It's not me, it's YouTube

When I was in high school I posted videos infrequently to YouTube. It was a weird thing at the time to record yourself and in my case I was using the webcam from my little white macbook. The sound quality wasn't great. However, it was just cool having a channel and have a few dozen 'likes' on a video. I uploaded songs I was into, songs my friends or family liked and that was it. No big deal.

YouTube has changed.

In my mind, it's become better for the viewer and more competative and inaccessable for content makers or I think 'Creators' as YouTube officially calls them. I posted occasionally the summer of 2013 when I was going through a hard time and had some firey words to sing, but now... I don't even know if YouTube is worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I love consuming YouTube. I can be on it for hours, listening to gurus and vloggers or music or tv episodes. I've learned so much, I've wasted so much time and I've had minor success in both utilizing YouTube as a community and as a stage. I partnered with adsense and then eventually YouTube to make money off my videos, but there was such little traction I've yet to claim my first cheque. What I never realized was that the whole 'little traciton' part was because I never engaged an audience. I didn't even know that was something you could do. I wasn't on twitter, instagram didn't exist and by the time they were used as outlets I was way behind in the youtube game.

I really do think if you want to upload videos and have more than 12 views you need lighting, you need a DSLR, you need click-bait, you need a corresponding twitter, instagram and facebook like page. You need to know other youtubers, you need to make your own content and corresponding blog posts. There is even a sense of accountability towards your viewers. One youtuber I watch even commented in a video today that she's changing her posting schedule, and didn't want to leave her viewers in the lurch or to just dissapear.

Are you kidding? I have a more stable and reliable relationship with the youtubers that I'm subscribed to than I'd say a 50% of my social group.

I just have this love-hate relationship with YouTube; it's so friendly and welcoming but so distant and so removed. It's definitely another type of online reality. You can become lost in the cyber-life and responsibilities and reactions that revolve around people who exist 2-dimentionally in your life. It boggles my mind how often I look for videos of people that are just chatting and talking about their lives.

I'm ending this post unsure. Unsure if YouTube is the place where I want to share my music or myself, or just lurk around consuming curated content. I don't quite have the heart to break up with YouTube...yet.