This is a post by TotalBiscuit. He has over 2 million subscribers on Youtube. It is a good illustration of the dark sides of Youtube that one has to deal with when you have fame. He made this post a year ago. The world is a vast place with a lot of diversity. There are all sorts of people out there including ignorant and toxic ones. Sometimes, your own privacy and not getting attacked is worth more than showing things publicly for views or anything else. My channel is very small in comparison but I have had people who don’t respect privacy and keep barraging you with their form of “advice”
Right. See this is what happens when I try and quietly remove myself from the situation, people just make it worse and worse and worse. There’s no winning. So apparently I should have made a final post saying why I don’t want to engage on this subreddit anymore, so here we go.
People like you are the reason I dread talking to my audience on a daily basis. A long time ago I used to love waking up, logging in and seeing what the viewers was saying, replying to their comments, doing the whole interaction thing. It was great. But that was a long time ago. Now everytime I post a Hearthstone video I have get anxiety over the amount of horrible comments it will get. It keeps me awake at night. I barely play the game now because of it. I used to play it for hours a day, now I only play it for videos, maybe an hour or two a week at most. I guess I’ve associated what was once a fun activity with constant complaining. Everytime I make a mistake I don’t beat myself up about it because I made a mistake, I do it because I just gave people another avenue to complain and say things like “It was painful to watch” or “it was cringeworthy”. I’ve heard so much of it I’m rolling in self-doubt and the only reason I keep that series up is because it pays well now. It used to be through passion for the game but the audience killed that.
But it’s not just that. It’s when the audience stomps on my principles. I think that’s what hurts the most. I made a career out of trying to protect my audience from bad purchases. It’s hardly saintly, its still just videogames on the internet, but whats a little light entertainment/info for you is MY LIFE. That’s what I get up for every day now, that’s what I live for. I work that job 6-7 days a week and I do it because I believe what I’m doing is helping, that it’s making gaming better even if it’s just a little. Ignoring your blatant misrepresentation for a second, when you say something like “It’s not the devs fault there’s bugs”, or you go after me because I don’t support early access and I want to be consumer-first, dev second, that isn’t just a debate point, you’re attacking the principles that are at the core of my day to day life. This sounds really dramatic but this is my life, this is ALL I DO. I only exist to do this right now.
I’ve read so many people with their “advice”, oh… you should get a thicker skin! You should just ignore it! Those people have no idea of the volume of it all, or how constant it is, it never stops, it’s day in day out 24/7, no end in sight noise. So many people talking at once… It’s death by a thousand cuts. That thick skin isn’t invincible, occassionally it buckles and when it does I tend to react badly. I’m not sure you actually understand just how fucked up I am. My hair is going grey, not to mention it’s falling out. Yeah, my hair is grey at 29. Great right? I’m pretty sure I have chronic health problems that have been made far worse by stress. I’m even worried one of them might be life-threatening and I’m getting really paranoid about it. I fucking eat because I’m sad or angry or whatever, I have days where what should be a dream job is something I don’t even want to think about doing. I’m seriously fucked in the head and I have been for a very long time. I CANNOT stop reading feedback. I can’t just leave comments. I gave my Twitter to my staff months ago to try and stop me from reading it, which actually worked surprisingly. Turning off Youtube comments was great and for a while the subreddit was small enough and friendly enough that I could actually handle dealing with it. Now I dread reading it every morning and I CAN’T STOP MYSELF. God how many times have I tried to “get better?” over the last few years? Every time it’s fucking failed, every time and I hate myself for it.
But do you know how much it hurts to read stuff like this? That I think my audience is irrelevant? I live for my audience. I put myself on the line for my audience. Right now my livelihood is under threat because I said what needed to be said to make sure my audience stayed informed. I give everything I’ve got on a daily basis to try and make my audience happy. So imagine how I feel when they lash out at me. Yeah, you’re right, I should handle it better, but I can’t. I mentally cannot, I’m a mentally broken person who likely can never be fixed. I hate myself everytime for that, way more than you could ever hate me for the things I say here. I kinda hoped that some people would realize when I did that piece on the Flappy Bird dev that there was more than a bit of my own personal issues in there. When I asked people to understand what it’s like to get a bunch of attention you’re not equipped to deal with that maybe a few people would realise but that’s my fault, I should have just come right out and said it. I’m in a bad place physically, emotionally and mentally. I am not equipped to deal with my audience right now and frankly I should have deleted my account weeks ago so I can try to recover and not have individual viewers bear the brunt of that process.
You are not blameless but you are not the root of the problem either. Understand what it is you do to the people you apparently like. Everyone you like feels this way to a greater or lesser degree. Some people handle it better than others. I handle it terribly. I probably always will, so it’s best I do what others in my position do and put a wall between the audience and myself to prevent further damage being done to both.
I’ve always been a believer that professionalism and worth speaks through your actions not your words. So I’m going to take away my words for a while so there’s nothing else to drown out my actions.
Sorry if you expect a better person behind your daily videos. What you’ve got is a fucked up, sad, balding, overweight guy who is good at one thing and is lucky enough to do it for a living. I guess things were better when it was possible to maintain the illusion, but these days people demand unprecedented levels of access to the people they watch and this is what it gets them. Sorry you don’t like what you see behind the curtain
