Comradeship // Freechat

I worked with someone that, when I saw him watching YouTube ads I commented that there’s “this “YouTube vanced” program that cuts out ads” his literal response was “I watch ads to support my content creators,” and I actually had to just stand and compute for a moment that this was a real human I just spoke to.

There's a material reason for this. I'm going to summarize and simplify a lot because it's a lot of nuanced and detailed history that I do not have the detail knowledge to go into, but basically:

In the beginning, Youtube was more like "people sharing stuff with each other and connecting over it". When the partner program was introduced, that started to change over time. People still presented as your friendly neighborhood quirky individual content creator, but now there was a clear connection between profit and video making on the platform. However, this was somewhat misleading. Under the surface, you had stuff like Maker Studios behind a lot of channels, so not as individual and organic as it came across. Still, people were being conditioned to see things in the way of "this is an individual who is providing something for free, so it makes sense to support them where I can if I want to see more of it."

Some of this form starts to go away (I think cause it wasn't making the big names behind it enough money), some channels who were under a big name try to make it on their own, stuff like that. But between advertisers getting shy of their ads showing up on videos that give them a bad rap and youtube algorithm fuckery, individual channels start having a harder and harder time making it on ad revenue. Some branch out into merch or things like that.

Enter Patreon. Patreon creates a streamlined way for video makers to directly ask for money for what they do. It's still not as transactional as making people pay for videos, but it's a step closer to it. And again, for many, this seems reasonable to them because they're literally getting stuff for free and the like the person and the stuff they make, so it becomes like this volunteer support of artisans thing. (Patreon is based on the idea of a patron of the arts even, IIRC). This is more or less where things have stayed at, where even as algorithm stuff and youtube automated moderation choices get worse, people cling on through voluntary donations.

The idea of voluntarily viewing ads to "support a creator" is not so odd in that context. It doesn't even cost you anything directly to do it other than time (unless you get manipulated by the ad into spending money). Would I personally do it? No. I can't stand ads and would almost certainly stop using youtube if I had to endure ads on it. But in the context of how youtube developed, there's a clear connection between the personalization of content creators as human rather than business, the individualization of video making as artisanal work worth supporting rather than conglomerate that is doing a transaction, and the voluntary choice to "support" someone in it.