Thoughts on YouTube

Lately I've taken to watching videos on YouTube about people quitting YouTube. Let me start by saying I'm not quitting YouTube, not even close.

However, in my own limited fashion I do understand the pressures that these people feel and I have a lot of thoughts about this phenomenon. Firstly I've been actively putting out videos on YouTube since 2014/2015. I started putting up videos in earnest with my 100 days of Tonalism project and since that time I've averaged a video or two a week.

Monochromatic Tree and Path 6x8

There have been some periods where I left YouTube for a time. This was not due to the sorts of pressures that are causing people to leave these days mostly it was because I was opposed to YouTube's policy of censoring free speech.

I can't say that YouTube's policy has changed in any great way but after leaving for a time I started to feel the pull to release videos on YouTube again. There's been nothing in history like YouTube. It's completely unique and having the ability to create something and put it on your channel and have people see it and respond to it is incredible. It's incredible regardless of this or that policy that YouTube might implement.

Truth be told even when I wasn't publishing actively on YouTube I was still using YouTube as a host for my videos and posting those videos on my blog.

So let's talk about what's going on with these creators and I'll tell you what I have to say about it from the standpoint of being a YouTube creator myself. These people are burnt out. They post on rigid schedules and many of them rely on YouTube as their primary source of income.

One of the videos that I watched this last week that was very illuminating, described YouTube's algorithm as a narcissist. Narcissists don't care about other people, they only care about themselves and what it is they want to happen. If you have a boss who is a narcissist they won't care that you are feeling tired, burnt out and overworked whereas a normal human boss would be more concerned about these things.

In many ways the computer algorithm narcissist boss is far worse than any human boss could ever be, because it absolutely does not care about you at all. It looks at weights and measures and makes its predictions and directions and that's it. It treats you as a creator like a machine because it is a machine. It doesn't care about you at all. That sounds like a nightmare scenario as far as a job goes.

Another video I watched, talked about how you could work 30 hours on a video and have it do far more poorly than a video where you just turned on your phone and recorded something. This is quite unlike the real world where more effort usually means more pay. If you put in overtime on your job you make more money. If you're a freelancer and you take on more work you make more money but with YouTube, more effort does not necessarily equal more income.

There was a time briefly where I was trying out different things to increase the subscribers and the views on my videos say around 2016 or so. I tried things like shorter videos and more frequent posting. Maybe I got some results, it's hard to recall. Either way I lost interest in romancing the algorithm. I could see that it didn't care about me or my art, or even my audience.

So, the analogy of how you would deal with the narcissistic personality is apt. The best way to deal with a narcissist is to not deal with them at all. That is been my YouTube strategy now for a very long time now. I love the people that actively follow my video content and my painting journey. I love helping people. I love sharing my process and my art and truth be told I am extremely thankful to Google and YouTube for hosting these videos.

I do make some income from my channel, more so since I started the members area. It's not enough to support me which is frankly not a bad thing after having seen all the videos about creators quitting YouTube I saw this week.

I think there can be a real temptation when you start having financial success from any creative endeavor to maintain that success. As a byproduct of this desire you will ultimately will be making decisions that are less than integral artistically.

I'm not judging people who do this. I was a commercial illustrator for 13 years so I know all about trading my art for money. In many ways this has given me an amazing advantage over so many people that are on the Internet sharing their work now as I know what it means to be a prostitute. I'm not interested in it. It's a dead end. I'm not willing to sacrifice what I do artistically on the altar of commerce. I would rather pack groceries then do it.

That said I am thankful for the people that purchase my art, view my videos and I'm especially thankful for the people that have donated to my channel and helped me further my career as an artist. Some amazing people have come forward to give me support and that has definitely renewed my faith in humanity at times where I was perhaps feeling a bit despondent about the world's reception to my art.

We have as modern humans and artists face unique challenges that artists of the past did not really have two deal with. There has always been art and commercial art there has always been popular artists and artists that were less so. But in the modern age it's very easy to lose yourself in the response to your work or lose yourself in the pursuit of chasing attention or financial gain.

I don't think it's worth it and I've known this for a long time. I knew that surrendering my soul to the narcissistic YouTube algorithm boss would be a zero-sum game. A losing game and so I just put out my videos and whatever happens with them is what happens.

Before I go I might point out that if you're thinking of starting a YouTube channel you should definitely do so with the type of attitude that I've embraced if you want to remain whole as an artist.

When I put out a video I tend not to look at how many views it gets. There will be times down the road where all notice that this or that video got more or less views and it's something that I will note but I will not let that determine what types of paintings I'm going to do and by extension what types of videos I'm going to make.

This process makes what I do on YouTube eminently sustainable and at the end of the day all of us as artists have to work to protect that part of us that the art comes from.

We have to nurture and support what's special inside of us so that it can endure. So that beauty and truth can endure.

Take good care and stay at a trouble!

Mike