If I behave like a reasonable person in real life, things usually go great for me. I have loving relationships, and people support me. I've got friends, I've got family, I parent my children successfully, I get along with my ex-wife, and I try to go out on dates and be a nice guy. But that approach as a content creator gets me nothing. The hard part for me is separating the two, because while drama and insanity are very successful for me when I'm creating content, I can't help but take a little bit of that back into my real life, and even live my real life in a way that makes better content.
2,500 views for a game, 95,000 views for rage bait
Here's a very concrete example. A couple of weeks ago I made a new game called Meme Coin Dynasty with AI. It's awesome. I tested it a bunch with the AI, I played it myself, it's on jerrybanfield.com, and I did a post about it. You'll notice that video got about 2,500 views. Then yesterday I did a drama-filled post, rage baiting, saying I'm selling most of my ICP and that going all in was a huge mistake. That one got 95,000 views, and it will easily get at least 5,000 more, if not 100,000 more, over the next few days. That is 40 to maybe 50, even potentially 100 times as many views from drama compared to a normal post. This is how people have built up entire channels: with sensationalism, with drama. The problem is that stuff doesn't usually work in real life.
A date that felt like a video
I had a date yesterday that felt more like a video, where this woman was just arguing with me. Maybe she's been watching some of this "decentering men" content or whatever, but she was confrontational. She was hostile. I felt attacked and consistently criticized, and at the same time I held my point of view: I'm here, I'm happy, I'm having fun. She was stressed out. She was anxious. She wasn't having a good time. It's like she was living the drama she watched online in real life on a date, and she could not even manage to be polite. From my view, there was no possibility of a human connection with me because she was stuck in all this drama she'd seen online, and that made it hard for her to actually connect with a real person.
I've seen a number of people like this, and that's part of why I deleted millions of followers and deleted all my accounts last year. I got tired of it. Because to me, this is what's healthy: content that shows normal, that is fun, and often content that maybe doesn't even make you feel good when you watch it. It can be genuinely uncomfortable, and it can be the most transforming. Some of the things I've listened to, like the books I've listened to, were uncomfortable to take in because I realized I was going to have to change my life because of the information I'd heard in that book. I didn't really want to do that, and it was scary, but I did it. A lot of content that doesn't get views is actually helpful.
But how helpful is that drama post I did, talking about how I'm selling all my ICP, how the community's a disaster, and how DFINITY's not delivering? How helpful is all that drama? Well, platforms care about getting people to spend the most time on the platform. And it's drama, sensationalism, and insane stuff, which ironically is very different from normal, that gets people to spend addictively more time on each platform. The challenge is this: when you take in a bunch of drama and then you show up on a date like I did with this woman yesterday, how do you connect with a real human being? What you need in person is normal and love and connection and curiosity, but online it's criticism and judgment and disconnection and fighting and over-identifying. How do we separate these things?
MrBeast and ultra-processed content
Ideally, content creation would reward sanity. Ideally, content creation would reward people who are providing value. Instead, it rewards people like Jimmy, MrBeast. He creates the most sensational, drama-filled content possible, and it's certainly packaged in a way that is palatable. It's not like he's going out criticizing a bunch of other people, but it's still kind of mindless entertainment. It's just like watching a TV show, or just like eating ultra-processed food. It's sensational when it goes in, but then what happens after you've consumed it? When I consume a bunch of content based on drama, sensationalism, and insanity, I don't feel better afterward. After I watch a MrBeast video, I feel like I just wasted my time. I feel like real life sucks compared to watching that. Jeez, my life's boring. What am I doing with my dumb life compared to watching this drama?
My kids experience the same thing. They would be watching these kids do all these fun things, and they would turn down opportunities to do the fun things themselves. They could go do the same kind of stuff they're watching these kids do, but they'd say, no, we just want to watch YouTube Kids. We don't want to actually go play mini golf right now ourselves. We'd rather sit here and watch these other kids play mini golf. And then after they'd get off the tablets, there'd often be fights and screaming and crying, and I'm thinking, this is crazy. And that's what you'd think of as relatively drama-free, harmless content.
What the dating coaches get views on
So what do you get when adults watch a bunch of content that's out there trying to put everybody else down and criticize everything? You get the male dating coaches telling men to be avoidant, to make more money and get rich, to put no effort into women, and to do anything to just hook them with a dating profile. Then you have the female dating coaches telling women that men are the problem and that you need to decenter men. And when that stuff plays out in real life, it's not normal, and people aren't happy.
I watched a bunch of these guys saying, yeah, don't text her for a couple of days. Some of them even reversed their position later, saying, well, just react to her message. And literally what they get views on is the opposite of what works in real life. They're out there telling all these dudes one thing. I put that crap into practice, and I had women texting me, "I'm not feeling the connection." And I'm thinking, wait, what happened? We had an awesome first date. You texted me right away after the date. Oh, right, I didn't text her for two days because this dude said that's how you become a high-value man. You don't text her. You let her wonder, let her insecurity build. Well, her insecurity sure did build. She decided she was not interested in me, that I couldn't possibly be interested in her, because she was watching her dating coach who says, don't deal with avoidant men. If a guy's not texting you all the time, then he's not that interested in you. Move on, some other guy will do that. I'm like, what?
Beautiful out here, screwed up in there
I go for a run out by my house. There's a beautiful lake, and I go for a nice run around it. Yesterday I did a three-mile run, and it's a mile around the lake. I'm thinking, man, everything is so beautiful out here. But then you come online, and everything is so screwed up in here. It's because the algorithms reward drama. Human beings are very vulnerable to rage bait, to crazy stuff, to sensationalism, and unfortunately most people fall for it, and I can't say I'm exempt. As I said, I watched a little bit of a MrBeast video and a MrBeast drama video today myself.
Then I watched a guy, Owen Cook, who certainly has some great dating advice to give, but this guy is also pretty extreme. A guy who has gone out in-field approaching women for tens of thousands of hours is not an average person. He's a genius, or else why would a regular man approach that much? Most guys would have just gotten a wife and settled down after doing a fraction of that approaching. Why is he continuing to do it and teach it? I don't need to tell his whole story, and I still need to watch the rest of his video. But if he comes out and says dating's awesome and you're doing great, are people going to watch his video? Or does he say dating's over and it's totally different now than it used to be? That second title is what many of his videos have been titled, and it gets clicks.
The telephone game and the matrix
Even when people don't watch the video, the message spreads. The majority of people who saw my ICP post probably didn't even watch it. I noticed that because in a lot of the comments, people indicate they didn't even know what I'm actually saying. They're seeing somebody retweet my post, often just making stuff up, and they're not even seeing my original message. They're seeing somebody else's retweet from somebody who didn't even watch the video and is just making stuff up. This is like the telephone game, except everybody is intentionally trying to sound as insane as possible so they can get their story out there instead of someone else's.
I come online and I feel like this environment is the matrix. The internet is the real-life matrix. The things you see happening on the internet versus real life are often polar opposites. Most of what I see in real life is love and connection, except when I have a date with somebody who's been taking in so much of this content that they just can't connect with another human being. Now, most of the women I go out with are awesome on first dates. They connect, they chat, and I'm proud of them for showing up and being normal despite all the content they've watched. And I'm amazed that with all the content I create, I can show up on a date and most of the time be normal too. But I've said my share of crazy stuff and red flags on dates. I've had my share of struggling to connect with people in real life because of all the drama.
My content and my divorce
I'd say a big part of me getting divorced last year was my content. It was one thing my now ex-wife just came to hate about me. I hated being with somebody who's in this drama world, who needs to manufacture drama to make interesting videos. Like with ICP: I've done ICP content day after day after day, and then I do some drama content, and it gets out there. Even though some people don't come back and watch after the drama, the drama gets out there. I've been viral a few times online. Do you think I've ever gone viral for love and light and trying to help and lift people up? No. I've gone viral when the most people decided to all hate me at the same time. I've met other content creators in person, and the moment they'd dreamed of going viral was miserable for them, because usually you go viral off of people hating you. So is this the kind of lifestyle you want?
Kindness content doesn't pay the bills
I dated a woman I called the queen, and I talked about her on my Jerry Banfield vlogs channel and on Jerry Banfield Dating. This woman is mostly a sweetheart, and she's trying to create content about love and connection. And I'm sorry, sweetheart, but that content is never going to go anywhere. She's getting some decent views on it, but she's making zero money. You're not going to go anywhere with content that's trying to share kindness with people. You can get normal amounts of views, but you are not going to pay the bills with kindness-driven content. Drama-driven content will pay the bills. I know, because I've done this full time. Just look at what everybody else is doing.
Going into the matrix to unplug people
So the way I look at it, my job is to go into the matrix. I may signal some drama on the surface, but I hope I can discreetly help some people unplug from the matrix and see that real life is often a normal, beautiful thing. Once you see that everything is sold and all these content platforms are fueled on drama, ironically, one of the things to do is to actually stop using these platforms. But I tried that too, and then life kind of gets boring and you get a narrow view on life. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram let you get a wide variety of points of view from all over the world, which is genuinely helpful compared to just being in your local community with a very narrow view on life. That's especially true if the people around you are all taking this drama content in and you're not taking in any content of your own. Then you get all their drama secondhand, and you don't even have a choice. At least by being online you can try to look for content that's inspiring, that's uplifting, and that's helpful.
If you're a content creator, talk to me
If you're a content creator, I invite you to schedule a call with me. I've lived this lifestyle for over a decade. I've created tens of thousands of videos and uploaded them online. I've published around 50 individual pieces of content that are taken from raw, long-form videos like this one, cut into short videos, and then fired out through automation on Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn. So I know this lifestyle. If you want to know how to succeed in it, how to survive it without burning out, and how to operate at the advanced level with AI helping, it's amazing. If you want to do this, come to my website and talk to me.
I share more on how I actually approach all of this over on my YouTube Coaching playlist, including the tools and automation I use to keep publishing without letting the drama run my life.
And if you just want to support what I'm doing, join the community, where you can direct message me and post, and I read all of those. Or you can join for a one-time payment for lifetime access with no censorship.
I hope to see you there soon.