I'm Jerry Banfield, and this is my vlog for September 5th, 2026. I'm a full-time content creator, and I'm real and raw and authentic with my life. Today, I'm in a pretty toxic mood. It's been a really annoying start to the day. I had an awesome day yesterday, and I wish I'd filmed the vlog before I went to bed, because I was in such a great, euphoric mood. I went out with the single mom who had canceled on me a couple of times, and we had a really nice date last night. I met up with her, we had a great conversation, walked around, had dinner, and talked for a few hours. We had so much in common. Meeting her in person was awesome. She started off the date by saying, "Look, I'm sorry that I didn't make it the other two times." I was just like, wow, it's so nice for people to actually acknowledge and apologize. It feels so rare and so scarce, especially in this world of online content creation.
I had a nice time with my kids yesterday. I went for a three-mile run, which took a little over 30 minutes. The first mile was nine minutes and 51 seconds, then the second mile was a little over 20 minutes, because I switched to run-walk, especially for the middle of the second mile and the third mile. I'm so grateful I've got so much exercise stamina. I did yoga at home, and I got a massage.
Why a content creator needs emotions
So what's got me toxic this morning? What's hard about being a content creator is that I need my emotions to create great content. I need to have feelings, because that's the difference between a human being and AI. AI content is flat and generic, because at least at this point, it doesn't seem to have much in the way of real emotions. It can kind of fake emotions, but you can just feel that it doesn't care. When it generates video, it doesn't care about what it's saying. To me, the secret of being a professional content creator is being able to be a bit manic: to go really high, see amazing possibilities, grab those and execute them, and, when you're down, to learn from that and create some content from it.
This morning I saw that the chief business officer at DFINITY, Pierre, unfollowed me on X, which seems to me to be a pretty clear sign of the isolation I've created. I've created a lot of ICP content over the years, and I've gotten very little support for it. I basically destroyed the crypto channel I had in 2023, which was growing and was one of the fastest-growing crypto channels. I was making tens of thousands of dollars a month covering all these other coins, and I basically destroyed my crypto channel by going all in on ICP. I made the mistake I said never to make again. I made it again. A big reason I quit doing content last year was that I was doing all this ICP content and making almost nothing. And yet I was hoping that by having a conversation, we could try to change that and do some marketing.
What's unfortunate in life is that lots of times, people just want to hear whatever confirms they're right, especially online. People want to hear, "Hey, you're right, you're thinking right." People run away from anything that's not telling them exactly what they expect and want to hear, unless it's drama and gossip and chaos about somebody else. God forbid I step up to the ICP community and say, look, the marketing needs to be improved, and here's what we can do about it. That's probably the last thing people at DFINITY want to hear, because they're probably very sore about it. They don't want somebody coming up to call them out and say, "What the hell have you guys been doing with marketing? Here's what we could do going forward."
Two toxic ICP videos, and whether to release them
So I filmed a couple of really toxic videos this morning, and now I'm wondering whether I even want to release them. At this point, it's kind of like, why not? But in the past, I've burned bridges. I deleted all my accounts in 2025, and here I am remaking them. I'd hate to burn a bridge today and then be working on rebuilding it in the future. If the ICP price goes up all of a sudden, I'd look pretty dumb. If I start burning the bridge and criticizing the whole project and then the price goes up, it's like, okay, everything I said turned out to be correct because the price went up. So I'm not sure what to do about that today. Maybe I'll film some videos that are more reasonable. But it's very disappointing to see how fragile life is sometimes.
I think about the video I sent to the queen, which the channel that bought it has now released in full. I kind of burned the bridge with her by sending that video. Before I sent it, we might have been able to recover and get back on track, and maybe we could be having an awesome relationship today. However, maybe by burning that bridge, I helped advance my life a whole lot. I got to the point where I sent her the video that has now been released after somebody paid $2,000 for it to put out on a Jerry Banfield fan channel. They've actually broken the video into three parts, which is an interesting take, building it up to get more views. Would I have been better off if I hadn't sent her that video? It probably would have dragged on longer dating her. Maybe she comes back from her trip and we reconnect and things go well, but maybe it takes several more weeks to get to the same place. Or maybe she ends up sending the same message anyway, saying she doesn't think we're emotionally and romantically compatible. So maybe my video helped burn the bridge and speed things up. Often, if you want to go forward in life, you need to clear space and get rid of all the things that are holding you down and taking up space that aren't what you want in your life.
A date in an hour, and a lesson about exclusivity
I have a date with a woman an hour from now, and a date with another woman in a couple of days. I'm playing tennis with that woman, and I'm going to try to see if it's a date in her mind and explore whether she can go out with me besides playing tennis. I may have another date with the woman I went out with last night, too. One reason I burned a bridge with the queen is that there are a lot of other women out there, and it seemed to me like it wasn't working with her. Whatever dynamics we were having, where she was pulling away and being avoidant, that wasn't working. It also showed me things I don't want to do again. I'm not ever asking a woman to be my girlfriend before we've had sex again. That was a mistake. If we haven't had sex, there's no reason for me to commit to being with one woman. I should be going out with as many women as possible and trying to find the very best option for me. Even after having sex, if it's great and everything is just perfect, I don't see why I'd be asking to be exclusive when I could still keep dating other women. That was a valuable lesson. I should not have asked the queen if she wanted to be my girlfriend before we'd even kissed, although I've heard of some of my friends doing the same kind of thing right now.
Is there a scenario where I'm having a great relationship with the queen if I don't send that video burning the bridge? Maybe. And with content creation, if I put out the most toxic content I can, that's going to get a much better reaction and more viewership, lots of times, than putting out more reasonable content. I've got two toxic ICP videos filmed right now, and those would probably make great content. At this point, the bridge is probably already burned. I'm probably on the DFINITY team's shit list. There's probably no going back. It doesn't matter all that I did for them, and they probably don't care anymore. It's very easy to get on someone's shit list with a single video, like with the queen. But I guess she got on my shit list first, canceling the date we had, pulling away, being avoidant, and acting like texting or communicating with me was such a burden. I'm not sure how to navigate it. You don't want to just burn all your bridges in life, especially with family. At the same time, if you don't get rid of the things and the people and the jobs in your life that aren't working, you don't have space for the things that do work.
I'm very grateful that money is coming easily to me outside of ICP and crypto right now. I made more in the last couple of weeks doing content about other cryptos than I have in months of ICP content. So maybe it makes sense to just burn the bridge with the ICP content. If I want to create it in the future, and the price goes up and there are lots of views to be had, I can always celebrate that if I feel like it. Still, this is much better than having a regular job. I'm grateful I don't have a boss who tells me what to do, where to do it, and when to do it. I'm grateful I get to figure these things out myself. I hope I can move this energy and this mood before my date with a woman who looks very compatible with me on paper.
So many conflicting ideas at once
There are so many conflicting ideas in my mind, and I love that my mind can hold all of them. I think of the woman I went out with three women ago, who ranted and raved on our date. It was really unattractive and put me off. But then, if I rant and rave in my content, it gets me a lot of views, it gets people to react to me, and it makes me money. It seems like with content, the thing to do is just tell people what they want to hear all the time, and if it doesn't work out, oh well, at least you told somebody what they wanted to hear and supported them where they were at.
But when I think about my life, some of the most influential conversations I've had were when people told me what I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to hear that I was an alcoholic and needed to get sober. I didn't want to hear that I was fat, and I personally think if more people had called me fat, I would have done something about it sooner. I remember the personal trainer I had a few months ago, a guy who's in fantastic shape and was dating beautiful women. He said, "Can you believe I used to be a little fat kid?" I said no. He said people were so mean to him and told him he was fat to his face so many times that he finally did something about it. Our whole world is set up to profit off telling you what you want to hear, what you think you should hear, and what you've already heard, and then putting what you should hear down through authority. And yet, to me, some of the toughest conversations we need to have start out with something like, "I'm going to tell you what you don't want to hear right now."
The fine line between honesty and repetition
That's tough with friends and family too. I had a couple-hour conversation with a family member last night that was so good. They were frustrated with another family member, because those two often tell each other what they don't want to hear. There's a fine line, because I don't need to tell you every day, all the time, what you don't want to hear. There's a fine line between kindness and clarity, and honesty is kind. I thought I was very kind with the woman I went out with when I told her exactly which red flag she signaled to me that was such a huge problem. She knows exactly what was very off-putting to me, so that going forward, maybe she'll think about it. If you're talking a bunch of shit about parenting when you're not a parent, and you're going out with a man who is a parent, maybe you should watch your mouth on that subject, or be ready, if you get a little crazy, to acknowledge it. But saying that over and over again, maybe that's not kind either. Often, though, we need repetition to take action. I needed everybody to tell me I was an alcoholic and should get sober before I did it: my Xbox friends, my wife at the time, other women I dated. I needed people to not tolerate my crap before I was willing to change, and I'm interested in how to apply this everywhere.
I guess I sent the video to the queen because I was tired. I felt bad because I told her I'd be patient, but I wasn't patient. I was tired of that crap, whatever that behavior of hers was: super warm and into me, and then all of a sudden she needs to pull away, cancels dates, doesn't show up, doesn't make time for me when she said she would, is super distracted talking to me on the phone, takes 12 hours to respond to my message while she spends hours editing her videos in between. I'm not going to put up with someone treating me that way, especially not in the first couple of weeks of getting to know you. If that's how you are, that's not a good sign.
Burning bridges has made me money
When I look back, most of the places I burned bridges in my life gave me the opportunity to rebuild something I was really happy with. So maybe I will just upload those toxic ICP videos I filmed earlier, because maybe those bridges need to be burned so I can free myself. I want to make a full-time creator income, which I've done in the last month, thanks to not just talking about ICP. In fact, it's burning bridges that has helped me make a full-time creator income in the last month. Burning the bridge with the queen and making that video available publicly made me $2,000, and being willing to step out of ICP has made me maybe thousands more dollars. Wow. So I guess that's an insight. Me going on a hard, visceral rant about ICP will be pretty watchable content. People will be like, "Damn, that shit is hardcore." So I guess today is about owning your emotions. It would be silly, with the content I've already put out, not to put out the video where I rip on the ICP community and on DFINITY. Why not put that out at this point?
This is my look into my life today. I've got this date I need to get dressed for, and maybe rinse off or something. I'm going to head out now, and maybe I'll film another entry for my Daily Vlogs playlist later today and let you know how it's going. I'd hate to have taken two hours of my time this morning, which is probably almost my only filming time today, and not even gotten anything out of it. I generally have a rule that I don't censor and I don't refilm videos. So I filmed two toxic-ass ICP videos. Maybe we'll start with the one that's not as toxic and double down the next day with the one that's more toxic. That'd be funny. Fuck it. That'd be funny. At this point, there's very little to lose. You always have to think about who the people are who love you, and what they would be proud of you doing. At this point, I think a lot of the people who love me will be proud of me saying, look, let go of ICP, burn that bridge, they've done you wrong there, move on, and accept all the other opportunities you can have.
Maybe there's some scenario where I hadn't burned the bridge with the queen, and then this whole month, instead of dating all these other women, learning so much, having all these videos, monetizing the channel, and selling the video I sent her for $2,000, could have been a pretty shitty month going through a mediocre relationship with her. Maybe things would have progressed in some areas, but maybe she would have been a total pain in the ass, continued that same avoidant behavior, and it could have been an agonizing month not making any money. Maybe things never would have gotten better. But life is so delicate. I really love it when things are good with people, and it is hard to have things good with people when you get really toxic on them. So my mind feels scrambled right now.
If you want to talk, or you want to give me your feedback, go to jerrybanfield.com and join the chat, join the Skool community, or schedule a call. Those are the ways you can communicate with me, and I'm very interested in what each of you who's supporting me has to say.
I get tons of critical feedback myself, so I'm always hearing what I don't want to hear, and I think that helps me be a strong man with a bigger perspective than a lot of other people who are trying to avoid hearing anything besides what they want to hear. So thank you. Maybe you didn't want to hear this, or maybe this is just what you needed to hear today. Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you again soon.