[Letter from a viewer:]
There's a reason why you have to disable the comments and dislikes in your video's. You want to pursue filmmaking for youtube? Here's the best advice I think you need right now. Take feedback from your viewers. If you're getting dislikes and hate comments, you're probably making shitty content. Ask yourself why is it that you need to disable comments. If you have enough self-awareness, you should be able to figure that one out and then stop doing it.
All the best, although I don't think it's going to work out for you
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[My reply:]
Bruh.
To quote a Keenen Ivory Wayans movie, "Oh sister, you are so barking up the wrong tree right now."
If you'd read the description to any of my videos --ANY of them-- you would have seen the following:
Why are comments disabled on my youtube channel? Here's the answer, in a relatively uplifting 5 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHb9k30KTXM
I get messages from people all the time telling me how profoundly my youtube channel has changed their lives. Some of them have stayed in touch with me for years, so I get a sense not only of the impact that my political philosophy has had on their lives in the short-term, but in the long term, also. And, as indicated in that five minute video, I try to make the time to talk to those people at length (long emails, Skype calls, etc.) --and when you have just 2000 viewers per day, believe it or not, the time you have for talking to members of your audience is very finite indeed.
There are people who have quit playing video games because of my channel. There are people who've quit eating meat because of my channel. There are people who've broken up with their husbands or wives because of my channel. There are people who changed their major in university, took on new career-paths, etc.
But, above all else, there are people who changed their political direction in life, because of my channel. They reconsidered their political assumptions. Started asking new questions, and came to new conclusions.
How about you, Leigh?
Do you get that kind of feedback from YOUR audience?
Do you have some sort of job (or some sort of hobby) with similar outcomes?
I have to tell you: I've handed out sacks of rice to starving people in Laos ("humanitarian work")… this is better. What I'm doing, right now, on youtube: it's better. Oh, and I've tried that "street activism" that vegans tend to brag about, too: talking to strangers while standing on the sidewalk. Let me say, again: this is better. ;-)
E.M.
