Help Keep YouTube Creepy
It’s a time of great upheaval. Let’s start at the beginning. Well, closer to the beginning than we are right now.
YouTube is the place online to create video content. Period. There are competitors, but it’s like saying Starbucks has competitors in the coffee realm: They exist, but they don’t really pose any threat to the juggernaut. Why is this the case? Well, YouTube was first, true, but LiveJournal was first, and we have Facebook now.
YouTube is the massive unstoppable beast it is because it created a space for people to make whatever they wanted, within rational limits. If people found and enjoyed that content, YouTube allowed those creators to share in the bounty via their AdSense system. Ads play on videos, and if enough people watch those videos, those creators got a paycheck. Some, like the infamous PewDiePie, have quite literally become millionaires off the system. Thousands, if not millions, of creators have created the new television, launching YouTube into the stratosphere when it comes to revenue.
This is the Internet, though, so you know we can’t have nice things. Enter The Wall Street Journal. Owned by the Murdoch conglomerate News Corp, TWSJ wrote a story a few months ago stating that ads were running alongside extremist content linked to ISIS, that the site had become a hotbed of underground child pornographers, and that even the site’s biggest broadcaster, PewDiePie, was an anti-Semite.
Now, in order, they weren’t, it isn’t, and he’s not; but that doesn’t matter. TWSJ is the Bible for those who work in the stock market, and advertisers responded by yanking their content off YouTube in droves. The fact that News Corp was none too happy that people on YouTube were starting live news channels to rival their own certainly had nothing to do with this story being chock-full of basic factual errors and flat-out falsehoods.
YouTube, being part of Google, THE Internet company, knew the score, understood the issue, and responded in a calm and rational way.
Of course they didn’t. They panicked.
Suddenly, with an unexplained and thoroughly vague change to the policy, content had to be “advertiser friendly” to be monetized. If a video had “monetization” taken away, the creator no longer received any money from that video. As tends to happen with witch hunts like this, one of the first casualties was anything related to horror. Using extremely broad algorithms that could catch just about anything, widespread demonetization happened. It’s been discovered that content with a title that includes thing as simple as “horror” will have its money pulled.
In the years that AdSense was working through YouTube, many creators quit their day jobs and started creating content full time. In some cases, they started companies and hired staff to create more and better content. To say this widespread demonetization was a disaster is an understatement. Creators saw their profits drop from the thousands every month to almost nothing. Many channels closed entirely, as they couldn’t afford to take that hit.
Thankfully, some broadcasters are fighting back. Led by larger creepy creators like Rob Dyke, the #KeepYouTubeCreepy movement has started. Switching to Patreon for their funding, these rebels are leading a revolt against the system that is too busy trying to appease ad execs to realize that without content, there won’t be anything to run ads on.
My personal favorite creepy broadcaster, Reign of ReignBotHorror, has created a horror showcase to give smaller channels a chance to get exposed to a larger audience. In the video below, 71 different creepy/horror/dark creators have made one-minute clips promoting their channels. Reign has linked each creator’s channel, in order, in her blog via a link in the video description.
If you love horror (and if you don’t, why are you here?), check out this video and find some people to subscribe to on YouTube. There is a TON of fantastic content out there, ranging from true crime to original horror to creepypasta to paranormal investigations. If you subscribe to one of these channels, I strongly recommend dropping a buck a month into their Patreon campaigns. This is how we keep horror alive in one corner of the Net where it’s been thriving but faces extinction.
Categorized:News
