The History of the Downward Spiral

[Music] you've been coming in here for a while now and we've made some progress no doubt but so far we've been unable to reach a breakthrough however today something's different i can feel it you've experienced a lot of significant change in your life and i suspect that you're finally ready to open up so all that said i'm going to ask this one more time what is the downward spiral i was born in 1998 on a sunday when i look back at that year with our modern understanding of how things turned out it can be largely seen as a pinnacle america was by far the most feared and respected country in the world some of the greatest athletes in this country had the crowning achievement of their entire careers john elway won the super bowl dale earnhardt won the daytona 500 michael jordan captured his sixth and final nba title the president of the united states was still in office that was somewhat respected and revered it's tough to look back then knowing now how things turned out i mean when you look at america now it's suffice to say we've kind of fallen on hard times in fact when you look at just about every measurable aspect of life it would seem that just about everything is getting steadily and steadily worse it's almost like i came into this world right at the moment when everything started to go downward so if you're asking me when the downward spiral began the only thing i can say is that it had to have started sometime between then and now the first time i saw youtube i was at my friend todd's house i remember we spent all afternoon watching stuff like charlie the unicorn the laser collection clay world all this stuff made by like amateur 20 year olds i was still a kid at the time and before that i watched a lot of tv as many people my age probably did cartoon network nickelodeon you'd pour hours and afternoons into just watching that even at such an early age i could understand that the effort that went into making a tv show was something that was seemingly not replicable on just an individual scale so when i first tuned in to youtube and saw people making things by themselves regular people with no skills no prestige no anything they could just hop in make some creative project and upload it for millions of people to see that was mind blowing to me it was like discovering a whole new dimension and i was hooked man basically every day i come home from school and watch the same videos i'd watch new videos it was truly a brilliant time and back then on youtube no one knew what they were doing everyone was just free to sort of make whatever they wanted there were no formulas there was no trying to appease some sort of algorithm people just made stuff that they thought other people would want to see there's a real beauty and the simplicity about that era about people just going out there throwing caution into the wind but out of all the crazy stuff on this wild west era of youtube at the time i was drawn into one very particular sub-genre today it sort of goes by many names but back then it had one name and it was called youtube poop look what i got under my camp so youtube poops what are they i feel like i had a better understanding of it when i was younger before uh i developed the logical means of adult thinking to describe youtube poop the closest thing i could compare it to i guess as a metaphor would be digital graffiti you're taking these pre-established works something that's been composed by thousands of man hours a professional production and then you and your 12 year old wisdom basically just turn it into a bunch of nonsense i mean i guess the part that drew me in is the idea that you can take this existing thing that everyone knows and transform it in a way where all of a sudden it's like a whole new thing something like spongebob and patrick cursing there ain't nothing fancy about that word you mean [ __ ] yes that one it's like staring into an alternate twisted reality but with youtube poops it sort of became real it was like power power given to the hand of a mad architect i think sometimes it's fun for us to watch something be created because we know how fun it may be to destroy so in 2010 i've been browsing youtube sitting as the silent watcher and i figure hey i might as well throw my hat in the ring it's free i'm a kid i have the time let's try to make a youtube poop and upload it to a new channel and uh i guess that was the beginning of emperor lemon so it's march of 2010 and i'm getting ready to upload my very first youtube poop it was like a four minute edit of the spongebob episode idiot box so i i think i worked on it for weeks like every day coming home from school i was obsessed with it i was so eager ready to just put it out to the world so i go to click upload post my very first video ever and i get the notification in my video manager saying that it's been blocked worldwide for a copyright claim well and that was my welcome to youtube moment it's interesting looking back knowing uh the history of this channel that even from the very beginning i was having problems with youtube but okay it's a rather inauspicious start let's try something new and so a couple of months later i end up posting what is the actual first video that appears on this channel you can never have another first video or first few videos there's something so fun about it i kind of envy youtubers who are just starting out and that may sound awful rich because any youtuber starts out is trying to get where i am but when you're starting out there's no expectations you don't got an audience you could just make what you want you don't know what you're doing and that's great you're not jaded over the creative process you don't care about views or the algorithm it's just fun it's kind of what youtube content is supposed to be in my opinion so you were awfully young to be starting youtube well that's kind of why i'm glad i wound up in a place like youtube poop where you could exist pretty much anonymously it definitely helped shield me from any personal scrutiny that i certainly wasn't ready for at the time you know it's hard to be taken seriously as a kid online part of the reason i gravitated towards ytp in the first place is that it allowed me to be treated equally even though if i'm being honest with myself i probably was a little too young at the time so my first year on youtube i released probably six videos i think the most views i got on any of them over that time was like a hundred of course at the time i had no standards for anything but i was starting to wonder whether i would make anything that would actually break on through to the next level while approaching the one year anniversary of me opening my channel i got my first big break so back in the day there was this youtube pooper known as barney as perverted he was fairly popular by youtube poop standards made some pretty entertaining spongebob poops and even though in 2010 my first attempt to post a spongebob poop was thwarted by our wonderful copyright system by 2011 the heat had died down and i was actually able to post a spongebob youtube poop on my channel and one of these spongebob edits gets seen by barney and he posts a very nice comment saying that he loved the video now most youtuber interactions would just stop there but back then youtube actually had this function on the site where you could feature somebody else's video on your own channel and out of sheer generosity barney put my video up on his far more popular channel and after just 24 hours the video had thousands of views and i'd crossed a hundred subscribers man for me at the time being 13 years old and having my first taste of success on youtube it was like christmas had come for the second time i was so excited for that entire week it was all i could think about going back to the video watching the views go up and reading comments from all these people who were becoming new fans and after a few months that video got up to over a hundred thousand views and emperor lemon had officially arrived on the scene it took pretty much a whole year to get there but i had finally climbed that very first rung of the youtube ladder there was still a hell of a lot further to go but at that point i was very content to be standing on that rung it's really funny the way youtube works sometimes where these seemingly very small events can have huge consequences later on and it's just really funny to me how this one guy who has been inactive for almost a decade now a guy who pretty much nobody knows today was single-handedly responsible for setting me off on my journey to however far i get barney may have been forgotten but i'll never forget him youtube back then was pretty much the wild west if you got in trouble back then there was no saving you people could pretty much run roughshod and if they got enough friends together to flag your videos they could just take down your channel for no reason and you have no one to review it no way to appeal you just have to accept it and open up a new channel and that's how it was back then especially in youtube poop where copyright was always such a lingering issue so back in this time i wasn't even sure if i was gonna make it much longer and it came close my channel that you know and love today was almost terminated completely there was a time when i had two community guidelines strikes and of course back then i didn't exactly have much to lose but it's still strange to think that the channel i'm still using more than 12 years later almost ceased to exist entirely but fortunately for me that third strike never came and i could live to youtube poop another day and i kept making them through the rest of 2011 and 2012 i was having a good time and people liked the videos and then at the beginning of 2013 i started to feel something that i hadn't ever felt before while making youtube videos i was starting to lose motivation for working on projects i think by the summer of 2013 i had gotten to around 3 500 subs but the channel wasn't really growing by any substantial amount it kind of just felt like the same old same old for a while for me the tank was almost empty i could sort of feel like i wouldn't be around that much longer so that summer i think about trying something a little bit different i think i worked on this video for months it was the longest i'd ever spent on any project in my entire life and by that august it was done and ready to post i didn't know it at the time but that one video would change everything [Music] all right so the uncredibles i got to say that in my 10 plus year experience of dealing with youtube there's certainly a lot more heartache than anything worth celebrating i mean a lot of times it's hard it's real hard it feels like the whole deck is stacked against you but every now and then you find these rare moments where youtube throws you a bone and man doesn't feel great i remember the video got like 50 000 views in the first week which is something that i never came close to achieving on any of the other 30 or so videos i'd done before and that was when i sort of knew that this video was different and i think by around christmas time it hit a million which at the time for me was just an unfathomable amount of people i was still 15 at the time and when you get that many views at that young it just seems like you don't even know what to do with it just something about seeing that number a million next to something you made it's like one of the first numbers that's so big that you can't really visualize it it all happened so sudden it was kind of unbelievable surreal to see on my end it was crazy i didn't really know what to do other than just make more videos like it once youtube gives you that shot in the arm it's addicting it's addicting having all these people watch something you made and they loved it and they want something more i knew i had made a good product and i wanted to deliver more of it i don't know if i just got extremely fortunate or what but in 2014 i was on a hot streak there was a period for about 18 months from the tail end of 2013 to the beginning of 2015 where it seemed like i couldn't miss i mean i was riding high how could you not be i had this channel where i never really envisioned that i would be one of these fortunate people to be so successful and to get views consistently in the millions but there i was i caught the wave and i was definitely enjoying myself of course that's not to say that there aren't drawbacks with growth because there certainly are and there certainly were for me even if i didn't really realize them at the time getting elevated that high up on the pedestal it's not without consequence you know back in the day when i was just starting out there were a lot of youtube poopers many of whom i watched on a regular basis and i really enjoyed their stuff they were friendly to me they would comment on my stuff with words of support but once my videos started getting a ton of views that relationship seemed to change there's something about the way people make youtube poops and carry themselves where it's almost like you're not supposed to be seen you're not supposed to be famous it's something tied up within like the pride of the unknown artist there was something about the nature of youtube poops that was supposed to be anonymous you weren't really supposed to become a personality from it you weren't supposed to revel in the success was there jealousy and resentment i mean i guess we all have this same sort of expectation to put in x amount of work and get so much out of it as a result there's a lot of luck involved in youtube and a lot of people end up far more fortunate for putting in the same work and that's just how the cookie crumbles but yeah people take umbrage to that i get it i just feel like the way that i started to be treated was a little bit unfair considering i had nothing to do with how successful my videos got i put them up online just like any other video and they happen to do way more views perhaps it's my fault for not going out and making friends with these people when i should have but once my videos started getting a lot of views i definitely was not viewed the same way you see this happen to a lot of artists in any creative field where they get a big break and then all of a sudden people start coming out of the woodwork talking about how they don't deserve it and for as much as the casual audience loved those videos they certainly started to rub people the wrong way in my neck of the woods i don't believe that i acted arrogantly i don't believe that i acted prideful that's how it may have been perceived by people back then but that wasn't what i was putting out i tried to share the success a lot of people forget this but i hosted collabs i really tried to get a lot more talented people in the community seen i wanted to be generous you know but it seems like no matter how much stuff i did to try to elevate other people it wasn't necessarily appreciated so you had a lot of success at a time where not many others did do you ever experience regret that maybe you should have capitalized on it more i mean that's how a lot of youtubers would have treated it many people on this website have found great success by taking the machiavellian approach just sort of treating their audience as another means to an end back then i could have definitely cashed in on something trendy like mlg montage parodies and who knows how my career could have turned out and just how big my audience could have been today in hindsight it's easy to envision yourself making all the right choices so much so that we often lose sight of how we could have made the wrong ones something tells me that if i had sold out way back then things probably wouldn't have worked out for me i don't think i was ready to take that next step i was still way too young and i didn't appreciate what it was like to truly struggle so at the end of 2014 i started off on what was probably my biggest project ever at that point which was the frying nemo series it basically took me six months to release these four youtube poops covering the entire run time of finding nemo and for what i could realistically achieve at the time it was ambitious i worked really really hard on it it was the hardest i worked on any project to that point somewhere along the way i really was not having fun it was probably the first time making any youtube poop where i was not really enjoying the ride it was pretty much the first hint i got that my time in youtube poop was starting to come to a close i think somewhere along the way it became less about what i want to make and more about what i think the fans are going to enjoy watching and many youtubers can attest to this but doing that is kind of the one way to suck the enjoyment out of whatever you're working on and to make matters worse the reception to the end of the series wasn't really what i'd been hoping for so a lot of the youtube poop community they like to reside on this forum known as youtube i uploaded deep frying nemo which was part 4 the final part of the frying nemo series and on the general discussion page it was just a [ __ ] page and a half of people ridiculing the video it was hard to see all these people many of which i looked up to and respected kind of just being so bitter about me uploading this video that moment for me was sort of like i'm an outsider in this community i'm not really well liked anymore i may have been liked at one point but i never capitalized on it enough to sort of sustain that goodwill and now it seems like a lot of people in this community no longer hold me in good esteem and it was tough it was tough to be motivated to continue after that knowing that your contemporaries the people you relate to most in making this very niche style of video they don't really like you i think that summer summer of 2015 i really started to consider stepping away from youtube poop so that summer actually i passed a pretty huge milestone i passed a hundred thousand subscribers i think only two maybe three other people had ever gotten that far from a channel uploading exclusively youtube poops within that genre there were really no more barriers left to overcome i'd done everything i don't know if i exactly knew it at the time but ready or not it was time for me to sort of turn over the next page in my career so this is my hundred thousand subscriber play button that i got back in 2015. a lot of youtubers today don't even know that they used to look like this but i definitely like the old design a lot better it felt a lot more personal and special i guess you could say that's how the whole site was back then but as luck would have it passing 100k was only the second most fortunate thing to happen to me that year because at around the same time i got a little message in my youtube dashboard saying that i'd been approved for monetization this was something for me that didn't even seem like it should have been on the table and it would absolutely never happen today during this whole time so far and getting all those millions and millions of views i had never actually earned a cent of revenue for myself it was all complimentary for the fans you know my motivation with youtube at the time was never about making money and based on the type of videos i was making it wasn't something you could do regardless and it really never occurred to me until that moment that youtube could actually be a viable career choice it's just really funny because every couple of years or so when i was starting to lose motivation youtube would just throw me a bone to keep me in the game and here was another one just youtube offering me free money on a silver platter it's pretty crazy how it happened that way looking back i feel like i just had to be in the perfect place at the perfect time for the stars to align in that way but what do you know youtube works in mysterious ways and all of a sudden i had a whole new purpose for making videos i had a lot of new priorities initiatives that i wanted to try out with my channel but i just wasn't quite ready to take that step for the moment i actually went back to making youtube poops sort of like how i used to make them right when i started i mean i stopped caring so much about what the final product would be and i just sort of put a video together and put it out i think mentally i just tried to go back back to a time when all this stuff was just still intrinsically fun for me where the act of making the video in and of itself was where the value came from but of course at this stage in my career it couldn't possibly go back to exactly how it was and youtube viewers 95 of the time all they really want is one type of thing done one sort of way and my viewers at the time wanted an eight and a half minute youtube poop about a pixar movie and when i stopped delivering they stopped tuning in so as i started releasing these new more experimental youtube poops the views started dwindling downward the thing about success on youtube is that it's oftentimes fragile one year you can feel like you're just on top of the world but anyone who's been in the game long enough will tell you that it can all go away like that i'm not one of these people whose self-worth is intrinsically tied to how many people are watching them on the internet it really didn't make that much of a difference to me what did start to bother me at that point was the comment section it started off with just a few go to any comments section on youtube and you'll find them but as time went on and i kept putting out these videos that most of the audience didn't care for that vocal minority started to grow a lot and you know i was someone who was perceptive to it i used to read every single comment i got every day every time i log into youtube i'd go to the comments tab and read them all i don't do it anymore it's just it's just too much mentally to deal with especially once the audience grew to a point where it was just thousands and thousands of people sharing their opinions i don't think that the human mind was designed to deal with this many people talking to you but back then i stuck through it that was like the lifeline to me with the audience i find prestige in entertaining an audience of people and the comments section that's the primary means of communication for expressing whether or not a viewer was entertained so it meant a lot to me it meant more than the views and the money numbers they're just numbers you can count them all day but it's the human element of the comment section that is the sauce that really ties everything together but for as much as i extol the meaningfulness of reading the comments sometimes you encounter those moments when it's just an absolute [ __ ] i think the final turning point for me was when i decided to make the simpsons green i really liked working on this video i considered it one of the best videos i'd made in over a year this video for me epitomized everything about why i was inspired to make these videos in the first place it may seem stupid it may seem very dumb to get sentimental over videos as ultimately stupid as youtube poops are but at this point it was 2016. it was almost six years of my life thousands of hours of my free time dedicated to making these videos i'm sure everyone else may call it stupid but these videos and the process of making them were meaningful to me green simpsons was meaningful to me but that day the comment section didn't agree god after a while it's just like can you people just get off my damn back jesus christ man i make these videos for fun i put these videos out for years for all of you to enjoy for free and then i make one or two that you don't like and all of a sudden is this big problem and you have to make it my problem i just complained after complaint after complaint and it wasn't all of them it wasn't even a majority of them but it was a level of bitching unlike anything i had ever personally experienced before i mean making youtube poops is all about fun it's supposed to be fun well i wasn't having fun anymore you know i really tried i really tried to just kind of graciously ride off into the sunset but the circumstances were such where that wasn't gonna happen i took it hard i took it really hard i was very upset i had never been this upset before making youtube videos i i just couldn't believe what i was seeing these people who had just enjoyed this content i made for years that i put out for free to just turn on me like that it really just threw a wrench into my whole philosophy of where i derive enjoyment from making videos i used to think it was all about the fans all about pleasing them not only were they displeased but now i had become displeased and again i apologize if i'm being overly corny or sentimental by saying this but back then youtube poop and making youtube videos that was one of the only things that i really liked doing it was one of the only things that i considered myself good at it was as big a part of my life as anything else and my oh so beloved audience took it away from me they made it so that i couldn't enjoy it anymore and upon realizing that something in me changed and that right there was the moment that emperor lemon died and was replaced by emplemon i'm sensing a lot of anger from this time period yeah and how did that make you feel angry god people are always wondering when exactly the downward spiral began i think that this moment right here is a pretty good candidate for when i mean the whole story before this you could pick and choose times when you think i'm in the downward spiral but after this happened i am without question in the downward spiral i think it was six years to the day of when i first opened my youtube channel when i uploaded the we need to talk video with that being said i have a lot of stuff i really need to get off of my chest the way i see it these people had bitched and moaned and complained and ruined my day and now it was my turn i don't need people to boss me around about [ __ ] youtube poops where the entire [ __ ] purpose is to get away from that [ __ ] i'll show you complain and i'll show you the best complaining that anyone has ever seen i will make an entire career out of complaining if you're one of these people with the [ __ ] delusion to think that i will listen to your hackney demands you need to unsubscribe from this channel right now i don't want you subscribed you know they say you shouldn't do this in all the uh the little youtube advice tutorial videos that you find from some indian guy who hasn't even managed to crack 10 000 subscribers this it's not part of the uh pre-composed youtube tips to make an entire video snapping on your audience and telling them how much you hate them well i'm sorry is it not fun enough for you too bad i stopped having fun a long time ago send me the crap below a hundred thousand again at least at least it would remind me of a time when the [ __ ] was still fun youtube whatever it is at this point is clearly not about having fun anymore that day i made it very very clear i'm not going to be pushed around by the whims of this audience anymore any video you see on the future of this channel it won't be because of you it won't be for you it was a mistake to care so much about them i never really have since people unsubbed people stopped watching views went down revenue went down i didn't care i'd been happy making videos for no viewers i'd been happy making videos for no money you had people coming out saying that i was done that i would never amount to anything that i'd bow out of youtube and quit and they'd dance on my grave for having the audacity to lash out against the oh so prestigious audience and you know what it was probably very reasonable for them to believe that people didn't do what i just did but that was the road i traveled it was time to stick with it the summer of 2016 i made all sorts of videos it was the most varied my content had been and probably ever will be i'd been wanting to branch out and try new videos for a while but it was this moment in rejecting the fans that truly pushed me into it because as for the channel i hit the reset button i pretty much took the old channel burnt it to the ground and built a new one out of the ashes the views at one point got very lean there was a period where i'd upload a video and it would only get 10 000 views pretty much a 99 decline 99 out of 100 people had stopped watching me there would be entire months during that summer when i had negative subscriber growth pretty much every video i'd upload i would lose subscribers not very healthy looking metrics for a growing channel but you know what i didn't care for the first time in what felt like forever i actually had the freedom to work on what i wanted to make in confronting this taboo of not trying to screw with the audience i ended up overcoming this fear of losing them it was a mutual departure i didn't need them and they didn't need me it's just the reality of making content online people come and people go it was a strange time to be an employment fan but those few people who stuck around well they were in for quite a ride so 2016 was a pretty tumultuous year for me personally i'd have to say that if i look back at every single year of my life that was probably the one year in which i had the most personal change but hey you know just because i'm on a downward spiral it doesn't mean everything else has to be and if there is one saving grace of 2016 it was that there is all of a sudden plenty of great stuff to watch on youtube what we do here is go back [Music] to this day i always maintain that 2016 was the best year for youtube content and basically in this year you saw people become legends filthy frank idubbbz keemstar leafy even h3h3 at this point was making good videos i see posts in the modern age trying to write off this era as being just unnecessarily edgy or trying too hard or having a detrimental influence on whatever future generation you may consider these guys deserved the success they achieved they pushed the boundaries harder than any other group of youtubers before or since the content produced during this time was just simply at another level it may seem sappy to talk about it this way to be so reverent over what was essentially just a bunch of guys goofing around and starting drama with each other but you'd be hard-pressed to find another period of youtube history that was more interesting and more dynamic it was just a time when people were just so free and unafraid to push the needle in hindsight knowing what was coming next we probably should have been a little bit more afraid these guys were truly influential and they influenced me i got to see what was possible on youtube and towards the end of 2016 i was finally starting to get a little bit of momentum back on my side i remember at the end of the year i came out with the empty subscribers video and then the top 10 dank memes of 2016. and these were pretty much the first proto emplemon videos of the modern age where i actually sat down wrote a script recorded and edited a complete product i remember at the end of 2016 i hit a very big personal milestone i had my first one thousand dollar month on youtube and it gave me a slight glimmer of hope that i could continue this into the future you know after all the strife and all this turmoil the channel wasn't dead yet there's still a little bit of life left in it there was still new people tuning in new growth to be had it was basically a new channel with a new audience and a new direction but things were looking up it seemed like it was gonna get easier little did i know just how foolish it was to place that much faith in youtube just when they pull you back in it seems like every single thing conspires against you to push you out god man 2017 what an awful year to be on youtube it had to have been the worst it had to have been the worst year in youtube history i know there's a lot of new people in the youtube space who weren't around back then but if you ask people who were people like me they will get legitimate ptsd flashbacks at how putrid of a year that was to make content on youtube it all started from just some article from some douchebag journalist whose name doesn't even deserve to be mentioned he's just complete garbage he writes this whole article for the wall street journal about how he found some coca-cola ads on a johnny rebel song never you mind the fact that the titanic music companies that basically almost tried to bully youtube out of existence in the first place they manually claim and run ads on all these songs that's the reason there's ads on it didn't show up to the guy in the article for some reason no it's uh it's youtube's fault and coca-cola and pepsico they can't be bothered to have their product alongside such raucous inappropriate content oh no so that marked the opportunity for basically them and a lot of other fortune 500 companies to pull their ads out of youtube entirely so you know how i had my first thousand dollar month in the december of 2016 or so i think by march my monthly earnings for the entire channel was under a hundred i was basically making enough money off of my channel in those months to go to the grocery store two times thanks for the tens of thousands of views this is what you're worth now and this is what every youtuber was worth now that didn't make squeaky clean brand friendly content man hearing all that makes me glad i chose a profession in psychiatric help seems like every passing year business just keeps going up just old dying dinosaur media who no longer have the interest to have pissed away all the good will of the audience they once had it's their lone dying clutches to maintain the last scrap of relevancy they could they saw all the audiences turning off the tv cutting the cable cord and going to youtube to enjoy better content for free and they weren't willing to go down without a fight these companies they had their chance to come into youtube graciously but they did not choose to do so and i will always have a chip on my shoulder against them because of how they acted coming in here youtubers man i mean we built this platform we worked for free for years making content for people that was more compelling more interesting and more personal than anything you guys were putting out it could have come in graciously but no they wanted to come in and call the shots the youtube trending tab pretty much a joke now but there was a time when you could actually find decent and interesting stuff to watch on there from youtubers oh but then jimmy kimmel and jimmy fallon and all the late night host decide we want our stuff to not only compete in the same space with youtubers but we want to be given special treatment i i say it started happening probably around 2015 but it didn't really get obnoxious until 2017. late night tv show clips you had to get them all in all represented big budget mainstream movie trailers big budget mainstream music videos from top 40 artists this was the content that was now the face of youtube or at least they were trying to make it that way and of course when the adpocalypse hits and all the actual homegrown native youtubers get absolutely slaughtered all these companies just slide in make themselves comfortable of course their ad rates never took a hit it was only us the common man the common youtuber the whole reason that motivates you to get up and make content because it's achievable for us it's never achievable for you to become jimmy kimmel or for you to become a top 40 artist with million dollar budget music videos that's the appeal of youtube the idea that we the common man are making the content and we don't have to rely on million dollar venture capitalist industry shills we don't need to rely on the whim of some old crotchety 80 year old producer who thinks he knows what young people want to watch these companies when given the chance early on they tried to kill youtube they tried to squash youtube into the dust and keep the glass ceiling in place keep that division between the regular plebs who should never amount to anything and the golden boys the mainstream hollywood new york city elite it wasn't a long time ago it was just 10 15 years ago when all this stuff was going down and how easy it is for youtube to forget because at the same time that all this home-grown talent that basically built the platform were getting squashed youtube basically saw the legacy media that had antagonized us for so long and laid down and said you guys come on in make yourselves comfortable we have no allegiance and no accountability to the very people who built this site we were basically used to build throne rooms for all these established companies to just come in and sit down on top of us without having to earn a thing all you mainstream companies who try to choke us out just a decade ago you are now the premier face of the entire website welcome in we hope you enjoy your stay and uh maybe they did but for the rest of us we sure weren't enjoying our time on youtube i can't speak for everyone else but i was sure pissed i was pissed off at the direction of this website i felt like there was no longer a premium for making good videos it seemed like for a little bit there youtube was not just neglecting it but actively making the site inhospitable for interesting and dynamic content and for me the abject downfall in the quality of youtube content came to be embodied by one channel it was a channel by the name of behind the meme hello internet and welcome to behind the meme where we take a look at the meaning and the origin of your favorite memes and god he got a ton of views and his videos were complete [ __ ] it was just awful terrible just complete dog [ __ ] content bland boring no insight just like brainless popcorn content but man people tuned in i don't know why they did but they did he was on trending he was getting pushed by the algorithm in everyone's home page and i could tolerate it for so long until he made a video about youtube poop it was one of my most hated videos of all time in my 10 plus years of watching videos on this platform just pump out the video for the hell of it and uh who the hell cares if you're representing whatever you're talking about correctly or even remotely informatively no no no that that's just the standard on youtube that's being promoted at this point pump out a bunch of complete [ __ ] content and all the stupid idiot viewers will just lick up the slop and i had had enough of it i had had enough of seeing the direction of the site so i basically took years of rage and inflicted it on this one guy and that was the behind the meme video [Music] throughout 2016 and much of 2017 it was a big trend on youtube to start drama call someone out and air your beef some will call it toxic yeah there's always been toxic content on youtube i would call it keeping people honest and accountable and making sure that the overall quality of content on this site doesn't devolve into absolute dog water this behind the meme guy people were already sick of him long before i touched the topic but hey you know what i saw all these people making these call out videos to great success now it was my turn to become the content cop and man to say that it's my most controversial video would be an understatement there are people today five years after the fact who still refuse to watch anything i make because of what they saw me say in that video there are a lot of people pissed off at what i was saying but you know after having my whole audience turn on me in 2016 i was used to it it didn't really faze me and you know they had their reasons the criticism i got from that video was not unwarranted there's a lot of stuff said in that video that was pushing the limits of acceptability do i regret releasing the behind the meme video well i can say it was definitely a lot more trouble than it was worth i did gain quite a few new fans from that it was probably my first million view video since the youtube poop era it was kind of like opening a pandora's box of sorts i had never made a video before that going so hard after one individual channel and i didn't really anticipate my audience who had been mostly indifferent with anything i'd made for the past year and a half i wasn't really expecting them to be so emboldened with what i was saying and to really go after this guy and just hammer him for weeks and months after the fact it caused a lot of heartache a lot of strife a lot of anger but do i regret putting it out i don't really know i think to say i regretted it would be like to say that whole part of my development on youtube didn't matter i could try to play it off as much as i want but at the end of the day i know deep down that i meant what i said in that video in my mindset and my mental state at that time and my anger towards the direction of this website that video wasn't gonna turn out any other way it was a product of its time no doubt if i could do it over knowing what i know today then yeah i probably would have done things a bit differently in that video that video whether you like it or not that was simply the next stepping stone in my development and i wouldn't be in the position i am today had it not been for the mistakes i learned from that video but you know i made my drama video and i had attention that i had not had since 2014 or 2015. after releasing that video i definitely turned over a new chapter of the downward spiral you know i complained and bitched and been abrasive and cantankerous for many videos before that but this was the first one where people actually listened it was definitely something i had not experienced up until that point in my career you know whether they were for or against the video people were paying attention people were listening and people were taking it seriously it was the first time i'd released something out onto the internet and really made people pay attention it's easy to just watch content online and be aloof and indifferent towards all of it but this video made people angry whether they were angry at me or angry at behind the meme they cared it certainly made an impression on me to basically take all these people and rile them up it was power and agency that i suddenly had in my hands and over the course of the next year i was definitely experimenting to see how far i could push it don't you think that it's a little hypocritical to complain about being badgered by your audience just to turn around and do the very same thing to behind the meme well let's not mince words here all right the content was piss-poor there's no getting around it and yours wasn't i guess the difference for me is that i was trying to make good videos i never got the impression that he was you know there's very little separating his stuff from something like buzzfeed or watch mojo just a bland soulless content farm i don't want to hear this revisionist history about how his videos were actually decent because they weren't just because you feel sorry for the guy doesn't change that did behind the meme deserve to be criticized absolutely but i'll acknowledge that at some points perhaps the criticism went a little too far well don't you feel at least a little sympathy for the role that you played in it you know the way some people retell it it was like i literally sent people out there to go harass the guy let's set the record straight that never happened that was never my intent did the hate go too far yes okay yeah i think so i'll admit it and after a while i did start to feel bad for the guy it's part of the reason why i've since tried to distance my content from youtube drama because after a certain point it's just not worth it it just becomes too exhausting and i get it you know there's enough problems in the world why create another one at the time that was the video i wanted to make but it wouldn't be long before i would start holding myself to a higher standard i think at this point it's important to reiterate that i still wasn't planning to do youtube full-time there was maybe a brief moment six months earlier when i was considering it but in the middle of 2017 youtube was basically on the verge of financial ruin for the vast majority of its creators and it didn't exactly look promising for the future it was a really rough time probably the worst time in the past 10 years to try to earn a living off of youtube i'm not exactly the type of person you'd consider to be a strategic optimist i'm not someone who sits around hoping that things magically get better no the way i do things i'm always really perceptive of the realities of how things are in the current moment and in that moment youtube did not look like the way to go i'd resolved within myself that i would use the supplemental income that youtube provided but that there would come a point in the near future where i would have to abandon youtube and enter the workforce and get a conventional job and the whole point of mentioning this is to reiterate that even as recently as 2017 i was still not fully committed to putting youtube in my future and that definitely affected how i ran the channel at the time because quite simply i wasn't building for the future i didn't see my future on youtube and there were moments back then where i was basically planning to flame out and just squeeze as much goodwill and attention out of this channel that i possibly could have before i inevitably crashed it into the ground i remember that summer of 2017 the state of the website just continued to deteriorate the infamous demonetization system was starting to get rolled out and it was pushed out long before it was ready and it was just a total mess it was a time when you couldn't even touch a sensitive topic without your video turning yellow and your potential revenue being slashed 60 70 percent it was awful it's just paralyzing you couldn't do anything you couldn't take the slightest risk without being in just financial ruin so much effort being spent on videos that was just all for naught and when they demonetize your video they wouldn't just take away your revenue and they tried to deny this for the longest time but after enough experience from everybody it was just indisputable you would not only get less revenue you would get less views and less exposure and after enough people saw how their videos did while monetized versus d monetized it was a night and day difference youtube tried to pretend that it wasn't there but everyone caught on there was no hiding it and there was a lot of adaptation that was forced on by these monumental changes content as a whole was forced to be less interesting and less inspiring it's just like everything got forced into this bottleneck of being bland safe and just totally unwilling to step on anyone's toes i'd be damned if i wasn't just dismayed seeing every day on this website people neutering their content to adhere to their guidelines and i had initially placed my frustrations on a guy like behind the meme i took all this frustration of youtube basically burning down in front of my eyes and pinned it on one guy and it didn't take long for me to see how that was a little unfair and how my anger and resentment should have been placed somewhere else and so i shifted my focus to youtube some may have called it awfully arrogant of me to do so biting the hand that feeds people pointed out how it was awfully hypocritical of me to direct all this hate towards youtube i wouldn't have cared so much if deep down i didn't love youtube and that was really the honest fact of the matter i loved youtube and i saw this thing i loved probably more than anything else in my life gradually just decay into a shell of its former self and it was extremely disheartening to me so i released the video youtube has been on a downward spiral and pretty much everything in there just comes straight from the heart you know i never had any intentions to damage youtube or to cause the sight to fail at my hands for me it was just a means of seeing like what are we doing what have we done with this place that was once so beautiful and robust and just a sanctuary for independent creators to make these low-budget creative works and express themselves this is what youtube was all about you could broadcast yourself and then look what we've become i had a lot of pain for sure and it was almost like i wanted to make everyone else feel as upset and betrayed as i was and for a lot of people yeah that video was very upsetting but i think a lot of other people felt vindicated that someone was finally stepping up and speaking their mind on a lot of these issues that they were thinking but were perhaps too timid to bring to light and it was all of a sudden with this video where i felt like i had a greater purpose where it was no longer about hedonistically and selfishly just putting videos out there and getting views and revenue for myself i felt like i was now speaking on behalf of the greater youtube community and you know i wore that as a badge of honor you could call it virtue signaling or grandstanding or whatever but i really felt good being in that role being sort of the mouthpiece for all these other misfortunate creators who got sacrificed for the system for a moment i just really reveled in being the guy to speak the honest truth of the situation and not worry about what would happen to my channel and i was ready at that point to basically ride off into the sunset until youtube kicked me off i didn't care i was dealing with something that was bigger than me and yeah maybe it was arrogant of me and maybe there were points when i was in over my head but it was definitely a fire that was lit underneath me that was making me more motivated than at any time that i could remember so towards the end of the year i start really trying hard on these videos i really start putting a lot of effort into the editing and the writing and the pacing trying to basically make the best product that i can make i pretty much wanted to prove to everyone else and myself that i could that my videos could be in the same league as the best of the best on this website and so i started working on what was probably my most ambitious project to date the video that would eventually become the donald trump meme theory and looking back this was probably the very first video that i would consider to be in the modern emplemon era i remember this was the first written video where i finished it and was able to look back on it with some kind of pride and i always remember what happened next i remember i posted it and it was up for about a day and then within probably a few hours it got demonetized and copyright claimed and i was completely discouraged and for me for a while that was pretty much the final straw i mean i i had this video that was like the first video that i was really and truly proud of and i do all this work just to put it up there and basically get the ultimate middle finger from youtube you can put in all this effort and people can watch and like it but at the end of the day your kind is basically not welcome here and me continuing to try to give the site a chance and give it the benefit of the doubt i was done i was not gonna tolerate this disrespect anymore and i was ready to just straight up quit right there i typed up what was basically a resignation letter from youtube and i was ready to put it up as just one last final [ __ ] you to my youtube career and i fully believe i would have gone through with it and just quit that day but you know this strange thing about youtube throughout my entire career just when i was ready to leave every time something pulled me back in so i had appealed the copyright claim and i'd appealed the demonetization and thus far i didn't have very good luck with it but lo and behold right as i was about to go put together this video of me quitting i refreshed the video manager to see the green dollar sign looking at me again and man that was one of the most surreal moments i've ever had on this website it was almost like a moment of divine intervention where i'd been taken to the absolute darkest place i'd ever been on youtube and one tiny glimmer of light came through and i took it as a sign i took it as a sign to say that my time here isn't up just yet i have a little bit more business to attend to two weeks after that moment youtube announces youtube rewind for 2017 and something about that just really didn't sit right with me i mean for a year as punishing as 2017 was to just most of the talent on the website how tone deaf do you have to be to put on this whole glamorous end-of-the-year celebration as if all the strife and struggle you put your users through during the entire year just didn't matter like you were just sweeping it all under the rug so i come up with this little document basically saying how youtube has screwed over and mistreated its creators for the entire year and how we as youtubers should basically protest all of this mistreatment by going to youtube rewind and pressing dislike and youtube rewind starts getting a lot of dislikes it was getting to a point where it was like a top 50 top 25 most disliked video in history i don't really know how much of it i can personally take credit for but one thing was definitely for sure and it was that i was not alone in being pissed off at youtube and youtube of course caught wind of it they saw that youtube rewind was getting an abnormal amount of dislikes and they saw that a lot of it could be traced back to me a guy who had made a post instigating people to do so i never got any official word that this was the case of course but by this point i had lots of friends in the community and i heard some stuff through the grapevine they singled me out as the guy who had led the campaign against youtube rewind and i don't think it's overtly paranoid for me to say that for the next year or so on the website i definitely felt like a target i definitely felt like youtube was putting the screws to me there would be times when i'd upload a video and there'd be absolutely nothing wrong with it and it would still get demonetized you could show that video to a hundred people and none of them would find anything objectionable in it but i put it up and within a minute it would be demonetized you guys want to make it this difficult fine i'll play ball i'm not afraid to be a martyr i'll follow the rules i'll follow all the guidelines you need just to prove that you guys are screwing with me so this was actually the point in the channel where i started making my more professional looking series series that i intentionally designed to be a bit more polished and a bit more accessible for general audiences it was basically just me proving to youtube that i was capable of acting as professionally as anyone else and that all these problems they were giving me were simply out of their own prerogative and i swear to this day that for a while there something was definitely up my channel was definitely on some kind of list but you know by this point around the summer of 2018 i kind of been on my anti-youtube war path for a year and a half now and it was fun for a little bit to keep up this persona of mr rant but after a while you just start to run out of gas there's people have made very long and lucrative careers out of being the guy who complains about whatever topic and i don't have anything against it more power to them it's not easy to consistently succeed on youtube and if you can find a formula to do so then that's good for you but after being the [ __ ] complaint guy for so long i started to realize that i just can't keep this up forever it's just being angry and disgruntled all the time surprise surprise it wasn't making me happy i mean youtube at that point still wasn't getting any better so it's not like all these complaints were actually amounting to anything you know in the moment it feels real good to get all these people riled up based on something you say and to basically create this army of people to go out and raise hell but after a while it feels like you just run out of things to complain about and so i thought to myself instead of wasting all this time and effort and resources complaining about how much youtube sucks now wouldn't it be nice if instead you could just be a reason why youtube doesn't suck i think there comes a point in every youtuber's career where you've been around long enough to where you reach this inevitable question of what am i doing here what are we doing here i mean you can only get so many views and subscribers before it all starts to just fade away into meaningless numbers after a while the whole youtube experience that people think they're getting into just all becomes sort of peripheral just a bunch of statistics no more tangible than the electricity coming out of your computer screen and so that was kind of the point i was at in mid-2018 for the past five years or so i've been motivated by a variety of different factors it felt like over that whole period i had been making videos for someone else whether i was trying too hard to please the audience or trying too hard to prove a point to them i was all of a sudden asking myself what i wanted and what i wanted to get out of making videos from that point on i pretty much just put my head down and started working on what i thought were good videos i started turning up the work and the research and the editing to make my stuff something that i could be proud of i think the real turning point for me was the leafy video and this was the first time i can remember where i basically just buckled down for an entire month where i just worked my ass off to create this good product it ended up being quite successful i got a lot of attention and views and subscribers for it but the one thing about that video that i found really encouraging was that it felt like the first time i'd used my power on youtube constructively where i'd presented a project so engaging that a lot of people who watched it ended up changing their mind about something that they thought they knew very well it's often difficult on youtube to tell whether you're actually good and talented at something or whether your success is just a circumstance of hype and bandwagoning off the latest trend and with the leafy video people were definitely impressed i could tell that my success was no fluke i'd put out a good product and now it was time to use my abilities to make more videos like it so during the whole time i was making rant videos complaining about how much things sucked there was sort of this opposite voice welling up in me wanting to take the opposite approach where instead of spending all this time shaming mediocrity i create a series where i celebrate greatness i mean after all greatness is a lot more special than mediocrity and part of me for a while felt like it was worth talking about it so this idea about celebrating excellence eventually turned into my most successful video series to date never ever [Music] it's hard to believe that i've only made six episodes so far because its impact has felt much more significant than that i don't think i originally envisioned the series to be like that but it ended up becoming quite special and that was simply a product of each episode subject being special to me i ended up going the extra mile to make sure that these topics were treated with the care and respect that they deserved i was very fortunate that never ever succeeded in the way that it did because it helped transform my channel from this place of rage and negativity into something that was a lot more positive and a lot more pleasant it definitely inspired a turn for my videos to become a whole lot less cynical and better i mean you could say whatever you want about these videos but you have to admit that they have heart and sometimes on youtube that's all people are looking for a lot of people out there they don't have it so good and a lot of them come to youtube wanting really hard to feel something and uh i'm glad that my videos have been able to provide that service to so many so by the end of 2019 i graduated from college and i had a pretty big decision to make leading up to it you would have never guessed that i would have picked youtube but i did i remember looking at my videos and my body of work over the last year and for the first time in my whole career i was actually impressed with myself and by this point my channel was growing again i had successfully recovered a new audience that were excited and eager to engage with what i was going to put out next i felt like i was earning a level of respect that i didn't even come close to getting back when i made youtube poops downward spiral i'm gonna dig straight to hell gamers and i think that's what ultimately ended up convincing me to take the leap of faith and actually pursue youtube full-time it's like at long last after spending so much time making these videos i'm finally at a place where i feel like i belong and that the people around me and the people who watch me believe in me and i think that was enough to finally make me believe in myself didn't you and i have a podcast around this time too wait what oh that uh let's just say that there are certain things i'd prefer to leave in the past you know for the longest time i had been treating my youtube career like i had nothing to lose and that was honestly how i felt for years because i died the youtube death people weren't supposed to come back from losing 99 of their audience for most youtubers that's supposed to be the nail in the coffin it's basically just the internet telling you to pack up your things and leave and most people when they find themselves in that situation they do they up and leave i didn't though it was like i had been fired and just kept showing up to the office pretty much everything that came out of my channel after that point was just supposed to be gravy it wasn't really supposed to amount to what it did during that time period shortly after the downward spiral i acted brazen for sure i acted like someone who probably wouldn't have their career much longer because back then i certainly felt like i didn't need youtube and that they didn't need me well what a difference a few years can make my relationship with youtube certainly changed all of a sudden i leveraged a lot on my youtube success and i could no longer afford to treat it as flippantly as i once was i was no longer in a position where i could just throw caution at the wind and make whatever video and upload whatever trash and and hold the audience in such contempt as i once had there are a lot more stakes now and for the first time ever i really needed the channel to succeed and these high stakes all of a sudden became very apparent just a couple of months after i decided to do youtube full-time of course in the spring of 2020 coven hit everything and shut everything down people in the conventional job market got screwed they basically got laid off with no means of income for the foreseeable future all of a sudden the stable real job that everyone told me would be a sure thing and told me it would be foolish to give up to chase some pipe dream of making youtube videos for a living all of a sudden that didn't look like such a good option i don't hold it against people for warning me that it was foolish to pursue youtube because it was at the time every single indicator showed that it was a foolish decision but i just look back at that decision in absolute awe at how things worked out in how so quickly the sure thing white collar cubicle job just became toxic it felt like being on one of the last life rafts off of the titanic it's definitely a strange feeling to get what seems like a lot of breaks in the way that i have sometimes it feels like i'm falling into protagonist syndrome with just how fortunate things ended up where it's almost like i have this plot armor around me that insists the show must go on i think back to all those times when i thought about quitting youtube entirely and there were many of them and now i'm probably just going to be doing this and making these videos until i physically cannot anymore that's not to say it's been entirely smooth sailing because it hasn't there were certainly a lot of demons from the past that continued to haunt me behind the meme you know after i made that video about him things didn't really work out for the guy you want to talk about the downward spiral well probably hit a little too close to home for him you know there are a lot of other youtubers back then who also made videos [ __ ] on the guy many of whom were way more popular than i was at the time but no historically i'm gonna go down as the guy who basically bullied behind the meme into retirement yeah it might not be exactly fair to see it that way but i guess it goes to show out of all those videos made about him mine was certainly the most persuasive it seemed like it took a while for my channel to get back in good standing with youtube after the whole tank the rewind thing of course it probably helped my case that one year after i instigated that whole movement youtube released the 2018 rewind that went on to become the most disliked video in youtube history i think that kind of uh took a bit of the heat off of me to sort of show that maybe it was more of a youtube problem than an emplemon problem that the rewind got disliked and i think whatever bad blood they had for me they kind of had to excuse it after that you know after enough time it passed the demonetization that was once terrorizing pretty much everything i made it died down for the past two years pretty much i haven't had a problem with it i think by far though the most punishing sins that continued to follow me around was of course the old youtube poops by the end of 2017 i'd pretty much stopped making them entirely there wasn't really a big goodbye or anything like that i just sort of made them until i no longer cared to do so but even though i had pretty clearly left and moved on to greener pastures i was still getting my fair share of drama and controversy from that scene it was just like a bunch of ghouls who would just not forgive me for how i exited that community and after a while i got sick of it and just called them all out on it i made it known that i left for a reason and a lot of these people that just continued bitching for years after i left they definitely had their hand to play in it and it sucks it sucks that i left on such bad terms but there's certain things you encounter in your life that are just toxic and it's up to you to remove them and move on to a better place i think the saddest part of all of it was the youtube poops themselves i had moved on from that time period for sure but it still represented a significant part of my personal history i mean it's not something you could just throw away and erase those memories of spending all those hours making those videos they're going to be around as long as i'm around you know for as much animosity as i had leaving that community it still very much shaped the creator that i would eventually become i'm not one to try to delete videos and obfuscate the past no matter how unsavory it might be many other youtubers in my position would have deleted them off their channel a while ago but i wanted to keep them up they were an essential part of my history that represented pretty much half of the time that i spent making content on this website most of my new viewers they don't care they're obviously here to watch the new stuff but for anyone who did and was curious and how i got to where i got they were there for them and i tried i really tried to keep them up for as long as i could but eventually they put me into a position where their existence on my channel became untenable i always got the suspicion that youtube and their internal systems didn't like that i had all these radically different videos on my channel for my entire career i had seen my catalog of youtube poops slowly but surely decay away and become no longer viewable to the public i really tried to keep them up for as long as i could to preserve the memory but in june of last year one of those videos put me in just such a bad situation that i couldn't justify keeping them up on the channel anymore it was somewhat fitting that the big problem came from the original green simpsons video the video that arguably started the downward spiral to begin with basically youtube flagged that video for terrorist activity and i didn't know it at the time but when you get a strike of that nature youtube strips your entire channel of monetization so within one instant after getting one strike i was making zero dollars off of any of my videos had it happened earlier in my career i just would have had no way out and i would have been forced to quit right there thankfully i've reached a position in the youtube community where i know enough people who know people at youtube and they can actually go in and manually get it resolved after 48 hours i had my monetization restored and the biggest scare i had ever had on this channel was averted but in those two days where i had my primary source of revenue stripped i felt horrible i felt downright depressed i was at a point where i couldn't imagine myself doing anything else than making youtube videos if that would have been the end of my career i don't know what i would have done anything else i would have done with my life i would have just been a ghost my heart wouldn't be in it it's excruciating it was an excruciating position to be in and it was only possible because of these youtube videos that were continuing to just cause me problems and so i sat on the idea for about a month and eventually i went through with it where i went through and privated every single youtube poop on my channel well not every single one i left my very first youtube poop up just as sort of a totem to show people that this is where it all began but everything else was pretty much gone that whole part of my history erased it it was tough i felt real bad about it but you know when i made the announcement that i was getting rid of them something very funny happened where all the old emperor lemon fans started to come out of the woodwork telling me how much they loved the videos how they were so sad to see them go i really wish they could have been around when i actually needed to hear that you know back then choosing to leave youtube poop in the first place i certainly didn't feel appreciated part of me wishes i had known then that these stupid videos actually did matter to a lot of people but you know it had to be done there was really no other way for me to constantly continue with this channel that i financially depend on and jeopardize it in the way that these videos were i came to view it as basically 50 ticking time bombs where it's only a matter of time before any one of them could cause catastrophic issues in the future i had to do it i had to close that chapter of my career forever and then once the deed was done the funniest thing happened the next video i uploaded got on the trending tab i always considered myself on the side of the platform that youtube never wanted to acknowledge and yet here it was my video on trending the ultimate trophy case of youtube favoritism to me it was almost like a sign that after i'd sacrificed something so near and dear to me youtube had finally relented and gave me the green light and ever since then my videos have been performing better than at any point in the history of my career i don't know if i believe in destiny but with how this youtube thing worked out it's really made me considerate so what does it mean that mplemon reached a million subscribers something that realistically in all likelihood should have never happened in a million years but here we are i reached the proverbial youtube mountaintop the lifetime achievement award for a career well spent 12 years of trying 12 years of frustration but i made it i made it to the point that every youtuber wants to reach when they first open up their account it shouldn't have been possible based on the types of videos i made and how i presented myself and all the times i wanted to give up it shouldn't have happened i'm not usually one to look at my subscriber numbers but when the day came i tuned in seeing that number cross over to a million it's something you only get to experience once in a lifetime and so when the moment finally came i just sort of sat there in front of my computer monitor in stunned silence i felt like i just crossed over into a new reality that i didn't imagine was possible i mean i thought i was capable of getting pretty far in youtube but not this far i always imagined that something would have come up and stopped me before i got the chance to experience that moment but there it was i reached the million people can say what they want about me but that's something that they can never take away it's a big milestone possibly the biggest that any youtuber can experience i don't anticipate any other subscriber number being as impactful as seeing those digits cross over into seven figures for the first time it was like when i reached a million the credits of youtube start rolling you've pretty much beaten the game once you've reached that level of success you've made it to the big leagues and uh i wasn't really sure at the time if i was ready to take that step yeah at the end of the day it's just a number nothing in reality tangibly changed from either side of that moment but i'll tell you what i certainly felt different i felt like suddenly a huge weight and a huge pressure had been lifted almost like that chip on my shoulder i had for so many years had finally run out of steam you know i've always been someone who's been motivated by the chase and not so much the trophy it was hard work getting to a million 12 years of my life as of that moment i think i actually spent a majority of my life making youtube videos but you know throughout the whole story i kind of felt this force pulling me along because it was difficult because a guy like me wasn't supposed to make it and throughout my whole career i've always kind of made it my mission to prove people wrong you know finally reaching a million after all this time it was really validating for sure but i feel like i also lost a bit of the mojo that carried me to this point in the first place i think thus far i've definitely been in a different mindset coming out of it and i'm just gonna have to wait and see how that turns out and that pretty much brings us to today so i guess that's the story of my youtube channel you know there may be many others like it but this one is mine it he seriously just fall asleep uh who am i kidding it's the best he's been at therapy in years oh sorry for dozing off there the story was just kind of dragging on a bit oh come on rusty this is supposed to be a special moment don't you feel special i mean after all i don't exactly do this kind of stuff every day so is that it is the downward spiral finally over you know what i don't know about that you know for the past six years ever since i stopped making youtube poops i've been telling myself that i've been on a downward spiral but now that i've passed a million can i even still say that anymore now that my career has finally reached the point where i passed that magic number has the downward spiral ceased to exist you know have i finally come out of it where i no longer have the grounds to complain about how i've been treated on youtube because for the last couple years i'd say i've been treated pretty well and for part of me it's hard to admit that you know based on my experiences on youtube and just how close i was at so many points to the edge of control i'm of the philosophy that it can all just go away in an instant and what's strange to think about is that how i feel now is oddly similar to how i felt back in 2014 when everything seemed like it was going so well you know going through the downward spiral back at 100k i ended up surviving yeah but it wasn't without its consequences it took a toll on me for sure and i look at my channel now versus then and it's ten times bigger if you ask me that's ten times farther to fall it's a fall that's daunting enough where i'm not quite sure if i could survive this time around and so i think i'll always have that fear in the back of my head that the downward spiral is not yet finished and that i haven't seen the worst of it but hey at the end of the day that's the burden i carry it ain't easy being green [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 1,197,509

Keywords: EmpLemon, Downward Spiral

Id: polObRCwKP8

Length: 99min 32sec (5972 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2022