Leaving YouTube - 02/05/24
Published: 15:00
i need to immediately start this by acknowledging and appreciating the response my final upload got from people. it feels like i hit a home run, even if - til the very end - the platform itself made it difficult. that's extremely gratifying, being that even though i only started working on it in october of last year, it was a load of perpetual work without much downtime. thank you so much to everyone who watched it and left kind words appreciating it for its unusualness.
part of me is going to miss this - abandoning the subcultures and platform i'd been brought up with, but i see it through a lens of contemplation & evaluation. all of us know and can tell that youtube isn't the website it was ten years ago; even five. it's not even just a "website" anymore, it's a ruthless competition. youtube the company have indicated blatantly what they think of that, and the effects of this shift are hard to ignore. emoji=yt
when i was young, i used to be a 'youtuber'. in the earliest stages, i was a kid in the 2000's showing the world my learning process. somewhere in the middle, i started hitting milestones of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, etc. and near the end, i was reluctant to continue the upkeep.
numbers - and regrettably, the people they were supposed to represent - became one big blur that i was taught to think measured my worth.
i started to forget the point of it all. that point being... the... the - uh...
ok, let's be real. when i started, i didn't have a point. i was eight.
especially in recent years, i've been thinking on why i started uploading in the first place. i was never expressly interested in 'attaining fans' or 'getting views', and i only started caring about the comments/reception after it started happening, so why didn't move on sooner?
i was completely enthralled by the seemingly-impossible expanse of the world wide web. even since i was little, i've appreciated the 'net for its endless opportunities to bring people together and ricochet creativity. youtube felt like something to be apart of - to take part in and experience together. i suppose that even though it was only one of very many websites to represent this, it seemed to cast the widest net. the togetherness and personalization of youtube is what i was specifically drawn to, but, as stated and should be apparent, these aspects are not so strong anymore.
this is getting long, so i'll wrap it up here.
there will always be "good youtubers"; valuable role models, enthralling, informative, cultural, creative, thought-provoking, gamering, etc. youtubers, and the magic of inspiration hasn't been entirely lost solely because youtube started to prioritize marketing decisions over community feedback. i'm moving on because i'm ready to enter a new chapter.
you can watch my last youtube video here.
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