There's hardly a YouTube channel today that doesn't do it. Begging you to subscribe and to press the like button. Can't I decide that for myself?

Oh poor you that you really need to beg for this. Even the rare channels I actually subscribe to (and I am very extremely picky with that) do this (well there are a few that don't). I sometimes wonder, is the content of your videos not good enough to make people instantly do that?

Well, I guess it shows what kind of commercial business it has become to be a YouTuber, and how YouTube has really lost its innocence. After all, YouTube is the biggest platform for videos now. It once began as an amateur concept and on February 14th, 2005 the domain YouTube.com was registered. And what did we see most. Cute, yet very amateur videos of many funny things. Cats most of all were damn popular. However the platform became bigger and bigger and in the end the competing platforms Google Videos and Yahoo videos could really not catch up, resulting into Google buying YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars, and the rest is history. I was already a member of YouTube prior Google takeover, and as the takeover was on November 14th, 2006, meaning that I created my account in the first year, I wonder if I can consider myself a charter member of YouTube somehow 😜

And I've seen the platform turn from a platform for amateurs turn into a big platform with higher quality content, but also with much of crap clearly set up to attract tons of viewers in order to get rich very quickly.

Of course, YouTubers NEED their viewers, for the same reason that when I would own a bakery store that I would NEED my customers. As a game creator on Game Jolt I NEED the people who download my games and play them and like that, and most of all, spread the word. And of course if you would subscribe to my YouTube channel (not that I use it much for posting videos) you would at least never miss my videos and this is where it goes wrong, also.

YouTubers have become so reliant on the number of views they get, they cannot afford to lose them. The more likes they have the higher the chance their channel will be shown to people who do not know their channel yet. The likes are therefore no longer just a mark of appreciation, but have just become big fat business, but there's more, making the likes even MORE evil. Google has the tendency to personalize advertisements and your likes are also being used to see which advertisers would do best to which viewer. By liking videos YouTube can see what kind of subjects interest you. So if you like all videos about Turkey and most of all the videos that show how wonderful Turkey is to be as a tourist, you are bound to get more advertisement from travel agencies offering vacations in Turkey. That's the idea. This makes likes worth only more, and this can pay out in the money YouTube gives out. Not to mention the more you like from a certain YouTuber the more their videos will be recommended to you and the more views they get... Long story short it's just big money.

The likes are no longer a sign of appreciation, they've become your way of payment. And subscriptions too. Their primary function just just be that you only get to see what you like, but some people yelling at me because I rarely subscribe to a channel (unless it's something I really absoletely like, and that's a rarity) show that subscriptions are no longer for my personal benefit, but just a matter of booming business.

And as a result many channels have become more and more aggressive in their attempts to get people to subscribe. And where some channels only spend a few seconds on this at the end of the video during the end credits....

Some of them even coming to the level of being downright threatening. "Don't forget to subscribe or evil beasts will crawl over you at night to eat you while you are asleep". Really those kinds of messages I've seen.

I've also seen the message that if I don't like or subscribe my family would be cursed. Well, I can tell you, it happened. I didn't like, I don't subscribe and I didn't hit the notification button and my family did get cursed. I can tell you, to took me great effort and yet great joy in my studies to see which curse would be most effective, and boy when I finally uttered the curse, was I happy to see that it was very extremely effective, MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(Star Trek fans, remember the 31st Rule of Acquisition)

Oh, by the way, channels threatening me about bad things happening to me when I don't subscribe will likely be blocked, as I loathe that practice.

Sometimes I even get to the point where they really get under my skin. "Only 1% of the people watching our videos actually subscribes." And this being turned into a very extremely big drama. HAH! I think my score is close to 100% so that would imply my YouTube channel is doing very great right? Well, my number of views is very very low though, so piss off. It's nothing new. Let's go back to the era of radio and TV, you kids may hardly be able to remember it, but I am an old man!

Now let's be honest, we all listened to radio and we all watched TV and when I am going to limit this to music only (to make it easier). Back in the 1980s, Michael Jackson was one of THE artists (don't get about the sexual accusations as they became an issue AFTER this time, and are not relevant as far as this blog is concerned). Everybody knew his music. We all listed to it on the radio, we all watched his videos on TV. Many young musicians were inspired by him. In shows in which you had to mimic your idol he was one of the most mimicked idols. And yes, when he was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey giving insights in very personal things he normally never spoke about the whole world was watching and the whole world was talking about it. But how many people actually went to his concerts? Yes, he was always sold out, and then it seems like loads of people but how many of the people listening to his music does that make, how much %? And how much % of the people actually bought his records? These are numbers you cannot really calculate at all, since it's impossible to find out how many people actually liked Michael Jackson and listened to his songs on radio and TV. We can only make rough estimations. The number of concert visitors and record sales are easier to measure as those have been documented very well. This gives however a very false sight on how many % of the people actually went to his concerts and bought his records.

However now in the fully digital times of YouTube, things are different. Whenever I watch a video on YouTube, one view is counted (and probably even more data than only that one view). And so it becomes by far much easier to find out how many people just watch your videos and how many actually subscribe. And this gives a more accurate view on how your most loyal fans are, but trust me, no matter how famous you are, your true fans are always the minority. Better get used to that.

Now we Dutch are infamous for our line "Wel kijken niet kopen". This line is impossible to properly translate to English since there is no proper English word for "Wel" which is a pretty crucial word in that line. Roughly translated it would mean "We will look but we won't buy", which is not entirely correct, but it has to do. Well we Dutch are infamous for it because of our HONESTY! And honesty will lead to hearing things you don't want to hear. Since all nationalities are guilty on this department. If you had to buy everything you ever looked at, you'd be bankrupt by now and have debts beyond any form of hope.

Of course, you can say pressing the like button, subscribing and all is free. Correct, but here's the rub. There is more content on YouTube than my brain would ever be able to phantom even in the subjects I like and I am really passionate about. Subscribing to all channels I'd ever see would get me more notifications than I would ever be able to process. This will undermine the few channels that interest me most as they will sooner or later be suppressed by the channels I do like, but have lesser interest. So by trying to force me into one channel you take me away from that what I appreciate most, and that is then in a certain way my payment. But when I go back to the 1980s, if I merely bought all records of Michal Jackson, I'd already have a lot of junk in my house, but (regardless if my budget can take it) if I bought all records of all artists at the time (as that is what YouTubers seem to expect of me in the current digital equivalent of all this), where aside from Michael Jackson we also had George Michael, Boy George, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Roxette, the Dolly Dots, the Golden Earring, ABBA, The Cure, Dead or Alive, Queen, and yeah, well, I merely named the top of the iceberg when it came to great artists of the time. If I had the money to buy all their records, I'd need a bigger house, and likely most rooms would then have been entirely filled with records, and just for your information, records were just those big black discs back then where you had to put a needle on in order to get them played. Devices you had to treat with great care.

So, don't be pissed about the fact there are not as much people subscribing as who are watching. Don't oppress people to subscribe to your channel either.

We hate it when door-to-door salesmen are trying to oppress their business to you. Doing that through YouTube is just as bad.

Of course, a bit of self-promotion isn't bad. We all need it in order to rise to fame. And in business fame is important as when nobody knows about you, you wouldn't sell. But then again, people who found your channel already found out about you. Also the channels most aggressive on this, are also the ones with the most basic content that's nice, but not really spectacular either.

Hey, perhaps I am an idiot, but QUALITY over QUANTITY.

<sarcasm>Oh and don't forget to follow me, for more cool blogs</sarcasm>. 😜🤣