This month marks the 10th anniversary of my first YouTube uploads. What started as a place to preserve some video memories from a trip to Europe has become a scrapbook for all sorts of lovely things: trips to Walt Disney World, plenty of those, travels all around the world, to England, to Switzerland, to my favorite authors' homes here in the U.S…also a scrapbook for my favorite BTS performances and Bollywood songs, for Animal Crossing fun, for gardening, for the passing seasons, for a certain cat.
Also, of course, a scrapbook for my reading, for plenty of classics and Jane Austen and wonderful books. And most recently, a scrapbook for writing and illustrating as well, as I've published two books of my own, the first two installments in my kitten series, The Book of Cymbeline.
Over these past 10 years, my scrapbooking efforts have extended to over 1,200 videos, so I thought today I might reflect on what unites them all. What is it that I've been doing here for the past decade? How can I best summarize this enterprise, this endeavor?
YouTube is a funny place. Every channel fits, in one quite literal sense, in the exact same boxes. Whether it's a company with a huge marketing budget and a big team, or a professional creator with sponsors and tons of subscribers, or just a small, hobbyist creator like me, making videos in my spare time for fun - all of us get the same grid of thumbnails, the same line of characters - all caps or no caps, emojis or no emojis, as you please - the same all-important 1280x720 pixels that must encapsulate the whole video and entice the viewers to click if you want said video to have any chance in the algorithm.
The uniformity of YouTube's layout can sometimes make us forget the almost endless diversity of origin amongst these millions of videos. It's an entirely different enterprise for every channel.
For me, I suppose a good place to start might be, right off the bat, to take the word “influencer” off the table. In fact, let's just chuck that word out the window, because I think it's insulting to consign hardworking online creators to such an epithet. Writers, painters, poets, filmmakers - we don't call any of them influencers, even though their works certainly do influence. If you truly think someone's primary goal is merely to influence your behavior according to their own designs, if that is the one word you would use to describe the entire direction of their creative output, it would be more honest to simply call them manipulators.
Perhaps there are some creators who are truly merely influencers, merely manipulators, but I think they're in the minority. I think many, if not most creators, whether they're full-time or hobbyists, are just trying to share what they love, what they find to be compelling and true and important.
That's what has kept me creating over the years, and maybe that is what's responsible for the sometimes absurd variety of topics which I cover. When I've thought about narrowing my focus and only making videos in one niche, which is what the “how to succeed on YouTube in current year” tips videos always seem to suggest, I just lose my motivation.
But then, off in the distance, hidden between the trees, I seem to catch a glimpse of some flickering will-o'-the-wisp. And I think, well, that would be fun to make a video about. I haven't done a video about that before. Someone should talk about that. And before I know it, off I go, tilting after the next windmill on the horizon.
My inner Don Quixote enthusiastically lays out the vision and says, “Don't worry, I promise it'll be quick this time, really and truly. Only see how beautiful it will be. It would be such a pity not to share it.”
My inner Sancho Panza is not fooled by this story because he's heard it many, many times. But he sighs, sets up the tripod in half a dozen different spots before my inner knight errant approves the angle, spends hours and hours filming and finessing and editing, stays up past midnight to get the video finished when I still have to get up early the next day to go to my real job.
As any small creator can tell you, this is a hobby that sometimes feels like a second full-time job that you don't get paid for. And there have definitely been times I've felt burnt out, running on fumes, wondering why on earth I still do this. But life would be awfully boring without windmills and wills of the wisp.
Quixotic creativity is what drives me on, but there's certainly discouragement and temptation as well as weariness to battle against. It's easy to fall into the trap of wishing your videos would get more views or more comments, wondering why your video doesn't seem to be doing as well as this channel or that channel, “desiring this man's art and that man's scope.” It's an old temptation for the human race, and social media companies are only too happy to exploit our weaknesses.
The way the backend of YouTube is structured can easily lure you into that mindset of comparing numbers and wanting to make videos to chase those numbers down. There are the views, the engagement, the metrics, all in front of you. The success and impact of your efforts, all tidily packaged up in neat strings of digits. They tell you everything you need to know.
Or do they?
It's a trap for both creators and viewers. I've seen YouTubers who, from the outside, I would have described as definitively successful, and yet they'll talk about how they feel like they'll never truly make it on this platform.
A video or a post is like a poem or a painting. It shows one view tells one story. It does not sum up a creator's entire existence. And it's our job as both creators and viewers to give ourselves that reality check and keep that in mind. Life is visceral, not digital. What you post on the internet will never give you existential validation or lasting self-worth. Only a relationship with God can do that.
Just as the analytics don't really reveal the quality of the individual creator, They also can't impart the quality of all those individual views. When I sit down in front of the camera, I'm not imagining myself talking to an auditorium of so many subscribers. I think of my videos as a conversation with one person, you, the one watching (or reading!) right now. And it can be a bit lonely on the creator's end, actually, because I'm sadly not talking to you in person. I don't always get to see the other side of the conversation.
Sometimes I do, and I have made so many wonderful connections to YouTube. I've been inspired by my followers and my fellow creators in so many enriching ways. But on the whole, as a creator, you're putting a note in a bottle and sending it off into the wide ocean. You're planting seeds in a garden you won't get to see, but I think surely those seeds in that bottle can be a vessel for grace and goodness that God might be able to use. Surely that's why he sent the wisps and the windmills to begin with.
Social media sites can be a great platform for creative projects, great for making connections with people, great for accessing a variety of different perspectives and sifting through information. But social media can also be a slippery slope and a bottomless pit. When it comes down to it, the internet is not on your side.
These massive online tech and media companies would be only too delighted if you would hand over not only your time and attention and personal private information, but also your judgment, your right to think for yourself and form your own opinions. It's every individual's job to discern how to use the internet, not just to their own best advantage, but to the best advantage of their own soul. We each have to check our own facts, measure up what we see against our inner judgment, our experiences, our consciences. No one should be expected to do that for us. No one else can properly do that for us.
I've found that using the internet is like cooking. If you gather the right ingredients, use the right methods, you can create a nourishing and delicious masterpiece. But if you choose your ingredients carelessly, if you pay no attention to the cooking process, you'll end up with a poisonous, burnt mess.
I think a lot of us are walking around with a sort of permanent mental indigestion caused by misuse of the internet. I wish I could say that after 10 years I have it all figured out, but I struggle with it too. You have to pay attention every time you're in the kitchen, I guess. It's not a once-and-done kind of thing.
The landscape of social media, along with the world at large, has changed a lot in these last 10 years, and I've watched that with concern. It's bad enough to feel these platforms care more about their pocketbooks than your well-being, but now it seems they're intent on policing and dictating our thoughts and beliefs as well. I'm waiting on my marching orders from the Creator with a capital C. I choose God's definition of success as my definition of success, so I think I'll only fully understand this endeavor once I get upstairs.
My Sancho Panza is beginning to lose patience with me, always a sign that it's time to wrap things up. Thank you for being a part of this enterprise, part of the bookish kingdom. As long as I keep catching sight of glimmers off in the distance, I'm sure I'll keep creating videos, although I've recently been chasing down other wisps as well. It's been so exciting to get The Book of Cymbeline I and II out, and I'm sure III and IV, more installments to come.
It's also been great to have a place for writing and blogging over on my substack. I do plan to continue to do more with my writing, this letter being one example of that.
I'll meet you all at the next windmill.
Until then, stay bookish, friends.
Love, Emma.
Chasing Wisps & Windmills