Wetube: the Death of Youtube. (Bobby Burns x Elle Mills x Caitlin Shoemaker)

so you've heard it before people coming
on and telling you they're burnt out pissed off heartbroken I've had some kind of emotional breakdown and next year 2019 is going to be different from 2018 or 2019 is that they're gonna spend more time on self-care and self-love and taking care of these mysterious mental breakdowns and emotional problems that YouTube alone causes them and guess what I'm here to tell you the exact opposite in 2019 unit I want to work harder on YouTube than I ever have before I'm gonna tell you that I want to actually live up to a title I came up with I don't know a few months ago but that's been kind of haunting me for years active research and informed opinion what I feel is lacking in both the mainstream media and on social media are exactly two things I've been talking to several different friends who have another's platform and on other platforms in social media and I think we all sort of feel kind of overwhelmed and like we need to take a break and I think that if so many of us are feeling that that definitely says something about the line of work and maybe not just all of us that may be what like society is encouraging today's episode is sponsored by better health they are an incredible online therapy service that is not a suicide hotline replacement but it is really really helpful YouTube is like a hotbed for creating mental health problems I think I think it's created a whole new set of problems that people have never even had before what I meet people I want to make sure that I live up to the expectations why I do my YouTube voice and I go hi I'm almost oh it's so nice to meet you yeah yeah I hope you have a great day than all this stuff but like in normal day-to-day life I just talk like this I know I am by Bobby burns voice that I've done for forever I didn't mean for it to happen it just kind of happened one of the characteristics that really differentiates YouTube from any prior era of filmmaking or broadcasting is that the creators involved no longer blame the industry they no longer blame bureaucracy funding problems they never blame a conspiracy of department heads or any of their superiors and decision makers they blame the psychological stress of the art form itself I don't know if this is ever really had before on the scale we're all familiar with the script at this point right well familiar with people coming on camera and telling you just how hard it is to talk about your feelings just how hard it is to sit down in front of a computer and play make-believe or even just how hard it is to film yourself cooking lunch and share with the world I put in a lot of frickin work I was working way more than a 40-hour workweek I was pretty much working seven days a week for the moment I woke up to like the moment I went to bed in matters both shallow and profound everyone wants to come on YouTube and take your money get rich get famous and then have a mental breakdown and explain you how difficult it was sometimes even just to share like surveillance footage of themselves joking around in their own kitchen with evidently no research preparation no other effort put into it other than that I'm starting this video by telling you YouTube is easy YouTube for me over 1,000 videos over 3.3 million views in the last five years YouTube has been the easiest thing I've had to do in my life I managed to have this strange demi-monde level micro fame level success on YouTube while at the same time being enrolled as a full-time student at university having a full-time job as a university level instructor or / teacher professor in China learning Chinese language I didn't speak read or write at all when I started this YouTube channel that I speak reading right now an incredibly difficult name to learn there was a brief tumultuous period in which I stopped learning Chinese instead of learning Japanese some of you were here for that at any given time during the history of this YouTube channel I have been involved in two or possibly three core cases that were unbelievably emotionally draining um through legal machination --zz for my ex-wife or separated wife i was prevented from seeing my daughter for such a long time that she forgot who I was I was then reunited with her and on date one of the reunion she literally had no idea who I was sheshu were marked in my presence that it was really great meeting me but what it was sad that she still never got to see her real father surreal conversation to have and then over a period of two years of meeting up with her again and again periodically having to explain to her what her situation was in contrast to the fiction her biological mother was telling her incredibly heart-rending difficult life of lived these past five years I'm not even mentioning things the fact my father died hey we all gotta die sometime he died of old age was in some ways kind to him and in some ways cruel YouTube is easy it's so beguiling Lee so deceptively easy that it seems to be that almost nobody really makes an effort and where does that matter it doesn't matter that much in terms of weight loss health fitness bikini try on videos lick your body challenge videos taste test videos cooking videos restaurant view news that does not matter to me so much or I really see it where it really hurts me because when I look at the variety of what's available in terms of politics so you've heard it before you've heard it even within the intro to this video clips from other channels people coming on and telling you they're burnt out pissed off heartbroken I've had some kind of emotional breakdown and next year 2019 is going to be different from 2018 or 2019 if it gonna spend more time on self-care and self-love and taking care of these mysterious mental breakdowns and emotional problems that YouTube alone causes them and guess what I'm here to tell you the exact opposite in 2019 unit I want to work harder on YouTube than I ever have before I'm gonna tell you that I want to actually live up to a title I came up with I don't know a few months ago but that's been kind of haunting me for years active research and informed opinion what I feel is lacking in both the mainstream media and on social media are exactly two things active research and informed opinion whether I'm looking at pede content from The Economist and foreign policy or whether I'm looking at self-styled YouTube politics gurus like Jimmy Dore and The Young Turks across the whole political spectrum most of what I see are knee-jerk reactions to headlines and to announcements from government officials elected or otherwise I don't see people engaged in active research I don't see them presenting informed opinion most often it's not just the voices that are loudest that at least informed I can tell you that after many many years searching across the board what I see is that the disappearance of advertising revenue from traditional journalism has resulted in a lever lowering tied in both the quantity and quality of what's available even in the English language obviously it's going to be even more dire in minority languages right now as 2019 begins I don't know anywhere that I can go for really quality political analysis even if what's going on in the United States Canada or you and there is absolutely nowhere I can go for meaningful research and political analysis of what's going on in East Asia in South Asia in all of Asia if I'm being honest and blunt I remember marking my girlfriend a few days or weeks ago when was the last time I saw a video that talked about what's happening in China and Japan that wasn't just narrowly focused on u.s. foreign policy and what President Trump had said but that even took half a moment to say talk about a political event in Japan and then consider what India had to say about it well the government of India said what this meant from the point of view of Australia France or Germany but Japan other players within Asia that little bit of research or presenting an informed opinion that says hey look when you see this in the context of the last 50 years of history here's something you might not have thought about I don't see that quality of content anywhere especially not in the Economist especially not in foreign policy magazine a YouTube mask is almost it's just like how you talk to a random stranger I was out like an event or something how I would talk to them not gonna act like all stressed out and all this stuff but it's the weird thing about YouTube sometimes I want to show that side of myself but I'm showing these that side of myself to strangers and it's just like an odd thing when you meet these people in real life this is my problem I'm like exposing all this like [ __ ] about myself that's really deep [ __ ] that I don't talk to my friends and family about and then they start trying to talking to me about in person I go I don't know who you are why are we talking about this I want to wrap up this video with an anecdote that relates directly to the clip you've just seen when I was in Chiang Mai at the start of the court case where I was threatened with violence defamed this guy said explicitly I was gonna be stabbed beaten up dragged to a police station and he defamed me in a way that really had very negative consequences next several years my life maybe for the whole rest of my life at the same time I was meeting people face to face and I didn't realize how special this was I was meeting people face to face who didn't March as fans of my channel or didn't just know much in they were people who had the experience repeatedly of meeting youtubers face-to-face after being familiar with their content for a while on the internet and when they met me what they said again and again I think at least four times like it felt like 10 times but maybe it was just three or four times this happened but people said this to me verbatim people met me and said wow you act exactly the same in person as you do in your videos and wow you talk exactly the same in person as you do in your videos the time course I felt nothing I thought nothing of it I didn't feel it was a big deal like yeah what do you expect do you expect like I'm playing a fictional character with a hand puppet and then you meet me and it's a different dude I I do my YouTube voice and I go hi I'm almost Owen so nice to meet you yeah yeah I am by Bobby burns voice that I've done for forever I didn't mean for it to happen it just kind of happened this is exactly what these people been talking about consciously or unconsciously a lot of people start speaking as a fictional character a lot of people start speaking to a mask that YouTube mask if you want to say and that is exactly the source of a lot of these I don't know feelings of dysphoria feelings of depression feelings that they've created I don't know some kind of illusion that can't maintain some kind of standard they can't live up to in their relationship with your audience and my relationship violence has never had this kind of intermediary effect I think everyone who meets me everyone who talks to me on skype everyone emails at you man it gets an email pact everyone knows that they really are talking not to a fictional character but to a person is doing the best he can one person who now wants to take on the burden not just of sharing autobiographical notes not just of sharing I don't know my free time when I'm not busy with full-time university studies full-time jobs full-time language learning all the other things about this dragged me and hey part-time parenting let's face it just had seven days of custody with my daughter part-time indeed somebody who's actually taking it on as a bit of a public service to provide the active research and informed opinion that you know from my perspective in 2018 you're not gonna get anywhere else on the Internet [Music]