Goodbye YouTube

Yes, I know it’s quite the dramatic title. Figured I’d use tactics that were common on YouTube to get some extra attention to this article — more than it already would get naturally. “Play their game” as they say.

The other night I finally committed to a decision I had been considering for some time now about my YouTube channel and effectively removed all content from it. More properly made it unlisted so it will not show up under normal searches and browsing.

If you’re reading this far you’re probably wondering why I would go on and do this? It’s a pretty long story, honestly, but it boils down to this thought: I no longer wanted my content on the platform. I no longer get enjoyment in any form from people finding and watching the videos I’ve created, regardless of if they like them or not.

That sounds crazy, but it’s a side effect of the multiple issues I, as a creator, have with YouTube itself. The sheer lack of value that is placed in the efforts of smaller content creators — how we just don’t matter, our videos aren’t worth suggesting to people most of the time, and, if they are, they only seem to be shown to people who want to be assholes, trolls, whatever — something no one really wants to deal with.

I felt like it would be nice to leave the content up for those who would enjoy it, but as time passed even that felt like a wasted effort thanks to how YouTube does things. Many videos seemed to just stop getting views all together (new uploads included, as I still made the occasional “fun” video which would only get a view rate equaling a small fraction of my subscribers) or, those that were getting views and comments, were seeming to be shown to the wrong kinds of people, or otherwise just gathered the attention of more of the undesirable element of the YouTube user base than I would hope for.

Basically, most of my content was effectively dead in the water, while the half that was active was way too active, being seen by too many people at once leaving just terrible comments. I don’t mean terrible as in rude or hostile (although those happened) no no, I just mean they were actually poor thoughts all together. Most were people asking stupid questions on my Xbox Power Supply videos (information that a simple Google search could have provided) while others were the “know it all” type of comments, where because you did a video on X they want to, very rudely, correct you on Y and Z.

I know comments like that will inevitably happen, but damn do they get old. Especially when it seems people who like the content (which clearly kept happening considering the up votes and subscribers I was getting) wouldn’t comment to counter it, be it actively or at least to say “hey great video.” That happens often with larger channels with solid fan bases but not for smaller ones, and the fact remains that shit gets old.

I was considering closing comments for the videos in question, but at that point it kind of made them being up, well, pointless, and that’s when it hit me — I no longer gave a damn! That’s when I went to the video manager, did a select all on my videos, and made them unlisted. That’s the end of that, no one is easily finding those, and if they really want to see them, they will be the kind of person who would probably enjoy it, rather than being some random asshole on the site who had it suggested to them by some algorithm and decides to watch it just for the chance to be an asshole. I’m too goddamned old to deal with that shit. I don’t need that kind of childish negativity in my digital life.

Now, why didn’t I just delete them all? Two reasons. One, to not lose the views built up from them — deleting a video deletes all its views and I’d rather keep that previous traffic to help boost the channel if I return to video making in the open on the site — that’s a big if, of course, requiring YouTube to pretty much pull a 180 on how it does things currently.

Secondly, some videos are linked in various places and, as a blogger I hate when videos just disappear when they are central points of my works, and I’d rather not inconvenience a fellow blogger in the same way. Common courtesy, you could say.

But, that’s the very short form of the story. I could spend a whole set of articles expressing all the frustrations I’ve had over the years with YouTube and I probably will at some point. I’ve written about quite a bit already when I began to get frustrated by the whole process, but the past few years of watching others rise and fall changed my perspective a bit.

For now, though, I share the above for whatever it may be worth to someone else. I actually get something out of writing these articles — something I didn’t get in making videos. I write articles on the same content I’d make videos on (in many cases) so I don’t think the problem was with me — it was with YouTube itself, and I’m simply not going to try to play their game anymore.

On a final note, if this article is a bit disjointed, that’s because it took me 11 revisions and it’s still not up to par for me personally. However, at this point, I’d rather publish it and move forward having said what I felt and explained why someone going to my channel now will see a whole lot of nothing.