remember why you do it

Sometimes I find myself caught in YouTube rabbit holes where I think of something I want to watch, and that makes me think of something else to search for, which then makes me think of something else that would be cool, and so on. There are these compilations that fans of Jenna Marbles and her boyfriend Julien Solomita  have made of just funny and cute moments the famous couple has had on their various channels, and that made me do a search for "jenna and julien sweet moments" or something like that (yes, that's the kind of stuff I search on YouTube--I can be a sap).

This search led me to a video on Julien's channel called "When I'm Gonna Propose (Q&A)" (dat clickbait) where he answers fan questions about various topics such as his diet, his favorite YouTubers, and of course his relationship with Jenna. So, of course, I clicked on this video in hopes of finding out some sweet romantic stories about some YouTubers I like, but I found myself more interested in a different topic that was brought up in the video.

Among the many fan comments that Julien responded to was the question, "What is your advice for someone who's just starting out making videos--more specifically maybe, what are some mistakes you've made that you can help someone else avoid?"

Julien's response to this was succinct, and not anything I haven't heard before, but it was something I needed to hear at this moment in time. His advice was to "zero in on WHY you're making videos...I think one of the mistakes I made is losing sight of WHY I ever started. Sometimes you get distracted by a number of things, but if you can keep your reasons for ever starting making videos at the tip of your brain, I feel like that helps you proceed the right way."

I'm YouTuber with a not-insignificantly sized audience and a solid presence online, however, I still have a long way to go before I can consider myself a successful professional content creator. This struggle might be distracting for viewers who just want me to keep making good videos and interacting with them online. Some creators in my position are happy where they are and just continue doing what got them where they are, but personally, my goal is to continue to grow and expand as much as humanly possible. I am constantly, every day, trying to think of how I should improve my content creation strategy, how I can improve my videos, what tips and tricks I can implement, how I can diversify my income, etc. These things are always on my mind, but I sometimes forget that my audience doesn't care about any of that. They just came for the videos.

Now don't get me wrong, every video I make is something I worked hard on and something I stand by and believe in, but I guess for a while now I've admittedly been thinking about making videos as a 'means' to an end of being successful, rather than the videos and the message I'm spreading be the end itself. I use YouTube as a way to flex my creative muscles and to express myself, but I decided a long time ago that alongside that, I wanted to make videos to promote good discussions on YouTube. I want to make the assertion that skepticism can be done without cynicism, that critical thinking and compassion can be compatible--you know, that whole HAKO thing.. That's WHY I make videos. And I think I kind of lost that a little bit.

I still very much desire to reach the next level as a professional creator and will work hard to get there, but I will do a better job at keeping the WHY at the forefront the whole time. Thanks, Julien for reminding me about that.

why i disable ratings on my youtube videos

A question/complaint I get rather frequently has to do with the fact that I hide the like/dislike bar on all of my YouTube videos. For some people this has proven to be a source of confusion, if not frustration. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve decided to write a blog about it just so I, as well as my viewers can have something to direct people to when they ask why I do it.

It’s definitely a bit suspicious I suppose. I know when I go to a channel and the Likes and Dislikes are hidden, I assume there was some reason for that, usually that their video has been heavily Disliked and the uploader is trying to hide evidence of that. This may be a good theory for newer viewers, but if you stick around you notice that I hide the ratings on all my videos, not just ones that didn’t get a good reception. By the way, the ratings aren’t technically “disabled” they’re just hidden. You can still Like and Dislike, it just wont be displayed publicly.

I was initially inspired to hide the ratings bar when I was a frequent target of video brigading by the fans of other bigger YouTubers who had made videos about me. Of course these fans do not actually watch the video (the analytics confirm this), they just come to dislike it and leave a nasty comment because their favorite YouTubers essentially encouraged them to. So that usually results in a video having a massive amount of dislikes. So the dislike button becomes a way for people who have been trained not to like you to come and essentially vandalize your channel. For several months, this happened very frequently and resulted in many of my videos being dislike-bombed. Now I don’t mind negative feedback if it is actually useful. I have made videos that got a lot of dislikes naturally because my audience thought the video was bad or off-base. But this is not useful feedback, this is just vandalism. And I have to say, when every other video you make has a bunch of dislikes, it’s not exactly encouraging. It kind of makes you not want to make videos. So I decided to take away the weapon these trolls were using.

Nowadays, I don’t get dogpiled that often. Both because I have sort of “opted out” of the “YouTube culture war” and have done a decent job of staying off of the radars of the usual suspects. However, I decided to still keep ratings hidden, because I find it kind of pointless and usually misused in general.

Most of the time, your video will get 99% likes. Because your subscribers like you and support you so they’re going to auto click Like. And unless you’re being brigaded, there’s no real reason for anyone to click Dislike. So most of the time, the like/dislike bar is either A. 99% Likes because your audience clicks Like anyway, or B. 90% Dislikes because you’re being dogpiled by some other person’s audience.

Sometimes you make a controversial video and that could get you some dislikes as well. In this case, people use the “Dislike” button as a “Disagree” button, and I really hate that people do that. In my opinion, Dislikes should be used for videos that are bad, poorly made, misleading/clickbait, or generating strong disgust — things like that. Not used just because someone said something you disagree with. That sort of diminishes the whole function of clicking Dislike.

So yeah, I basically think the like/dislike bar is useless and kind of provides very little value to me as a creator and also to my viewers. Also, I’m interested in taking a way a weapon people use to vandalize your channel when they don’t agree with you (or when they’ve been told they shouldn’t agree with you.)

Also, if i’m being honest I find it very amusing how frustrating this is to people. People literally feel entitled to being able to click Dislike on stuff. So that’s another reason, I guess.