So, you're starting a youtube channel? (Politics, philosophy, personal life, etc.)
09 January 2017 [link youtube]
Advice Nobody Wants to Hear [Ep. 006] Episode Six.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so you've decided to start a YouTube
channel I'm gonna make a video giving you a few words of advice about why you might or might not want to start a YouTube channel really about the strategic considerations you should have in what kind of videos you make if you aspire to one day have an audience of say 1000 people who tuned in regularly to hear what you have to say I have there are all kinds of people have respected in my life university professors authors artists intellectuals all kinds of creative people and if they came on the internet and gave a lecture about political philosophy especially if it's a book review about a book nobody's ever heard of they could never get a thousand people to show up and hear that lecture they could never get a thousand people to watch that video I have one old friend who's a university professor Jenny Jenny if you're watching this I dare you you try to make a video about philosophy or political philosophy and try to get a thousand views it's not that easy okay but there's some advice I can give you as someone who's a medium sized broadcaster in a very small category in a very small pond and you know again truth be told just today I was talking to two different channels talking to Jay costley it was talking a vegan mojo guys who've worked very hard and you still get 200 viewers on a video I'm always talking to mod vegan a lot of respect for her content she worked so hard she maybe gets 200 or 300 viewers on a video so again having the audio having a regular audience the size of my audience it is in a way an accomplishment and there are some kind of strategic considerations for you for you to consider one first off the bat if you want to talk about something meaningful whatever it is it may not be politics it may not be philosophy it may not be veganism ecology or animal rights you have to answer questions that your audience is already asking and they can be asking those questions for any reason so you know for me in this little demi-monde of aspiring vegan activists on the internet if there is a scandal if there is a particular question in the headlines and the news that people are talking about I can choose to take that scandal as an opportunity to talk about any political issue any philosophical issue any strategic issue but then people will come and watch that channel because they were already thinking about that that they were already asking themselves that question so right now a relatively small news story you know the leader of one vegan group called direct action everywhere he is actually facing legal charges he's facing legal consequences because he and some other vegans broke into a factory farm broke into a farm racing turkeys and they squirt unquote liberated some of the turkeys now you don't have to be a genius to figure out it doesn't matter if you used the word Liberator or not that's theft you can talk about liberating cows you're still a cattle wrestler you know you're still stealing cows so they're very obviously and they videotaped themselves doing this and share the videotape on the Internet well guess what that's breaking and entering and theft and it could be the end of his career so he can activists and we can joke around about it but Real Talk actions have consequences okay so a controversy like that I can come on camera and if other people know about it they've read about at the newspaper they've read they're thinking about it because it's a big issue within veganism that can be an opportunity for me to talk about any philosophical or political perspective I have to share I mean you could literally take a controversy like that and say look you know what's really important about this is something I learned when I was studying Aristotle in university when I was studying Plato and Socrates you name it you can you can take that in any direction you can make it as deep and meaningful and philosophical as you want to you can take it in an historical direction you can talk about events from history 500 years ago and they're somehow relevant to and important to this question of obeying the law you're engaged in political activism or democracy and due process and respect for the rule of law whatever the reason is um and you could also take it in a deeply personal direction you could say to people look this is a controversy within veganism today I'm gonna tell you about some that happened to me when I was in high school I'm gonna tell you what sign out of me and university and this changed the way I view activism or the way I view animal rights or the way I view turkeys on a farm whatever it is but if you are trying to reach a larger audience fundamentally you cannot just come on camera and make videos answering your own questions speaking to your own interests you have to be answering questions that the audience is already asking and some people do that in a really shallow and catty way and some people accuse me of doing it in a show and kind of way so there's always controversy with someone like a natural vegan I just had a video a few days ago really talking about the philosophy of Peter Singer and the implications the long-term implications of the popularity of Peter Singer and utilitarianism for veganism and social movement okay if I had just made that video if I had made a book review of Peter Singer one of his books on animal rights activism political philosophy it would have reached a very small number of people and even the people it did reach because I have regular viewers they'd start the video saying huh why why do I want to hear about this what does this have to do with my life even if they've already vegan even if they already know me you have to overcome a kind of obstacle because they're not already asking themselves that question but there was a controversy with unnatural vegan making excuses for another youtuber Kristina who's been wearing leather a natural vegan said that she thinks wearing leather shoes is not such a big deal and I did not respond in a shallow and Cadi way I didn't come on and say hey you're an idiot for making excuses of this I came on and said look the real issue here the real philosophical political issue is the legacy of Peter Singer the legacy of utilitarianism within veganism this is where I want to take it so I did talk about the controversy of the day talked about the politics of the moment but I'm also talking about the politics of the millennium I'm talking about issues that go back decades and that matter for centuries but fundamentally people started watching that video because they were already interested in hearing to answer that question they're already interested nearing what is the deal with unnatural vegan and her welfarist attitudes for her excuses for people drinking milk and people eating chicken eggs and in this case people wearing leather what is they're already asking themselves that question in some sense and when they come to my channel they're not getting the answer they expect but they're getting an interesting and provocative answer to a question they're already asking some they're already engaged with so that's that's the basic way you have to approach making youtube videos there already has to be something that raises the stakes for your viewers that creates their their interest and of course I say this partly because I'm tempted myself not to do this I'm tempted to just pick up a book of philosophy and talk about that book of philosophy whether that's a book review or a critique I'm tempted to just take an issue in the history of political science political thought and say hey on this video I'm gonna talk about this profound issue uh but the problem is again and I really appreciate the people who do show up when I give a book review if I do a book review why am i doing the book review because I am interested in the book because the book matters because the book is important in some abstract sense for YouTube that's not good enough I can't be in the position of explaining to my audience why this book is important why it's interesting why this philosophical issue is important or why it's interesting why this political issue is important in why it's interesting my audience has to come to that video already knowing why this is important or interesting they have to be already asking that question okay that's the challenge you have as a small youtuber making specialized content that's meaningful but content that will an audience and content where your audience will find you so again I'm not perfect I just did this book review a few days ago I'm gonna do another book review a few days from now I've been reading some I I think actually there's a lot of and and for me the tension there is I also want to make videos that will be important for my own daughter to see one day in the future I have a daughter that's three years old she's not reading political philosophy right now maybe one day and I want to make videos that in a sense tell my daughter Who I am and that maybe would be interesting or useful for her and shaping her view of the world when she's thinking about these issues herself in the future okay but that's a bias if what I cared about was reaching a huge audience obviously you know I would make more videos just about Game of Thrones just about A Song of Ice and Fire my first video on a song of ice and fire reached 10,000 viewers in only a couple of days that a song about fire is a series of fictional books obviously I could have jumped on that built that audience focused all my energy on a much more profitable category a much bigger pond of viewers in the internet than talking about vegan politics or political philosopher anything else okay this brings me this is a natural segue to my next topic if you look at what is already on the internet it's very it's very deceptive it's easy to see gaps in the content that's already being created the size of the gap does not correspond in any way to the size of the audience so you know give an example when I first came on YouTube I did not want this channel to be about veganism I didn't want that to be the primary thing I talked about or the only thing I talked about it still is it channels about me it's about my life veganism as a big part of my life but I was just starting a new university degree I already have one degree in political science I was starting a new universe degree in Asian Studies basically politics of Asia I thought I'd have a lot of videos here about the politics of Asia I thought I'd have other people coming on my channel and coming on my podcast and talking to me about politics in Asia now ask you so real quick globally worldwide are there more people interested in veganism or more people interested in the politics of Asia there are more people interested in the politics of Asia not ten to one not a hundred to one but in the thousand to one there are thousand millions of people who speak English who want to watch videos or read newspaper articles or buy magazines talking about the politics of Asia if you go to youtube a lot of people notice you do this search bar on YouTube search for the word vegan and then there's a little click down menu it's a little bit it's a little bit confusing and it's almost invisible you can click down and set a menu option to just search for today now in this context today means so if you search vegan and then you click vegan plus today you get a list of videos with the word vegan in the title uploaded within 24 hours to YouTube and it's amazing day after day you're getting hundreds of new videos being uploaded to YouTube just about veganism a lot of them are crap a lot of them are some of them are just about food diet weight loss not necessarily crap it is not interesting to me some of them are just vacation videos first to the beach whatever lifestyle videos a few will be political protests but there are hundreds of videos already going up every day not every way every day so if you look at that strategically you think why would I start a channel where one the size of the audience is tiny the total number of people come in the internet who want to hear about veganism is tiny and - it's already crowded there are already so many people competing with me in some cases people making exactly the same video as me like in some cases it's you know I make a video calling I make a video title why I became vegan thousands of people have already made that video even if I might want to make a video about the ethics of wearing leather thousands of people have already made that video right but this is counterintuitive now if you go to youtube and you do the same search for politics in Asia Asian politics you can do a bunch of searches of this and then you add that same criterion politics in Asia today there is nothing there is nothing you'll get a couple of channels in India that are not in English uploading news clips I used to know one guy who had a channel it was just one guy working along this channel doing some discussion of both of Asia he I think he was based in Hong Kong it's empty the field is empty and the market is huge but let me tell you something from personal experience again you can't just look at the number of results you have to look at the quality of results if it's people just uploading something they literally record it off of TV you know they recorded a clip from CNN you know this is not this is not original content YouTube but I promise you I have really spent a lot of time searching for that and there's nothing so there's a huge gap there the size of the gap tells you nothing about the size of the audience you can reach and I have experience making videos about politics in Asia and not just uploading those videos to YouTube but even sharing those videos on discussion forums you know internet websites that are just for politics of Asia and the interest is nil the interest is almost zero where I have a carefully researched factual informative video and about current events about something going on now that's controversial and interesting and it's a big deal and influences millions of people's lives it's a long time ago on this channel and you reach an audience of like 50 people and the 50 people aren't even interested and don't care right so this is completely counterintuitive we have an old-fashioned saying in English if you want something to get done give it to somebody who's already busy by the same token you can say if you want to be in a lively area of YouTube if you want to be broadcasting and have a really engaged you've got to move into a segment that's already crowded and that's true but veganism veganism is tiny and already crowded and yet I've had way more success to argument ISM than I ever could have had talking about politics of Asia counterintuitive but true and that's even true about a Song of Ice and Fire also known as Game of Thrones how hundreds of channels are already talking about Game of Thrones my first video ever about Game of Thrones reaches more than 10,000 viewers and fast if you want something done give it somebody busy somebody's already busy if you want a lot of action on a YouTube channel then you actually have to move into a category that's already busy and if you followed point 1 the first piece of advice of taking a controversy it's already going on taking questions people already asking but giving something really fresh and original and insightful whether it's from an historical angle getting deeper historically or deeper personally or deeper philosophically I think you you will reward the attention of your viewers and you will find an audience your audience will find you the people who respect and value that kind of content that you're creating last point here there have been a lot of warnings in this channel and there are a lot of warnings if you just look around [Music] basically about how micro Fame can destroy your life I I just watched a video this morning actually of a youtuber who got extorted an ex-girlfriend of his from seven years before an ex-girlfriend from when he was a teenager found out that he had a YouTube channel and she had some nude photographs of him from when they were together and she was actively extorting she wanted him to pay a $5,000 or he would she would post these naked pictures of her and this kind of thing and they naked pictures of the the two of them together you can look at a guy like the amazing atheist or a Nessie on there are a lot of car crash stories about how coming on YouTube most of these people make no money I make a trivial amount of money on the Internet but you can have all the disadvantages of Fame with none of the advantages there are people who get fired from their jobs there are people whose marriages fall apart or their life falls apart there are people who get ruined by this I think in a sense that's the easy side of it to understand yeah Fame goes to people's heads even when it's micro Fame even when it's really tiny and I'd point out to you like if you think Fame can't ruin your life when you have only two hundred fans if you have two hundred people wanting to talk to you every week two hundred messages on Twitter email Facebook all these combined I mean that's not a big fan base if you have two hundred people who want your time and attention who just want to chat with you in a week you may already feel famous two hundred people is enough to make people feel famous and to have these really strange psychological impacts on and the other point is even if you just have two hundred people like that you know knocking on your door metaphorically speaking people who want to chat with you on skype or by phone or meetup or hook up or whatever remember in a given week you're gonna be saying no to 199 of them right you're gonna be selecting within those 200 people who gets your time who gets your attention and that also is very unnatural for most people most like okay most people you get a new job at work you look around your co-workers and you ask yourself who can I be friends with here who can I tolerate out of my five coworkers who can I get along with and you make the best of it when you were a school kid in high school you were assigned to a new chemistry class you sit down there are 30 people in the class you're sitting next to five of them you look around and think who can I be friends with now you have hundreds of people maybe thousands of people who want to be your friend you want to get to know you yeah maybe people who want to sleep with you maybe people who send you nude photographs of themselves or whatever and whether or not you do it consciously you're choosing to exclude 90% of them or 99% of them so that alone is a really distorting elements of micro fame even if it's just 200 people who are gathered around you and at all ages that can have a really strange impact in people's lives with about 20 years old or 50 years old whether they're teenagers or in retirement however everything in that category of considerations I think I think just watching this video now if you just sit down and think about it think about it while you're doing the laundry you can pretty clearly anticipate how that's going to influence you how that's going to be a problem and in some ways how it's going to be a positive thing most of us especially that veganism why are we online in the first place because we want more friends in real life we want to be involved in real political activism we want to have colleagues we want to know other vegans so many vegans on the Internet live in a town or live in a city where they don't have even one vegan friend so you know making friends is a huge part of why we're online to begin with yeah I think you can sit down now after what I've already sent you in this video and you can think through okay if I do this YouTube channel how is this gonna influence me how is it gonna be an issue of my life when it's 200 people when it's 2,000 people if it becomes 20,000 people and you can think through the opposite how am I gonna feel if it goes up to 2,000 and then comes back down to 200 if it goes up to 20,000 and comes back down to 2,000 you can think that through and if you have a decent level of self-knowledge and self-discipline you can anticipate those problems you can be wise I think the vast majority of people with some basic level of self-awareness can think that through and can understand how they're gonna react what you can't anticipate is how suffering will change you suffering as such changes your character it changes who you are down to the core of your being and you cannot cannot know who you will become or how you will change after you go through a process of suffering suffering is qualitatively and quantitatively different when it is observed think about I mean some of you watching this would be quite young some of you'll be fully grown adults think about the worst trauma you've had in your entire life the most crushing devastating experience you've ever had maybe a death maybe you were the victim of a crime and now think about how different it would have been if you had been on YouTube what would happened in your past what if that had happened to you on YouTube or what if even if it wasn't filmed that the moment had happened what if just a couple hours after it happened you'd come on the internet and talked about your feelings what if there was an audience you were answering to in describing that trauma that suffering that terrible thing it's just that terrible period of your life you know maybe it's a subtle difference but it's profound maybe it's not gonna be that you go through the worst trauma in the world you know your parents died or you lose your job you have a period of unemployment you have a period when you're really unhappy and doing job applications I went through that on YouTube I you know just to give a parallelism which is a bit extreme in Canada we we had a case where a man a Canadian man went to Saudi Arabia and he was framed for a crime he didn't commit he had nothing to do with the crime and he was tortured formal torture this is not torturing out he was tortured by a professional torturer in a prison in you know in a torture chamber but he said what broke him was not the torture what broke him was when they brought in somebody else somebody he knew at work colleague and they had him watch they had him stand there silently and watched the other person being tortured and he knew that the other person would not have to be tortured if he confessed to the crime that broke him so he put up with a week or something a physical torture when it was just him suffering but when he was in the role of the observer and when he knew that the other person was being tortured for him then he had to make it stop he was broken immediately and he was ready to confess to a crime he had nothing to do with suffering transforms who you are the observation of suffering changes the nature of the suffering itself okay and you may not believe me you may not be able to imagine this but if you go through anything negative in your life it may be caused by YouTube it may be people harassing you or humiliating you on the Internet but it may it may have nothing to do with the Internet it may be that you have a trauma because you know your girlfriend is hit by a car I mean maybe anything I guarantee you if you are regularly uploading to YouTube at the moment it happens you're sitting there on the [ __ ] sidewalk next to the corpse of somebody you love watching the life go out of your eyes on some level you are thinking how am I going to explain this on YouTube the fact that your life is observed the fact that it will be observed the fact that there is an audience for whatever it is you're going through changes your experience even in the moment and then of course is gonna change everything after the fact when you come on the internet and talk about it and I really think that's something you most people cannot anticipate you can't anticipate how that's gonna change you I'll give you one other example from literature Tolstoy wrote a famous book called war and peace famous author Tolstoy has a scene with a duel men fighting a duel to the death with guns that was quite common during Tolstoy his life and Tolstoy was involved with some duels himself he was an author he was an intellectual but he didn't always believe in non-violence he got into something so at that time men would fight each other to death with guns over a point of Honor pretty regularly but I remember he gives this description of the duel and for me it really made me think about how cinema and television have changed the way we perceive reality and the way we describe reality because I was reading the description of this duel and I thought oh he's gonna describe the image of red blood on the white snow because it's Russia with in the winter with snow so that's what's coming we're gonna have the image of the shocking sight of red blood on white snow I'm Canadian if you're Canadian you've seen blood in the snow at some point I was just absolutely anticipating that as I read this it's it's such an obvious compelling image in terms of drawing out the you know the violence and brutality of this but know at the end of that scene in war and peace what it cuts to it describes the two men shooting each other and then there's the man who's the witness legally they had to have a witness to the duel you know the man who stand there he's the official witness he's witnessing the duel he's watching the man die and the only thing he can think about is how am I gonna explain this to his mother he knows this man he knows his mother he knows he's gonna have to go home and why they're writing a letter or going and meeting the woman he's gonna have to describe to this woman how her son died okay in a very real sense [Music] no matter how honest you are or no matter how artificial you are whether your approach to social media is highly theatrical or you are keeping it real as honest and raw and real as you possibly can suffering will change you the fact that other people are observing your suffering will change you and the awareness that you have to go and tell this story to somebody's mother you know you're a witness to your own life now you're a witness to your own tragedy your own triumphs - but it's not somebody's mother you've got to go tell the story - it's your audience and in a sense it's anybody's mother and everybody's mother because once it's on the internet in theory all your co-workers can see the video your ex-girlfriend from high school can see the video that's happened to me recently one of my first girlfriends from high school googled my name and watched all my videos she hadn't talked to me in 20 years all of a sudden she knows all this stuff from personally I don't mind I'm cool with that I think that's the side of the game that you can never fully understand until you go through it yourself and there's no way you can anticipate how it's going to change
channel I'm gonna make a video giving you a few words of advice about why you might or might not want to start a YouTube channel really about the strategic considerations you should have in what kind of videos you make if you aspire to one day have an audience of say 1000 people who tuned in regularly to hear what you have to say I have there are all kinds of people have respected in my life university professors authors artists intellectuals all kinds of creative people and if they came on the internet and gave a lecture about political philosophy especially if it's a book review about a book nobody's ever heard of they could never get a thousand people to show up and hear that lecture they could never get a thousand people to watch that video I have one old friend who's a university professor Jenny Jenny if you're watching this I dare you you try to make a video about philosophy or political philosophy and try to get a thousand views it's not that easy okay but there's some advice I can give you as someone who's a medium sized broadcaster in a very small category in a very small pond and you know again truth be told just today I was talking to two different channels talking to Jay costley it was talking a vegan mojo guys who've worked very hard and you still get 200 viewers on a video I'm always talking to mod vegan a lot of respect for her content she worked so hard she maybe gets 200 or 300 viewers on a video so again having the audio having a regular audience the size of my audience it is in a way an accomplishment and there are some kind of strategic considerations for you for you to consider one first off the bat if you want to talk about something meaningful whatever it is it may not be politics it may not be philosophy it may not be veganism ecology or animal rights you have to answer questions that your audience is already asking and they can be asking those questions for any reason so you know for me in this little demi-monde of aspiring vegan activists on the internet if there is a scandal if there is a particular question in the headlines and the news that people are talking about I can choose to take that scandal as an opportunity to talk about any political issue any philosophical issue any strategic issue but then people will come and watch that channel because they were already thinking about that that they were already asking themselves that question so right now a relatively small news story you know the leader of one vegan group called direct action everywhere he is actually facing legal charges he's facing legal consequences because he and some other vegans broke into a factory farm broke into a farm racing turkeys and they squirt unquote liberated some of the turkeys now you don't have to be a genius to figure out it doesn't matter if you used the word Liberator or not that's theft you can talk about liberating cows you're still a cattle wrestler you know you're still stealing cows so they're very obviously and they videotaped themselves doing this and share the videotape on the Internet well guess what that's breaking and entering and theft and it could be the end of his career so he can activists and we can joke around about it but Real Talk actions have consequences okay so a controversy like that I can come on camera and if other people know about it they've read about at the newspaper they've read they're thinking about it because it's a big issue within veganism that can be an opportunity for me to talk about any philosophical or political perspective I have to share I mean you could literally take a controversy like that and say look you know what's really important about this is something I learned when I was studying Aristotle in university when I was studying Plato and Socrates you name it you can you can take that in any direction you can make it as deep and meaningful and philosophical as you want to you can take it in an historical direction you can talk about events from history 500 years ago and they're somehow relevant to and important to this question of obeying the law you're engaged in political activism or democracy and due process and respect for the rule of law whatever the reason is um and you could also take it in a deeply personal direction you could say to people look this is a controversy within veganism today I'm gonna tell you about some that happened to me when I was in high school I'm gonna tell you what sign out of me and university and this changed the way I view activism or the way I view animal rights or the way I view turkeys on a farm whatever it is but if you are trying to reach a larger audience fundamentally you cannot just come on camera and make videos answering your own questions speaking to your own interests you have to be answering questions that the audience is already asking and some people do that in a really shallow and catty way and some people accuse me of doing it in a show and kind of way so there's always controversy with someone like a natural vegan I just had a video a few days ago really talking about the philosophy of Peter Singer and the implications the long-term implications of the popularity of Peter Singer and utilitarianism for veganism and social movement okay if I had just made that video if I had made a book review of Peter Singer one of his books on animal rights activism political philosophy it would have reached a very small number of people and even the people it did reach because I have regular viewers they'd start the video saying huh why why do I want to hear about this what does this have to do with my life even if they've already vegan even if they already know me you have to overcome a kind of obstacle because they're not already asking themselves that question but there was a controversy with unnatural vegan making excuses for another youtuber Kristina who's been wearing leather a natural vegan said that she thinks wearing leather shoes is not such a big deal and I did not respond in a shallow and Cadi way I didn't come on and say hey you're an idiot for making excuses of this I came on and said look the real issue here the real philosophical political issue is the legacy of Peter Singer the legacy of utilitarianism within veganism this is where I want to take it so I did talk about the controversy of the day talked about the politics of the moment but I'm also talking about the politics of the millennium I'm talking about issues that go back decades and that matter for centuries but fundamentally people started watching that video because they were already interested in hearing to answer that question they're already interested nearing what is the deal with unnatural vegan and her welfarist attitudes for her excuses for people drinking milk and people eating chicken eggs and in this case people wearing leather what is they're already asking themselves that question in some sense and when they come to my channel they're not getting the answer they expect but they're getting an interesting and provocative answer to a question they're already asking some they're already engaged with so that's that's the basic way you have to approach making youtube videos there already has to be something that raises the stakes for your viewers that creates their their interest and of course I say this partly because I'm tempted myself not to do this I'm tempted to just pick up a book of philosophy and talk about that book of philosophy whether that's a book review or a critique I'm tempted to just take an issue in the history of political science political thought and say hey on this video I'm gonna talk about this profound issue uh but the problem is again and I really appreciate the people who do show up when I give a book review if I do a book review why am i doing the book review because I am interested in the book because the book matters because the book is important in some abstract sense for YouTube that's not good enough I can't be in the position of explaining to my audience why this book is important why it's interesting why this philosophical issue is important or why it's interesting why this political issue is important in why it's interesting my audience has to come to that video already knowing why this is important or interesting they have to be already asking that question okay that's the challenge you have as a small youtuber making specialized content that's meaningful but content that will an audience and content where your audience will find you so again I'm not perfect I just did this book review a few days ago I'm gonna do another book review a few days from now I've been reading some I I think actually there's a lot of and and for me the tension there is I also want to make videos that will be important for my own daughter to see one day in the future I have a daughter that's three years old she's not reading political philosophy right now maybe one day and I want to make videos that in a sense tell my daughter Who I am and that maybe would be interesting or useful for her and shaping her view of the world when she's thinking about these issues herself in the future okay but that's a bias if what I cared about was reaching a huge audience obviously you know I would make more videos just about Game of Thrones just about A Song of Ice and Fire my first video on a song of ice and fire reached 10,000 viewers in only a couple of days that a song about fire is a series of fictional books obviously I could have jumped on that built that audience focused all my energy on a much more profitable category a much bigger pond of viewers in the internet than talking about vegan politics or political philosopher anything else okay this brings me this is a natural segue to my next topic if you look at what is already on the internet it's very it's very deceptive it's easy to see gaps in the content that's already being created the size of the gap does not correspond in any way to the size of the audience so you know give an example when I first came on YouTube I did not want this channel to be about veganism I didn't want that to be the primary thing I talked about or the only thing I talked about it still is it channels about me it's about my life veganism as a big part of my life but I was just starting a new university degree I already have one degree in political science I was starting a new universe degree in Asian Studies basically politics of Asia I thought I'd have a lot of videos here about the politics of Asia I thought I'd have other people coming on my channel and coming on my podcast and talking to me about politics in Asia now ask you so real quick globally worldwide are there more people interested in veganism or more people interested in the politics of Asia there are more people interested in the politics of Asia not ten to one not a hundred to one but in the thousand to one there are thousand millions of people who speak English who want to watch videos or read newspaper articles or buy magazines talking about the politics of Asia if you go to youtube a lot of people notice you do this search bar on YouTube search for the word vegan and then there's a little click down menu it's a little bit it's a little bit confusing and it's almost invisible you can click down and set a menu option to just search for today now in this context today means so if you search vegan and then you click vegan plus today you get a list of videos with the word vegan in the title uploaded within 24 hours to YouTube and it's amazing day after day you're getting hundreds of new videos being uploaded to YouTube just about veganism a lot of them are crap a lot of them are some of them are just about food diet weight loss not necessarily crap it is not interesting to me some of them are just vacation videos first to the beach whatever lifestyle videos a few will be political protests but there are hundreds of videos already going up every day not every way every day so if you look at that strategically you think why would I start a channel where one the size of the audience is tiny the total number of people come in the internet who want to hear about veganism is tiny and - it's already crowded there are already so many people competing with me in some cases people making exactly the same video as me like in some cases it's you know I make a video calling I make a video title why I became vegan thousands of people have already made that video even if I might want to make a video about the ethics of wearing leather thousands of people have already made that video right but this is counterintuitive now if you go to youtube and you do the same search for politics in Asia Asian politics you can do a bunch of searches of this and then you add that same criterion politics in Asia today there is nothing there is nothing you'll get a couple of channels in India that are not in English uploading news clips I used to know one guy who had a channel it was just one guy working along this channel doing some discussion of both of Asia he I think he was based in Hong Kong it's empty the field is empty and the market is huge but let me tell you something from personal experience again you can't just look at the number of results you have to look at the quality of results if it's people just uploading something they literally record it off of TV you know they recorded a clip from CNN you know this is not this is not original content YouTube but I promise you I have really spent a lot of time searching for that and there's nothing so there's a huge gap there the size of the gap tells you nothing about the size of the audience you can reach and I have experience making videos about politics in Asia and not just uploading those videos to YouTube but even sharing those videos on discussion forums you know internet websites that are just for politics of Asia and the interest is nil the interest is almost zero where I have a carefully researched factual informative video and about current events about something going on now that's controversial and interesting and it's a big deal and influences millions of people's lives it's a long time ago on this channel and you reach an audience of like 50 people and the 50 people aren't even interested and don't care right so this is completely counterintuitive we have an old-fashioned saying in English if you want something to get done give it to somebody who's already busy by the same token you can say if you want to be in a lively area of YouTube if you want to be broadcasting and have a really engaged you've got to move into a segment that's already crowded and that's true but veganism veganism is tiny and already crowded and yet I've had way more success to argument ISM than I ever could have had talking about politics of Asia counterintuitive but true and that's even true about a Song of Ice and Fire also known as Game of Thrones how hundreds of channels are already talking about Game of Thrones my first video ever about Game of Thrones reaches more than 10,000 viewers and fast if you want something done give it somebody busy somebody's already busy if you want a lot of action on a YouTube channel then you actually have to move into a category that's already busy and if you followed point 1 the first piece of advice of taking a controversy it's already going on taking questions people already asking but giving something really fresh and original and insightful whether it's from an historical angle getting deeper historically or deeper personally or deeper philosophically I think you you will reward the attention of your viewers and you will find an audience your audience will find you the people who respect and value that kind of content that you're creating last point here there have been a lot of warnings in this channel and there are a lot of warnings if you just look around [Music] basically about how micro Fame can destroy your life I I just watched a video this morning actually of a youtuber who got extorted an ex-girlfriend of his from seven years before an ex-girlfriend from when he was a teenager found out that he had a YouTube channel and she had some nude photographs of him from when they were together and she was actively extorting she wanted him to pay a $5,000 or he would she would post these naked pictures of her and this kind of thing and they naked pictures of the the two of them together you can look at a guy like the amazing atheist or a Nessie on there are a lot of car crash stories about how coming on YouTube most of these people make no money I make a trivial amount of money on the Internet but you can have all the disadvantages of Fame with none of the advantages there are people who get fired from their jobs there are people whose marriages fall apart or their life falls apart there are people who get ruined by this I think in a sense that's the easy side of it to understand yeah Fame goes to people's heads even when it's micro Fame even when it's really tiny and I'd point out to you like if you think Fame can't ruin your life when you have only two hundred fans if you have two hundred people wanting to talk to you every week two hundred messages on Twitter email Facebook all these combined I mean that's not a big fan base if you have two hundred people who want your time and attention who just want to chat with you in a week you may already feel famous two hundred people is enough to make people feel famous and to have these really strange psychological impacts on and the other point is even if you just have two hundred people like that you know knocking on your door metaphorically speaking people who want to chat with you on skype or by phone or meetup or hook up or whatever remember in a given week you're gonna be saying no to 199 of them right you're gonna be selecting within those 200 people who gets your time who gets your attention and that also is very unnatural for most people most like okay most people you get a new job at work you look around your co-workers and you ask yourself who can I be friends with here who can I tolerate out of my five coworkers who can I get along with and you make the best of it when you were a school kid in high school you were assigned to a new chemistry class you sit down there are 30 people in the class you're sitting next to five of them you look around and think who can I be friends with now you have hundreds of people maybe thousands of people who want to be your friend you want to get to know you yeah maybe people who want to sleep with you maybe people who send you nude photographs of themselves or whatever and whether or not you do it consciously you're choosing to exclude 90% of them or 99% of them so that alone is a really distorting elements of micro fame even if it's just 200 people who are gathered around you and at all ages that can have a really strange impact in people's lives with about 20 years old or 50 years old whether they're teenagers or in retirement however everything in that category of considerations I think I think just watching this video now if you just sit down and think about it think about it while you're doing the laundry you can pretty clearly anticipate how that's going to influence you how that's going to be a problem and in some ways how it's going to be a positive thing most of us especially that veganism why are we online in the first place because we want more friends in real life we want to be involved in real political activism we want to have colleagues we want to know other vegans so many vegans on the Internet live in a town or live in a city where they don't have even one vegan friend so you know making friends is a huge part of why we're online to begin with yeah I think you can sit down now after what I've already sent you in this video and you can think through okay if I do this YouTube channel how is this gonna influence me how is it gonna be an issue of my life when it's 200 people when it's 2,000 people if it becomes 20,000 people and you can think through the opposite how am I gonna feel if it goes up to 2,000 and then comes back down to 200 if it goes up to 20,000 and comes back down to 2,000 you can think that through and if you have a decent level of self-knowledge and self-discipline you can anticipate those problems you can be wise I think the vast majority of people with some basic level of self-awareness can think that through and can understand how they're gonna react what you can't anticipate is how suffering will change you suffering as such changes your character it changes who you are down to the core of your being and you cannot cannot know who you will become or how you will change after you go through a process of suffering suffering is qualitatively and quantitatively different when it is observed think about I mean some of you watching this would be quite young some of you'll be fully grown adults think about the worst trauma you've had in your entire life the most crushing devastating experience you've ever had maybe a death maybe you were the victim of a crime and now think about how different it would have been if you had been on YouTube what would happened in your past what if that had happened to you on YouTube or what if even if it wasn't filmed that the moment had happened what if just a couple hours after it happened you'd come on the internet and talked about your feelings what if there was an audience you were answering to in describing that trauma that suffering that terrible thing it's just that terrible period of your life you know maybe it's a subtle difference but it's profound maybe it's not gonna be that you go through the worst trauma in the world you know your parents died or you lose your job you have a period of unemployment you have a period when you're really unhappy and doing job applications I went through that on YouTube I you know just to give a parallelism which is a bit extreme in Canada we we had a case where a man a Canadian man went to Saudi Arabia and he was framed for a crime he didn't commit he had nothing to do with the crime and he was tortured formal torture this is not torturing out he was tortured by a professional torturer in a prison in you know in a torture chamber but he said what broke him was not the torture what broke him was when they brought in somebody else somebody he knew at work colleague and they had him watch they had him stand there silently and watched the other person being tortured and he knew that the other person would not have to be tortured if he confessed to the crime that broke him so he put up with a week or something a physical torture when it was just him suffering but when he was in the role of the observer and when he knew that the other person was being tortured for him then he had to make it stop he was broken immediately and he was ready to confess to a crime he had nothing to do with suffering transforms who you are the observation of suffering changes the nature of the suffering itself okay and you may not believe me you may not be able to imagine this but if you go through anything negative in your life it may be caused by YouTube it may be people harassing you or humiliating you on the Internet but it may it may have nothing to do with the Internet it may be that you have a trauma because you know your girlfriend is hit by a car I mean maybe anything I guarantee you if you are regularly uploading to YouTube at the moment it happens you're sitting there on the [ __ ] sidewalk next to the corpse of somebody you love watching the life go out of your eyes on some level you are thinking how am I going to explain this on YouTube the fact that your life is observed the fact that it will be observed the fact that there is an audience for whatever it is you're going through changes your experience even in the moment and then of course is gonna change everything after the fact when you come on the internet and talk about it and I really think that's something you most people cannot anticipate you can't anticipate how that's gonna change you I'll give you one other example from literature Tolstoy wrote a famous book called war and peace famous author Tolstoy has a scene with a duel men fighting a duel to the death with guns that was quite common during Tolstoy his life and Tolstoy was involved with some duels himself he was an author he was an intellectual but he didn't always believe in non-violence he got into something so at that time men would fight each other to death with guns over a point of Honor pretty regularly but I remember he gives this description of the duel and for me it really made me think about how cinema and television have changed the way we perceive reality and the way we describe reality because I was reading the description of this duel and I thought oh he's gonna describe the image of red blood on the white snow because it's Russia with in the winter with snow so that's what's coming we're gonna have the image of the shocking sight of red blood on white snow I'm Canadian if you're Canadian you've seen blood in the snow at some point I was just absolutely anticipating that as I read this it's it's such an obvious compelling image in terms of drawing out the you know the violence and brutality of this but know at the end of that scene in war and peace what it cuts to it describes the two men shooting each other and then there's the man who's the witness legally they had to have a witness to the duel you know the man who stand there he's the official witness he's witnessing the duel he's watching the man die and the only thing he can think about is how am I gonna explain this to his mother he knows this man he knows his mother he knows he's gonna have to go home and why they're writing a letter or going and meeting the woman he's gonna have to describe to this woman how her son died okay in a very real sense [Music] no matter how honest you are or no matter how artificial you are whether your approach to social media is highly theatrical or you are keeping it real as honest and raw and real as you possibly can suffering will change you the fact that other people are observing your suffering will change you and the awareness that you have to go and tell this story to somebody's mother you know you're a witness to your own life now you're a witness to your own tragedy your own triumphs - but it's not somebody's mother you've got to go tell the story - it's your audience and in a sense it's anybody's mother and everybody's mother because once it's on the internet in theory all your co-workers can see the video your ex-girlfriend from high school can see the video that's happened to me recently one of my first girlfriends from high school googled my name and watched all my videos she hadn't talked to me in 20 years all of a sudden she knows all this stuff from personally I don't mind I'm cool with that I think that's the side of the game that you can never fully understand until you go through it yourself and there's no way you can anticipate how it's going to change