26 April 2026 - i think i realized why i've been writing

I'm in a kinda weird spot, emotionally. It's hard for me to put it into words, but I think the attempt at it is what is going to matter a lot more than the result. I am a creative person. I can and do create visual, audio, and multimedia art. I'm pretty good at it. I like to believe I'm a half-decent speaker and writer too; someone who can make topics filled with snobs and holier-than-thou assholes feel maybe a little more approachable to the average person because, by all accounts, I am very average.

For the average person, creating is a hobby and an outlet. That's largely what it is to me as well. I will not be making a living off of my art any time soon and will overwhelmingly likely be working a 9-5 until the day I die, unless I move to a different nation. I'd been sharing my art with my immediate community since I was 7-8, and with the world since I was 11. I was recording and editing skits with the family camcorder and Windows XP's movie maker or making slideshows/flipbooks on my sister's Nintendo DS Pictochat and sitting my family down to watch them at an age that could've probably gotten me on Ellen if someone had decided to document it. In 2012, I started a YouTube channel. The same one that is currently the yeoscore channel. I was uploading let's plays, skits, music, 2018-style commentary videos or video essays, and most recently settled on a mix of music/lyric videos and topic videos that kinda border on the modern commentary video setup.

In fact, I promised two commentary-style videos at the end of last year. They still haven't happened. I haven't forgotten, and I still think they are great ideas that I can execute very well, but I haven't done them. Why?

I don't feel as excited by making a YouTube video as I did at ages 11, 16, 18, or 21. There was a point, from 2019-2021 or so, where I was streaming games as well and was really enjoying it, and really enjoying creating highlights videos that were being watched by nearly nobody. I had another brief stint in 2024 making gaming videos with Hayden on a semi-secret second channel that I poured a lot of passion into, and thoroughly enjoyed. It was a 0-pressure, almost just-for-me, innocent pleasure of mine. I'm excited by the idea of doing that again, but in practice? YouTube feels kinda like a lost cause.

The Mcdonalds-fication, Mr Beastification, slopification, whatever you want to call it, of YouTube has been extremely discouraging. I'm going to be an unc shaking my fist at the clouds here: I miss the period where people created online largely for fun. If you wanted big bucks, you would take your show to TV and fail there like Ray William Johnson, CollegeHumor alum Adam Conover, or Lily Singh, because you'd have to strip your personality and become a corporate shill to succeed in that environment. Your fans would not follow you to television, and the people watching television have no clue who the fuck you are. Adam, at least, returned to his roots and seems to be making great stuff again.

The problem I have with YouTube right now is that they(whoever "they" are) brought television to YouTube. I have 0 issue with sponsored videos and sponsored video segments. I have no issues with pre-roll and even mid-roll ads. The amount of ads we are being shown before, after, and during videos has become a problem. I also have an issue when a person's entire catalogue is corporate, sanitized slop. Mr Beast showed the world that it was possible to run a brand-safe slop factory online, and now that's the meta. It's so hard to look at a Mr Beast and still want to participate in the same platform. We are not peers. I do not fuck with him or anyone like him. I do not want to be seen in the same places that he can be seen. He is my direct enemy in many different ways. I mean this with every fiber of my being. Mr Beast makes me lose all hope in a decent future, his content is so dystopian and discouraging and makes me feel so hopeless. It makes me feel like there will never be a world that's enjoyable to live in. This guy makes me sick to my stomach in many of the same ways that Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or Peter Thiel do. They represent the downfall of humanity, in my mind.

It's so incredibly hard to want to participate when scrolling YouTube in recent years just fills me with so much dread. It's a shame, too, I still prefer online content to any other. There are tons of channels out there that I think still capture the essence of the golden era of the platform, when kids would say "I like to watch these YouTubers" rather than "I like to watch YouTube." There is a difference. This was an era where you would be hooked by personalities, rather than topics. You stuck around for the person creating the content rather than the content itself. Algorithms, the attention economy, brand-safe planning, the shift to short-form content... no singular thing killed this era, rather all of these things at once.

I think this is where I found a lot of love in writing. The writers I follow, people like Savannah Brown, Taylor Lorenz, amongst a long list of independent music and fashion mags, fill me with what I would call a sense of authentic creation. I think the medium of print or text lends itself to that authenticity a lot easier. It's pretty easy to pick out AI articles and people largely only write like this out of a place of love. I think it's a lot easier for me to exist amongst peers here than on YouTube, or even in music.

But, like I said, there are channels that are still embracing the spirit of what I think an online sharing platform should be. Bunch of Friends, Vanilla Mace, turtlewithhat, slushy noobz, nicole raffie. These people inspire me to create. They ooze charisma and a love for the joy of creation. You see that this isn't work to them, even though they all rely either partially or totally on that income, and you get the sense that they would still be doing it without any money to be made. These are creatives first and businesspeople second. Like many old white guys say about any white Celtics player, they're doing it the right way. My opinion, of course.

Many OGs in the space also never switched up. JacksFilms still feels like JacksFilms, just older and a bit more mature. Markiplier still feels like Markiplier. CoryxKenshin still feels like CoryxKenshin. Jacksepticeye still feels like Jacksepticeye. 

I'm hoping that these channels can someday soon give me the energy and strength to do it again, because it does feel like a piece of me has been missing for a few years. Forgive me for being a bit of a doomer on this front.

With lots of love,

Geoff