My Top Ten Youtube Videos of 2020: Happy New Year, 2021.

happy new year tomorrow is the first day
of 2021 and i'm taking a moment to make a top 10 list with a purpose we're talking about the top 10 videos on my channel in the year 2020 not to celebrate certainly not to uh reflect on the success or the failure of my channel but to basically underscore the point that if you want to come on the internet and make meaningful content you can't let your decisions be shaped by the size of the audience you reach you can't let your measure of success or failure be the number of viewers per video for those of you who are not regular viewers in my channel you may find the reflections here a little bit bewildering but what i try to do is make content that's meaningful for me and is meaningful for a particular audience that may be quite different from one video to the next so to give an example if i'm making content about learning chinese obviously i'm imagining an audience of people who are themselves also trying to learn chinese or in some cases people who are considering their options before making the commitment to learn chinese just lately i've actually gotten quite a lot of fan mail from those people from people who are saying well they're thinking about really committing a few years their life to learning chinese and they're watching my videos before before making that decision if i'm making videos about politics of making videos about history philosophy each one of these has a different imaginary audience for whom it's ideal but ultimately you know i have to think about myself i have to think about my own daughter my own hypothetical grandkids in the future or something watching this many years from now i have to have a long-term view of the short-term creative challenge of making youtube videos and i wish i could tell you that i was one of a whole generation of people making content in this way you know making videos that we really think are meaningful that really matter long term but i'm all alone out here on youtube i don't have colleagues i don't have contemporaries i don't have friends on the platform that's why there are so few videos where i'm collaborating with other youtubers or even where i'm clashing with other youtubers and say the last the last two years it's been a very lonely road to get on but for those of you who are regular viewers of my channel it will be immediately obvious to you that this set of top 10 videos these are by no means the most meaningful videos on my channel and they're also not even videos that succeeded in reaching their intended audience right so number 10 on this list is titled is laoshu's language number 10 in the list is titled is laoshu's language learning method a scam uh and as you might survive the answer is yes so right now i'm doing uh i'll just list a few i got thomas going on sinhala um arabic sudanese arabic russian pashto um bosnian swedish uh armenian hindi uh what was what's another one i'm doing don't and uh syrian so it's quite a bit of them there's a lot of them going on right now but uh now that reached about 6 000 viewers in a year but if you just look at the thumbs up to thumbs down ratio you can see it's reaching the wrong audience you can also compare this to the last several years of videos i've made about this sort of question looking at polyglots and the advice they give on language learning or my own videos about how to learn chinese in other languages and you can see i'm utterly failing to reach that audience so it's quite likely this link was just shared by fans of laoshu coming to to give it the thumbs down i think it's a meaningful video as with all these things i'm motivated really by the content of what i have to say for me it's rewarding to go back and listen to that now it's still interesting it still matters there's still practical advice that'll be useful for the right people if they're the ones clicking on it and again i do get fan mail for this type of video and for this video in particular but to look at this as a success it's very difficult in many ways really this is a further example of failure number nine another example of a video that has far more thumbs down than thumbs up shane dawson versus brie estrik this is not a shallow gossip video this is a video with a really meaningful point to make and i still stand by it and i still enjoy listening to it today five years from now when i've completely forgotten about what the controversy is between shane dawson and breastfeed i'll still think this is a meaningful and worthwhile video however even though this reached a reasonable number of viewers it very much reached the wrong audience and obviously those 6 000 people have not become regular viewers of my channel probably none of them even watched one other video on my channel before giving it the thumbs down and moving on because this isn't the kind of shallow snap judgment that they were looking for at that time especially all of the audience was looking for was harsh moral condemnation uh directed towards shane dawson and incidentally that's what brie estrig offered by the way if you check brie estrix youtube channel she's even less successful than i am now but she wrote a wave of controversy at that time by indicting and condemning her former friend shane dawson someone who actually she could feel some gratitude towards for creating her relatively long-lived career another example the same phenomenon jordan peterson's brain damage now this is a meaningful video talking about jordan peterson's history with drug addiction and um mental health treatment of various kinds and uh you know it's not a joke these drugs cause brain damage and jordan peterson is now struggling with the consequences of bad choices he made in life and of course part of what makes that so remarkable is that he had a phd in precisely this field many people were victims of uh you know psychiatric treatment in this way they were just desperate for help went in and asked a therapist to help them or ask the psychiatrist tell them and they had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they accepted a bottle full of pills i've used this clip before on my channel but this is really instructive in showing you what akathesia is what it is about this that makes life so unbearable this is a seemingly beautiful intelligent young woman who took a very low dose of a very common ssri antidepressant she's on a low dose of alexa pro very commonly prescribed and her life has been totally destroyed and you know what's worse she has to live with the awareness that these horrible physical symptoms that make it impossible for her to sit down impossible for her to stand still impossible for her to play the piano impossible for her to hold a pen and write for any period of time impossible for her to sit at the computer and and type these unbelievably horrible symptoms they're not caused by damage to her nervous system it's not like she had a car accident that injured her neck or her spine or her arms or her legs no she has to live with the awareness that this is because of brain damage this is damage in her brain that fundamentally impairs how she feels how she thinks how she's able to perceive and understand the world it fundamentally changes who she is for the worse forever if the symptoms themselves don't drive you to suicide the awareness of that it's very likely to do so well jordan peterson knew exactly what he was getting himself into i've seen him on youtube in lectures talking about his encouraging his own patients to get on some of these same pills and what do you know they ruined his life in terms of brain damage they have long-term consequences none of you will be surprised to know that even though this reached 6 500 viewers it reached the wrong viewers this obviously was shared on reddit groups of jordan peterson fans and jordan peterson supporters who just came by to you know what would be the appropriate term just came by to show their disapproval of anyone daring to question their demigod look for me it's meaningful content i'm glad i made the video and for a few hundred or if possibly a few thousand people it would have been meaningful content also but you cannot let the numbers guide your future content creation you need to be a very resolute very highly motivated person to make the content that's meaningful for you and the content that's meaningful for your audience even if that audience is one that's purely theoretical like in the same way that i have to theorize about what someone who is studying chinese needs to hear like what's useful for someone who's making the decision to study chinese who's now in their first year of university studies learning chinese i have to kind of in my own mind's eye hypothesize who that audience member is and what's good for them you have to be strongly motivated to move forward that way and not to respond positively or negatively to these kinds of numbers here's a video on the science behind jordan peterson's addiction obviously exactly the same comments apply now here's one that's misleading in a in a different way number six on the list this is one of many videos in a series i did dealing with 21st century pornography and the way in which the production of that pornography now intrudes into our personal lives and our professional lives i might say like never before so this video was successful it's a very meaningful video i've you know i still recommend seeing it today the problem is every other video on that playlist was unsuccessful this one video alone which by the way was censored by youtube to the maximum extent you have to be logged into your account and over 18 years old to to see this video it's also demonetized and so on this is as restricted as any video on youtube can get without actually being deleted by youtube it nevertheless reached seven 500 people the problem is a very meaningful measure of success would be that if the people who saw this video watched at least one or two others in this kind of series of kind of documentaries and reflections that i did on this same meaningful and i think important topic and the reality is they did not a totally different example you know i i talked about uh ethics and philosophy of a bizarre highly sexualized science fiction book series called gore and just one of those videos was successful so again if you're putting in the time to create say over an hour of content on a topic like that spread out over a series of videos that are maybe 20 minutes each you know the fact that one of those videos got thousands of views and as you know many of those people only watch the first two or three minutes that's how everything is on youtube you have to accept that as a content creator that single success actually indicates a much broader and deeper failure now this is an important issue i care about the issue i care about reaching a large audience on this issue about this is an example of something where i don't just want to reach a minority within a minority of people when i talk about pet ownership in veganism you know that's a really specific topic for a really small number of people there's some issues where i really accept look the maximum size of the audience for this is about 1 000 people my critique of the animal rights philosophy of gary francione my whole discussions of that kind completely accept there's a small specialized audience when you deal with a social and political and ethical issue of broad public importance like this of course i really do aspire to reach a much larger audience but the success of this one video actually just illustrates the failure of that series of videos as a whole number five on this list this is consistently the single most successful video on my channel for many years and it is advice on how to write the iq test used by the canadian military so it's not called an iq test but it's a series of intelligence tests you have to write in order to enter the armed forces in canada this is also a great example of how youtube videos succeed many people invent theories about the algorithm about hidden forces that decide your success or failure on youtube no to a greater extent than you can possibly imagine it's people sharing the link on other websites on other forums whether that's facebook or reddit or emailing each other that's what makes a video successful so this video has been shared in the different forums where people preparing to enter the military or maybe people failed the exam or trying to do it again where people are giving each other advice to say hey there is this video talking about what you need to to get ahead to study for this exam that is the difference between success and failure on youtube people have to want to see the video and they have to share the link with others who are interested in seeing it i would just add i have no contemporaries making this kind of video i don't know anyone who's really providing this kind of practical advice trying to make problem solving videos i i just say i'm not saying there aren't any on the internet anywhere but i've never known anyone like that i don't have any colleagues contemporaries or collaborators i can make videos with who are motivated to make videos of that kind and pursue success of that kind number four yet another video criticizing dr jordan peterson this particular video i know was seen by peterson himself and his daughter probably many of my videos criticizing him were watched by jordan peterson and his daughter they left comments they probably shared the link to some extent amongst their followers and again although this video has a meaningful and important message the vast majority of people who watched it have absolutely no inclination to hear what that message is the average duration of a view of this video is shockingly low at only one minute and 29 seconds so in this case very clearly people were showing up just to give it the thumbs down and leave so what is success on youtube what is meaningful content creation for you everybody's going to come up with a different answer but i can tell you it ain't this the number three video of the year this one does not include my voice in any way it's a series of comedically edited excerpts from other people's channels titled anissien one the last of the beans were spilled etc it's reached a remarkably large audience again if you glance at the thumbs up to thumbs down ratio etc the vast majority of people were just clicking on it to voice their disapproval but again this just reflects the culture of outrage on the internet people wanted something to hate or disagree with and seemingly none of these people watch this video in the context of my numerous other highly philosophical critiques and reflections on the ethics of onision number two a satirical video that i think most people clicked on not expecting satire and social commentary hitomi mochizuki the breast massage video i just thought that we would open this conversation today and talk about my personal deepest hearts desires and yearnings and things that i'm trying to manifest into my life i think it's so important to know what you want because then you know what to work for and know what to look for and what signs to listen to if you have a clear idea of what you're seeking in this life if energy is neither created nor destroyed everything you will ever want is already here it is simply a matter of choosing the thoughts which will put you into harmonious vibration with that which you desire my soul vibrates to the childlike freedom of traveling to a new place taking in all the colors smells languages and dropping into a meditation on the senses everywhere i go now i have no regrets as with many other videos on this list i think as with every single other video on this list i can say it is a meaningful video i did have a point i did have a thesis that i stand by i still think it's worth seeing today and even if it's satirical you can still have a laugh at it today but if you think i'm going to respond to the success of this video by making more videos of the same kind you are wrong and finally the number one video of 2020 a video that i think my regular viewers and fans will not even remember final cut bro caitlyn witcher versus pro syndicate a video that continues to be successful this day a video that continues to get thousands of views per month steadily the moral of the story is this if you are a stand-up comedian you can respond to the laughter or silence of the crowd with youtube you are always facing the silence of the crowd you have to be highly motivated to make meaningful content for your own reasons and four outcomes that you have clearly defined in your own mind you cannot be motivated by you cannot respond to the number of views per video [Music] you