This past Monday Youtuber Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) posted a near 13 minute video where he discussed his insights into the recent environment Youtube has created. It’s a pretty interesting and intuitive video that might be his “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment. Today might be a shorter article, but I wanted to look at what Mark was saying and the importance of this discussion.
-“The Vicious Cycle of Pessimism” Part I-
This is probably the biggest problem he touches upon. Being a Youtuber is getting tougher with every passing year. More people look to this platform as a way to make a living and that leads to more and more videos getting uploaded everyday. Competition is getting stiffer every year and a lot of the established Youtubers are not willing to lose their viewers. This in turn leads to less collaboration between creators and a potential loss in interesting content. It use to be that if two people were doing similar things on Youtube that they’d be willing to work together and get each other exposure to more subscribers. Now it’s like seeing a bunch of spoiled children clinging to their toys screaming if anyone gets near them.
-“The Vicious Cycle of Pessimism” Part II-
Another problem is the drama being created on Youtube in order to drive up views on videos. A few articles back I spoke about the React World controversy mentioning how The Fine Brothers were getting torn apart all over the Internet. It’s interesting to see how many fellow Youtubers jumped on the hate bandwagon directed at the React World project and the Fines Brothers. Videos were created by a variety of Youtubers ranting on the subject. These videos racked up hits and made money for their creators just from tearing someone down. While some calmly spoke about the issue most went on an expletive laced tirade that personally attacked the Fine Brothers. It was less helpful in resolving anyone’s fears and more about stoking them.
-The Stagnation of Content-
As we all know views equal money on Youtube. With that many people begin to look at the trends and emulate content rather than create something new. This is most prevalent in the Let’s Play genre. When creators like Mark and many others started on Youtube the thought of watching people play and commentate video games was a novel idea. But they struck gold and became popular. With that everybody assumed that they could point a camera at their face, play scary games, and become the next big thing. So many channels became about Let’s Play videos that no new ideas came to fruition. We now have this problem that creators stick to what makes money rather than try to go down a different route.
We now have to ask ourselves what does this mean? First and foremost creators need to get back to the original spirit of Youtube with helping pull new people up rather than be angry about the competition. There also needs to be more spontaneity in the videos created rather than imitating the latest trends amongst big Youtubers. So what are your thoughts? Do you agree with Markiplier’s assessment of the current state of Youtube? Are there any problems that need to be fixed? Or would you prefer to see Vimeo become a bigger competitor for Youtube?
sdfilmthoughts 