Creativity and YouTube

No one can deny the declining quality of comedy videos on YouTube recently. Most trending "funny" videos are either a promotion of a TV show, talk show or typical vine comedy videos where you can see the joke coming a mile away. In most cases, watching YouTube is no longer different than watching television. You have to search far and wide to find some original, creative comedy bits, where you can actually laugh.

There are a few reasons for this, first and foremost, the so called ad-pocalypse that happened earlier this year. Some try to pin it down to pewdiepie, some try to pin it to political videos - it doesn't really matter at this point. What matters is how and why it affects original creators of YouTube. Now thanks to the threat of not getting any revenue from a video, people have to make what YouTube wants them to make, as we can see on the trending section. If they insist on keep doing the same kind of slightly edgy and original videos, they get nothing for their hard work. Most of them are in a catch 22. They want to create the content they've been creating so far, but if they do, they know they'll get nothing on return. Some of them try to get money from other sources like patreon/paypal or they go on streaming services such as twitch.tv - which are much more generous and supportive than YouTube.

You've probably guesses some of the big names who've been affected by this; h3h3, Anthony Fantano, Birdman, FilthyFrank (aka Pink Guy) and the rest of the gang. They might say controversial stuff here and there but they are mostly doing original work and are very entertaining. Most of them have moved in other directions ever since the ad-pocalypse happened. Let's look at FilthyFrank, who is a personal favorite of mine. He's always been controversial, he's always pushed the limits but he's has built a culture around him, he even came up with some global videos, he originally came up with "Harlem Shake"! Most stuff he's doing is either satire, criticism or both, but everything he's done, it's 100% original. Let's look at what he's doing now;

He's been releasing less and less material and went onto other venues. He's making music under his Pink Guy alias, even came up with an album which was on top of Spotify for some time! He's also making serious music under his own name, joji or George Miller and will continue to focus on his music rather than making videos in YouTube. Which has been the case for most original content creators, unfortunately - focusing on something else that is.

Some say this is OK, they can't possibly expect to make a living out of YouTube for a long time and this was bound to happen. However, I disagree. I believe those content creators were fine before this ad pulling nonsense and YouTube could have handled the situation much better with some micro-management rather than just cutting off everyone who might be controversial. I'm disappointed with the quality and amount of original content creators on YouTube, and I believe I speak for most people when I say that vine comedy shouldn't be the future of comedy in YouTube.

Let me know what you think about this in the comments! :)