For my part, I think that if I'd heard more about contentedness as a goal in my formative years, and less about happiness , the hedonic treadmill would have been much easier to avoid -- or, at least, consciously manage.
Being economically secure including heath insurance and living below your means cuts out some major issues, but beyond that has minimal benifit.
Partners / children can be a boost or stress point depending on the person, but loneliness is an almost universal drag. Thus seek and maintain positive friendships.
Heath is somewhat up to the whims of fate, but a heathly diet, good sleeping habits, and minimal exercise can maximize what you have to work with.
I'm currently around 20% bodyfat. I eat healthy, drink when thirsty, sleep 7.5-9 hours, walk/bike as much as transport and do "convict conditioning" workouts 3 days a week. Outside of that, I don't "workout" but I am active in chores, hiking, etc.
All my friends are extremely invested in fitness and all sub-15% bodyfat. I am very disciplined but I try to focus more on nutrition than fitness (I cheat too much!).
I'd love more insight and if you had studies on this I'd love to learn more about efficient/minimal exercise.
If you're consistent and do intense aka 75-85 max heart rate at least once for 30 minutes per week that makes a real difference over time. Lower intensity requires a lot more because the body needs to adapt to stress.
Traditionally you see stuff like : http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/PhysicalActivity... and people say I don't have time for that. But studies find meaningful change happens at under 1/2 their recommended levels.
Got me thinking that these are important but to an extent only, basic human life is what makes you (only me?) happy. Smooth schedule and smooth people interactions...
- pursuing life goals no/yes
- being happy no/yes
Some people just live their lifes and are simply happy, don’t pursue any goals at all. Then other people pursue goals without being happy. Of course being in the top quadrant is optimal, but many people decide to optimize for one axis only. I realized that I’m in the bottom left...
- one has money and success and other things that meet the personal criteria of a good life.
- one has none of the problems related to poverty and failure and frustration and health issues.
Feelings are triggered by hormones and the nervous system.
E.g. panic attacks are related to too much epinephrine (adrenaline).
Quote from the article: “My life just changed so fast,” Elle Mills said in a video from May 18. “My anxiety and depression keeps getting worse and worse. I’m literally just waiting for me to hit my breaking point.”
I guess being creative on youtube also means (too) much physical and emotional stress for some people. Especially for those who already suffer from anxiety and/or depression.
Dramatic change or lack of change despite efforts is also stressful.
If you're saying something was "fantastic" but really it was average, wouldn't that disconnect make you feel like you /should/ be happier than you really are? Maybe you'd wonder if there's something wrong with you when really it's just an inaccuracy. I think it makes sense that social media culture at the moment would cultivate that since you want everything to seem way better than it really is. Not that humans don't have a tendency to do this stuff regardless.
It's something I think about from time to time and this post reminded me of it.
I've found the best way for me to keep a steady-state of contentedness, sprinkled with joy almost every day, is to truly love my fellow man. I wouldn't consider that exactly philanthropy though, and philanthropy only helps when one has a basis of love for everyone (even for people who openly do 'wrong', or who go against your personal values). Along with that, this love must be freely given to individuals, and not just felt when contemplating mankind generally (it's easy to love mankind, but it's not so easy to love that guy over there).
It's hard work to find that kind of love for everyone and it needs constant maintenance, but once you know how to maintain it, it changes everything. Forgiveness is easier, empathy is automatic, and everyone else's joy and accomplishments become yours. It also gives a sense of freedom, which I suspect comes from not being boxed-in in one body and one sense of self because you have the opportunity to feel things through others, and to connect to others simply by passing them by on the street and noticing that, yes, you love that one too.
There are a few other things as well, though love for men is the biggest. These are: appreciation of beauty in all things, appreciation of beauty in nature (especially contemplating how dynamic nature is), and a creative outlet that is personal.
The chase was better than the kill. So why not just chase? Because the chase anticipated the kill. Now what?
Elon Musk is an interesting case.
That's why people in vastly differing situations can both be happy, because it's a subjective function of how much meaning you have in your life. Having a purpose lets you battle through depressing lows and accomplish great deeds and still remain fulfilled. Otherwise it's just a chase for the next big thing, and while that can be fun for a bit, it also leaves you empty and lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Spoiler: It is a former CS professor at Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch. He had terminal pancreatic cancer. This is a dying professor's last lecture. It is a father sharing life lessons for his kids when they are older to watch.
Some relevant quotes:
- “As you get older, you may find that 'enabling the dreams of others' thing is even more fun.”
- “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
- “The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. ”
- “Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.”
- “People are more important than things.”
for me the conclusion was a rather grim Ecclesiastical one.
Stoicism seems to me 'making the best of bad situation' still we are doomed and doomed soon.
What difference is there between stoicism and fatalism?
Offside: If you are a conscripted soldier in 1940 Soviet army, ordered to march against a machine gun nest in Finland where do you get your solace?
The Finnish soldiers were amazed(and developed PSTD) how consigned to their fate the advancing Soviet soldiers were despite wave and wave of them being gunned down.
Same goes for a situation like in Boethius Consolation of Philosophy and The Last Lecture.
They are screwed and you can delude yourself into thinking things are great.
When you're middle class or poor and not influential, the people around you are a relatively normal sample of the human population and they have a balance of positive and negative qualities but they're mostly genuine individuals.
As you become wealthier or more influential, new people come along who are increasingly greedy, selfish and scheming.
Then this becomes your new reality and that's why you feel unhappy. Your social connections are often entertaining and outwardly pleasing but on a deeper level they're mostly unfulfilling.
"Unfortunately for the hedonist, constant pleasure-seeking may not yield the most actual pleasure or happiness in the long run—or even in the short run, when consciously pursuing pleasure interferes with experiencing it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism
John Stuart Mill: "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."
I started doing amateur game streams on Twitch (nothing serious, got a few regular viewers) but even tho I try to make an effort to just relax/chill and take it easy, I can't help but feel a bit stressed trying to be at my most entertaining version throughout the whole stream. Combined with having a regular schedule (even if it's just 2 hours of stream twice a week) it quickly builds up a certain stress that can only be described as stress similar to having a job. I end up hating the thought of "oh no, tomorrow I have a stream again" when I should be excited for it, I mean it's a hobby, it's supposed to make me feel good. But strange enough I spend 10 times more time at work and I rarely get this stressed.
It's hard to explain. I don't know exactly why this type of activity can become stressful so quickly. Maybe because it's much more related to how I feel in general. If I have a few bad days it's not going to affect much how I code at work (maybe reduce overall productivity/speed but code quality should be in the same ballpark). But if I feel bad I simply cannot be as entertaining as I can when I feel good and that stresses me out and I make an effort to still be entertaining, on schedule. Maybe that's what it is :)
The weight of expectation, probably.
Now I only play single player games, and I’m much happier for it.
When I played some WoW it was care bear enough that I could mostly solo and not have any real obligations. Eve was very hard to solo much.
Even blogging has the same effect on you and it really sucks because everyone will say "you need a schedule because it's what people expect, they need to know when to tune back in".
But once you do this, your whole mentality changes from sporadically posting something interesting because you overcame some obstacle and wanted to share your newfound knowledge to "it's time to think about next week's post, and it must be done because your schedule dictates a new post in 2 days".
It's very stressful, even if you enjoy it.
It was such a low feeling I’ll never forget it and one of the things I miss least about it.
I think it came from 2 hours of trying to entertain a lot of people and make them feel good about life while simultaneously experiencing full on imposter syndrome.
No such option with live streaming.
I usually prepare at least 3 posts in advance, but this has its flaws too because sometimes a certain topic is interesting "today", but it's not that interesting a month from now.
Also a lot of my posts come from experiencing something first hand and I find it to be a better writing experience if I write about what happened shortly after it happened, instead of weeks in the future when details might get stale.
Lastly, some posts take multiple days to write too, so it's not like you can just say to yourself "I'm going to crank out 4 top quality posts today and I'm set for the month".
While it's rewarding to gain followers and attention, it raises the pressure on me to post new images, and on what type of content and it's quality. At the end of a day that I don't update my Instagram I feel guilty. While I can gain followers and reputation by posting, I see myself lose followers by posting media that doesn't match my audience's expectations or by not posting often enough.
This has the effect of chilling the content creation that got my social media started in the first place. It makes me weigh the value of things I am doing in terms of whether I can exhibit them online. I especially shy back from posting personal content, but I don't really know what my audience prefers. Just art pics, or life and personality? To make things more complicated, there is social pressure as I know about 10% of the audience personally.
I have started other Instagram accounts where I post semi-anonymously to have the same sort of normal social media outlet as a regular person. If that were to grow in followers though, the same thing would happen.
I myself rather watch someone when they have something that they are eager to tell or show, rather than on a schedule. It feels like we all got that nerve as watchers, when we expect something to occur at a certain point in time with a certain quality we are effectively eating up the spontainious creativity.
My advice is to tell the audience that you need a break, you still want them to hang around. But you need to have faith in them being there, very much like any relationship. Or else it's up to you to satisfy the audience, when it's actually up to them to enjoy the stream.
Audience is a toxic that we should be vary with, not healthy to be in too much, but that's just my own opinion. It's nothing weird, just how it is.
Think of your art or fun hobby as like a horse. Making it pay for your rent and food is like throwing a heavy saddle on its back and sitting on it. If you let a day job carry you (or a patron or parent etc.), your thing is suddenly freed from your heavy ass and you can remove the saddle altogether. It will be a lot happier, treat you better, and incidentally run a lot faster too!
My job can be stressful at times, which I don't consider to be strictly negative, but I have noticed just how much this has impacted my enjoyment of, for example, reading technical articles that are too close to my work subject matters. On the other side, I still have great fun on reading challenging articles, application notes or whole books on different subjects in electronics and signal processing, and my way to ensure that it keeps being fun, is to keep it away from being relevant for my income.
Well, the "independent artist" directly selling to the market place is a fairly new thing in the scheme of things, originally artists had patrons, then galleries and art dealers set fashion. Youtube lets a wide variety of people sell directly to the world and this creates an intensification of the precariousness earlier artists felt.
The artist in the modern world is imagined as someone turning a hobby and a dream into a profession but profession artist derives originally from artisans of the middle ages or other time, individuals skilled by no means concerned with "art for art's sake" (coined by Théophile Gautier in the 19th century).
Of course, it should be noted that during the evolution of the modern artist, artists' skills increased but simultaneously the artist sold more their sensibility and "themselves" rather than simply selling their skillfully produced products.
Imagine that you were passionate about programming and already managed to get 'facial recognition for seagulls' working on your hand-me-down PC. You could go to university and then find that they start teaching you ASP.NET or ADA or some other dead language that only prepares you for the military or the city. Coding then becomes a matter of dread, herd mentality guessing what you are doing wrong and artificial deadlines.
Or even at school this can happen, if Geography is your thing and you are a walking gazetteer, able to talk and learn from anyone no matter where they are from. So 'Geography' would be the natural thing to study, right? A few weeks in you realise that you are only ever going to learn how 'volcanoes work' and 'Geography' then becomes a chore.
To extend your analogy, these folks have to ride that horse all day, every day, from dawn to dusk, and they are starting to get some serious saddle sores.
At one point solving the same problems ever again it turns into a chore. There must be some new challenges to have things interesting (either at work or outside)
Regardless how much you enjoy your job, having the same hobby as the day job is not a good idea.
Yup. Part of the reason I'm so wary of kids being told "do what you love" as advice on what career to pursue. Not bad advice per se, but can be tricky for the reasons you highlighted.
I think this applies to ANYTHING you enjoy.
Take X activity that you love to do, and start doing it to survive (a paycheck).
Suddenly, X becomes a burden and a chore, and your previous love for X goes out the window.
I have experienced this with programming. When I started, I thought I had won the lottery. I loved it so much, and to think, I could make money doing this! Well, 10 years later my love has significantly waned. I still enjoy it, and I am content in my job, but I have nowhere near the intrinsic motivation to work that I had when I started.
Bojack isn't hilarious. It funny sometimes, but it mostly feels important. Like work. Rewarding to watch for having done the work.
I will be checking it out, tho, for certain.
Contrast this to Casey Neistat or purge gamers who started their narratives to bring about what's unique about them.
There's hardly a facade on any of it. I qualified what I meant by acting in my tweets. In the case of purge, it's Kevin being Kevin. He'll read patch notes for 7 hours and doesn't give a toot about what the watch count could be for that. He's active on twitch but without any mad acts and crazy tricks for the fans. His unique sauce is just being super analytical. So he does just that with no crazy voice or "YouTube face".
Either one of Casey or purge could be on the verge of needing a break. But they've been doing this a lot longer than any of the new stars and still seem very comfortable being themselves.
This is not to shit on the current Gen of daily content creators. I'm just worried a lot of them are not going to deeply understand why they are actually getting burnt out. They are doing excessive amounts of work where the primary requirement is to shed your self. There is very little difference between what they do and ye Joe average 28 year old working daily at a software engineering job that pays well but forces the worker to wake up with existential dread each morning.
Realising this might mean that some of these content creators might have a reckoning where they realise that long term they have nothing innately unique to offer the world of YouTube. I'm worried none of them will come to that conclusion simply because their brains are going to be fighting back saying "but this is what I always wanted".
We are all capable of getting what we think we want to do wrong. No shame in that. Just be willing to save yourself.
1: https://twitter.com/kiriappeee/status/953547948754862080?s=1...
One thing to note is that Casey Neistat did burn out, stopped daily vlogging for almost a year, and said that even before he stopped, he felt his vlogs were not up to par because he didn't have the energy/time to make them better.
Now he's back to daily vlogging, but he's back with a whole production team helping him out.
Similarly GaryVee doesn't seem to burn out on daily vlogging, but that's because he outsources all of it. He goes about his day saying stuff that's useful and someone else records it then puts it together into an episode.
I started on a video essay project which will go on Youtube and can see this hitting me already. There are some incredibly productive folks out there who have a dedicated staff to add the magic of editing and audiovisual effects. I will be happy just to get my audio sounding OK and to have something resembling visual style.
Regardless, I have confidence in what I'm doing because I have a clear direction and intent with the content with relatively modest goals(a portfolio building career move). Optimization for the short term popularity metric guarantees that you end up competing in a world of formulaic "man talks into camera", "man plays video game", "man reviews product", "man lives everyday life" type content. And while I could see myself doing some of those, for fun or experimentation, I wouldn't want to become someone reliant on it. It helps to have a few different things going on.
Ironically, this is the lesson a lot of persons learned when they were kids on 4chan and co. Never put your information out there. Never ever period. It will ruin your life longterm. The internet is not a nice place. It is sadly a lesson, many people who grew up with facebook and youtube never learned. A lot of them were likely full of optimism and had a very sudden awakening where the path back out was no longer viable.
There are rather simple examples like this moment
https://youtu.be/aGmt5neXURs?t=491
And to be blunt, even she was naive when it came to showing the skyline. Have the right/wrong viewer and you are screwed.
There is a rather sad example of the German Youtuber "drachenlord". He is a fringe youtuber, out of work and is bullied by people in the hundreds. Yet it is his livelihood now and thus there are scenes like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27CsOBn5HE
where he is selling posters.
I still think the south park episode about brittney spears is sadly relevant.
He wasnt that well adjusted to begin with and is completely out of his depth by now. He is a rather overblown phenomenon because he is incapable to deal with the attention but the basic problem is rather common. Sadly youtubers are at the disadvantage towards normal celebrities as their stalkers get to group up easily. I think very few are prepared for that kind of attention
Some of this is the biases of the YouTube management and employees, some is the beliefs of advertisers, but it seems incompetently implemented. Many advertisers would be perfectly happy running in front of "offensive" content in their same domain (e.g. any ammo company would happily run ads before a video about guns; maybe Disney wouldn't), etc. So they are basically making up for limitations in their product with arbitrary and destructive policies against the content creators.
I hope a non-YouTube, non-Google platform disrupts them ASAP, although this only seems to be happening inside verticals (like Full30 for firearms).
It's not that there's any shortage of video and other content distribution platforms. People just want the discovery and monetization associated with YouTube while not wanting to deal with everything that comes from getting in bed with the elephant.
But it's also meaningless. Ephemeral. Fading.
If you're improving someone else's life, that's a bit more tangible.
I know people who would have died if they hadn't discovered that helping other people makes them feel like life is worth living.
So, maybe if you vlog stuff that helps people, that might make it more satisfying.
Just a thought.
It's called a "Re-Boxing" video. First kids are happily playing with a mess of toys. Then a parent comes in and tells them it's time to put that shit away.
The sad kids then have to put their toys away in boxes, and then put them completely away neatly in closets and such. The camera then just focuses on the nice clean floor.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should have targeted these videos at parents instead of children. Well; Live and learn I guess...
So he deleted all his content.
But he came back and still do some videos. https://m.youtube.com/user/Photonvids/featured
But much like repeated drug use the buzz wears off and the futility of your existence stares back at you in the mirror.
But with less new creators, what is YT going to do?
It's almost starting to feel like social media is becoming a hula hoop. Fun while it lasted. Everyone was doing it. But as the novelty wears off so does the mass and its gravity.
Somebody else will take the viewers. Older celebrities getting out never killed any communication means. What kill those is lack of new people to take their place. YT seems to not be suffering from the later.
If the risk doesn't match the rewards the best will look to apply their energy elsewhere.
That is how it has been since prehistory for most humans.
Though strangely, if I zoom to a smaller or larger size, it looks fine.
And it really is not a common sight. I have not had any problems with fonts in the three years that I'm using Linux.
1. livelihood: does it provide enough $$.
2. meaning: the end product/service, do I find it meaningful.
3. people: do I interact with colleagues, customers, etc. whom I find interesting and respect.
4. process: do I find the work in and of itself enjoyable, tending to put me in a flow state.
The YouTubers might be lacking in 3., and depending on their personal tastes/needs, possibly the others too.
Youtube is in an interesting position right now. They have a lot of great content, but there are obvious huge problems standing in the way of run-away success. Finding new content is another of the big problems, I use Youtube a lot for "edutainment", but the recommendations engine doesn't really give me much diversity. And the diversity I explore seems to just confuse their recommendations.
The passion, and angst they have for it all is obsessive, and seems very unhealthy. Looking for reasons everywhere for which signals are causing them to go down in views, or not go up. Or not go up as fast as they had planned out in some sort of scaling of the past performance they've had.
I feel quite badly for them, and it's the reason I don't bother streaming even though the few times I have, with their support I get a lot of viewers. It's a completely viable thing for me to do, but the "thing" in question is to be as unhappy as they are, and as obsessed with the detail of if people like me or not.
You couldn't pay me for that hell.
The ecosystem used to favor high demand niches by offering much higher CPM. It is all homogenized now and YouTube is saving the highest CPM ads for the most popular / connected creators. $1-3CPM I've heard is average. Coding videos now get around $4-$6 down from $15-$20 when I started.
Not producing frequently also reduces your CPM. Same with short length videos. Many factors go into the CPM rate now that are not great for creators.
Then again, that's also a problem with a lot of Google services in general. Google search rewards those who post the most regularly too. Could be interesting to see if any bloggers or writers have similar issues with that.
While YouTube is a private platform and they are welcome to display whatever content they feel, it is against American ideals to censor creativity and speech if fellow citizens.
Jet again another:'Striving for _more_user_ engagement'? I am just trying to get a little bit canibalism-humor out of: "googleᵀᴹ is eating children"... (-;
1: http://unogs.com/video/?v=80097519 looks to be available on Netflix in the EU, but for some reason nowhere else.
Authenticity is the key to YouTube success. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!
I think a lot of these YouTubers feel locked into the persona they created, and just like any lie, it's tough to remember all the details, to be contiguous.. And I'm sure it feels like something they want to get off their chest and start over as themselves.. But they are worried that their audience isn't going to be interested. I think it all depends on the audience.. Some channels have dedicated viewers. Others depend on couchsurfers and SEO/spam/keyword linkage. I think most channels that put out consistent content with consistent subscribers would do fine if they changed it up. It's probably just the level of risk that makes them worry to tears.
I really like this insight, but i don't know what to do with it.
Most youtubers are one or more of these three:
1. They comment on things, either current events or things in general. 2. They are self designated experts in their field and dole out tips and advice. 3. They make original content of some kind, like comedy skits or other art forms.
Then there are the so called bottom feeders, the scourge of modern YouTube, the makers of reaction videos.
Their channels are updated quite frequently, if not daily at most one per week. Only small proportion of the videos is worth watching. The rest is total waste of time. Subscribers often vent their frustration in the comments about the content, but for most people you'd have to go past several pages to see disgruntled comments. The top ones are usually favorable ones, and I am unsure of their authenticity.
The fundamental problem is that these youtubers mistook dumb luck for talent. When, for some inexplicable reason, some of their early videos went viral, they were egged on by their ego to post more, which is fine. But soon when they ran out of content, instead of quitting or taking a break to regroup, they continued to post substandard content.
I know I am being overtly judgemental by using words like 'substandard', and one might contest that by showing how popular these people are - some were even guests on popular US talk shows (one shiela was even on Conan) - but that is my point. I am amazed at the success they got despite such content. I wonder what kind of people are impressed by such content. Its one of the great sociological mysteries to me because, unlike a low quality TV show that persists due to studio bosses persisting with it for whatever reason, on social media things survive due to direct audience interest.
Quality intellectual output is quite hard. Even the most gifted comedian won't be funny all the time, the most gifted musician won't make good music all the time, the most gifted philosopher won't say deep thought provoking things all the time. In the current state of society where instant gratification is craved, people don't understand this, and it shows in how mediocrity succeeds time and again in all walks of life.
I think this burn out thing is their coming to terms with their lack of quality content and sort of giving up being an imposter. That said, some of the youtubers who post original content are indeed good. If they take time off and develop their talent, they could make a proper career out of it.
so all the crap that actors/actresses put up with is likely to apply to youtube/twitch people.
dreams, pressure, long-hours, fame, ratings anxiety, envy, fans, meltdowns. etc.
Another funny consequence of algorithmic optimization. Seems like people that came up with it weren't as smart as they thought. Hint: if 99.99% of your users are consumers and 0.01% are creative producers, from whose only 1/1000 can consistently perform, you wouldn't want to drive them to the ground. Also, pushing increased frequency inevitable lowers quality and increases noise of your platform and prevents unique but occasional hits from being properly rewarded. Is that really good for advertisement?
If the content of the channel is not deeply meaningful for it's creator anymore, the job loses meaning. The attention and popularity are rewarding but the effect wears out. If the enthusiasm is not genuine, it starts to feel bad.
Not that I don't acknowledge mental health as an actual malady, Some people truely need help. Just that I think this particular case is bogus. Especially when your so called break involves creating so much video.
Luckily, I'm a little older and have worked in entertainment with the talent side previously, so I've already had my burn out phase and have also seen and understand what fame and/or public attention does to someone, especially if they're mentally unwell.
Not tooting my own horn, but it takes incredible discipline and foresight to not get sucked into this vortex of needing to please your audience and sponsors and to do everything all at once.
We live in a time when things that are extremely hard or time-consuming are supposed to happen quickly and easily (the magic of editing!) No more is this apparent than on youtube. The main audience on YT are in their mid-20's and younger, who basically grew up in a world where literally everything is at their fingertips, at the drop of a hat. This definitely reflects in their media consumption patterns/platforms of choice. The problem is that for someone in a business where you (or a small team) basically do everything and are pressured by fans and revenue generators/sponsors to keep putting out content at a crazy pace, it becomes all-consuming and unsustainable.
I told our team from day one that collectively, the audience doesn't care about you - they're vampires. They're voracious and fickle and only care about you so long as you keep giving them that sweet, delicious content. Yet, if you start off on the right foot, you can keep their appetites satiated without screwing yourself over.
My partner and small team and I decided early on that we'd focus on better content less often, and keep engagement on the platform with fans to a manageable amount. We knew this would impact revenue and growth, but for our literal sanity, it was necessary and we're so thankful to have started this way. We made very little money the first year of doing the business but each year has gotten bigger and better and sponsors/brands have come through citing the lack of us "whoring" ourselves out for a quick buck or views as the reason they're wanting to pay us 6 figures to work together. So while it might seem like we're giving up fame and riches, you're only partially right - definitely giving up fame, but the revenue growth has been incredible because we've stayed the course and kept our heads about us.
As a fan of other channels on the platform, especially Elle Mills and Casey Neistat, you see that mental illness is a big issue and putting someone already fragile in a position to deal with immense pressure to produce more and more that it becomes a pressure cooker and too much to handle. Elle is the perfect example of this. As a fan of Casey's I'm often struck by his lack of empathy or understanding that filming constantly, and then editing for 4-8 hours everyday, all while getting 3-4 hours of sleep with little downtime is not sustainable for 99.999% of people. I'm still unsure if he's one of the few people that need that little sleep or he maybe is a little bi-polar. As evidence of the effects of his punishing schedule, he recently started working with a filmmaker named Dan Mace. He was constantly sleeping on camera, missing small things in edits, etc that you can't help but feel for him. Casey even goaded him on a little bit and told him this is how you have to work to be successful on Youtube - he's not wrong, but he's also not understanding that success means different things to different people. He clearly loves/needs the attention, so I get why he thinks this way, but he's missing the bigger picture outside his little world. Keeping up with Casey's schedule looks punishing on it's easiest day and is the surest way to get burnt out, all in the service of something, quite frankly, so fickle.
TLDR; Audiences are like vampires and there's immense pressure on creators to constantly create/earn revenue/build audience which is not good for anyone mentally healthy and disastrous for someone not mentally fit.
I know I have subscribed to a few channels and watched them a lot initially then found them a bit boring after while. I never bothered to un-subscribe. (Somewhat related - interestingly my Stack Overflow score stays quite consistent despite not having done much for a while, the answers I have put on there a while ago still seem to get upvotes).
That italicized word makes a huge difference in avoiding burnout. When a team is right, many things are possible. If it is missing, there is no support for burnout.
Best of luck!
Not really. Just like everything else it is only the top percent of any industry that rakes all the money.
The only reason I'm able to do that well (still far below minumum wage, if minimum wage legitimately gave you 40 hours a week which I think generally it won't) is that I spent close to ten years entrepreneurially running the same business as a commercial proposition, all by myself. I made between twice and four times as much selling plugins directly to people, but it was COMPLETELY unpredictable and the Patreon is not nearly as unpredictable: provided they don't implode, it's a slow steady growth curve as more people discover what I do.
And going commercial didn't protect me from things imploding: I went to Patreon because I'd been using Kagi as a payment processor, and they imploded. They still owe me two months' pay that I will never see. Patreon was one of those bold intuitive jumps where I went 'I'm happier giving my work away, let's gamble my whole life on this working, and if it fails, whatever, I didn't want to live anyway'. Turned out I was able to survive on it, and the relative predictability of the admittedly-lower income is good for my mental health.
That was where keeping up a better-than-monthly grind of product releases got me, when I absolutely depended on having 'hit' products to sell to make up for the ones that fizzled, and never knew what was actually going to hit. It's this which is killing the YouTubers.
It's not just that they don't know which videos will go viral, it's that they also don't know what the rules are or will be, and worse, they are subject to being algorithmically handicapped in a way they are blind to. The whole system is set up to goad them on to unrealistic behavior, and appears to silently punish them for failure to comply. All they can do is cling to cargo-cult-like obsessive lowest-common-denominator stuff and double down on what they think will help them, which is never actually confirmed by YouTube. This is a recipe for killing people, in action.
Being an entrepreneur and small business owner is already sort of fraught with uncertainty: you can fall back on 'if I work hard and do what I do, I can get through to a certain number of people and build a following'. Being a 'Youtuber' is more than twice as bad, because it's that except that your platform can and does literally stop you getting through to your own people if they want to connect your people to some newer youtuber that they would rather stick in the recommendations. The very act of getting through at all is subject to restriction by the YouTube that you're working for, so it's no wonder people are going insane trying to please YouTube.
That’s a fantastic summary. We’re all, viewers and creators, rats hitting the lever, not sure when it’ll give us a fresh burst of satisfaction.
The "slave" analogy is completely flawed.
European literature is full of this and educated people are expected to detect it as such.
It's a cheap trick which is why it belongs in dramatic literature, not in a discussion based on reason and facts.
Another cheap trick is making an alternate throw-away account rather than having a history of comments that people can refer to, to see if you have contributed positively in the past, or if you're just an obnoxious troll.
And an illustrated book about birds
That entertainment industries are filled with people like this suffering while being ridiculously successful is a universal across virtually all media.
Do personality disorders count as mental illness, or are they distinct?
Psychology is fad based, mostly bullshit and still not able to deal with the fact that correlation does not imply causation.
So to answer your question: who cares, these people need help.
It is controversial to claim that someone with a "personality disorder" needs help.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic
I don't think that's accurate. A "personality disorder" doesn't necessarily involve anosognosia, nor is it limited to things that cause conflict with other people like borderline or narcissistic personality disorders.
Then we could all breathe a little bit and work a reasonable schedule with a healthy appreciation for creativity.
Of course, I think this also very neatly summarizes our views on mental health and mental issues.