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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."
For professionals, the solution is obvious - find another job.
For YouTubers... not so much. There's few viable alternatives, all look like very transient phenomena.
Dunno what those dudes making a living there think.
Don't get me wrong I think that companies should provide healthcare for employees -- frankly thats a topic for a different time -- but I don't really see how this would qualify. Uber probably comes the closest but they are officially on company payroll, go through a background check, are offered a deal of fleet leases, et al. There's much more of a employer/employee relationship than the contractor status which has been turned down by several courts.
In contrast, Youtube doesn't hire people to create content. They sign up and get no money until they hit XXXX views or followers. Even then it's not them responding to a hail, but rather it's them trying to attract people to their channel.
Google providing some options would be great and get themselves some much needed positive PR. Not sure if Youtube was ever designed/bought to let external users generate money off of it. I definitely wouldn't plan my income around something where the compensation was 100% at the whim of someone else without an employment agreement.
Those with mental health issues are drawn to be âoeYouTube starsâ
Is YouTube forcing these people to put up content? Do they enforce deadlines when something needs to be posted? In what way is YouTube anything but a way for these people to post something?
It's difficult to have any sympathy for these folks when they're the ones who made the decision to "create" and post it. They're the ones who think they have to get more and more viewers. They're the ones who are driving themselves down the rabbit hole.
If this is too stressful for them, perhaps they should find a job at McDonald's.
I can't find an article about this and it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the Polygon article, but the Content ID system that Youtube uses to flag copyright violations is apparently going to have significant changes this month. This is per Matthew Patrick (MatPat/The Game Theory)--who is basically as close to the company as someone can be without working there--in a recent livestream of theirs.
Other long-running issues he address in that same 15-ish minutes are Youtube tools being confusing, a severe lack of response from Youtube support (and conflicting responses, even when that person has better access than xXxStoneddGamer567xXx), and he's talked in the past about how Youtube extremely over-reacts to controversies. Their "solutions" rarely take care of the original issue and instead punish a significant number of other creators.
Youtube has been relying on critical mass for years now.
In the last few years Youtube has increasingly been courting "mainstream" outlets, including launching their Youtube TV service, and these outlets have pushed original creators more to the sidelines. While MatPat doesn't explain what these Content ID changes will be, my expectation is that the system will become far, far less lenient toward infringements real, imagined, or claimed (thanks, DMCA!). If so, there will likely be a "purge" of creators.
If that is the case, I'm hoping that some company can step up to with a video-focused service that caters to smaller creators (or creator groups.) Vimeo might be able to branch into this, but their current (apparent) focus on completely-original content (and content not too far removed from television or film festivals) makes me think this is unlikely. Twitch's focus on live-streaming really limits content, and the platform serves gaming and some creative setups only which will make it a non-starter for people looking to move. Vine could make a comeback, striking while the iron is hot. Outside of those two I simply don't know of any other alternatives, either established or up-and-coming. Most of my video consumption these days comes from small creators, and I would really hate to lose this kind of access to what they create.
Maybe PornHub could take a stab at it, they've taken many interesting actions already. (Snowplowing, alerting users about tracking by their country, etc.)
trying to be 'helpful'. Even clicking the bell icon twice doesn't always work. Some videos I only know exist because I go to the 'videos' page. Same for Aron Ra. Anything that's a bit controversial (and isn't Alex Jones) gets buried.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah this was kind of my thought. They're collaborating with youtube, youtube brings the audience(s), they bring the content, both parties prosper.
This concept that youtube is a socialist country that must provide for it's slaves is a strange one. There's no moral or ethical obligation for youtube to provide mental health services. If they are producing too much content and getting burnt out, maybe roll back to a weekly or monthly format? Lots of sailing vlogs use the weekly format, but they're actually traveling to new places and have a ready source of new content.
Worst case scenario, they quit and go work at mcdonalds, play grand theft auto and smoke weed for a couple of months to go unwind. Running your own business/media company is not for everyone.
moox. for a new generation.
A foolish artist who uploaded his content to a site built on ads and SJW politics.
And the user policy changed, and the SJW came, and the restrictions grew and bans against that creative content, and content was shadow banned, and great was the removal of creative content.
And the censorship, and the bans came, and the SJW reported and banned on that content, but it did not delete from the online, because better sites had been founded on Freedom of Speech.
The wise artist who built his own site on the US First Amendment did not get censored.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've copied two thirds of my YouTube videos to BitChute (going to copy the rest during the weekend). I like it because it's the 2nd home of many controversial/non-SJW channels that are feeling the squeeze on YT, so I am hopeful that they are OK with such content. I also really like the BitChute player.
It's not perfect: it relies on Torrent to alleviate the burden of the servers, but it's growing rapidly.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It's all that non relational database bullshit. They can't give you complete, correct, or consistent results because their data is all in a big, meaningless heap.
Amazon has the same issue. You can't get a fucking simple price filter working on an Amazon search, for example.
When I was a contract programmer and got burnt-out, nobody came to hold my hand or tell me how I deserved to be treated with more respect and love.
But I never expected them to. I was a big boy (with big-boy pants and everything) so I took responsibility for my own destiny.
Now I'm a full-time YouTube content creator and I still don't expect anyone to hold my hand or tell me how I deserve to be treated with more respect and love.
Still wearing the big-boy pants!
Yes, YouTube and it's constantly changing policies make life very hard -- but so did all those project managers I used to code for.
Life can be tough... get over it. Take a teaspoon of cement and harden up -- or find something else to do.
It comes down to this simple timeless fact: you can't build your own business on platform owned by a single third-party.
You can't be a "YouTuber" for a career. You can, however, be a content creator who happens to be using YouTube as an incredible free resource (have you looked at just how much video storage YouTube allows?), but this means YouTube video monetization (i.e. ads) can't be your sole source of revenue.