I was feeling really down today. It felt like everything was pointless, like I shouldn't even do my videos, like life itself was hopeless. And now I'm doing a live stream on my channel, and this is the best I've felt all day. I had my kids over earlier and I snuggled with them, which was wonderful, but it seems my emotions as a YouTuber are heavily tied to creation. This is one of the tricky things that has taken me a while to figure out. If you're a content creator, you may be baffled by why you so often feel bad right before you create content. Thankfully, I've learned that often, I swear something like half or a third of the time, I feel awful before I start doing my videos. It's like I don't want to do them at all. I literally sat on the couch and cried for an hour before this stream.
Now, I'd had some emotions that were built up over the week of going to VidSummit. But it seems like doing my videos as a YouTuber and a content creator is something that helps me feel really good. My emotions are tied to doing my videos, and that's not surprising. There are all kinds of artists and creatives, painters, piano players, athletes, whose emotions get tied up in something they do, something they're good at, something creative.
Waiting for a good mood is how you get nothing done
I went to VidSummit and met a lot of YouTubers there, and one thing YouTubers seem to struggle with is feeling like they have to be in a great mood to film their videos, and that they don't want to do anything if they're not in a great mood. And I'm thinking, man, I would hardly get anything done as a content creator if the only time I filmed was when I was in a good mood. Like tonight. I know from doing tens of thousands of videos and thousands of hours of live streams that when I feel horrible, I should get on my live stream, because by the end of the stream I'm going to feel much better.
Ironically, I don't often feel better watching content unless it's just the right kind of content. Mr. Beast put out a new video today, and it looked interesting. It's 59 minutes long, one of the longest videos he has put out. I was on the couch thinking, I know I'm not going to feel better if I watch this. I watched the first two minutes and said, all right, let me stop. I need to get on my live stream, because when I get on my live stream I start talking, I start creating, and I start getting the emotions moving. I think it really helps to get your emotions moving. This is something almost anybody could do: just talk through what you're feeling, share, and create authentically from the heart, even if you never post it publicly.
I talked to a YouTuber who said they didn't think they had anything to say, but they just started recording and ended up talking for 58 minutes. Then they told me, I can't post that. My audience expects me to be cheerful and playful and fun. I can't post a 58-minute rant. I said they should start a second channel, but it would crush their entire image. Their image is happy, fun, playful, everything's good, let's have a good time. That's what's challenging, and that's what you need to know when you're watching content: a lot of the time people are either profiting off being miserable all the time or hiding the natural downsides.
I need big emotions to create properly
What's further challenging is that I feel I need my emotions to create properly. Some of my viewers have told me, you need to go get on meds, you're emotionally unstable. And my answer is that I need big emotions to create great content, because even when I was married and my life was more stable, my content was just not interesting enough to get people to watch. Now my content, and me creating as a single guy, borrowing money, hoping I can make it as a full-time content creator again, which is what I've done since 2012, after getting divorced and giving my ex most everything, and after deleting everything right before, when I was thinking I needed to go get on meds, is what people respond to. So ironically, it's my emotions and my feelings that have made my content much better.
Some of my best content has come from hitting huge peak highs. For example, there was a woman I called the queen, and I had these huge peak highs for about a week. My YouTube channel at Jerry Banfield, which is now my most popular channel by watch time with 8,700 watch hours in the last year, was dead until I met this woman and got so euphorically high for a week straight. I did vlogs every day in that euphoric state, and then I crashed and was miserable for at least a week, maybe two weeks afterwards. That's where my channel took off. That's where my channel got monetized. That's where people started reacting to my content. My content was so boring before that. The guys at Who Are These Podcasts couldn't even be bothered to react to my content, even though they'd followed me for years. They reacted to some of it, but when those queen videos started hitting, then they started going off on those, because that was interesting content.
So to me, a big challenge of being a content creator is that logically you might think, oh, I need to be in a good mood to film. I'm a veteran at this point, so I know that when I feel miserable right now, I'd better get on camera and start recording, because if I wait until I feel good to record, I'm going to suffer longer. And ironically, it's exactly those things that people identify with. When I was married and making a bunch of money, people struggled to identify with me and my real, authentic videos. Now I'm divorced, dating has been brutal this year, and I've been racking up a whole bunch of debt. Now people identify, because most Americans are in debt and dating is just nuts. Because my content is authentic, people connect with it. I have these huge emotions, and I know they're essential to my creativity. So I'm always hoping other YouTubers will realize that you need your emotions.
The video I did not want to film
My first TikTok video to get over 10,000 views actually got about 90,000 views. I had made a bunch of TikTok videos back in 2019, when it feels like now you couldn't have failed on TikTok, and I made so many videos that just bombed. Then I did this video of me crying after I got out of the shower, and it got 90,000 views. I did a follow-up video to that which got hundreds of thousands of views. Then I started hitting more videos that got hundreds of thousands, and I eventually got a few videos to a million. But the breakout video was one where I was literally sobbing and crying about my mom and not knowing if she was going to make it or not. That was a video I did not want to film. I did not want to film it at all. And yet, like so many times, what we need to share is what other people need to hear, and it's the last thing I'm going to want to share.
I think we need a lot more real, raw, authentic content, from people who are out here sharing the ups, the downs, and everything in between honestly, not just sensational "I'm so great" clickbait, and not "everybody sucks and it's horrible" content either. Neither of those is fully authentic. The value of a million TikTok views back then was worth nothing, but now, if you're in their creator program, it could pay pretty well. If you want more on creating through the hard days, I share a lot more of this on my Content Creators playlist.
So I hope that's useful. You can find more from me at jerrybanfield.com.