Don't blame capitalism for your failure on youtube / failure as a creative artist.

it's easy to think about encouragement
as an entirely positive force in society in our personal private and even political lives you may know people you may have friends and family who suffered their whole lives due to lack of encouragement you may have friends and family who say when they reflect back on their own lives if only someone had encouraged me then I could have pursued my passions or I would have devoted myself more to this art form or this creative project or this hobby or even just a different job or career path or they would have enrolled in something else in college that would have gone gone back to school and taking new college courses and started your career if only someone had encouraged them but already in this positive assessment of encouragement we start to get a sense of the danger that's hidden within this phenomenon right have you ever had a friend who was really devoted to doing stand-up comedy and you know they have friends and family encouraging them saying oh yeah you're hilarious you should do it and they're putting all their time and energy and all their hard work into trying to get a career as a comedian going and the reality is they're terrible at stand-up comedy they may be terrible just for objectively real obvious reasons that anyone and everyone could agree with or it may be that they have a sense of humor that incredibly few people share not even 1% of people it's one in a million people share their sense of humor but here on YouTube they're on Instagram on Twitter maybe they have just a few dozen followers who really share their sense of humor maybe they're just a few dozen people writing in to them saying you're hilarious stick with this do it maybe they're getting that encouragement over the internet even though every time they go to do a stand-up comedy night at a live Club right let before a live audience in the city they're living in reaction is terrible nobody laughs and think about the mindset people get into this is especially common with left-wing people and I live my life surrounded by people love love you love the left-wing I love it I'm vegan everyone I know is left-wing everyone's further to the left than I am all right you know imagine the kind of excuses people make oh well on the Internet these people encouraged me they appreciate my sense of humor but um you know in this small town these people are they're just not sophisticated enough to presume it you know the problem is just people in this city the problem is just people at this particular comedy club or even problem is just this capitalist system left-wing is heavy well it's heavy on that right where people want to ignore the judgment of the free market people want to ignore Commerce and what that really means what the implications are even for your comedy career just like oh well you know Hollywood these people are just obsessed with money just capitalism it's just the free market no man they don't they don't appreciate my art they appreciate my sense of humor comedy right people really cultivate this mentality they commit to it and they live that lie right they build up their own sense of superiority over the judge for the audience and no no homie no if you're a comedian you have to love the audience that's what you have to live for right you have to be motivated by making those people laugh you have to bring your sense of humor down to their level you have to make your joke work in a way they can understand it's all about that you have to be more commercial than Hollywood you have to be more motivated by money by carrying it with the audience that's the audience you're gonna cater to and pursue and so on right all right that's comedy as an example it's even easier to understand what I'm talking about here the dangers of encouragement with you know something like modeling being a being an actor you know what if you have a friend and they're trying to do modeling and they may even be paying a lot of money for that you know to try anything you know they just don't have that pretty of faith and maybe they're putting a huge amount of effort into getting in shape at the gym but they never really get in that great shape and it's like you know maybe modeling isn't for you or maybe you should have other priorities in your life so that at least this this fantasy you have a model is a lower priority and isn't dominating and destroying your life if those same people may turn around and say to you in anger why didn't you encourage me why don't you just tell me I'm beautiful why don't you just tell me I'm talented right and again that that person may have an Instagram where every day people are telling you know you could be a young woman every day people are telling her how beautiful she is they're people trying to sleep with her or whatever that's like well yeah okay you're to that guy you're beautiful or you're beautiful enough for some random strangers in the Internet to try to hook up with you right doesn't mean you get to have a modeling career wait look life is unfair the modeling industry especially unfair okay this is not a meritocracy modeling no this is based on merit or strength of character or hard work okay randomly some people are born with facial features and a body type that makes money of modeling and most of us are not and and if you don't have it you can't fake it so this is even more extreme than talking about comedy okay I've made videos in the past that reflect you know in many ways I'm a left-wing person like you know for gay rights and veganism and ecology and many I have a lot of things in common with the left-wing I have a lot of things to come with Bernie Sanders but there are some ways in which my values my political program are more conservative or more stereotypical of a conservative person and that includes that I'm really willing to take seriously the judgment of the free market I don't just discount and discard and disregard the whole world of Commerce as if it's meaningless well I didn't think I was going to mention this through when I was a kid when I was a young teenager maybe 15 16 I read a book on the theory and philosophy of art I could name the book and I choose not to and the author of that book put forward the idea that art by definition his definition of art this author art was precisely what you didn't do motivated by money so his rationale was this you know you can see a beautiful poster advertising soap you know and the poster they may have paid an artist team of artists may be incredibly well painted maybe incredibly beautiful but but that's not art from his perspective that's just illustration there are paid illustrator doing an illustration for an advertisement whereas a painter who paints a picture that's not motivated by money yes whatever the guy I remember the guy said look it doesn't matter what his artistic vision is doesn't matter if it's political or personal like he may just be painting a picture of a beautiful woman because that to him is what's beautiful he wants to paint that or whatever whatever his motivations are that the theory in this this book the philosophy was art begins his view precisely where the commercial instinct ends its precise of what you're not doing for money and I really thought about that when I was a teenager and I think I found that convincing at like 15 60 but then when I was more mature I realized no that's a hundred percent wrong and that's really a kind of insidious form of left-wing propaganda or the struggle of the artist is precisely in understanding and profoundly accepting that art is what you do for an audience you know art is what you do indeed to earn money for money in as much as you are a professional artist that's exactly when it's not a hobby anymore right when you commit to make star wars right yes it's an art form it's not an art form despite the profit motive it's an art form precisely because the production of art is for an audience it's for reaching a large audience okay so you have to have the compatibility of Commerce and the creative arts to really understand either one you know and you have to have this really profound appreciation for the judgement the free market for the audience and so on and so forth does does this mean that there has never been a great movie that failed to find its audience or that there's there's never you know there's never been a great work of art where the audience never happened to find it of course not not right but again my view of the world begins with taking that relationship between the creative artist in the audience much more seriously than a stereotypical left-wing person because it's so easy for them to get into just demonizing capitalism and the free market proceeding from the assumption that art shouldn't be about earning money at all that art shouldn't be about catering to the audience reaching out to the audience at all right so look somebody wrote in to me saying that he feels he he feels I shouldn't be making youtube videos on popular topics or now I shouldn't be making videos arguing about video game addiction arguing against video game addiction he feels I shouldn't be making videos arguing about anisia and other YouTube personalities and drama and so on these are of course my most popular videos he's talking about he thinks I should put all that away and he really feels it's important and meaningful for me to just be making videos about American politics and European politics now he says a bunch of flattering things he says encouraging things right but it's in precisely this sense that he's wrong right just look at my channel my channel got in the last 90 days 200,000 views 200,000 views in last 90 days and the average viewer watched three videos on my channel that's the more flattering statistic right people come to my channel and they watch my videos not despite the popular videos you mentioned because of them right I mean like let's let's face facts here guys look at the front page in my youtube channel people are actually coming to my channel to hear me call vegan gains an idiot to hear me call an insane an idiot to hear me call Jordan Peterson an idiot I think that would fall into the category of things this guy is talking about right and then some of those people will listen to me talk about the politics of China or the politics the United States and the Poulter's Europe some of them will get a little bit interested in my perspective on politics or other things right but my videos about politics or the least popular videos in my channel my videos about Bernie Sanders and a Sagan I would vote for Bernie Sanders if I'm not American but if I were I'd vote for reasons however I'm a critic of Bernie Sanders I have a new onset of critiques of where he's wrong where he's dishonest where he's inaccurate or you know okay I'm not an uncritical supporter of Bernie Sanders but I would vote for the guy who especially given the current alternatives um no those are my least popular videos there's no audience right when people offer you encouragement don't be encouraged think analytically think sympathetically sympathy is an analytical tool sympathize with the audience all right people don't want to hear what I have disabled politics or if they do want to hear what I've disabled politics it's only because they already have some connection to my personality they have some respect for me because they've heard me talk about veganism or in some cases because they heard the videos I did on Game of Thrones that was a mainstream TV TV show a couple years ago there were a bunch of people who heard what I said about Game of Thrones and then they got interested in hearing what I said about politics and other topics right that's the reality of what's going on here you okay but you have to take seriously the judgment of the free market and adjust your motivations accordingly okay it's just not true that I'm someone who's hilarious but you know I'm performing at one stand-up comedy club where the audience doesn't find me funny okay I have a very very peculiar sense of humor that a very very small percentage of people you know react to positively I'm somebody who has you know a view of an analytical view of politics that a very small number of people appreciate and that positively influences the lives that very small number of people okay but don't get it twisted what this person is saying to me that I should devote my time to he is a hundred and eighty degrees wrong it's encouragement people need encouragement people crave encouragement even for things like studying Chinese as a which even for things like vegan activism I understand that all right there's a deep human need for encouragement and some people need it from their parents and some people need it from their their colleagues their classmates their contemporaries some people need it from an audience or what-have-you but in the 21st century with the profound reorganization of the relationship between performer and audience creative person and audience okay whatever kind of performance you're in whatever kind of authorship you're in as never before there's a kind of onus on me to refuse to be encouraged just because one person in a million on YouTube or one person a million on Instagram or Facebook sees my political content and thinks wow this is really valuable this is what you should devote your time to know if the videos I were making about politics were valuable then I would be making money doing them take that seriously the commercial failure of those videos the fact that it is not worth $100 a month for me to upload YouTube videos about politics that is a kind of judgement from the audience that is a kind of judgment from the free market that people are very well-rehearsed in rationalizing and dismissing but that I am saying to you now you and I both should learn to take very seriously