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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."
Anyone working for a company that makes sudden drastic changes to your livelihood on a regular basis is going to be stressed.
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!
People have been talking about how terrible YouTube has been to its content creators. While they make their money from advertising, people only visit YT because of the content creators.
Their current policies have been all about the former and not the latter. This is leading more and more people to abandon the platform for better prospects, like Twitch. (Especially considering the effective pay-raise that Twitch offers for much less work)
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.
There is a name for this. It's called work. Welcome to the club.
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.
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.
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.
Twitch is doing the exact same things though at smaller overall user base (they still outnumber Youtube for live gaming streams).
It _really_ doesn't help when people are able to pull shit like Alinity did. I'll spare you the drama, short version is she was able to get a video from pewdiepie ( has a massive youtube following) - taken down. Why? Because he refered to her as a "Thot" (don't ask). My point is had it not been for pewdiepie's following, she would have succeeded without question and actually does it on stream (along with admitting Immigration fraud but we won't go there).
Doesn't really have much to do with "worth ethic". You see there are companies who pay for you to stirke videos (in her case false DMCA claim). They encourage the abuse. It's also what everyone on Youtube is facing since they make no money of their content. The videos are demonitized.
Adding to this is the liberal douchebags passing TOS changes that make no sense and Twitch outright refusing to address Alinity despite her admitting to it on stream.
Welcome to the Internet.
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.)
That's actually it. You have your 15 minutes of fame and you use the credibility/fame and/or the money to pivot into doing something else more enjoyable/less stressful.
Brooke Brodack? She's my second cousin's niece. She has only uploaded a few videos the past decade. The last one I watched had the title "YouTube has changed." Despite at one point being #2 on YouTube, she can no longer earn a living on it.
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.
Because people who can create content on a regular basis to keep millions of people interested, and make enough money to live on are typical millennials, right?
Anyone working for a company
Which these people aren't doing.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If you get to 200K subscribers you are making an INCREDIBLE amount of money. A million is so far out there to make the 1% seem like the minimum wage. If you are burning out, you are just getting greedy. YouTube does not owe you anything.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
But nobody blamed oil paints and canvas for the mental problems of artists.
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/
I think youtubes search functionality just sucks, which is ironic. I have trouble finding videos, even when I know the creator. Search engine can't search.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I think it's more nuanced than that. Viewers are product, for sure.
Creators... they're livestock.
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.
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"
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.
I got a plan B. It involves your wallet being looted off of your corpse.
Perhaps it's time to get real fucking jobs. Let's see how much burnout you have then.
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
The light that's trying to be twice as bright as it's capable of will burn out much faster!
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.
It's killing them that uploading fart videos and videogame voice-over is becoming less and less lucrativenbecause literally anyone can do it? This is such a tragedy, someone should start a GoFundMe for them.
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.
Brooke Brokack? She is my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate!
Some of these people are contracted to produce shows for Youtube Red. Wait, didn't they change the name/functionality of that recently? I can't keep it straight.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
While I despise the whole lot of these vloggers and youtubers, now you're just being an asshat. Please define "real job". Nothing wrong with what they do for a living, if they had anything creative or interesting to create and share. Sadly, this Youtube "economy" is built on neither.
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.
No, this is a stupid and annoying simplification.
The advertisers are only customers in as much as there are people to advertise to. You can't sell to advertisers if there are no people watching the adverts. Youtube needs to keep the people watching happy which means keeping the people who make stuff to watch happy because without people watching, the advertisers aer not interested.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Running a full blown weekly/daily media format all on your own is taxing to your mental health.
No shit.
Guess why John Oliver, Bill Maher and Co. have armies of staff supporting them.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
For me, "real job" means you either are an employee on a permament/temporary contract or you run your own company and sell things/services to customers or B2B. Forgive my ignorance, I really don't know how being a youtuber works, but which one of these are vloggers? I doubt their youtube employees [1]; if they are independent contractors, then they signed a REALLY bad contracts: "we'll pay you for your content, but we reserve the right to arbitrally decide how much you get, when you are paid and if you see any money at all. Also, we can change our deal any moment" (ask your boss if they accept such attitude from the clients). Everything I hear about being vlogger on Youtube stinks of unprofessionalism and bad career choices, no matter how much money selected few can get in a short run or how hard they are actually working.
[1] unless the US labor law allows signing contract without specifying the salary upfront and allows changing the salary without employee consent - it's plainly illegal in my country, but hey, maybe California is messed up enough to allow it?
While I despise the whole lot of these vloggers and youtubers, now you're just being an asshat.
Says the typical jerk who thinks creativity can be summoned on command... For once, the ACs hot the nail on the head.
These 'top creators' have no contract, therefore, they're not beholden to create for the masses on schedule. If they're trying to make a living at something that's not guaranteed (contracted, as most professional creatives are) and trying to out-think advertising algorithms, well, good luck!
It's like the time when your friend is singing to the radio and it's off-key... "Don't quit your day job, man."
You either have it or you don't... well, really, you either WANT it or you don't.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Many famous youtubers certainly can't either, since they just film themselves overacting and spewing nonsense, trying to be funny.
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.
It's a market. Sane rational actors would bow out and get a fucking job. Then YouTube would have less content. And if that content is worth a damn, YouTube would start paying a bigger share. My suspicion is this content is worthless, though.
Anyone whose livelihood depends on youtube ads, should look for alternative streams of revenue.
That includes, IMO, taking a regular job and releasing only one video per week. In most cases, there's not more than one good video per week anyway and the rest are just trivial vlog-fillers.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Except the balance is against that of the creator, because for every tier of creator, there's probably 10~100 more of similar quality who are ready to take the place of who ever bows out.
The limited resource in the YouTube creator-view-advertiser balance is viewer eyeball-hours.
eBay is much the same; sellers can be culled in droves and there's always more to replace them, but buyers are the ones you need to stick around.
yep, nicely said, wish I had mod points for you
I get what you're saying - sort of use it as publicity for something else. But on the other hand, it's not far off this, which seems like a way for cheapskates to get stuff for nothing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Search engine can't search.
I haven't tried comparing results from google and from the youtube search box, but I often find that I get a useful youtube video from google search.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Have gnu, will travel.
You don't need a platform for serving video on the internet, you know. That's why it's the Internet, and not broadcast television.
I don't respond to AC's.
Okay so I have 33,000 subscribers BUT I do have 15 million views and 1400 videos so I feel I can comment on this. They're lazy, entitled, greedy, egotistical assholes who have clearly never worked a day in their life. I've worked shitty industrial jobs, customer service, and some VERY bad IT jobs. I still work a full time job in addition to Youtube but guess what. In order to get money, you have to do work. I don't care what people think of me. I don't care if a big video flops. I just do my job, realize it won't be perfect, and if I absolutely need a day off I do it and come to terms with the fact that it'll probably lose me $100 or so.
Why wouldn't actors fit the above definition?
They work on temporary contracts and sell services.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Youtubers (which includes Vloggers, ie people who just make video blogs) are running their own companies, so they come under your definition of "real jobs". They're video production companies distributing their product through Youtube, just like traditional production companies distribute through CBS/NBC/FOX/etc.
It comes down to this simple timeless fact: you can't build your own business on platform owned by a single third-party.
And yet, how many production companies make a nice healthy living selling content to NBC/CBS/TBS/etc? Youtube is not much different from the television industry's setup except they don't make you do a pilot and don't make arbitrary decisions about what people want to see.
Oh I forgot, they'd have to actually do real work.
Words spoken by everyone who's jealous of someone else's job/money.
Because that's not a single third-party. If you are a producer/director/whatever (I don't know the correct showbiz terms) and NBC won't do a pilot on your pitch, then you can go to CBS. If they won't do it, then you go to TBS. You are not bound to a single broadcaster until there is a contract (which prevents capricious changes).
I am all for content creators---just don't be "YouTube creators".
Or there is a meme of posting your "breakdown", or at least of you talking about your breakdown.
YouTube is currently (and apparently successfully), trying to compete with FaceBook (among teens). Just like FB, that means YouTube needs to provide a constant stream of content, more often is better than longer. How else are people going to comment on something that just happened now?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Professional youtubers all produce shit content for people who lack buying power anyhow. If they're tired of it they should quit. I think it would be great if they stopped paying people to produce content.
I feel the same way and I'm not sure what he should be jealous of?
I doubt most paid youtubers make more than your average slashdrone, I don't like pictures of my face online because I'm paranoid. I do get jealous of people with easy gigs that pay well but from the sounds of it being a pro youtuber isn't as easy as it seems.
I don't like most youtube content that you can tell was made in pursuit of money either, with bumpers and graphics and shit. Not that I mind the production quality but it's usually a hint that the rest of the video is going to be ingenuine, it's going to be the best idea that some guy could come up with that week, vs something that someone uploaded because something about the content in the video compelled them to show other people.
Sure it doesn't have a public domain rap music intro, graphics, or any sort of script but it's the kind of stuff you won't see on regular tv.
I have to admit I'm a fan of angry video game nerd and hak5 but now that I think of it I found those through XBMC and not youtube.
Step away from the limelight and learn to take time for yourself
Youtube would have died years ago if not for the creators who used it. It wasn't some charity for ideas, it was a business for hosting videos. The ad revenue for YouTube was generated by those who watched the creators on that platform. It only makes sense to give them a cut to keep the platform growing and them creating.
It's a symbiosis. But Youtube is finding another host to feed off of (big music labels and mainstream channels) and seem to be leaving those creators behind.
Demonitization hits way more than just the game streamers and PewDiePie clones. Slingshot Channel, AvE, and many others have been hit. Most end up creating Patreon pages to try to compensate, but that's only half a solution.
I read the internet for the articles.
While I despise the whole lot of these vloggers and youtubers, now you're just being an asshat. Please define "real job". Nothing wrong with what they do for a living, if they had anything creative or interesting to create and share. Sadly, this Youtube "economy" is built on neither.
The video logging concept being hosted on Youtube is simply not a very viable way to make a living. You can get your channel demonetized simply by a person making a complaint against it's content. As well, it seems that the standards for demonetization are a bit capricious. There have been gunning channels demonetized - and not the stupid ones where some asshat decides to get his girl to wear some skimpy outfit and fire a rifle she never did before and gets knocked over or worse, breaks an orbital bone from a scope hitting her in the eye - but legitimate channels. A lot of MRA or MGTOW channes have been demonetized even though their channels are quite popular. Youtube thought police scan for "feminist", and it better be a real positive video or else it gets dinged.
Anyhow - it is Google's site, and they have the right to include or exclude whatever they want. That is also a big problem. It's a bad business model for Youtubers to work within.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The difference is Youtube's monopoly position.
If the value of your artistic expression is less than the value of hosting your art, then no, you should NOT get a cut of the revenue.
MRA, MGTOW and other incels are not quite the best example of "legitimate" channels getting booted or demonetized. Some would call that draining the swamp.
MRA, MGTOW and other incels are not quite the best example of "legitimate" channels getting booted or demonetized. Some would call that draining the swamp.
First off, if you are going to by a genius, get your terms correct. An Incel stands for involuntary celibate. This includes a wide range of people, many of whom are celibate by virtue of accident or disability. Oh, an incel is not restrained to one sex either.
Men's Rights Activists are people who lobby for changes in laws.
Men Going Their Own Way are just men who either do not want to have relationships with women, or never did.
Very few MRAs or MGTOWs are incels.
MRAs are at least for the moment, largely ineffectual . It is noted that you are against men's rights.
Incels might be better pitied instead of in a truly bigoted manner, you declare them as part of a big problem, you insensitive clod.
Then we come to MGTOWs There's an interesting group with several levels. The red pill ragers are mostly men who have lost their wealth and children in divorce, and aren't happy about it. That's kind of understandable. It usually calms down in a couple years, although they no longer want emotional relationships with any women.
Then there is a grouping that note that The government is now acting as the money source in many one parent (female) family that doesn't want a man in her life.
Then there are people they call MGTOW monks. This is the stage after the rage dissapates.
Then Ghosts, which might be analogous to an old school hermit.
The part that some folks want squelched is that especially the MGTOWs produce materials that young men who have not yet been harvested can see. Even so, MGTOW is in the end, passive avoidance, merely staying out of relationships with women. You aren't having marches, you aren't agitating for laws, you are just following a philosophy of passive avoidance. You don't have to call yourself MGTOW to simply avoid women. Birth and marriage rates dropping, as well as the increasingly common lament "Where have all the good men gone?" are perhaps symptoms.
The interesting part is why women would find this objectionable. The male that avoids you is not bothering you in any way. He is not harassing you or sexually assaulting you. And in a world where 30% of women ages 18 to 35 consider that a man winking at a woman is sexual harassment, it wold appear that simply ignoring her would achieve her demands of not being winked at or otherwise subjected to male abuse. Isn't that what a woman would want?
For the record, I am neither MGTOW, or Incel. I only report that MGTOW is a social problem, just like third wave feminism is a social problem.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.