Why I deleted everything in 2025
I've made millions of dollars online, gotten millions of followers, and earned over a billion impressions on the content I've created since 2011. In 2025, I deleted everything, because I felt like all I was doing was making content in one of two ways. Either I was trying to help people with my content and make people's lives better, and then I'd get no reach in the algorithm, or I was willing to say anything and do whatever was needed, and then I could have all the views and all the money I wanted. After being a content creator since 2011, I came to feel that the whole system was really gross and that I couldn't maintain any morality in the middle of it.
I deleted everything with the hope that I could find something better to do with my life where I could genuinely help other people. And yet I didn't find anything. One night, after looking at my money going to zero and going into debt, looking at the fact that I couldn't find any work that didn't feel like selling my soul, I prayed. I got no answers. All the help people offered was "just get a job." Sell your soul at a job; that's what everybody else does.
So I was afraid about money one night, and I prayed to the Shepherd of Fire. I said, "Please tell me what I need to do to make money." The words quickly came: "Go back to YouTube. I already gave you everything there before, didn't I? Come back to YouTube." I immediately set up YouTube accounts the next day, and my YouTube channels are going off as well as they've gone off in a long time. And yet I still have that conflict in my mind. Let me give you some concrete examples.
When I had no ethical considerations, I printed money
When I didn't have any problems saying what I needed to say and doing what I needed to do to get paid, I had more than MrBeast in 2016. I made millions of dollars online in my first five years of just going all out online as a content creator. I had very little ethical consideration about what was going to happen to my audience as a result of watching my videos. I didn't worry about that at all. My only thought was: how can I get the most clicks, the most watch time, the most sales, and the most money out of my videos? And I just printed money all over the place. I sold courses to people that they didn't even watch. I made myself an authority on marketing, and then on crypto. I live streamed games. I became one of the first crypto YouTubers in the world.
Crypto is where the conflict really came to light. If I just got out there and promoted these different coins, I could make huge amounts of money for myself. Exchange referrals. The coins themselves paid to advertise, paid for access to my viewers. There was money all over the place for me. But what I noticed, especially as I encountered my followers in person, was that while I was making tons of money, paying all the bills for my family, and a winner in the eyes of the world, lots of times my followers were losing money and wasting their time watching my videos.
I started to feel bad about this. I started to have some empathy. Yes, I made a bunch of money off my videos, but here's how it worked: I'd buy a coin low, market it a whole bunch, and sell it high. My followers would buy it high, and then I'd stop marketing it. They'd still be holding it, lose faith in it, lose a bunch of money, and sell it low. I started to feel bad about all of this. I was just wasting people's time. I was just saying whatever I needed to say to get paid.
By 2018 my business, which I'd been consistently growing, had millions of followers online. I'd made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and paid for everything for my family. Then, as soon as I started getting into this ethical dilemma for the first time as a content creator, thinking, "Wait a minute, maybe I should consider how my videos are impacting my audience and not just have it all be about me and what I get," my business totally crashed out for about a year.
Facebook Gaming, Call of Duty Warzone, and the cheaters above me
Then I just went back to, "Look, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Give me the views, give me the money, and give me the followers." From that mindset, I got sucked in. I got sucked into Facebook Gaming and playing Call of Duty Warzone. So here I am with two little kids in 2020, a guy who had felt addicted to video games lots of times, who had tried to quit playing video games and had finally been able to quit, and I start playing video games again and end up being one of the top 20 Facebook Gaming partners. Meanwhile, I hear whistleblowers talking about all these things happening on the inside of Facebook Gaming, and on the inside of Facebook generally. They are pretty repulsive to hear, but they feel pretty accurate based on what I'm seeing on the inside and what I'm seeing in the non-disclosure agreements I end up signing in order to be a Facebook partner.
Again, in the eyes of the world, I'm successful. I made over $100,000 streaming Call of Duty Warzone and retro games on Facebook Gaming, YouTube, and elsewhere. I had blown up my business and had two years of almost completely losing money, and then within a year I just print all kinds of money and get all kinds of views and all kinds of followers by doing what I need to do. I saw that if you want to make money and get followers, you need to play Call of Duty Warzone on Facebook. So I did it, and I made all kinds of money and millions of followers. It was a big deal. Everybody knew my name, and people were recognizing me in person.
And again, the same conflict of interest. I noticed that while I'm winning, the people above me are willing to do more than I am. They are willing to cheat at the game, whereas I'm not willing to cheat at the game. Many of the people above me will cheat at the game so they can get more views and more followers. They'll do all kinds of stuff. And once more I run into my integrity, and I'm frustrated, because if I want to go higher, I need to drop the integrity. I need to cheat too. If I had cheated, with my personality and the strategies I used, my gameplay would have been unbelievable, and I could have reached the top. But instead I again come into conflict with my integrity. I feel like the whole system is compromising everybody.
I also noticed that while it appears I'm winning, there are mothers ignoring their husbands and ignoring their children to watch my live streams. There are grandmothers spending hours and hours watching me play a first-person shooter every week. What kind of impact do you think that has on someone's mind? In one case I'm thinking of, a grandmother who didn't even play video games got sucked in because I knew how to run the algorithm, and she watched me play a first-person shooter for hundreds and hundreds of hours over the course of a year. Is that good for her? I start to think, what am I doing? I'm pulling people into watching me play video games who didn't even know what I was doing. I'm pulling people into watching me play video games at all. I get people who start streaming, buying thousands of dollars of equipment, setting up and starting to stream. They give me hundreds of dollars. They say they're inspired by me. They give me hundreds more dollars to promote their streams, but they do nothing but waste their time and lose money while I profit.
So I get disgusted with the whole system, and I essentially call it out. I tackle a much bigger level of the matrix, and I see that it's all a control matrix. Everything, the entire media environment, is one big control matrix designed to disempower and to distract. And again, I feel disgusted that I'm contributing to it. Then I end up getting demonetized on Facebook. Right when I change my intention, when I decide I really want to help people, that I don't want to just waste people's time, that I want to serve, that I'm willing to sacrifice and do whatever it takes to help humanity, I get demonetized on Facebook.
Chasing money in crypto, then paying for the path of virtue
Then I go chase money in crypto. When I start out just saying whatever I need to say to get paid in crypto, I go from having lost the Facebook Gaming money, my gaming income dropping to almost zero within a few months, to printing tens of thousands of dollars a month, because I just go on crypto and say, "This coin's going to go up. It's awesome." All the people I'm telling what they want to hear are so happy to see a new voice, a good-looking face, a strong, clear personality that's experienced at this. They're so happy to see me. I start printing tens of thousands of dollars a month. I get exchanges coming to me saying I can make $100,000 a month if I'll copy trade with them and refer everybody, showing me examples of other people doing the same thing and telling me I could do at least what they're doing, and even better. I talk to my viewers face to face. I sell them courses for hundreds of dollars.
Again, I'm winning in the eyes of the world. I'm making all this money, but my viewers are spending a bunch of time watching my videos, which basically have very little substance. I've just taken what other people said in their videos and reiterated it with more personality, better presentation, and better titles. And then I get the views and the followers. Then I get people asking me face to face in Zoom calls, "Hey Jerry, you promoted these 50 coins, but which one of them is the best?" I have to face the truth that I don't know which one is the best, because I'm out here just saying whatever I need to say to get paid.
So I find the one with the best technology and go all in on it. My money plunges. I choose the path of virtue, and I pay for it immediately and consistently over the next several years with my wallet. I keep thinking I need to make sure I'm serving and giving my audience the best information, so I commit to only giving my audience the best information. Consistently, my views tank. My audience gets bored. People from all those other communities leave. I get stuck in this ICP community that only wants to hear how great ICP is, even though the marketing is terrible outside of me and a couple of others, and the technology is not getting adopted. And for years, I just keep going.
Burnout, my wife, and the divorce
I just show this coin over and over again. I get burnt out repeatedly, because I know that if I would say what I need to say, I could get serious money. Instead, I'm out here operating, sacrificing myself, and getting almost nothing for it. My wife gets tired of me. When I say what I think is most helpful for my viewers to hear, my money plunges, so my wife has to pick up the slack. Now she's paying most of the bills. Now she's not as attracted to me. She doesn't think she needs me, because now she's contributing more financially than I am.
Then I try to quit. I try to find a better thing to do. I end up trying to quit in 2024, and I come back to it for the money. I finally delete everything in 2025 because I realize I can't quit if I can just go back and post to these accounts. Then, right after I delete everything, my wife tells me she wants a divorce, because from her point of view I'm now useless. Now I'm not making any money. She could just do everything herself. She could find another man to date that she likes better. So she gets rid of me.
Then I'm out here not making any money, blowing all my savings, and then blowing through my credit. People try to help me, but nobody says anything truly helpful except "get a job" or "go back to YouTube." I asked hundreds and hundreds of people for help, and it was always get a job or go back to YouTube.
The answer that came back: go back to YouTube
So in the dark, in despair, in prayer, I pray to whoever's listening, because it doesn't seem like God's listening. I've prayed and I've asked for help. So I think, how about the Shepherd of Fire? Maybe he's listening. "Please help me. What do I need to do for money?" Immediate answer: go back to YouTube. So I come back to YouTube. It's the same environment, the same things. And now here I am today, six months later, having gotten millions and millions of impressions on my videos, and I'm again faced with the same choice. I already have a silver YouTube plaque I got a decade ago. Do you want that gold one? Do you want the money? Well, I'm going to be your boss. You do what I want you to do, and you're going to get what you want.
So this is where I'm at. Do I want to be broke and lonely and right and righteous? Do I want to be empathetic and caring about my fellow human beings, absolutely on top of my content and absolutely ensuring that what I'm saying is truly helpful to people? Or do I want to say what I need to say, get the money I want and the fame I want, which will easily bring me lots of opportunities to not be lonely?
I have to say, I think I've been wrong. I think I've been wrong trying to choose the path of virtue, trying to choose the path of putting my audience first, because what has that gotten me? It's gotten me divorced. It's gotten me living alone. It's gotten me broke and in debt. And when I did what I needed to do, which was made clear to me by others following the same path and made clear directly when I asked for it, it worked. I've prayed to Jesus, and I don't see that I've ever gotten good answers. But I pray to the Shepherd of Fire, and I get very clear, actionable answers that consistently work. I just don't like what they are sometimes.
Look at what the videos are really promoting
I'm not sure how you navigate this as a content creator, because I'm sure you might think of an exception. Sure, there are some content creators who get to just put out love and light content, but even that is often discreetly sabotaging. Some of these books and things tell you, "Oh, just be love," but behind that there's guilt. There's shame. Any time you've deviated slightly from love: guilt, shame, you're not good enough. I'm not going to call anybody out in particular for this, but just look at the videos. See what they're promoting. Are these things that help you be an empowered, strong person, or are these things that trick you into wasting your time on junk information? I know what it is.
At the same time, though, I can see what works. I can see what I need to say to get paid, and I've laid out much of what I've learned about this over the years in my YouTube Coaching playlist. If I need to say what they say to get paid, then what about my audience? I'm starting to think that's not my problem. Because if I can't pay my bills, that is my problem.
But what about my audience? What if my audience watches my videos and it disempowers them, but it empowers me? Is that my problem? I don't know anymore.