YouTube

I have a YouTube account. Occasionally I post video of my trips. Generally my videos are records of my vacations to places as diverse as the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, to hikes in Glacier National Park in Montana. They're there for my own pleasure, and as ways for friends and family to see some of the places I've visited. 

I don't do it for money since my account is too small for YouTube to assign it to monetization. There's a minimum number of subscribers one must have to earn funds on YouTube, and I don't have those subscribers.

However, I do watch a number of YouTube channels that are monetized. Some of them earn out impressive sums for their creators. One guy I used to watch had about a million subscribers by the time I stopped visiting his channel. And that's what I want to write about: the reason I stop viewing some content creators on YouTube.

The reason I stopped viewing the guy whose fan base grew to enormous numbers wasn't because he started making tons of money from it. I generally couldn't care less about that. What did bug me about it was purely selfish. Initially I thought of his show as something of a secret. But as his fan base ballooned to crazy numbers the novelty of it faded and I got bored with it and just stopped watching. It was just too much the same every episode, and I also got the impression that some of it was created content rather than the spontaneous exploration that had originally attracted me. So, I wrote it off and haven't seen it in about three years.

One channel I used to watch featured a working class couple who got into hiking for fitness. Their videos showed them as a couple of fatties who did look as if they had been in good shape once upon a time and had let themselves go. They tracked their weight loss as they tackled long hikes and steep mountains and as the months progressed they were no longer overweight and after about two years were once more in excellent physical condition. And they began to wear skimpier and skimpier (and expensive) hiking clothes, showing off their physiques. For whatever reason I began to suspect that the whole thing was a setup. They'd gone DeNiro Raging Bull and had intentionally gained forty pounds each with the scheme of losing the lard online to promote themselves. Finally, watching the pair of them prance around like a couple of tarts made me nauseous. I can't even recall the title of their channel or even if it still exists.

Another guy I used to watch because he posted the best Rocky Mountain hiking information I have ever seen. I could watch his videos and decide whether our not I wanted to tackle a particular mountain when my wife and I head west for a couple of months when she retires. His videos coughed up the finest trail beta I have ever seen with details about trail difficulty and how not to veer off route on some of the tougher hikes. However, he committed what I consider to be a cardinal sin when it comes to producing how-to videos: he got political. In his case it was just one comment. But it turned his show from something fun to watch and into a screed. I couldn't look at him or hear his voice without thinking of him as an idiot. Normally I don't care what a person's political or philosophical beliefs are; but if you're creating a channel about nature then you need to focus on that and only that. Again, I can't even recall his name or the title of his YouTube channel. His was a rare case wherein I actually blocked his presence.

Some creator content I just grow bored with, or happen upon another channel that does the same thing, but in a superior way.

Then there are the folk who achieve financial success with their show and rub it in their fan's faces. Again, I don't begrudge someone turning a profit. That's fine. One hiker/kayaker I follow has achieved success and thanks his fans for allowing him to earn out enough from YouTube to use the funds to travel more widely to more interesting locations. That's okay. But some of these folk just brag. Some of them end up buying expensive toys with the money the viewers allow them to get and show it off. "Look what you losers allowed me to buy." I've axed several shows over this. One couple accumulated many thousands of fans and then attached a button to their screen that allows suckers...I mean viewers...to send them money. The instant they did that I deleted their channel.

So, essentially, unless you are producing a YouTube channel about politics, then it's best to avoid such in your YouTube channel. Just don't do it. Yes, you can attract people of one particular political inclination or another, but you can also lose a bunch of fans who would otherwise watch your show and earn money for you. Just the facts, ma'am.

Finally, along the same vein, are the channels that reach a level of popularity when they become "influencers" in the eyes of manufacturers. This lot of creators get to a point where companies send them expensive gifts with the idea that they will dedicate an episode to giving a positive review of the gifted items. This is pretty much when I take leave of them. One of the channels I watched regularly until the past couple of weeks fell victim to this. His past few videos have been glowing reviews of merchandise that manufacturers have given him. Since he became a so-called influencer I haven't seen him post any of the local travel videos he was putting up almost weekly. I'll be saying goodbye to his channel, too.

And there you have it.

Advice.

I know a lot of writers, and I know a lot of people (too many, actually) who want to be writers. And over the years--because I have sold many short stories, comic book scripts, review columns, and even some novels--I have been asked for advice on writing. I always feel weird giving advice, mainly because while I may have sold a lot of fiction, I have never been able to earn a living from it. In all of the years I have been working at it, I made tens of thousands of dollars from it only twice: once in the year of my movie deal for THE FLOCK, and one year when I was writing a bunch of comic book scripts for the likes of Marvel Comics and a few other smaller comics publishers.

So I've always felt edgy about answering any questions about how to go about writing professionally.

The only real advice I could ever think of that were worth passing on were the same that you find coming from almost every professional author one would care to mention. And that advice is that first one should read, and ready voraciously and widely. And second, one should write, and write often--perhaps obsessively. If you do the former, you will discover what professional writing looks like. If you do the latter, you will eventually (one would hope) become decent at it.

There is a third bit that I used to give but which is all but useless these days: and that was that you should submit your work to various publications. The pool of professional publications--which was almost anemic even in my youth--has become all but absent. E-publishing and self-publishing have pretty much killed the professional markets, and self-publishing in general has caused the almost complete degeneration of English literature here in the States.

However, it occurred to me some time ago that there is another bit of advice that I could give, and it is this:

Don't compare yourself to any accomplished author, and certainly don't compare yourself to any great writer. Doing this is not only borderline insane, it is also rather a disgusting example of mad ego.

Case in point: Some years back I used to correspond with a professional writer who had sold a number or novels and had garnered a bit of critical praise. He was close to being able to earn his living completely from writing, which is an enviable and admirable feat--something I never could do.

After struggling along selling novels for low to moderate advances, he finally landed a very nice deal with a very large publishing house and for the first time in his life found himself with enough money to live comfortably for at least a year without having to punch a clock. That was cool. I was happy for him.

But then came time for promotional stuff and the interviews pushing this novel which had gotten him such a huge advance. And what does he do? This guy compared himself to Cormac McCarthy!

Yeah. Fuck.

Cormac McCarthy is about as good as it gets. There is only one Cormac McCarthy. If I was going to use the word "genius" to describe a living American author, he is only one of two I'd tag for that praise.

Don't compare yourself to a genius. Not only are you likely lying like a politician, you have set yourself up for a tremendous fall. A Humpty Dumpty fall. Because, really, you cannot hope to be even the tiniest fraction as talented as Cormac McCarthy. I had read this author's books, and he churned out serviceable--and often fun--pulp fiction. There was no brilliance to it. It was good, fun adventure stuff. Unless he'd made a leap of galactic proportion in his work, he was nothing near the ability and talent of McCarthy. I waited for the book, as did everyone else, hoping to see the appearance of a new work of absolute blinding brilliance.

It came out. The book got some very mild praise, some bloody savaging, and it quickly sank out of sight and went out of print. (I tried to read it, but found it both boring and pedestrian.) The editor who had argued for the publisher to cough up the big advance for the novel found himself fired and unemployed (true story). The book of course never came even the tiniest of  a fraction of earning back its advance. The author found himself thereafter without any further novel sales (for years and years).

So. Don't compare yourself to a great writer. I don't care who you are. It's a mistake. You're asking for trouble if you do.

You can say that you were influenced by a great writer, but don't say your work compares favorably to that of an actual genius.

Since that time I have seen self-centered asshole writers compare themselves to Ray Bradbury, to Charles Bukowski, to Charles Portis, to Harry Crews, to Harper Lee, to Kurt Vonnegut, to Ernest Hemingway, to Jack London, to Stephen King, to--Jove help the idiots--Ursula K. Le Guin.

Don't be like those dipshits comparing themselves to greatness. Just be yourself. Show some dignity.

Le Guin, an American treasure.