YouTube's Top Creators Are Burning Out and Breaking Down En Masse (polygon.com)

Polygon reports of several prominent YouTube creators who are struggling with burnout. The cause can be attributed to "constant changes to the platform's algorithm, unhealthy obsessions with remaining relevant in a rapidly growing field and social media pressures [that] are making it almost impossible for top creators to continue creating at the pace both the platform and audience want," reports Polygon. From the report: Three weeks ago, Bobby Burns, a YouTuber with just under one million subscribers, sat down on a rock in Central Park to talk about a recent mental health episode. One week ago, Elle Mills, a creator with more than 1.2 million subscribers, uploaded a video that included vulnerable footage during a breakdown. Six days ago, Ruben "El Rubius" Gundersen, the third most popular YouTuber in the world with just under 30 million subscribers, turned on his camera to talk to his viewers about the fear of an impending breakdown and his decision to take a break from YouTube. Burns, Mills and Gundersen aren't alone. Erik "M3RKMUS1C" Phillips (four million subscribers), Benjamin "Crainer" Vestergaard (2.7 million subscribers) and other top YouTubers have either announced brief hiatuses from the platform, or discussed their own struggles with burnout, in the past month. Everyone from PewDiePie (62 million subscribers) to Jake Paul (15.2 million subscribers) have dealt with burnout. Lately, however, it seems like more of YouTube's top creators are coming forward with their mental health problems. In closing, Polygon's Julia Alexander writes: "YouTube offers no clear support system for creators, nor is it clear if the company has offered professional help to some of its top creators who've made their burnout public. Instead, YouTube's only direct reaction is a playlist dedicated to burnout and mental health. The creators are essentially working until they no longer physically can, and apologizing to their fans after believing they've failed. Polygon has reached out to YouTube for more information about services that are provided to creators. The only way to beat burnout is to take breaks. Unfortunately, for many YouTubers, those breaks are rarely planned."

Comments

Constant change and an unsure future are stress in

[oic0]

Anyone working for a company that makes sudden drastic changes to your livelihood on a regular basis is going to be stressed.

What?!

[libra-dragon]

Youtube doesn't need to provide professional help for these attention seeking assholes. And no one is compelling them to create content. Take a break. Take that Youtube revenue and pay a doctor/therapist. Youtube doesn't owe you shit. What's next? They didn't make your favorite dinner? They didn't tuck you in at night? You made content, they paid you. Fuck off!

Re:What?!

[Aighearach]

I wouldn't want their gig, but also, I don't want to hear them whine about it. They're free to do it. But it isn't content I want. I wouldn't expect any of the interesting channels to be thinking of it as a "career," but as a way to publish something interesting. If they're not also selling books or products or something else, then they're just volunteer teachers, and they should keep doing it as long as they are happy doing it, and then stop doing it when it starts feeling like a burden. If it pays then obviously it makes sense they would do it more than if it didn't pay.

Re:What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The critical thinking question here is, are these creators employee's of youtube or independant contractors?

If I pull up on a bunch of men on the roadside looking for work, hand them camera's to take home, then have them dance like monkies and make noises infront of the camera, then put their dancing and noises infront of an audience and pay them a pure comission based on some algorithm that I won't tell them how it works, am I an employer? Am I in violation of labor laws?

Just because this is done with computers and the internet, does not make this magically any different.

When you call India to have the indian remote into your computer and fix something, are they working on US Soil, or overseas? If you build a 10,000 mile long mechanical device for them to manipulate your computer, would it be any different? If you have them collaborate on a software product, are you importing software on an hourly basis and thus must pay a tarriff? Computers don't make this discussion magically any different than what it really is., But boy do business people like to argue the rules don't apply because Computers.

Just like they argued it didn't apply because Black people are savages and thus should be our slaves, or it didn't apply because KILL THE GERMANS\JAPS, or that it didn't apply because of some misguided con-game of self-superiority that justifies an executive paycheck 200x of the janitor.

It's easy to get into the habitation of taking advantage of people, and even easier to get into the havitation of being victimized. So easy it is for us to believe whatever we want to believe.

And you sir, You can come at us all with your mighter than thou, holier than thou attitude of superiority, saying we should have known better, or we should've seen the theif in the night, or that we are mere contractors deal with it. You're either playing the role of the victim or the grifter.

The social contract is broken, these are the symptoms. You live long enough kid, you're going to realize this is all a load of BS.

Re:What?!

[lgw]

They're collaborating with youtube, youtube brings the audience(s), they bring the content, both parties prosper.

The Youtuber brings both the content and the audience. YouTube brings the advertisers. The problem is, Google constantly and arbitrarily changes the rules for compensation. That's just dickish.

Of course, the smart guys on YouTube figured this out long ago and get their funding through Patreon etc, not YouTube.

If they are producing too much content and getting burnt out, maybe roll back to a weekly or monthly format?

YouTube's algorithms will drop you through the floor. With the latest changes, you might not even show up in subscription feeds. YouTube wants many small updates. No idea why - seems silly to me. Most the channels I watch do one real update a week, and then some shallow junk every couple of days to keep the algorithms happy.

Re:What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not employees or independent contractors. Youtube provides a platform that people can share content on. The better analogy would be a farmer's market. Someone provides a space and vendors fill it. There's some revenue sharing to the owner of the space.

Re:What?!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Youtube doesn't need to provide professional help for these attention seeking assholes.

As someone who is not a mental health professional, I feel free to speculate that the need these people have to obsessively pursue YouTube stardom just might be correlated with their apparent emotional and psychological fragility.

But it’s also true that these mega-stars of the platform deserve at least some of the credit for its popularity.

Name for this

[kbg]

There is a name for this. It's called work. Welcome to the club.

Hard to feel sympathetic

[Seven Spirals]

When we all have jobs that are as bad or worse. Everybody is getting squeezed. Learn to love it or start building guillotines. Those are pretty much the options.

Re:Hard to feel sympathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because a job that drives someone to poor mental health is a great job and just needs constant psychiatric drugs and psychologist visits.

Your first world countries that support such a system are retarded and suck.

Consider for a moment...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe practically everyone living in the 21st century is stressed, insecure about their livelihood, and feels like they're pushing the proverbial boulder up a hill every day? Maybe the major difference here is a Youtuber has a soapbox to complain about it, whereas most other people don't even have a therapist?

Now, consider that "Youtube Content Creator" is one of the few jobs you can decide to stop working at will, and still expect to have a job waiting for you when you decide to come back. It's also one of the few where your customers are inherently sympathetic to the condition of your mental health.

If anyone could just stand up in their cubicle, announce to the office that they weren't feeling enthusiastic about the work, and take a few "mental health" weeks, the world would burn. I question if any of these Youtube burnouts are self-aware enough to realize any of this.

Re:Constant change and an unsure future are stress

[wonkey_monkey]

Anyone working for a company

Which these people aren't doing.

This also happened in the 19th century

[Applehu Akbar]

But nobody blamed oil paints and canvas for the mental problems of artists.

Re:Constant change and an unsure future are stress

[Q-Hack!]

Anyone working for a company

Which these people aren't doing.

This... YouTube creators are not YouTube's customers, they are the product. The customers are the advertisers, and thus the only ones YouTube cares about.

Re:Constant change and an unsure future are stress

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more nuanced than that. Viewers are product, for sure.
Creators... they're livestock.

YouTube's fault

[vix86]

I think a lot of these creators probably could have dealt with the pressure from their audiences (and from themselves) to produce relevant content. But when you add in changing algorithms, changing community guidelines/demonetization, and fewer advertisers who are increasingly critical of where their ads go; then it doesn't surprise me in least bit that many creators are starting to break down. Imagine spending 40-60 hours on a single video, 3-4 years ago you could be safe in knowing that it would bring in a lot of viewers and a lot of ad revenue, but now you have to worry about whether your subs will even see it or if it'll even get recommended. Then you have to worry about whether it'll get demonetized/flagged which requires you to wait to get it manually reviewed. God help you if you made it public immediately because now you are losing ad revenue during the time period when you'd be getting the most views.

When I look at this new environment on YouTube, its hard for me not to believe that YouTube has purposefully 'poisoned the well' in an attempt to drive some of these larger YouTubers out and let the platform get taken over by big media outlets. Just look at Trending, its largely filled with Music videos, late night show clips, and the occasional news clip from like CNN or MSNBC.

"Creators" uh?

[Bobrick]

For fuck's sake, stop calling these people "creators". If I film myself yabbering about some product I was secretly paid to rave about (after the obligatory "What's up you guys!", before filming some friends and I acting like idiots in a store, followed by the obligatory "make sure to subscribe!", I didn't -create- shit. This is me filming myself being yet another completely insignificant brick in a boring wall. None of those so-called Youtube celebrities have anything to offer beyond racking in millions of views from some even less interesting people. If more of these attention-needing jackasses could have a burnout and sooner, maybe Youtube would be a bit less of a shit vortex, but I'm not counting on that.

Re:Constant change and an unsure future are stress

[jandrese]

Which they are totally doing, even if the company won't admit it for legal reasons.

It's really no wonder these people are stressed, they've been watching the demonetization line creep up and up over the past couple of years and know that it's only a matter of time until theyr'e effectively out of a job. They've been working themselves to death to try to keep the subscriber and hour counts up but it's literally killing them.

Re:Constant change and an unsure future are stress

[serviscope_minor]

Anyone working

Cutting it down to that. The top producers are people at the top of their game. That's really bloody hard work and the result of really hard work is often burnout. As someone who suffered severe burnout I can really sympathise.

It's got little to do with youtube though and more to do with people who are driven to work.

Re: Constant change and an unsure future are stres

[reanjr]

Creatives don't have a right to making a living from their creativity. Only the best of the best of the best creative output is worth money. The rest is dreck. YouTube's value proposition was not originally supposed to be everyone turning themselves into ad revenue streams. It was originally a way for people to get their ideas out there. YouTube is already giving you a free platform to spread all the dumb shit that pops into your head. They don't owe you shit.

Re:Why would they provide it?

[Calydor]

If I own a large (abandoned) warehouse, and I set it up to be used every other weekend for hosting a massive flea market or similar concept where private people can peddle their wares, old stuff someone else might want etc., am I then obligated to provide healthcare for the people that show up to sell their stuff?

That's about the closest real-world analogy I can come up with over lunch.