YouTube’s top creators are burning out and breaking down en masse

[Independent voter]

Bolded the parts I thought was interesting.

So the YouTube algorithm favors videos that are at least 10 minutes long, and it likes you posting frequently like once a day. Doesn't see too bad, if you can come up with 10 minutes of content every day.






https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/1/174...urns-pewdiepie

Three weeks ago, Bobby Burns, a YouTuber with just under one million subscribers, sat down on a rock in Central Park to talk about a recent mental health episode. One week ago, Elle Mills, a creator with more than 1.2 million subscribers, uploaded a video that included vulnerable footage during a breakdown. Six days ago, Rubén “El Rubius” Gundersen, the third most popular YouTuber in the world with just under 30 million subscribers, turned on his camera to talk to his viewers about the fear of an impending breakdown and his decision to take a break from YouTube.

Burns, Mills and Gundersen aren’t alone. Erik “M3RKMUS1C” Phillips (four million subscribers), Benjamin “Crainer” Vestergaard (2.7 million subscribers) and other top YouTubers have either announced brief hiatuses from the platform, or discussed their own struggles with burnout, in the past month. Everyone from PewDiePie (62 million subscribers) to Jake Paul (15.2 million subscribers) have dealt with burnout. Lately, however, it seems like more of YouTube’s top creators are coming forward with their mental health problems.

Constant changes to the platform’s algorithm, unhealthy obsessions with remaining relevant in a rapidly growing field and social media pressures are making it almost impossible for top creators to continue creating at the pace both the platform and audience want — and that can have a detrimental effect on the very ecosystem they belong to.

“My life just changed so fast,” Elle Mills said in a video from May 18. “My anxiety and depression keeps getting worse and worse. I’m literally just waiting for me to hit my breaking point.”

Part of her seven-minute confession includes a glimpse of her breakdown, wherein she’s trying to figure out what’s going on in her mind. Mills says:

This is all I ever wanted. And why the fuck am I so unfucking unhappy? It - It doesn’t make any sense. You know what I mean? Because, like, this is literally my fucking dream. And I’m fucking so unfucking happy. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. It’s so stupid. It is so stupid.

Soon after, Mills announced on Twitter that she was taking a break from YouTube and social media. She couldn’t keep up with the pressure, and told her fans that while she was safe, and in good hands, she needed time to recuperate and remember why she loved making videos in the first place.

Sam Sheffer, a popular YouTuber who burst into the spotlight after appearing in multiple Casey Neistat videos, recently took a break from Twitter for similar reasons. In his own video, Neistat addressed Mills’s questions about why she was so unhappy when everything she ever wanted was finally coming together.

“I’ve often talked about the pressures of being a YouTuber and it’s a tricky thing to talk about because to find success on YouTube is to live the dream,” Neistat said. “Like, this is the ultimate. And if you achieve this kind of success on this platform, which so many people try to do, like, how dare you complain about it? It is difficult to talk about because unless you’ve been in this position, I think it’s challenging to empathize with it.”

THE PULL OF THE YOUTUBE “SCHEDULE”
The backlash to YouTubers and Twitch streamers who publicly take time away from the spotlight shows its face in almost any comments section about mental health and creators. Their fans are mostly supportive, telling their favorite creators to take time and work on their mental health, but most people who don’t keep up with the day-to-day uploads or aren’t as tuned in to YouTube culture have trouble sympathizing. Here are just a few comments lifted from a recent Polygon article about YouTubers and mental health:

“It’s as if their fun hobby that they turned into a career came with all the trappings of having a career.”

“Of course every job is challenging but bruh, you’re at home, no kids, in front of some camera with this fake cheery persona. Your serious challenges involve a steady schedule and demonstrating your internet personality for the dollars? Please. Thats the line of work you chose. No different than a private dancer. Find another job if its such a problem.”

“So they’re saying their get-rich-quick scheme isn’t as easy as they initially thought it would be?”

“Yeah, hard to really sympathize. Boo hoo, I work harder than you think! Umm, is someone holding a gun to your head? No, so if it’s too hard find something else to do. Good grief.

Fact of the matter is, if they didn’t enjoy it or like the money they were making, they’d be doing something else. They act like they’re in prison doing forced manual labor.”

“Gee I never get burned out at my job ever. That doesn’t happen to me or billions of other people every day.”

There’s a pressure for YouTubers to remain in the spotlight. This is something that PewDiePie, who uploads at least once a day, has said the rigorous pace of YouTube video creation led him to his own obsessions with the platform. Those obsessions turn into eventual dismay over producing and not enjoying the one thing that made him successful.

“I think I have a pretty high tolerance of stress but it just got worse when I came here,” he said in a November 2016 video. “I’m really sorry ... it really sucks for me. I’ve always put YouTube first, always. Even if I’m working on other projects, it doesn’t matter. You guys come first, that’s my main thing. But I can’t do that while I’m here ... keeping the vlogs up is just impossible at this point.”


Katrina Gay, national director for strategic partnerships at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told Polygon in January that burnout in highly competitive, creative and front-facing fields like YouTube is common. There are ways to try and avoid it, Gay said, including setting proper hours and finding a way to leave work at work. But when the careers of so many video personalities involve exposing their personal lives, striking a work/life balance is next to impossible.

“No one tells you how many hours you should be working,” Gay said in our interview. “You have to discover that for yourself. Maybe it’s after the fact, when you’ve realized, ‘I’ve overdone it and I’m not as healthy as I should be.’ You have to pause. The process of learning how to do that and when to do it is tough, but necessary. When people are learning to do that right in front of you, like YouTube, it’s modeling healthy behavior for an entire community.”

That’s the position that Rubén “El Rubius” Gundersen found himself this week. Gundersen said he could feel the pressure building for years, but never really took time off to address it. Recently, however, his panic attacks have become more frequent. Gundersen went to visit a doctor and, after learning how to cope with his ongoing mental health issues made worse by burnout, knew he needed to stop.

“I think what I need is to leave for some time, to disconnect a little bit from all of this,” Gundersen said in his May 24 video. “I’ve been doing this for seven years without stopping, without being able to see how I am living from the outside. I always have in my mind what’s going to be next; the next trips, the next project, and it sounds like first world problems I know, but when you get everything together and you want it to be 100 percent, and give 100 percent, some times you can’t.”


The fallout from YouTube due to mental health concerns is a scary trend. Especially when YouTubers and streamers, like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins talk about the schedule they voluntarily keep.

“The schedule is: 9:30 is when I start in the morning and then I play until four, so that’s like six, six-and-a-half hours,” Blevins told Ethan and Hila Klein on the H3H3 Podcast. “Then I’ll take a nice three- to four-hour break with the wife, the dogs or family — we have like family nights, too — and then come back on around seven o’clock central until like two, three in the morning. The minimum is 12 hours a day, and then I’ll sleep for less than six or seven hours.”

WHAT YOUTUBE IS DOING ABOUT BURNOUT
YouTubers make almost all of their money from AdSense on YouTube, and projects or merchandise related to YouTube. This creates a pressure to upload a video every single day; to see consistent reach and maintain their positions as top creators among a sea of growing competition, creators have to effectively game the system.

This is where the algorithm grade comes in. The algorithm grade is the best working theory YouTubers work under when it comes to ensuring their videos are seen by as many people as possible. There are a bunch of little tricks that make up the algorithm grade (videos should be longer than 10 minutes, for example), but one of the most important details is frequency. It is strongly believed that YouTube accounts with more than 10,000 subscribers should post daily because YouTube’s algorithm favors frequency and engagement.

So people upload, and upload, and upload, and upload, building a bigger fanbase and working non stop. And then the consequences of that hustle hit them like a ton of bricks.

RELATED

YouTubers look to new platforms after viewer suppression, demonetization issues
“Relevancy” is the word that keeps almost every YouTuber on the tip of their toes, but it’s not the only source of strain. There are also growing demonetization concerns running rampant throughout the community. Posting infrequently means a creator’s videos won’t be recommended. Videos that aren’t recommended aren’t as heavily watched. The last problem a creator wants to worry about is their videos not appearing or being shared because of frequency issues when already trying to skirt around YouTube’s growing advertising restrictions.

“It’s really frustrating to be a creator on YouTube because we don’t really know what’s going on,” PewDiePie said in a video about demonetization and views suppression. “I think YouTube is so scared of telling people what’s going on for media outrage and for people abusing the system, so they don’t generally keep us in the loop.”

Not knowing how YouTube’s monetization system works, while also battling fears of videos being suppressed and less frequent uploads hindering their careers, are major anxieties. And like most anxieties that go untreated, they build up to a breaking point.


The issue is that unlike many of us who have bosses or coworkers who tell us to take time off, no one is telling YouTubers to chill out. It’s the opposite. People constantly ask for more, and there’s only so much that one person can offer.

YouTube offers no clear support system for creators, nor is it clear if the company has offered professional help to some of its top creators who’ve made their burnout public. Instead, YouTube’s only direct reaction is a playlist dedicated to burnout and mental health. The creators are essentially working until they no longer physically can, and apologizing to their fans after believing they’ve failed. Polygon has reached out to YouTube for more information about services that are provided to creators.

The only way to beat burnout is to take breaks. Unfortunately, for many YouTubers, those breaks are rarely planned.

[nymphetsss]

Yeah except the new support option kind of negates alot of monetization concerns if you have a regular fanbase. So no real need for a 10 min video everyday. The ninja thing too talking about 12 hours a day, dude makes millions a month, no shit you have to work lots for that kind of cash

[druenos]

I wish we could all " take a break " from our jobs. What is so different that Youtubers think they somehow are hard done by. If they have a lot of subscribers then they get paid well for their work. You know who I have empathy for, good hard working people that work as shop assistants, bar staff, people who work for minimum wage who turn up for work every day. I do not have any sympathy with Youtubers who see themselves as celebrities and feel hard done by when they realize life is hard work.

[Kokolums]

I wonder if it is the same for talk show hosts. Johnny Carson had to produce live content 5 nights a week for decades. The actual show ran for 90 minutes but you know he spent the whole day setting it up. Eventually after he was well established he did reruns or guest hosts but that wasn't a regular thing until maybe 20 years into doing it.

[therealstegblob]

I wish we could all " take a break " from our jobs. What is so different that Youtubers think they somehow are hard done by. If they have a lot of subscribers then they get paid well for their work. You know who I have empathy for, good hard working people that work as shop assistants, bar staff, people who work for minimum wage who turn up for work every day. I do not have any sympathy with Youtubers who see themselves as celebrities and feel hard done by when they realize life is hard work.

Written like someone who has no idea what they're talking about. Hilarious. Of course there'll be more clueless, ignorant judgey kids like you throwing shitposts into this fire this thread is going to turn into so let me rebuff all of them at the same time really quick.

A YouTube career is significantly more work than a low-skill job. More than that, however, the real problem is dealing with YouTube itself. YouTube is constantly fucking with the platform and it makes it impossible to get a steady viewerbase going, meaning your monthly income can fluctuate dramatically. Very few YouTubers arrogantly consider themselves celebrities who deserve some kind of preferential treatment. Only a few elite (vloggers who struck super lucky and can rake in millions of views for low effort webcam vlogs) are fortunate enough to have channels they don't need to put a lot of work into. Most big content creators are very humbled by the amount of work they do. The demand put on YouTubers means it's actually a really, really time consuming and hard job. A lot more effort than a joe job 9 to 5 in many cases.

But considering you're probably someone who doesn't have either a job or a YouTube channel I'm going to excuse you for speaking out of turn this one time.

[Kokolums]

I wish we could all " take a break " from our jobs. What is so different that Youtubers think they somehow are hard done by. If they have a lot of subscribers then they get paid well for their work. You know who I have empathy for, good hard working people that work as shop assistants, bar staff, people who work for minimum wage who turn up for work every day. I do not have any sympathy with Youtubers who see themselves as celebrities and feel hard done by when they realize life is hard work.

In this case its a little different because you are putting yourself out there in public to be judged by the public. If you make widgets, you can relatively feel secure in knowing there is a daily widget quota you need to reach. But with making videos, there really is no standard. You are at the mercy of what the crowd wants. If the crowd goes fickle and decides it likes something else, then that's it. There's extra stress coming at you from two directions in being a public figure and trying to guess what the crowd wants and doing it every day.

- - - Updated - - -

Written like someone who has no idea what they're talking about. Hilarious. Of course there'll be more clueless, ignorant judgey kids like you throwing shitposts into this fire this thread is going to turn into so let me rebuff all of them at the same time really quick.

A YouTube career is significantly more work than a low-skill job. More than that, however, the real problem is dealing with YouTube itself. YouTube is constantly fucking with the platform and it makes it impossible to get a steady viewerbase going, meaning your monthly income can fluctuate dramatically. Very few YouTubers arrogantly consider themselves celebrities who deserve some kind of preferential treatment. The demand put on YouTubers means it's actually a really, really time consuming and hard job. A lot more effort than a joe job 9 to 5 in many cases.

But considering you're probably someone who doesn't have either a job or a YouTube channel I'm going to excuse you for speaking out of turn this one time.

If I was really doing it as a job, my goal would be to get established and then get off youtube and/or twitch onto a platform i can control. Alternatively, I'd start some sort of wow community on my own first, and then start releasing videos and/or live streams on some other platform I can control second and just skip youtube/twitch entirely.

I wouldn't like tying my entire system to something out of my control like that.

[Machismo]

YouTubers are no different than Kim Kardashian...largely talentless, famous for nothing, and not worth my fucking time.

[Dacien]

One aspect I can kind of see being different from a traditional job, to sort of address that argument, is that if YouTubers take breaks and don't stick to these schedules, they risk falling out of the spotlight, losing viewers, and their career. And climbing back up is probably close to impossible once that happens. So imagine if you took some days off from work as a chef, reduced or changed your schedule for a while, and afterwards you got fired and were never allowed to cook for a living again. Just no more being a chef, figure something else out.

I'll bet this pressure of losing their career pretty much for good if they take extended breaks or irregular schedules probably contributes to the massive stress.

[minteK917]

The real problem is youtube itself, they dont actually use the legal definition of copyrights. Infact their automated system is so trash, if there is any content you own, you can simply strike a channel, even if its legal for them to use it for a review or a critic. Which means companies do that, because its easy, you strike them 3 times, they lose all their work. If youtube simply let legal procedure go their own way, these companies wouldnt bother, because they would lose in court to every single time. Theres a reason people do patreon and such, because well. Being on Youtube means you cant monetize yourself for your actual work, even if legally they have nothing to stop you.

[Shadowferal]

I find myself not giving a damn about some boob-tuber burning out.
Take a break...get a job making min-wage...after a few weeks I'm sure they'll be more than happy to keep going doing their internet thing.

[PACOX]

Makes sense. They are doing too much without taking break. Some of them document everything they do and live on social media. They are always in work mode.

But a lot of them did it to themselves or let the platform take over their life.

[Sliske]

People are surprised that individuals that have the constant opinions, compliments, insults, criticisms, comments, noises, inputs and just vibes of literally hundreds of thousands of people every time they turn on their computer or phone (which also happens to be how they make all of their money) end up developing mental problems?

I'm literally autistic and even I can see this from a mile away.

[Boricha]

I've seen a lot of Youtubers I watch complain about the direction of Youtube and the rampant demonetization of their content. Youtube the company is totally disconnected from their creators and keeps everyone in the dark on website changes. Their algorithm is nonsensical and it makes total sense that it's given bigger Youtubers OCD and obsessive disorders. They have to work 12+ hours a day every day to put out content while having no reassurance that their videos will be seen or monetized.

[Post]

I find myself not giving a damn about some boob-tuber burning out.
Take a break...get a job making min-wage...after a few weeks I'm sure they'll be more than happy to keep going doing their internet thing.

Yeah this is really just a lack of perspective. Their priorities change when they actually achieve their goal and become disconnected from the real world. Like you said, if they got a normal minimum wage job for a week they'd beg to make videos/stream.

[Celista]

So from what I can tell it's less "oh this hobby is now a job" (although I'm sure that's true for some creators) and it's more "YT keeps demonetizing people for inane reasons and what I need to do to put food on the table changes every week now". I am sure some people do not feel empathy for YT creators but the fact that YT keeps dicking them around makes me feel pretty bad for them.

[Deleted]

Youtube shows me only creators active. Who gives a shit about retired ones.

[minteK917]

I've seen a lot of Youtubers I watch complain about the direction of Youtube and the rampant demonetization of their content. Youtube the company is totally disconnected from their creators and keeps everyone in the dark on website changes. Their algorithm is nonsensical and it makes total sense that it's given bigger Youtubers OCD and obsessive disorders.

That just wont happen. Just like Facebook, Youtube has total monopoly of the market period. Leaving the platform doesent mean youtube gets smaller, it means you get next to no view. Even big review sites all still end up putting their reviews and podcast on youtube, because theres no way their own sites get the same view. Theres a reason why we break up monopolies in the real world, because once its there, nothing can compete or grow any other direction. The internet is suffering from the fact we applied even less rules to it.

[Ozzyorcborne]

Aw poor things. Guess they'll need to find a real job, shocker! What will they ever do??

[xcitng]

I wish we could all " take a break " from our jobs. What is so different that Youtubers think they somehow are hard done by. If they have a lot of subscribers then they get paid well for their work. You know who I have empathy for, good hard working people that work as shop assistants, bar staff, people who work for minimum wage who turn up for work every day. I do not have any sympathy with Youtubers who see themselves as celebrities and feel hard done by when they realize life is hard work.

How often does you job start reducing the amount of money you make even if your doing better than everyone else and working longer hours

[Wyrt]

I think that's why a lot of YouTube creators are now getting advertises to endorse their videos directly rather than having to do it through YouTube. But now you have to hear the creators advertise for some product at the beginning of their videos.