Do views actually equal value?
What I'm thinking about today, and what I believe would be insanely helpful if you're a YouTuber or a Twitch streamer, is a simple question: do views equal value? Do views mean I've actually done something useful? What I've really been struggling with as a creator is the assumption that if people are watching me, I must be doing something worthwhile. But when I look back honestly, some of the things that helped me most in my life came from small videos, videos that did not have a bunch of views. And most of the videos I've watched that racked up huge numbers were worthless to me. So what I'm seeing is that a quantity of views did not equal a quality-of-life difference I made in someone's life.
A lot of what people do to get views are exactly the things YouTube wants, because it's good for YouTube. In my experience, YouTube wants sensational, addictive content. It wants the kind of thing that keeps people glued to the screen, like my kids used to be. When they watched YouTube, they watched what I can only call garbage content. One useless video after another, not learning anything, the junk-food equivalent of media. They'd watch Minecraft videos of people doing dumb challenges my kids didn't even want to try themselves. They'd watch girls painting stuffies. They'd watch other people live their lives, while my own kids sat there on the couch on a device, not living their lives instead. So I talked my kids into giving up their tablets.
And yet some of the most successful YouTube creators, from where I sit, are doing nothing more than wasting people's time and making themselves rich. I've caught myself doing the same thing. A lot of what I've done has just wasted people's time too. Then I'd define my success by how many views I'm getting and how much money I'm making, and I'd treat those numbers as proof that I was providing real value.
What I see in crypto YouTube
But then I look around in crypto YouTube, which is currently my most-watched channel, and almost all the views there are worthless. The majority of them seem to be driven by bots. You say a certain thing, you push a certain narrative, and the people who want to hear that narrative, who have armies of bots at their disposal, push those videos. Then the videos show up in the browse feed. They show up when you search. And a lot of the genuinely useful information gets suppressed as a result.
That conditions us as creators to think, well, what I really need to do is please the algorithm gods. I need to please the people who are running the bots. And you tell yourself you're pleasing your viewers by doing that. But what I've noticed is that what pleases the bots and the algorithm often does not provide viewers with any real value. That's what's nuts about it. And it often isn't even worth my time. I'll do a four-hour crypto live stream sharing everything I've learned in 11 years in crypto. Another crypto creator like Superman will say that's incredible information to put out there, and he's in a very good position to appreciate it. Does the YouTube algorithm push that? Even though I gave a ton of value, even though people watched it, loved it, and learned a lot from it, the algorithm doesn't push it at all.
But if I say a certain coin is going to go up four times in price, and I put out a useless video with no real information, all hype and pure speculation, the algorithm pushes it. Not only because there's already an audience who has watched stuff like that and needs to keep being lied to so they can feel like they're not ignorant fools, but also because there are bots pushing it to make sure the algorithm carries it even further. So what I've learned on YouTube is that there are certain kinds of content that will get views, and those views aren't just worthless. In many cases I'd say they actively harm the viewers.
The same trap in the music scene
It's the same in music. I do the YouTube music scene too, and I've come to see how hard it is to even make music these days and get seen for it. A lot of people genuinely know how to make music. Instead, they constantly put out videos reviewing music gear, synths, software, and equipment, because those are the videos the algorithm pushes. People want to see reviews of synthesizers, programs, and equipment. And because some of the dishonest players push their gear-review videos with bots, creators learn that if they say certain things, they'll get the views.
Because everybody on YouTube is trained that views matter, that views are success, that a lack of views is failure and a lack of money is failure, we're always thinking the same way. I've thought so many times on YouTube that I'm just a slave to it. I volunteered for this willingly, but now I'm stuck in a system. I've tried to quit. I've quit YouTube a bunch of times, come back feeling all virtuous, and every time it collapses right back into the same question: how do I get the most views for myself? And every time I come to the same realization. If I want the most views, I need to say what I'm supposed to say and please who I'm supposed to please, which is the algorithm. The algorithm wants a certain kind of addictive content that keeps people stuck on YouTube even when it's not good for them. There are other things, things that could be really helpful to say, that you're simply not allowed to say. And if you really want views, you need to please the people with the bots, because they're the ones who guarantee you hit the algorithm.
Going back to basics
So today I'm thinking I just need to go back to basics. Pretend I have nobody watching. Go live, have fun for myself, and focus on the message I'm sending, because almost nobody on YouTube focuses on what message we're actually sending. Many of these YouTubers, and I did this exact thing a decade ago, use YouTube to sell their courses. They make the most clickbait crap imaginable, then sell a several-hundred-dollar course and coaching on their website. I've bought a couple of courses like that, and they were crap. They often don't tell you what you really need to know, the things I already know and can put out there for free.
The catch is, if you're not pleasing the algorithm gods, you're invisible, and the algorithm is not transparent. I've seen firsthand that as soon as you upload a video, YouTube knows what's in it. It decides whether it wants the audience to see it, and that decision is based on the words you use, because there are certain words and certain narratives the algorithm wants put out there. That's why the algorithm isn't transparent. You have no idea what they've bumped up in priority and what they've shadow banned. Then there are the bots pushing certain narratives, and on top of that all the people who think like bots and just want the same kind of crap all the time.
Someone in my chat made a great point: you want to keep your videos succinct, short, and packed with value, but the algorithm rewards constant uploads instead. That's another trap on YouTube. The Mr. Beast strategy is to make incredible clickbait videos that pull everybody in, but that's not going to work unless you know the algorithm backwards and forwards and you already have the audience. At this point, other people own so much of the YouTube audience that even if you make the most clickbait content possible, you won't break through unless you're pleasing the bots. In my experience, the way you get off the ground on YouTube is to please the bots. Say what they want said, and they'll push your videos right off the launchpad, because at that point they've made you. That's how crypto has been built. The creators who say what they're supposed to say get their channels pushed by the bots, and that's how they become the big creators.
That's how I got my subscribers so fast, by saying what the bots wanted me to say. And then when I stopped doing what the bots wanted, they reported my channel and got it taken down. I only got my channel back because I've been on YouTube so long, with a history of just one community guidelines violation in 14 years.
So one of the hardest lessons I'm learning today is that I need to think about delivering value in the message I'm sending, first and foremost. I was telling people in crypto just yesterday that you have to stop defining quality by the wrong yardstick. You have to stop defining the top crypto by its price. And in the same way, I've come to believe I have to stop defining my success on YouTube by the number of views I have. I have to start defining my success by whether I'm communicating a message that's valuable, whether I'm interacting with my audience, whether I'm having fun, and whether I'm delivering something that actually brings value. If you want to see how I'm trying to put this into practice, I share more of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.