Am I the only one who sees this?
A lot of creators I talk to want to make something of their own and feel like they cannot, because their bottom line is tied to responding to everybody else’s work. That is the loop, and this video is about why it exists and what to do about it.
Outside of kids content, music, corporate channels and the spectacle stuff, YouTube is dominated by personality driven creators, and almost all of that is response content. Gaming, commentary, opinion on something somebody else built. There is nothing wrong with that. It is also the most profitable thing you can do with a camera and a microphone, because the barrier to entry is on the floor. Press record and you are in business.
Original work is the opposite trade. It costs money up front. I pay contractors, I pay for the infrastructure, and the margins look nothing like ad revenue.
Here is the part people miss. Ad revenue only requires passive engagement. Somebody stumbles onto the video, watches it, you got paid. That is a completely different act from reaching in your pocket and buying something, and it is often a different audience. Plenty of people found that out the hard way after assuming a following would convert.
So algorithmically you are incentivized to do the opposite of original creation. Look at the top ten selling games of last year. Not one new IP in the group. Sequels, remasters, annual sports titles and legacy franchises top to bottom. People say they are tired of rehashes. Watch what they do instead of what they say.
Same thing happens to artists. Draw your own character and it sits there. Draw Batman and it moves.
None of that is a reason to not do it.
If you are sitting on a good idea, go do it. Just go in with your eyes open. Understand your numbers may drop when you shift. Understand that a following built on one thing does not automatically cross over to another. I am not guessing at that, I lived it. I had tens of thousands of followers before I ever covered a comic, built off original music going back to 2006, and I still had to learn where that audience would and would not follow me.
Tame the expectations, not the ambition.
And if you feel like you cannot talk about your own work with the same confidence you talk about everybody else’s, that right there is the thing to fix.
Shut up and go do it.