So let’s cut to the chase with all this YouTube madness. What is the entire point I’m getting at in writing 3, now 4 articles about YouTube Content Creation?
First of all, for those of you who may not have seen them, let me share the first 3 articles in this series:
https://www.xadara.com/cutting-back-youtube-content-creation-part-1/
https://www.xadara.com/cutting-back-youtube-content-creation-part-2/
https://www.xadara.com/cutting-back-youtube-content-creation-part-3/
With that established, let’s get down to it. What does this all mean, in the long run?
It just isn’t worth it to do YouTube videos, unless you happen to have the perfect combination of elements in the resulting content and get hit by that bit of luck that it catches on. Being outside of the United States helps, as it is more likely, for some reason, for a non-American YouTuber to become prominent than an American one – something to do with the algorithms, who knows, nothing Google does makes sense to me anyway. The end result, regardless, is that you run a very minimal chance of your content being seen at a start.
No reason for this here, just wanted an image to break up the text.
For the time it takes to film, edit, and upload some content, to only get a few views and no interaction, it just isn’t worth it. It never is, to anyone, to spend that much effort on so little. If it takes off, great, but odds are it wont.
The thing I don’t get is the sheer rate at which trolls and the like manage to find such otherwise obscure videos. Google / YouTube does nothing to negate this, either. Their failed integration of Google+ Into the YouTube service was an attempt curtail such, and that went over about as well as you would imagine; not well at all.
No, instead, we are forced with every upload to effectively expect arbitrary hate to be thrown at any content uploaded. Anonymous comments with minimal ways to control and inhibit them, mixed with the literal impossibility to actually disable the truly anonymous thumbs up thumbs down rating system for videos, ensures that inevitably, no matter how good a piece of content you put out, you are going to see hate for hate sake on there. You could spend 2 days working on something just to be told you are a terrible person. Go figure.
“But Chris!” You scream from your keyboard as you read these words “That’s what happens to everyone, all over the internet! Quit complaining about it!”
Another image to break up the text. Nothing to see here.
Sure. Yeah. I could just ignore it. For the most part, I do, but that isn’t the point I’m getting at. The point is actually that Google, one of the largest companies on the face of the Earth, does nothing worthwhile to curtail this. If your video gets a dislike, it’s stuck there forever. I personally don’t feel such a system should even be in place, and as I have said before, Google+ had a simple +1 system saying that you enjoyed something. There was no way to be negative about something unless you literally typed out a comment in the same way I type this article, and ya know what you can do to that comment if you don’t like it? You can delete it from your content! How hard is it to focus on the positive elements of media consumption, and limit the ability for trolls to do what they do? Why can a top-tier tech company simply not do this?
Now, I am not saying to censor everything you may disagree with. Far from it. Dissenting opinion expressed properly should be kept visible for all to see and judge their own opinions. Absolute trolling, and general hatred that misses the point, however, should not be tolerated. Ever. Yes, everyone deals with haters. Yes, everyone deals with criticism. Real criticism, however, is much different from arbitrary hate. I cannot stress this enough.
For someone to spend potentially hours on a video, and for it to get only a few views, with an odd portion of those being people who simply choose to attack the content for no valid reason other than hate, why should someone even bother? That’s the situation I’m in. That’s the way I feel about it all; that there just isn’t a proper reason to make content like I wanted to way back when. I don’t get anything out of it.
I’ll continue to make videos as I see fit. Indeed, I have made a few recently. One, in particular, addresses this very subject, and what do you know if the moment I uploaded it was hit with some dislikes, and I lost a subscriber! All due to me saying “Hey, go to my website more, I’m not going to make as many videos!” I guess reading was a little too hard for that person, maybe…