No Tube Tuesday
Have you noticed the changes to your favourite YouTube channels? Alterations in company policy (with more to come) and other factors have made it more difficult for people to make videos. Or more accurately, to make money from videos. This manifests itself three ways:
1). People quit making videos altogether. It's simply too much work for too little return, so they go back to having lives.
2). People make fewer videos, concentrating on producing higher quality output that will better captivate viewers - and attract sponsorship that pays. (This is compounded by the increasing difficulty in making certain kinds of videos as the 'raw material' for them becomes harder to find.)
3). People make a lot more videos, flooding the market with output (especially shorts) in the hopes that "volume" equals "income". This caters to YouTube's desire to increase viewer engagement and therefore justify their ad costs.
Three strategies aimed at improving things for those who create in order to combat the ever-changing environment they live in. Not unreasonable at all.
Personally I think the first strategy, let's call it the "get a life" plan, is the best for everyone involved - including viewers. Sure it means less ad revenue for YouTube and less product promotion for companies, but who cares? The poor sods who thought this might be a viable career only to find it's a maddening trap will be better off without it, and the people watching can put down their devices and likewise get on with having a real life.
It is to that end that I propose we all make an effort at watching less online video, regardless of how little you may already be looking at. Hence "No Tube Tuesday"; simply leave the feeds alone and go do anything else. Clean the bathroom if you have to, just don't do it with something playing in the background.
After all, they're trying to make it easier for you to break your addiction by increasing the levels of disinterest and annoyance that comes with every video. Go with that, and free yourself. Ex-YouTubers will thank you as they, too are freed from the shackles of digital addiction.