witchcraft
it's too painful to live but I'm too afraid to die
- Nov 27, 2024
- 255
Branding and marketing gives me an existential crisis. I am me, irl, that's all I know. I don't want to do some fake corpo branding slop thing. But I don't want to use my real name and face on *YouTube. The only thing unique about me is my own specific experiences and the thoughts I share.
I don't know any artists. I am not artistically talented, so I can't create my own branding. I will not use you-know-what to create branding for me. I don't even have any ideas anyway. I don't "get" branding. It just sounds like a lot of soulless HR speak: target audience, whatever. Branding and marketing seems really limiting as well, like you can only ever, forever, play one singular game, or series, or *maybe* genre. You have to be so confident in your branding that you're willing to stick with it for years too, not change it every 6-12 months like a Steam profile pic.
One of my inspirations as a streamer is jerma, but I'm nowhere near as naturally-born entertaining of a jester as he is. Still, it would be cool to have what he has. It would be a dream to stream video games and make video essays about gaming, grow a community, share my gaming hobby with other people. I admire him, the hard work he put in, the risk he took, and his ability to entertain, but I've never gotten the impression that he sat around like some dude with an MBA and asked himself standard marketing and branding questions.
The more I've been around and checked out uber popular streamers, the more it seems that this is all ultimately luck based. There isn't anything more (*or less*) special about them than me or 90% of small content creators. I look at the thumbnails with the same Edvard Munch "The Scream" expression of them with some clickbait title in Impact font and it's like I'm seeing clones. Yet so many gurus say you have to be original. Wtf is original about 95% of the popular content on the internet other than differences in the personality / persona of the content creator themself??
This belief that you need to be special when there are millions of other people making gaming content is simply absurd. How is it realistically possible to think of something that not only nobody else, not one of the other millions of people has already thought of, but then that "special thing" turns out to be in high demand? This would require a crystal ball, divine intervention, since chances are high that something isn't already being done BECAUSE it's unpopular and there's no audience for it. A lot of times there's nothing particularly special about successful content creators. How many popular content creators have you come across and you don't get the appeal? You think they're boring or superficial? My mind just runs in circles over advice that makes no sense to me or seems easily and widely contradicted upon further examination. It's like all the advice for aspiring content creators is written by people who have never opened YouTube before.
How long before dozens of copycats start doing what Drawn Out is doing? I suppose *he* is special for seemingly being the first one of presenting his content in that way. Drawn Out is the one in 10million for actually, miraculously, somehow managing to come up with something that had seemingly never been attempted: stick-figure-man talks about video games. But aside from the rare exception, no matter the branding or the presentation or your personality or whatever else, you can't mindcontrol people to agree with you that you're special. He could've done that and it could have just as easily flopped. He seems like a cool dude and I'm not suggesting my content is better than his, and I'm literally subscribed to him, but besides his stick-figure-presentation-shtick there's not really a whole lot special about him. He's just a guy like every other guy who comments on the video game industry, which means the only other unique thing about him is him, the man behind the camera, the man behind the voice.
It's the same with guys like Any Austin or MrMattyPlays. I like both their content, I'm not dragging them through the mud here. What I'm saying is that there are many, many, many people who do literally the exact same content that they do. So what's special about them? It's them, the individual, the personality. But you can't MAKE people like you. I fail to see how YouTube is little more than a popularity contest. There are way too many successful people doing the exact same thing as each other, only differentiated by themselves as separate human beings, to suggest that you need to be the only one doing something in order to grow a following.
I don't know. The only thing that makes me "special" is me but that's not really good enough or a very successful business strategy. This whole thing is way too confusing and frustrating. Just a neverending cycle of second-guessing, identity crisis, self-doubt, identity confusion. If my best answer is "I want to stream whatever game I want like jerma, be faceless like lirik, and make essays on gaming / my favorite games" I'd have better luck surviving flying over miles of Flak-88s in a Cessna.
Other than dying, there's not really anything else I'd like to do with my life though. Everything else fucking sucks.
I don't know any artists. I am not artistically talented, so I can't create my own branding. I will not use you-know-what to create branding for me. I don't even have any ideas anyway. I don't "get" branding. It just sounds like a lot of soulless HR speak: target audience, whatever. Branding and marketing seems really limiting as well, like you can only ever, forever, play one singular game, or series, or *maybe* genre. You have to be so confident in your branding that you're willing to stick with it for years too, not change it every 6-12 months like a Steam profile pic.
One of my inspirations as a streamer is jerma, but I'm nowhere near as naturally-born entertaining of a jester as he is. Still, it would be cool to have what he has. It would be a dream to stream video games and make video essays about gaming, grow a community, share my gaming hobby with other people. I admire him, the hard work he put in, the risk he took, and his ability to entertain, but I've never gotten the impression that he sat around like some dude with an MBA and asked himself standard marketing and branding questions.
The more I've been around and checked out uber popular streamers, the more it seems that this is all ultimately luck based. There isn't anything more (*or less*) special about them than me or 90% of small content creators. I look at the thumbnails with the same Edvard Munch "The Scream" expression of them with some clickbait title in Impact font and it's like I'm seeing clones. Yet so many gurus say you have to be original. Wtf is original about 95% of the popular content on the internet other than differences in the personality / persona of the content creator themself??
This belief that you need to be special when there are millions of other people making gaming content is simply absurd. How is it realistically possible to think of something that not only nobody else, not one of the other millions of people has already thought of, but then that "special thing" turns out to be in high demand? This would require a crystal ball, divine intervention, since chances are high that something isn't already being done BECAUSE it's unpopular and there's no audience for it. A lot of times there's nothing particularly special about successful content creators. How many popular content creators have you come across and you don't get the appeal? You think they're boring or superficial? My mind just runs in circles over advice that makes no sense to me or seems easily and widely contradicted upon further examination. It's like all the advice for aspiring content creators is written by people who have never opened YouTube before.
How long before dozens of copycats start doing what Drawn Out is doing? I suppose *he* is special for seemingly being the first one of presenting his content in that way. Drawn Out is the one in 10million for actually, miraculously, somehow managing to come up with something that had seemingly never been attempted: stick-figure-man talks about video games. But aside from the rare exception, no matter the branding or the presentation or your personality or whatever else, you can't mindcontrol people to agree with you that you're special. He could've done that and it could have just as easily flopped. He seems like a cool dude and I'm not suggesting my content is better than his, and I'm literally subscribed to him, but besides his stick-figure-presentation-shtick there's not really a whole lot special about him. He's just a guy like every other guy who comments on the video game industry, which means the only other unique thing about him is him, the man behind the camera, the man behind the voice.
It's the same with guys like Any Austin or MrMattyPlays. I like both their content, I'm not dragging them through the mud here. What I'm saying is that there are many, many, many people who do literally the exact same content that they do. So what's special about them? It's them, the individual, the personality. But you can't MAKE people like you. I fail to see how YouTube is little more than a popularity contest. There are way too many successful people doing the exact same thing as each other, only differentiated by themselves as separate human beings, to suggest that you need to be the only one doing something in order to grow a following.
I don't know. The only thing that makes me "special" is me but that's not really good enough or a very successful business strategy. This whole thing is way too confusing and frustrating. Just a neverending cycle of second-guessing, identity crisis, self-doubt, identity confusion. If my best answer is "I want to stream whatever game I want like jerma, be faceless like lirik, and make essays on gaming / my favorite games" I'd have better luck surviving flying over miles of Flak-88s in a Cessna.
Other than dying, there's not really anything else I'd like to do with my life though. Everything else fucking sucks.
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