I’ve been at the content creation game for a while now, since the mid-2000’s, but in earnest since 2010 officially. I’ve seen both sides of the YouTube content creation cycle, had some limited success, but all in all have settled into creating for my own enjoyment. So take the following advice for what you will…
Being a Dick on YouTube is a great way to make money, at least in the short term. You could follow in the footsteps of critical content creators like The Critical Drinker and The Quartering, draw in views from angry little toads, and if you sell the Hate well enough, make a nice pile of cash in the end… At least for a while, anyway.
Eventually the angry little dickheads will tire of your schtick, or find a new scumbag to watch, and your views will wither away. So normally, I’d say that following this path is a bad idea, at least for long-term success on the platform.
When I started out with dedicated video podcasts and such on YouTube back in 2010, I was doing positive-focused content on “Lord of the Rings Online” and other MMORPGs. This garnered me a small but dedicated subscriber base (clearly on a different, no defunct channel… but we’ll get to that), which was fine. But then I started covering a lot of “World of Warcraft” news, and let my frustration with that game get to me, and… well, things went a bit sideways.
I ended up switching my whole channel over to a new persona, “The MMO Troll”, and I went from positive coverage of these games to more sarcastic and negative coverage. Usually with the intent to point out problems with development or community management, but I’m sure a lot of that sarcasm was missed by the viewership at large.
My subscribers boomed for a while, I got monetized by YouTube even, but in the end it was a net loss for my career on the platform. I lost access to the companies making these games. I stopped getting early access to betas and so forth. In short, I got cut out, and to be frank… rightly so.
I was being a Dick for views, and it was a bad choice on my part. Even if Blizzard and Turbine had earned some of the negative coverage they were receiving from me at the time (no seriously, they deserved it), I should have handled things better.
I should have risen above it.
Now here I am, on a ten year old channel that has almost no subscribers. I could have tried to rebrand my even-older channel, but while it has a bit more legacy subs, they aren’t the sort who’d want to watch positive game coverage. But in the end, I don’t really care. The folks who do find my videos are more likely to subscribe, so they can find future videos of mine. I’m not monetized (and likely never will be again), so I make videos for my own enjoyment, and if others like them, that’s great.
How is this proof that my theory is correct, then? Look at the tabletop roleplaying game channels. Which ones are the ones getting the most viewership? Almost every single one of them are posting positive, or at least mostly-positive videos about TTRPGs. I also can’t think of a single one of them that are Dicks. Yes, there are some Dicks in the TTRPG YouTube community, and some that are doing quite well for themselves, but who is having the better career: Ginny D or Jon Del Arroz?
I think what really matters is being genuine, and true to oneself. I mean, if you’re naturally a Dick, well by all means, bring that attitude to your YouTube channel. Be amongst your people. But for most folk, who actually have some semblance of empathy and goodwill towards others, trying to pretend to be a hateful little toad is not a good choice. Stick to being positive unless it is absolutely necessary that you post something critical, and go from there.
You may not find immediate success, but in the long run, you have a better chance of building a lasting subscriber base if you are positive and true to oneself.