Why I gave up on YouTube

Disclaimer: this post was originally written for Tumblr on January 29, 2023. It is here for preservation, because although YouTube has tried to backpedal… honestly, not much has changed for the better.

Hi. I am, or was, a small-time YouTube Partner. I have been described as “somewhat popular”. That’s some context to say, I’m speaking about my life inside the system.

So YouTube’s revenue has been decreasing. I don’t think that’s a well-known fact; this is something they would want desperately to hide, right?

Seems like it can only get worse; it’s in a corporate decomposition stage where the product is about as good as it gets but $ growth is expected for investors. So now it’s cut and restrict the product to get people to pay and add more ads.

– Deleted Reddit user

So instead of taking a step back, analyzing their product or their future, or even (God forbid) admitting that YouTube doesn’t need to make more money, they are now shaking their Partners for our fucking pocket change.

Here are the relevant policy changes:

Mini Cheddars are ruining my life

Mini Cheddars. Mini Cheddars. Mini Cheddars. Mini Cheddars.

It means SOMETHING. It has to, right? It’s everywhere. It’s torturing me. My life was good before Mini Cheddars. (My life was actually really bad but I don’t care.) Maybe my life would be better without Mini Cheddars. Maybe it’s the one thing weighing me down, or maybe it was there, plotting even in my earliest days. How can I know I’ve never eaten a Mini Cheddar? “They’re British or something,” I hear you saying, “and you’ve lived in America your entire life.” I don’t care. Someone smuggled a Mini Cheddar on an international flight one day and decided to poison me.

That’s the only explanation.

Tons of people get commercial jingles stuck in their head. I don’t care. This is not that. This is nothing like that. This is way worse. I am being actively conspired against. These three commercials are all connected and I will show you how.

Why do people hate the “poor baby monkeys”?

What drives seemingly ordinary, well-adjusted members of our society to partake in sadistic behavior?

That’s the common question I found myself wondering all over again when I discovered “MonkeyHateGate“. Deep in the bowels of YouTube is a community dedicated to a shared hatred of… baby monkeys.

Who are these people, and why do they hate baby monkeys? Seriously, they’re adorable. Right? Please don’t tell me you hate baby monkeys too. Uh oh. I hope we’re not going to have a problem here.

Yeah, at first glance, this whole thing sounded utterly laughable to me. I immediately concluded it must have been another dumb YouTube comment meme… I’m saying all this so that you don’t let your guard down. This article gets grim fast.