This morning, Diana woke up and told me that she got an e-mail from YouTube telling her that our channel would no longer be eligible for monetization as of some day in February. Considering that we've only made $40 (which can't even technically be touched until you've made at least $100), it doesn't really affect us -- I guess our kind-of-but-not-really-real $40 will disappear back into the digital ether whence it came.
When Diana started the YouTube channel, I was definitely in the background pushing her, like some dark, demented puppetmaster. We had just moved to Japan and she had no job, no money, and a huge heap of student loans + credit card debt so I thought a YouTube check every so often would help a lot. Secondarily, I thought it might spur us to employ creativity (which, even speaking strictly for myself here, has been hampered and wasted by procrastination and a lack of drive over the years). Besides, I thought it was the perfect storm: Diana's a beautiful girl taking a brave leap into a beautiful, foreign country on a journey of self-discovery. Who wouldn't want to watch that?!?
...with that mindset, aren't I just like some pimp hoing out my wife to the big-ol-wagging-and-waving dick of capitalism? Actually, wasn't I just hoing out my soul to the God of $$$?
In retrospect, I guess I spent way too much time thinking about the money (which is even more cosmically funny considering how paltry AKA digitally nonexistent the money turned out to be). Then again, I guess most of us in the first world Heaven of the modern world are at least a little guilty of the same crime to varying degrees. Nonetheless, it's a hard lesson to learn and I've felt pretty ashamed while writing this. I feel dirty. Is this the time to come clean about the time when we came up with a fake idea/name/person in order to hopefully start streaming on Twitch? Ugh. I might as well put it out there.
Look at those hashtags! We called Diana Riley B and I got her to push her boobs out in hopes that people would watch. I feel like I've let someone or something down. Maybe it's Diana, maybe it's God, maybe it's my dreams/ideals...maybe I feel like I've let my inner self down.
It wasn't all bad, though. I look back on the videos that Diana made like Camping in Japan: A Night in the Ainu Forest of Creation (Tobiu Camp 2016) and How I Came to Live in Japan and see them as creative and honest works of art. After coming home from Japan, we came across some old home movies that my sister and I made when we were kids. It's something I honestly forgot about over the years but my sister and I probably made hundreds of hours of video when we were between the ages of 5 and 12. We used an old camera my mom and dad used to make their own collection of crossdressing comedy skits back in the 80s (my mom said there really wasn't much to do when you're at home in the pre-Internet era -- also, how ANYONE could watch those videos and not realize that my dad was gay is totally beyond me lol). Anyways, one of our (mine and Hunter's) favorite recurring productions was Sakura Coast to Coast (a foulmouthed toy talk show inspired by Space Ghost Coast to Coast). We also had two true crime/horror movie inspired characters that we invented: 1) The Suicidal Stripper and 2) The Porn Ninja. They were all relatively innocent despite the terminology, lol. Watching some of our old videos was definitely embarrassing and cringe-worthy but we really had a lot of fun making them and they were a great way to pass the time (you'd often catch glimpses of our mother chatting away on the computer while we were filming -- almost always she'd yell at us or tell us to be quiet without ever breaking her gaze with the computer).
Back to YouTube, I've really enjoyed most of the stuff we've done, including my Digimon and collection unboxing videos. It's great to just talk about something you care deeply for. My ultimate, personal favorite is probably the tour of our apartment in Muroran (naturally inspired by MTV's Cribs). It's the kind of thing we'll be happy to have in 20 years.
As millennials, I think we live in an amazing time in terms of being able to make a somewhat-decent living through hobbies. Years and years ago, back when I would steal my neighbor's wi-fi from the couch in my grandma's living room (aka the room I lived in/slept in/considered my own while in high school/...now -_-), I found myself constantly browsing through the video game streams on Justin.tv -- usually watching people play JRPGs. I loved having game BGM in the background and the commentary often made me feel a little less alone. I was so intrigued by the idea of being able to stream my own games but due to Internet limitations (my grandparents had a legit sometimes-56-but-usually-28k connection until around 2014, IIRC) and my lack of a capture card on my old Dell laptop that we paid $1500 for when I graduated high school (!!!), it was nothing more than a pipe dream. So I just kept watching. Of course, back then I had no idea that select streamers on Twitch and YouTube would eventually make MILLIONS of dollars (or that it would at least provide enough side income to justify the time put into it).
I guess I just missed the train, so to speak. As the Japanese often say, "しょうがない."
No comments:
Post a Comment