You should be a YouTuber. (or Artist/Creator)

there's never been a better time to become a YouTuber or an artist or a musician or a writer or whatever type of creative you want to be and it doesn't even matter when you're watching this video I'm sure it will still apply and today I want to talk about why that is and hopefully if you've ever thought to yourself man I'd love to be a YouTuber or an artist or musician whatever it is but I just I just can't do it I don't have what it takes the algorithm sucks or nobody cares about what I

want to make you know if you if you said those things I'm going to try and convince you that things aren't as bad as they seem and I think you should do it you should be a YouTuber or an artist or musician whatever it is uh if that's what you want to do even if it's really hard and it sucks for a while and I'm going to back that up by telling you a little bit about me and my story when it comes to YouTube and all that and all the things I've learned from the

people smarter than me so I was lying in bed the other day and just you know Doom scrolling YouTube you know as should do and I stubbled on a video called monetization will ruin the internet again and I watched through that video and I wrote down a lot of thoughts I had while I did which I basically never do I didn't even take notes in college um and I'll talk more about what that video had to say in a minute but it had God damn it but it had me thinking really negatively about my job

which is YouTube and and content creation and with the news of Rooster Teeth shutting down the other day and God damn it and all these YouTubers uh retiring lately I got to thinking that the time to be a YouTuber is essentially over like the train has left the station then I later stumbled on a video called ranting about emergent narrative in Daggerfall and all it was was a 45-minute video of a guy with less than a th000 subscribers at the time uh ranting about Daggerfall but specifically he was ranting about something Meese that he was

really passionate about and it was just him narrating over 45 minutes of playing Daggerfall uh while he shared his thoughts and it had thousands of views not hundreds of thousands but a lot more than you would ever expect a video with BAS basically no editing to perform on a Channel with basically no subscribers and that video uh more than the than the negative video I watched earlier is is what really inspired this video because I was inspired to really return to my roots and go back to what got me making videos and streaming in the

first place and that's connecting with people and sharing cool experiences and really just making and sharing [ __ ] that I think is cool let's back it up a bit when I first started um you know I'm trying to avoid using the word content because it's it's one of those words that I've heard and said so much now that doesn't even sound like a a word really but I need to catch all word that encompasses everything that I create because it's not limited to just videos now so when I first started creating content I I

was I was consuming a lot of motivational stuff I was watching Jordan Peterson inspirational [ __ ] I was watching Gary ve dudes that these days I can't [ __ ] stand uh cuz as a lot of people have figured out most of their [ __ ] is talks of positivity at best and straight up harmful and abusive and manipulative at worst but all the toxic positivity in the hash grind set was all in my head and I had this all this motivation and I was going to do it I was going to be a

YouTuber so then I started watching all of the how to grow on YouTube channels and courses and I started spreading all that toxic positivity to my audience and really making people feel good about themselves and that convinced them to sub to my twitch or patreon or whatever and it created this feedback loop where I felt like I was in a kind of pyramid scheme where I was trying to make a career out of just telling people that they can make a career out of whatever they set their mind to and the more I made them

believe that uh the more viewers I had regardless of whether or not those people were actually finding success in their creative Pursuits so the more I started to realize this the more I got uh severely burnt out and disillusioned with my value as a Creator because I didn't really even know what videos I wanted to make anymore and that's why the Daggerfall video meant so much to me I watched all 45 minutes and I don't even like the Elder Scrolls games I'll be real that's my hot take of the day uh it helped me remember

that that my goal with my videos and stuff is to inspire others to just be more creative not by telling them how they can crack the algorithm or get monetized in 30 days or all that same [ __ ] that thousands of grifters are spouting out every month but by doing it and and being more creative myself and showing how awesome it is to lead a creative life and to think more deeply about your favorite games and movies and to take on challenges that you set out for yourself so why am I saying there's never

been a better time to be a YouTuber and a Creator and why do I think it's only going to keep getting better from here there will always be a like quote unquote meta that will push a few creators to their 15 minutes of fame or whatever and to social media celebrity status but the vast majority of people are going to find their definition of success in the Creator Space by carving out their own section of it with their interests and personality and while the algorithms and and and corporations God damn it I'm really sucking at

these special stage today so what was I saying even though the companies and algorithms behind the platforms will always be you know fundamentally flawed it's clear to me that it's getting easier and easier for creators across the board to connect with the people that actually care what they have to say right now audiences on YouTube and really like people across the internet are starting to get bored of the Mr Beast style hyper stimulating overproduced [ __ ] that's flooding social media right now uh the retention meta as people have called it um it's dying and

even the how to grow on YouTube channels are starting to talk about how authenticity and personal connection are on their way back in and I don't think they ever left I just think that people are realizing that they don't want to just endlessly scroll Tik Tok and Twitter until their brains rot and that's created an opportunity where now the audience for long form videos are searching out that authenticity and that ability to engage on a more personal level and so the algorithm is starting to push those videos again in the comments of that Daggerfall video

there was someone saying something like my favorite Niche on YouTube is just nerds talking passionately about their nerd [ __ ] whatever it is that says to me that anybody uh today more than ever can make a career out of just sharing what they love to do and make with the world that all being said uh there's also good reason to believe that there's never been a worst time to be a YouTuber or a Creator on the internet and that comes down to the perils and pitfalls of monetization video I mentioned earlier uh mon ation

will ruin the internet again is built on the idea that money as an incentive for Creative work I so mad about that block that I missed that money as an incentive for Creative work doesn't actually Foster creativity it stands really in direct opposition to it that video explains that idea in much more detail and uh just precise language than I ever could so I'm going to kind of hit it from a different angle there's this D and D and tabletop Focus YouTuber named Matt koville that has a video called something like like how to do

better rewards in DND or some other way better title where he talks about one of the lessons he learned working in tabletop and video game development was that um the behavior a game rewards is the behavior a game encourages that's a simple enough concept but the applications are virtually endless it's actually why I think a lot of people bounce off the classic Sonic games uh this game especially cuz in Sonic 1 uh you know if you go in with the with the idea that you're supposed to like go fast right uh cuz that's what all

the the marketing would have you believe that's what all your friends would have you believe the game is about you're not going to have a good time you know this game does not reward you going fast it rewards you keeping all of your rings until the end of the level CU that's how you get to the special stages and how you unlock the secret ending and [ __ ] so it's really about going slow at first you've got to you got to go slow and be careful uh otherwise you're just if you try to go

fast you're going to run into this Spike uh and then get set down to the bottom of the level and I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me it's really only on repeat play playthroughs where you've you've kind of learned the level layout and you've gotten better at controlling Sonic that your navigation through the levels allows you to go fast and then speed becomes its own reward and then you're encouraged to go fast maybe a more relevant example to my point is RuneScape um you get gold for doing quests or jobs or

whatever I haven't actually played RuneScape but bear with me here uh and the fun of the game and the actual game play uh is in like the quests right uh but the reason you pick one Quest over another isn't necessarily which one is going to be more fun or the one that makes sense to your like for your character in like a roleplay sense or whatever it's probably just going to be the one that offers more gold and then what happens when somebody finds uh the infinite money glitch uh there's just no fun to the

game anymore cuz you're not playing a game you're just inputting a glitch what is what is considered the reward is entirely dependent on what the player values if you go into Sonic valuing only speed you're going to be disappointed if you go into RuneScape valuing only the in-game money you're not going to have fun and that's what happens when you mix money with YouTube as soon as money is a potential motivator it stops being about making the videos you want to make and starts being more about what videos are going to make more money the

censoring curse words actually make a video better or does it just make the video more ad friendly does editing the [ __ ] out of the intro make the video feel more important to you no it just hacks people's brains to not want to click away I mean I'm someone who loves editing and I think editing can enhance you know comedic timings and allow you to communicate things that you just can't with a recording but it's gotten to the point where I no longer think of editing as a storytelling tool or a creative Outlet I've

been constantly conditioned to look at editing through the lens of you know how can I manipulate people to keep their eyes on me and not on that other guy in the sidebar trying to manipulate them to put to put their eyes on him and uh that is uh that's so crushing you know when I was a kid the adults in my life taught me this idea that um hard work is valuable and the harder you work the more you deserve to be rewarded it's this idea called meritocracy there are YouTube gurus out there that will

tell you that YouTube is a meritocracy and that the best way to grow on YouTube is simply to work harder and upload more videos than the other guy or whatever uh that is the biggest croc of [ __ ] I've heard in my [ __ ] life if you're someone who's uploaded at least two YouTube videos um you'll know that the amount of work you put into those videos and how many views they get aren't correlated like at all if you work twice as hard on video a than on video B you will not find

that you'll get twice as many views on video a in fact a lot of the time you'll find you'll get less views on video a now that's not to say that there isn't a craft you can hone over time to make videos that the views Trend upwards and all that and hard work and dedication does benefit that but that's how you start getting advice like put out as many videos as you can publish weekly publish daily cuz each video is a lottery ticket that could launch your channel into the stratosphere I mean how [ __

] up is it that we compare YouTube videos to lottery tickets and then turn around and tell people that it's all about their hard work and at the same time can we really look at channels that have ai generated titles and AI generated thumbnails and an AI generated voice reading over a chat GPT script uh over stock footage can we really look at those channels and see that the people running those channels are working harder than literally any of us or anyone else and that's just when we consider view count when you start talking about

income the disconnect is even bigger the amount of money you make from a video is more based on the video topic than it is about the view count a gaming video could get 10 times as many views as a finance video and the finance video will probably still make 10 times as much money I've heard other people say like when I was younger and and I probably would have said when I was younger something something along the lines of like oh that's that's called working smarter not harder um and it's like well then are the

people doing the infinite money glitch in RuneScape working smarter than the people doing quests uh no they just missed the entire [ __ ] point of playing RuneScape and probably just Googled how to do the infinite money glitch in the first place anyway the Crux of it all is that life is not meritocracy Modern Life is starting with no money and then spending most of your time uh finding the people who have money and trying to convince them to give you money that's all a job is that's all sales is you're not rewarded for your

work because of how much work you did or how hard it was you're rewarded for how much you convince someone else your work is worth and the behavior of the game rewards is the behavior the game encourages so working hard isn't encouraged manipulating people is encouraged in YouTube's case clickbait is encouraged AI slop is encouraged spending dozens of hours making this 15 minutes of moving pictures you've made as immersive or effective or funny as possible that's not encouraged because it's not rewarded and so why why doesn't everyone or really like the better question is what's

stopping you right now from posting AI generated videos about how to manage money or run a business it's probably because you don't want to right uh you have no interest in doing that uh you don't value doing that it's not why you became a YouTuber or want to become a YouTuber or whatever your interest in YouTube comes from the videos you want to make it's where the [ __ ] name YouTube comes from which leads me to something else I've been thinking about a lot lately and that's the concept of Dharma uh now Dharma is

a word you may or may not have heard before but it I've been watching a whole lot of this guy called Dr K he's got a channel on here called healthy gamer GG and he's essentially um he was a gaming addict uh who flunked out of college and so his dad sent him to India to become a Buddhist monk uh and the monks kicked him out and told him to go find his purpose in life because they told him his purpose wasn't to become a monk and he said he was sad at first uh cuz

he kind of liked the idea of becoming a monk uh but he went back to America and um eventually became a a Harvard psychiatrist he got his life together um and became became a psychiatrist and now he has a YouTube channel uh specifically to help the kind of gamer YouTuber redditor twitch streamer type Community with mental health problems specific to gaming and social media and to help find purpose uh cuz one of the more like Eastern philosophy Concepts he talks about is Dharma and so uh what is Dharma it's the simplest way I've heard people

describe it is that Dharma is kind of like it's kind of like your purpose in life but like that doesn't really cover it uh cuz who really knows what their purpose in life is you know when you're a kid you're made to think that one day you're going to oh [ __ ] uh I got to oh I can just spin dash through here when you're a kid you're you're made to you're made to feel like you know one day you're going to wake up and you're going to be like ah my purpose in life

is to be a doctor it's my purpose in life is to be a firefighter um and it just doesn't work that way Dharma as I understand it is more like what do you choose to do that may may or may not be what you want to do or even what makes the most sense to do but what makes your life better or more harmonious as Dr K would say it it's the idea that your life gets better and that you're overall happier when you do what you truly value and what truly needs to be done

instead of what you know Society tells you to do or what gives you instant gratification uh here's an example I used to have a day job that wasn't YouTube or content creation right it was a very cushy office job I booked the job before I even graduated college um I started immediately was in my degree field it had awesome benefits paid fairly well I had great friends that worked there and I was miserable I worked there for 2 years and then I quit and my family was baffled it was very hard for the people around

me to understand how I could check every box on like the happiness list and just leave it for the uncertainty that comes with you know making videos on the internet a lot of them thought I was depressed and to a certain degree I was but I've experienced depression like the kind of depression that meds and therapy are supposed to fix or you know at least treat and I just knew that this was different I spent every morning looking forward to lunch uh every afternoon looking forward to getting home and uh every single night dreading going

to work the next day and the reason was that I didn't I didn't care about what I was doing you know I liked what I was doing to like I liked programming but I was constantly doing what I I considered to be busy work and going to meanings that didn't matter and the problem at the end of the day was wasn't really with the job there are people who wouldn't have considered it busy work and you know I had co-workers who got something out of those meetings you know uh but that it wasn't the job

for me my my Dharma is creative work um it's expressing my thoughts and feelings through music and games and videos it's making people laugh and making people think and making people feel confident in themselves and showing them gratitude I feel like it's still not a great example because it's not just about long-term stuff like your job or Life Choices or whatever it's really about the present moment I like to think about it more in terms of you know what you put your attention towards cuz you really can't put your attention towards something in the future

right you can plan to put your attention on something in the future or you can put your present attention on thinking about something that will or might happen in the future but your attention is always a matter of the present moment so I think of Dharma as like putting your attention on the things that matter most and also eliminating the things that take your attention away from the things that matter so cleaning your room or your workspace might not be what like matters most right now but having a cluttered mess and having the negative feelings

of being dirty might be distracting you from getting your work done or even just enjoying your video games fully like and so that feeling that's pulling your attention to something that would make your life better in a sense uh that's Dharma it's not the same thing as motivation cuz motivation is very fleeting and it's not very well understood by the vast majority of people cuz like I bet some of you are laying in bed watching this video uh when in the back of your mind you're like I should be doing something else right I do

this all the [ __ ] time I'm so bad about getting out of bed in the morning it's not necessarily that we're not getting out of bed because because we're not motivated to go work on the things that we're really passionate about it's that your brain is like yeah but right now uh this beted is so comfy the sheets are so warm this YouTube video is so engaging you know if you're watching a video than this one and this hypothetical I mean and so your brain is really motivated to stay in bed and keep doing

what you're doing so Dharma is really the like voice or like the call in the back of your head that you hear toward what you really feel you're supposed to be doing especially when you aren't doing it or aren't motivated to do it I was really motivated to stay at that day job with all the money and benefits and social approval from the people I cared about uh but it wasn't making me truly happy what people mean when they say like that's not your calling right my favorite movie of all time is uh well it's

Empire Strikes Back but the movie that really speaks most to me and that I can most relate to is Spider-Man 2 that movie is about how Peter Parker is trying to balance being Spider-Man with all the things that he's motivated toward you know like his his friendship uh his school work you know paying the bills cuz being Spidey don't pay and he's really he's really having a rough go of it and he can't make anyone happy and he's he's losing his superpowers and so he quits being Spider-Man and for a little while he has a

uh well he has a great time he goes and sees Mary Jane's play uh he catches up on schoolwork he's becoming everything he dreamed of being uh and yet MJ ant May everybody in his life can tell that something is wrong right you know he's not being himself and then he sees a mugging going on and he you know he hears the call right he even reaches for his shirt to do his like Superman rip open the shirt costume Quick Change thing uh and he realizes he's not wearing the costume and he doesn't have his

powers and there's nothing he can do about it later on he sees a burning apartment building and he hears there's a kid trapped in there and he can't he can't hold back anymore you know he runs in and saves the kid uh even without his powers only to overhear from the firemen that they found a body on a different floor of somebody that didn't make it out and he he's just crushed you know he feels screwed either way it doesn't matter what he does he he can't save everyone he can't please everyone he can't be

everything he wants to be and so what does he do he uh well he enjoys some chocolate cake and uh learns to appreciate the little moments in life that he can and eventually accepts that you know he can't save everyone and he can't please everyone and all he can do is listen to The Calling to do good and do his best at it even if it means giving up the Simple Pleasures of a life with less responsibility so what's this got to do with being a YouTuber right cuzz I'm not so full of myself to

think that being a YouTuber is like being a superhero right the comparison I'm trying to draw is that every single one of us has something or in reality probably a lot of things uh that we could be doing that would at least make life a little bit better for ourselves and the people around us that we're probably ignoring in favor of what's easier or what's more immediately rewarding instantly gratifying whatever or even what's expected by the people around us so I'm talking specifically to you um who have felt a calling like that to something artistic

or creative whether that be making videos on YouTube or Twitch streaming or making music or drawing acting theater production Film Production writing fiction whatever it is I think you should do it it doesn't mean you have to be fulltime or have it be your sole source of income uh you know even Spider-Man's got to deliver pizzas on the side uh I just think that if you've got something to say uh you should say it uh something to make make it a lot of people you know especially people who aren't happy at their jobs are going

to tell you that you need a real job and that what you do doesn't contribute to society or whatever [ __ ] that [ __ ] art is society without art there is no Society you know we'd all just eat and drink and piss and [ __ ] and breathe and sleep and die we'd have no culture there'd be nothing to distinguish this group of people from that group of people and yet we would all feel uh just so alone and completely isolated because we would run around thinking that nobody had ever lived without experiencing

what you had experienced and nobody had ever known how it feels to to to feel what you feel before and there will be other people who try to tell you what is and isn't art and that what you do isn't art uh [ __ ] them too that replica of your real life house that you built in Minecraft that's art those drawings of your I don't know Supernatural fan character with their hands always behind their back because you're terrified of drawing hands art that YouTube video with 27 views you made talking about your conspiracy theory

that different colored M&M's are actually different flavors that's [ __ ] art my homie because regardless of whether it's acting or writing or music or YouTube videos whatever creative Pursuit you like and are drawn to and you choose will have some kind of craft that you can improve on and improving at your craft means you're able to make more intentional choices and those intentional choices add up to you being able to more accurately express yourself and create something that resonates even more with what you trying to achieve and that means that piece of art will

be more uniquely you because no one will have the same intentions as you and yet somehow at the same time more people will be able to resonate with what you made because the greater expression will either make them feel something they relate to uh or open their mind to something that they haven't felt before I'll be real my videos are probably never going to have you know the impact on the world that you know multi-million subscriber Harvard graduate Dr K's do but he's got you know his life and his situation and I've got mine he

he has his voice and I've got mine you know he might save New York but uh and I might be a you know more friendly neighborhood Spider-Man right and who knows the next Dr K might be watching this video now inspired to take the leap that they otherwise wouldn't have I think I'm going to drown here oh that was clutch um you know or uh maybe they're watching yours maybe the next Dr K will watch your video okay I had to I had to take a break from talking for a minute to beat that boss

cuz my God Labyrinth zone is a nightmare I don't really want to be known as an influencer anyhow cuz like godamn that [ __ ] is cringe influencer might be the only word worse than than content the only reason I want to be an influence in any capacity is that I once witnessed a kid in Walmart asking his mom to get him a Jake Paul poster and that uh that maybe want to jump off this building in Sonic the Hedgehog that maybe want to jump off a cliff in Minecraft right I lie awake at night

and still think about that kid sometimes I don't want to feed my ego by trying to convince people that they should look up to me or uh believe what I believe but I would much rather the young men and the young people in the world uh look up to someone like me than someone like Jake Paul or Jordan Peterson or uh [ __ ] what's what's the what's the incel guy you know like the the really bad one that got arrested in Romania oh [ __ ] me holy [ __ ] I cannot believe I

actually forgot his name oh this is e this is like euphoric oh I cannot believe I actually forgot his name that's awesome anyways I knew I had a lot to say on the topic um and I knew I had a lot to say in this video but I did not think that we would get all the way through the first Sonic the Hedgehog game in a single setting I have a lot of ideas pertaining to this stuff and I have a lot more that I probably could say for this video but there's only one last

thing that I kind of I kind of want to give out and that's uh that's a challenge I want to challenge you I challenge you to make something today I want you to kind of go out and start something you've been meaning to start or if you've if you've always wanted to to learn something go start learning it you know make today the day that that that happens leave a comment and and let me know what that is for you like what you're going to make get started on it today but but you know finish

it or get it to a point where you're you're you can share it and share it with the people around you you don't have to share it on the internet you don't have to post it to YouTube whatever just like share it with your friends or share it with your dad or whatever the point is to to get you to feel what it feels like to listen to that calling listen to that voice that tells you to make something and create something even if that voice today is me and then once you finished it and

shared it come back to this video and uh reply to your comment and tell me what it was like to to go out and and make something like that if you're feeling generous and want to support my God damn it if you're feeling generous and want to support my career as a Creator uh in the description and at the end of this video you'll find links to my music and uh my website where you can become a member of the neat club and support content like this on a regular basis let me leave you today

with a quote I have on my wall from uh another one of Matt coville's videos that I really like it's okay to think your ideas are cool and that people might like them if you give it a shot and feel embarrassed at the ridiculous tropy cliche poorly thought out nonsense you put in front of your audience it doesn't mean that you are wrong and that you should stop it means the opposite it means you got to keep doing it until you learn how to develop those cool ideas so that when you put them in front

of people they will say neat