chat

I think some of them actually do put in a fucking ton of work for very little actual content...folks like Captain Disillusion as an example, puts a metric fuckton of work into his videos and it shows. But yeah I think many of them just run out of ideas or get comfort enough that they realize they can get off the grind. Look at Tom Scott or Adam Ragusea for good examples of this...both of them admitted they were working too hard, and if you look at the quality and number of videos they put out, I believe it. Both of them admitted they were probably set for a while so both of them took a step back.

It's actually a ton of work to ideate, research,write, film, edit, and market your videos. Some folks choose to do it all or mostly all themselves and they usually can't keep up with super frequent posting. Others choose instead to hire teams and then they then into managers rather than content creators (what Tom Scott wanted to avoid and why he quit). These manager types are probably the most loud about how much work "they" do, when in reality The "work" is just micromanaging their team. LTT would be a shining example of this bullshit. The most successful ones post a lot to build up a reputation and a following and then usually take a step back and slow down. Grind till you make it and then chill.

Or they do like Technology Connections or Electro Boom do and just do whatever whenever however. Those kind of channels have the most staying power I think.

Protestant culture, "I'm so busy, I've been crazy-busy. Busy, busy, busy"

I find it hard to empathise tbh but I'm sure many would say the same of my crappy office job. Some maybe are mr beast permanent growth brained but also i imagine its quite stressful trying to build a life around such a volatile job as well as doing it solo is a considerable amount of work to meet the expected production value YT has these days. Thing is though if you earn enough money to hire other people i kinda can't take it that seriously, also winds me up when they would claim "i don't make that much" while being able to salary one or many people like fuck off.

Are you talking about Contrapoints?

Mr Beast is definitely a work-a-holikkk.

Depends on the YouTuber.

Esoterica where Dr Sledge is delving through literal medieval books and sources he has personally spent lots of money on and need to be translated just to tell us about a neat demon summoning spell people of the past thought was real or how this one angel was super cool and this one guy saw his sword and man was it a dope sword. He is clearly combining hours, if not days, of actual work reading, translating, and referencing stuffy works in other languages from bygone eras combined with years of academic accomplishment to produce these.

Then you see someone just has a drama/react channel where they stream a few hours a day and pay some editor peanuts to push out clips and it's like, come on, I understand entertaining people is a skill and all but this isn't even really your content. This is just water-cooler banter for people who have no friends or coworkers.

Agreed. I know Ross Scott works himself to the bone, but then there's the dudes who just react to someone else's Analog Horror and then act like they're bootstrapping.

I think it's easier to be a workaholic when you can choose your own hours, your job partly involves you being social with your friends, and you enjoy substantial portions of your "job". And I'm using the term loosely, consistently working 10 hours a day.

Youtubers used to work 10 hour a day grinds trying to make daily videos to feed the algorithm whereas now you just need a few hours of high quality content a year to live comfortably off Patreon/Nebula/etc revenue. I'd feel like an absolute fraud too and pretend i'm burned out

They have forgotten what real work is

I think they on some level know they contribute little of value to society relative to how much they earn, but bullshit Protestant work ethic grindset hustle culture pushes them to rationalize that away. That's why "I ran out of interesting things to say because my day-to-day life is virtually identical to some sheltered small business owner whose business is e-commerce so I don't even deal with real-life people outside of shopping at Costco to buy groceries" becomes "burnout." Plenty of people get paid 6-figures to sit on their ass all day drinking coffee and occasionally opening a spreadsheet, but they usually owe up to the bullshittiness of their jobs instead of trying to dress it up to be more than what it is.

more like wokeaholics /s

I think (I hope) a lot of those creators do things outside of those few youtube videos a year, like acting or volunteering or some such.

Anyone who defines themselves via an "excess of virtue" flaw is probably a bullshitter in my opinion, but I stay off of YouTube mostly so don't have an opinion about YTers.