From Nobody Talking About Me to 20,000-Plus Views a Day
Six months ago, I had deleted all of my content online, and almost nobody was saying or talking about Jerry Banfield at all. Six months later, I'm getting 20,000-plus views a day on my videos across six different YouTube channels, long videos and short videos, plus Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn. My videos are being seen hundreds of thousands of times across all platforms combined every single day. And every day, there are videos and posts of people saying the nastiest things they can come up with, from every different angle.
What a lot of people don't think about with content creation is that you have two basic pathways. One, you will be irrelevant. You can talk and almost nobody will listen. If you're lucky, you'll get a fan or two who will follow you and enjoy what you're saying. The other path is that you're going to have to go to extreme points of view. You're going to need to say things that aren't normal, things that will get people to pay attention to you. And when you do that, in my experience you will consistently draw in the loneliest, angriest, craziest, most deranged people on the internet, and they will try to use you, to farm you for content, and they will say anything they can to get your attention.
For example, in the ICP community right now, I said that I'm tired of making content for free, that the community, via the blockchain itself, is perfectly capable of paying for it, and that I think that's what we should do. I said I'm not just going to be committed to ICP anymore when I'm getting nothing for doing it, there are better opportunities elsewhere, and I have bills to pay. Now, that seems like pretty reasonable stuff to say, doesn't it? And yet you have people calling me names, writing posts saying I should sell all my ICP, and people who have been big fans saying they're unfollowing me and never watching my videos again. This is the kind of content the algorithms push.
Extreme Opinions Get Paid, Then Get Normalized
So everyone, all over all these different platforms, is incentivized to say the nastiest, craziest, most extreme things they can say. What we're seeing right now is a lot of people getting themselves views by taking the most viral, reactive, insane, extreme content and putting that in their videos. The crazy thing is that this stuff is getting normalized. Take these opinions, for example: I have a Jerry Banfield dating channel, and when you watch dating content, it's almost all extreme opinions. If you try those things in real life, they often produce very poor results. Whereas on YouTube and on all these other content platforms, being an extreme, crazy person will get you paid, get you watched, and get you attention, as long as you don't go too far.
If you go too far and break outside the boundaries you're supposed to stand within, you'll be silenced, censored, and shut up. Some of those boundaries are written directly into the terms and conditions, but others are kept secret. If you stay within the extreme bounds, though, the playground, the matrix you're supposed to talk in, and you take these extreme points of view, then you will have the chance to get lots of views.
This has been heartbreaking for me to observe, because when I got into content creation, it wasn't this bad. Often you could just get some followers, make content for the followers, and the followers would be happy. Especially on YouTube about a decade ago, you didn't have to do clickbait content all the time. YouTube would show your videos to the people who subscribed, and I could do ordinary videos talking about how I was getting into gardening. I could talk crypto. I could play video games. YouTube would show my videos to about the same number of people each time, and if I produced a genuinely helpful course or tutorial video, that might get some more views from search.
Over the last decade, though, all the content platforms have optimized for dopamine-driven people who are addictively consuming the platform, compulsively scrolling. The only thing that stops people who are on these platforms all day is the most extreme, crazy content. And then everybody's incentivized to produce that stuff.
For example, if I do a channel just talking about my ordinary life, like the vlogs I did a year ago: I was married, I still have kids, I was a content creator, and I made regular, boring, everyday vlogs. Almost nobody wanted to watch them. I had tens of thousands of subscribers, actually hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube back then, before I deleted them all, and almost nobody wanted to watch my vlogs. But then I start up these new vlogs and I start talking about all these dating stories. I talk about borrowing money to do YouTube full time. I start putting out extreme opinions. And then I have podcasts, and who are these podcasts? They take my content and react very negatively to it, although they must like me enough to feature me a whole bunch of times. They roast me, they troll me, they put out thumbnails that, if you were saying that to somebody's face, you would consider mean, putting them down, attacking them, arguing with them, criticizing them, and so on. They do that and they get tens of thousands of views on YouTube; hundreds of thousands of people see these videos trolling me. They get paid to do all of that. And I end up getting promoted: all their content trolling me helped me get new viewers and new subscribers and get monetized on YouTube. This is the reality of being a content creator today.
The Heat, and the Silent Majority Nobody Sees
I know a lot of other content creators, and what I've noticed is that some of the ones who are not as professional as I am, not as seasoned as I am, can't stand the heat when the criticism turns up. They can't stand seeing video after video and post after post criticizing them and roasting them. But here's what is not seen: there's often a silent, large group of people who are just watching and not saying anything. And these are often some of the most enthusiastic supporters. There are a lot of people who love my videos, but they're not generally going to sit down and write a post on X explaining how much they love my videos. When they see 50 people writing posts that are angry, nasty, and critical, they're not going to stand up to all that, because they already like my videos and they have no reason to draw in these insane people who are looking for views to attack them.
I've experienced this myself. There have been days where I've had videos going out about me, talking all about me, that got millions of views, millions of views in a single day, and all kinds of crazy people and hate comments, all of it, coming in. Back then it was very difficult for me to deal with, because I figured if there are thousands and thousands of people criticizing me, saying nasty things, and calling me names, they must have some legitimacy, right? Like maybe there's some shred of truth in what they're saying. Now I don't care how many people it is or who it is who says anything I don't agree with, anything I don't already think is true about me. I can take an endless amount of criticism now.
The real challenge is when people flip, when it's your wife giving you the hardest criticism and saying the same things the haters are saying, or when it's your friends or your family. If you want to be a content creator, you're going to need to discover a level of strength that is uncommon in everyday reality. Because if most people endured the kind of stuff I have, most people would try not to rock the boat with their content. Then they'll try to just make fun of or put down other people, but you'll inevitably get it back at you too. So a lot of people go irrelevant as content creators, because when you get destroyed, when there are thousands and thousands of shots being taken at you online, it's easy to take that personally, to crumble, and to just beg for it to stop.
Today It Feeds Me
But today that stuff feeds me. Go ahead and make a post about how bad my videos are. Go ahead and make a video reacting to my videos. I never file copyright strikes against anybody. Maybe one day, when I get more and more money and more followers, I'll employ an agency, because some creators have agencies that will do anything necessary to get people's accounts taken down. Whenever somebody makes a video criticizing them that gets enough views, they'll get the video taken down. I don't do that. You can say whatever you want about me, because it doesn't affect me. I know what's true. If anything, I've learned that people writing post after post criticizing me should strengthen my position. Because if I truly agree with what I'm saying, then anybody disagreeing with me is just giving me fuel to fire back at them.
In my house growing up, we would all argue with each other ruthlessly. My mom, my dad, my brother, and I would all just argue as much as possible and do anything we could to win the argument. If you want to be a content creator, you should look at being online like that. Anything anybody says is just fuel for you to roast them in your next video. And ironically, that puts on a good show. When people come at me, I'm going back at them. Oh, you said this? I'm coming back at you with that. Oh, you didn't like that? Good. I don't like this about you. But you've got to make it so you're not criticizing the person; you're criticizing the arguments they're making, the things they're saying, the intellectual positions they're taking, and encouraging them to change their opinion. That is the game being played here.
A lot of people fantasize about going viral. I ran into a guy locally one day who had just gone viral on Instagram, and he was miserable. This guy was in the business of taking care of pets. He had made a video with some edgy content, and the things people were saying about him had just ruined him. He said he couldn't believe all the nasty things people were saying, that he wanted to quit doing this, that he hated it. Now, this is the thing people dream of: going viral. And this guy went a fraction as viral as I've gone before. The things people said about him were on par with what people were saying about me, except imagine ten-plus times that much coming in. And imagine your wife saying the same things to you that all the haters are saying, and having to stand up to, like, everybody in the world.
I'm glad I've learned that if you believe in something, no amount of people should be able to change your mind about it. It doesn't matter who the criticism is coming from: family, friends, anybody else. You've got to be able to hold your own reality so strongly as a content creator that nobody knocks you off center. Most content creators don't have that kind of internal strength. And if you're going to go out and say things that criticize and attack others, which gets views and makes money, you have to be ready for what comes back.
Taking More Than I Give
You had better be able to take it when it comes in. I take so much more than I give out today, and yet I can handle it. I'm strong, it fuels me, and it makes this whole game fun. I see somebody's post talking a bunch of junk, and I'm coming after you in my next video. I'm going to make an example of you, destroy your argument, and make what you said look ridiculous. And then the people who love me are going to celebrate that, watch my video, and drop likes.
I wish we could make a better world out of this. I swear these media platforms are ruining a lot of us, so that when we do things in real life, like try to date, these platforms have screwed our minds up so much that it's hard to have a connection with another human being. We're instantly looking for a reason to just destroy the other person, acting the same way we see all this stuff play out online.
So it's tough for me as a content creator, when I want to make the world a better place, when I want to help people, but the environment I'm in is like a matrix that feeds off destruction, hate, controversy, and conflict. But I don't have any better idea for my life, real talk. I don't know what else I could do with myself at this point that makes the kind of money I make as a content creator working from home. So I try to work through all this, much of it out loud in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and still deliver a message somehow that is hopeful, that is love and connection.
The Silent Majority Has My Back
The last thing I'll say is that you've got to think about that silent group of people, which is often the majority. The silent group is going to watch all the insanity, but in my experience the silent majority often does have my back. I remember some of the times I went most viral: there were so many haters and critics, but a lot of people were just sitting there thinking, reflecting, and silently supporting me. Many of them let me know privately, but a lot of the people who silently support you are never going to let you know.
So if you want help with being a creator, if you've just gone viral and it's miserable, or if you're wondering whether you can sustain being in this business as crazy as it is, I'm Jerry Banfield. I help advanced, professional, long-time creators stay in this game. I've done just about everything you're going to do as a content creator, and I've got a lot of experience. If you want to have a call, go to jerrybanfield.com and join my chat, or join my Skool community. I've got you.
I hope to see you at my website, jerrybanfield.com, and I'll keep making these videos.