Feeling Recognized

I’ve started this blog post a few times now. Initially, it was a rant talking about burnout. After that, it turned into various excuses about why I had not been posting. They always ended up seeming overly self-indulgent without any real logic behind them. However, I think I’ve figured out the right words in the right order to explain this lingering feeling I’ve had for a few months now.

As with any industry, the end goal is growth and profit. Sometimes this is driven by legal obligations, but often it’s simply a matter of survival. Every business needs clients to survive. In this industry, that can take a few forms. Views on YouTube and subscriber growth are a form of finding new customers, but not necessarily growth. People can tune in, watch a short or maybe a video, and then move on. However, if you watch the whole thing, that person is more likely to see the next video. Sixty percent of my audience on YouTube are not actually subscribed. Twitch is similar: streams are sent to followers, and subscribers fund the stream itself. However, people move around, and interest comes and goes. It is rare for someone to only watch one person on a platform for an extended period of time. This means growth and networking on Twitch are how you sustain. Working with and networking with people who make similar content keeps the cycle of people coming and going steady and helps build stability. This same system can work for some social media sites as well. As for this blog, the focus is on staying out of your spam box and trying to be interesting enough that you decide to read it.

Now, with that brief thought on growth aside, it is a blessing and a curse when a significant number of people see your work every day. In order for these systems to interact together and for that growth pattern to function, there need to be interactions: comments, chat, likes, boosts, posts, etc. Talk to anyone who makes YouTube videos, and they will likely tell you the same thing: “Don’t read the comments.” While I’d argue that, for the most part, this is good advice, it does make ignoring the people you’re making things for rather easy. I try to read comments and respond, but at the same time, there’s always the fear that someone will say something that could ruin my day. Hence, don’t read the comments.

I’ve been feeling burnt out lately. When I moved to this lovely apartment, I hit the floor running, and without so much as a day to rest, I was streaming and editing with a move in the middle of it. Then, I decided to take a week off streaming and rest because I’d gotten sick—not super sick, but sick enough that I could tell I needed time to rest a bit. During the first three days, I slept and ignored my computer. I didn’t even turn it on for a few days. After that, I used the time to finish my Gremlin video. I had been working on it on and off since moving, but I was having trouble finishing it. During those final days of editing, I tossed a chunk of it that I had made a month ago and redid it. When it released, it was met with a massive positive response, making that time spent totally worth it, including the time I took off streaming.

Yet it feels empty. The numbers are great, the comments are lovely, and chat loved it. However, there is this feeling I get when I open my YouTube dashboard five days later and see the generated encouragement from YouTube: “Congrats! Regular viewers are choosing to watch this video more often, and they are watching for longer! This is helping increase its reach on YouTube!” Soulless at best, these are right next to a link to a YouTube-produced corporate video talking about engagement and audience schedules. No matter the success, the platforms I work on make it feel empty and remind me that I need to grow and keep grinding. Breaks are for losers. I open my Twitch dashboard, and I see brown arrows pointing down, indicating less revenue, less traffic, and fewer followers than the week before. It also indicates a loss in paying monthly subscribers—some from prime subs and others from paid subscriptions expiring. All of this because I took a week to rest and finish a project that had been sitting. These systems are extremely hard to ignore. Because at the end of the day, if you are not growing, you are fading. But then, I go and read my comments and see hundreds of people happy for my work. Two hundred and fifty thousand people have seen my videos this week. That is a number far above the norm. Yet YouTube has wired my brain to stress about sustaining the same numbers and constantly growing.

The saving grace for me is the comments section, which is flooded with thankful, happy comments. It’s the emails I get from people thanking me for a particular video or for a time that my voice helped them through. It’s the random DM I get on Discord at 2 AM from a long-time viewer saying thanks after having too much to drink. But the thing that had the most impact on me was when I saw my name in the credits of the first part of Noclip's documentary talking about Dwarf Fortress. It’s only part one of four, and I’m looking forward to watching the other three. Corporate content production makes it really easy to lose sight of why I started doing this. I wanted a hobby and a place I could call my own. I wanted a social outlet and a place where I could use to help make my days easier and a bit less lonely, and perhaps I could help someone else in a similar spot. That started with just streaming and eventually evolved into YouTube as well. Now, I produce hour-long recap “movies” out of the streams and try to make them funny and entertaining. Entertainment and creative work tend to make you pour your soul into something with the ideal end of being recognized for it on some level. However, every system built into the platforms we use to provide this entertainment to people is built to gaslight us into ignoring the positive effect our work can have and simply churn out the next video, stream, or post.

This is a call to anyone in my position: Read your comments, talk to your audience, and keep a light on why you started this in the first place. Because if you forget, it becomes far too easy to only see the numbers and not the people that you are making things for.

I uploaded a video! I’ll also include another link to the first part of Noclip's documentary. I am aiming to stream Tuesday through Friday this week. I want to figure out where to take the current fort and find an end goal. A few things have come up in the comments, so I’ve got some ideas. ;)