MatPat announced today he's leaving YouTube and his last theory video will be on March 9. The channels will be handed over to other team members and he'll still be involved, but he won't be the...
MatPat announced today he's leaving YouTube and his last theory video will be on March 9. The channels will be handed over to other team members and he'll still be involved, but he won't be the face of them anymore.
I'm just shocked. This feels so sudden, but I can also get his reasoning. Running a YouTube channel is a lot of work, even just a gaming channel has a lot of time spent on editing and recording footage (not all of which is guaranteed to be used). He's the face of five YouTube channels though, four of which are scripted and require extensive research. And that's before getting into all of the merchandise and other side-businesses. It's been noted before that he's often unaware of memes and internet trends since he has such limited free time.
It's still sad though. He's been one of the strongest voices on YouTube—not just with theories, but in regards to the platform itself. He's talked a lot about how YouTube is run, and has used his platform to help educate people and try to work with YouTube. And besides all that, he's just a genuinely good guy. Truly feels like the end of an era.
I'm trying to keep my paranoia at bay here, but with Tom Scott's recent announcement this feels like it may be a pattern. I'm a little worried about what will emerge once these strong voices leave...
I'm trying to keep my paranoia at bay here, but with Tom Scott's recent announcement this feels like it may be a pattern. I'm a little worried about what will emerge once these strong voices leave the platform, but perhaps I'm just getting old and starting to fear change.
I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up). Perhaps a lot...
I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up). Perhaps a lot of people are finding the stuff they need to maintain their income beyond production takes too much from them? One should keep in mind that they are also basically entrepeneurs; the only thing keeping them going is the sense that they enjoy doing it and getting paid for it. Once it becomes unenjoyable for any reason there's not much motivating them to do it unless they are getting paid very well.
"I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up)." This is...
"I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up)."
This is capitalism. How can they constantly keep increasing revenue? What corner can they cut, what price can they increase. Decreasing your outcome by giving less to content creators and increasing your income by adding more ads are two ways to stretch those numbers.
Yeah, something I've been appreciating about Second Wind (the worker co-op that formed from the creators that left The Escapist,) is that they've posted monthly profit reports showing where their...
Yeah, something I've been appreciating about Second Wind (the worker co-op that formed from the creators that left The Escapist,) is that they've posted monthly profit reports showing where their income is coming from. With 400k subscribers and 300-400k views on their premier video series', they're making $11.5k a month from YouTube ads. Those numbers aren't ones you can build a business on. The YouTube ads end up being around 10% of their revenue.
What you are describing is moreso the Friedman doctrine, which is a specific view of business ethics, rather than capitalism per se. What you're doing is essentially the leftist version of...
What you are describing is moreso the Friedman doctrine, which is a specific view of business ethics, rather than capitalism per se. What you're doing is essentially the leftist version of conservatives equating socialism with a planned economy.
Constant revenue growth isn't inherently a fiendish pipe dream. If anything it would happen naturally as long as the population increases and you maintain marketshare. Whether or not the expected rate of revenue growth is realistic is another matter, along with how companies pursue that growth. In an ideal capitalist world they'd innovate to get/stay ahead of the competition or branch out to capture underserved demographics. Unfortunately there's too many activist investors more interested in maximizing short term gains who'll come into a business, leech as much as they can from it, then ditch it for the next thing.
I assume you mean population as in the population of users. Even if you are not, it assumes that it is possibly to support a constantly growing population. Which on many different levels is a...
as long as the population increases
I assume you mean population as in the population of users. Even if you are not, it assumes that it is possibly to support a constantly growing population. Which on many different levels is a problematic assumption to begin with.
So more sustainable business models in (possibly naive) view should eventually aim at some sort of stabilization.
Population should not be increasing, we have too many people on this planet already, we need to decrease the population and keep it at that level. That is not natural to keep growing the...
Population should not be increasing, we have too many people on this planet already, we need to decrease the population and keep it at that level. That is not natural to keep growing the population just to make more money.
Everything has a plateau and rather than focus on providing a good service, they would rather enshittification their platforms and services just for a few bucks more per person to keep that increase, rather than focus on maintaining a good product or service at a stable level.
You can make profit without increasing insane amounts every year.
There is nothing wrong with making the same amount of money you did the previous year. Yes inflation is a thing so naturally prices should increase slowly to match that, but that isn't what we're talking about here.
The problem is, we made $1 billion this year, let's make $1.4 billion next year, now how do we do that? When it should be, we made $1 billion this year, how do we maintain that for next year, and if we have good ideas and features that improve what we offer or get more customers then that's a great bonus on top of that.
If you are profitable, all expenses paid for and still making money, then chill. Focus on maintaining and improving rather than just increasing the number in the account that says you own that number of money.
Make a good product or service and let the rest happen naturally. That's how it should work
We do not need to decrease the population. I really don't appreciate that argument because it's too close to a justification for mass murder than I am comfortable with. The primary problem with a...
Population should not be increasing, we have too many people on this planet already, we need to decrease the population and keep it at that level.
We do not need to decrease the population. I really don't appreciate that argument because it's too close to a justification for mass murder than I am comfortable with.
The primary problem with a large population is the collective consumption related to it. But so-called "developed" societies are extremely wasteful with consumption, so there's a huge amount of headroom for more people if we simply cut down on the waste. To argue that the people are the problem is not only supremely misanthropic, it is a massive oversimplification of the ideas related to the problem of scarcity.
I would, however, agree with you about not chasing after limitless growth in economics; there are many other goals a corporation should strive for that are often forgotten when chasing after it.
I'm not saying we should be killing people off, just people need to have less children. As it is we have enough problems with foster children and adoption programs, abusive parents, children in...
I'm not saying we should be killing people off, just people need to have less children. As it is we have enough problems with foster children and adoption programs, abusive parents, children in poverty. So so so many cases where people should not have had children.
And sure less waste would be nice, but how realistic is it? How feasible in the modern world where everything runs on technology and constant change and new things? It seems a lot more feasible to reduce the population over generations by encouraging decreases in birthrates. I mean we can do both too. Large populations will always consume more, so if population decreases and waste is reduced then both factors are helping the problem simultaneously.
And I do believe that people are the problem. We have done all of this. Drive down any highway (at least in the US) and you see so much trash everywhere, despite how much is put into driving the point home about not littering. People don't care. People will do whatever they want. There's far too many selfish people in the world who will just do whatever they want and not care especially when there's nothing holding them accountable. People maybe not necessarily be the source, but they're a multiplier. If you have 10 pieces of trash left by 100 people, then you'll have 100 pieces with 1000 people. It multiplies with the population. Reducing population (again over time, not advocating for genocide) reduces the problem by that multiplier.
I'm not saying that you are advocating for murder; I'm saying that the arguement you are using is very close to it. I certainly don't think you're a bad person. There are countless real-world...
I'm not saying that you are advocating for murder; I'm saying that the arguement you are using is very close to it. I certainly don't think you're a bad person.
There are countless real-world examples of societies that exist with drastically less consumption than we do. But the problem is that we in rich economies are grown children who are completely unwilling to give up the conveniences that are so wasteful, and our governments are unwilling to enact policies that will reduce consumption. But still I find them much more feasible on a global scale than attempting to lower the population. Take your littering problem, for instance; it's a problem with the proliferation of disposable containers. That is not nearly an issue in parts of the world where they are less common. Litter would also be much less important of an issue if those containers were made of biodegradable materials like paper and glass. But you can see that there's more ways to combat the waste that are much more nuanced than simply reducing population. That's a huge drastic solution to a series of problems that could otherwise be properly dealt with.
I won't deny that birth control is a very important thing, but it really should be used more for things like bodily autonomy and to ensure that children are born into families who are able and willing to care for them.
Mostly just clumping because of all the high december revenues, so waiting till new year to make an annoucement. Also, Tom Scott is still doing his podcast/game-show thing
Mostly just clumping because of all the high december revenues, so waiting till new year to make an annoucement. Also, Tom Scott is still doing his podcast/game-show thing
What scandals are those? The only thing approaching "scandal" I've run up against in my corner was the Linus Tech Tips thing, and that only because tech is my professional field. I've never seen...
What scandals are those? The only thing approaching "scandal" I've run up against in my corner was the Linus Tech Tips thing, and that only because tech is my professional field. I've never seen the appeal, personally.
I've also had to fix a few fuck ups by people who don't listen to the warnings and attempt some of the dumb shit they do on that channel. I can't entirely blame LTT for that, I suppose, but I don't love them for it either.
There have been a few recent scandals. Off the top of my head, last month a big expose by Hbomberguy accused multiple major content creators of plagiarism, most notably Internet Historian and...
There have been a few recent scandals. Off the top of my head, last month a big expose by Hbomberguy accused multiple major content creators of plagiarism, most notably Internet Historian and James Somerton. I've never heard of Somerton, but he was a major focus of the video and from what I can tell had his career ended by it.
Then right before that, The Completionist was exposed for not donating any of the $650 money raised by his charity for dementia research. And before that, a major YouTube named SSSniperWolf doxxed one of her critics, which is an entire mess of its own. Though seems she's still uploading stuff and getting along fine. And then there were the grooming allegations about Yandere Dev, the developer of Yandere Simulator, which is another giant mess... (On that note, when a friend first mentioned the Completionist my first thought was "oh financial corruption is WAY better than what I expected," which says a lot about how YouTuber scandals usually go.)
Note, I don't follow any of the channels I mentioned (except Yandere Dev). I honestly hadn't heard of most of them. But those scandals were big enough to get mentioned all over the internet and well beyond their fanbase.
The only one of them I follow is Internet Historian, and honestly, plagiarism is neither a shocker, nor as heinous as I would've expected. I'll have to check that Hbomberguy video out.
The only one of them I follow is Internet Historian, and honestly, plagiarism is neither a shocker, nor as heinous as I would've expected.
It’s probably good for YouTube in general. If there are less content creators, the existing ones should see more views and earn more for the same amount of effort.
It’s probably good for YouTube in general. If there are less content creators, the existing ones should see more views and earn more for the same amount of effort.
I was shocked too, but I get it. YT is more than a full time job and he runs a legit company. I'm only a few years younger than him. I can only imagine what it's been like doing his job for so...
I was shocked too, but I get it. YT is more than a full time job and he runs a legit company. I'm only a few years younger than him. I can only imagine what it's been like doing his job for so many years.
The signs have been there though. The people taking over hosting have slowly shown up more and more in his various channels. So his audience have had time to get used to seeing these new people.
I'll definitely miss him on screen, but I think the new hosts will do well in his stead. He'll still be bts, so the heart of the theory channels will be safe
I don't think I've watched the Game Theorists since around the time MatPat gifted the Pope Undertale, so this feels like catching up with a friend I haven't seen in years. Nice to see he's still...
I don't think I've watched the Game Theorists since around the time MatPat gifted the Pope Undertale, so this feels like catching up with a friend I haven't seen in years. Nice to see he's still got that upbeat yet contemplative attitude that's worth learning from.
Even though his work skews towards a younger audience, I've always gotten a sense of maturity from Matt that I feel is rare in the YouTube and E-Celebrity spheres, and his decision to step back and prioritize his family certainly follows from that. He's earned his retirement, and it'll be interesting to see how his legacy is carried on by his colleagues.
MatPat announced today he's leaving YouTube and his last theory video will be on March 9. The channels will be handed over to other team members and he'll still be involved, but he won't be the face of them anymore.
I'm just shocked. This feels so sudden, but I can also get his reasoning. Running a YouTube channel is a lot of work, even just a gaming channel has a lot of time spent on editing and recording footage (not all of which is guaranteed to be used). He's the face of five YouTube channels though, four of which are scripted and require extensive research. And that's before getting into all of the merchandise and other side-businesses. It's been noted before that he's often unaware of memes and internet trends since he has such limited free time.
It's still sad though. He's been one of the strongest voices on YouTube—not just with theories, but in regards to the platform itself. He's talked a lot about how YouTube is run, and has used his platform to help educate people and try to work with YouTube. And besides all that, he's just a genuinely good guy. Truly feels like the end of an era.
I'm trying to keep my paranoia at bay here, but with Tom Scott's recent announcement this feels like it may be a pattern. I'm a little worried about what will emerge once these strong voices leave the platform, but perhaps I'm just getting old and starting to fear change.
I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up). Perhaps a lot of people are finding the stuff they need to maintain their income beyond production takes too much from them? One should keep in mind that they are also basically entrepeneurs; the only thing keeping them going is the sense that they enjoy doing it and getting paid for it. Once it becomes unenjoyable for any reason there's not much motivating them to do it unless they are getting paid very well.
"I have been hearing that the amount of money that comes from YouTube from advertising is going down (which is kind of crazy given that the amount of advertising only seems to go up)."
This is capitalism. How can they constantly keep increasing revenue? What corner can they cut, what price can they increase. Decreasing your outcome by giving less to content creators and increasing your income by adding more ads are two ways to stretch those numbers.
This is fucking capitalism
Yeah, something I've been appreciating about Second Wind (the worker co-op that formed from the creators that left The Escapist,) is that they've posted monthly profit reports showing where their income is coming from. With 400k subscribers and 300-400k views on their premier video series', they're making $11.5k a month from YouTube ads. Those numbers aren't ones you can build a business on. The YouTube ads end up being around 10% of their revenue.
What you are describing is moreso the Friedman doctrine, which is a specific view of business ethics, rather than capitalism per se. What you're doing is essentially the leftist version of conservatives equating socialism with a planned economy.
Constant revenue growth isn't inherently a fiendish pipe dream. If anything it would happen naturally as long as the population increases and you maintain marketshare. Whether or not the expected rate of revenue growth is realistic is another matter, along with how companies pursue that growth. In an ideal capitalist world they'd innovate to get/stay ahead of the competition or branch out to capture underserved demographics. Unfortunately there's too many activist investors more interested in maximizing short term gains who'll come into a business, leech as much as they can from it, then ditch it for the next thing.
I assume you mean population as in the population of users. Even if you are not, it assumes that it is possibly to support a constantly growing population. Which on many different levels is a problematic assumption to begin with.
So more sustainable business models in (possibly naive) view should eventually aim at some sort of stabilization.
Population should not be increasing, we have too many people on this planet already, we need to decrease the population and keep it at that level. That is not natural to keep growing the population just to make more money.
Everything has a plateau and rather than focus on providing a good service, they would rather enshittification their platforms and services just for a few bucks more per person to keep that increase, rather than focus on maintaining a good product or service at a stable level.
You can make profit without increasing insane amounts every year.
There is nothing wrong with making the same amount of money you did the previous year. Yes inflation is a thing so naturally prices should increase slowly to match that, but that isn't what we're talking about here.
The problem is, we made $1 billion this year, let's make $1.4 billion next year, now how do we do that? When it should be, we made $1 billion this year, how do we maintain that for next year, and if we have good ideas and features that improve what we offer or get more customers then that's a great bonus on top of that.
If you are profitable, all expenses paid for and still making money, then chill. Focus on maintaining and improving rather than just increasing the number in the account that says you own that number of money.
Make a good product or service and let the rest happen naturally. That's how it should work
We do not need to decrease the population. I really don't appreciate that argument because it's too close to a justification for mass murder than I am comfortable with.
The primary problem with a large population is the collective consumption related to it. But so-called "developed" societies are extremely wasteful with consumption, so there's a huge amount of headroom for more people if we simply cut down on the waste. To argue that the people are the problem is not only supremely misanthropic, it is a massive oversimplification of the ideas related to the problem of scarcity.
I would, however, agree with you about not chasing after limitless growth in economics; there are many other goals a corporation should strive for that are often forgotten when chasing after it.
I'm not saying we should be killing people off, just people need to have less children. As it is we have enough problems with foster children and adoption programs, abusive parents, children in poverty. So so so many cases where people should not have had children.
And sure less waste would be nice, but how realistic is it? How feasible in the modern world where everything runs on technology and constant change and new things? It seems a lot more feasible to reduce the population over generations by encouraging decreases in birthrates. I mean we can do both too. Large populations will always consume more, so if population decreases and waste is reduced then both factors are helping the problem simultaneously.
And I do believe that people are the problem. We have done all of this. Drive down any highway (at least in the US) and you see so much trash everywhere, despite how much is put into driving the point home about not littering. People don't care. People will do whatever they want. There's far too many selfish people in the world who will just do whatever they want and not care especially when there's nothing holding them accountable. People maybe not necessarily be the source, but they're a multiplier. If you have 10 pieces of trash left by 100 people, then you'll have 100 pieces with 1000 people. It multiplies with the population. Reducing population (again over time, not advocating for genocide) reduces the problem by that multiplier.
I'm not saying that you are advocating for murder; I'm saying that the arguement you are using is very close to it. I certainly don't think you're a bad person.
There are countless real-world examples of societies that exist with drastically less consumption than we do. But the problem is that we in rich economies are grown children who are completely unwilling to give up the conveniences that are so wasteful, and our governments are unwilling to enact policies that will reduce consumption. But still I find them much more feasible on a global scale than attempting to lower the population. Take your littering problem, for instance; it's a problem with the proliferation of disposable containers. That is not nearly an issue in parts of the world where they are less common. Litter would also be much less important of an issue if those containers were made of biodegradable materials like paper and glass. But you can see that there's more ways to combat the waste that are much more nuanced than simply reducing population. That's a huge drastic solution to a series of problems that could otherwise be properly dealt with.
I won't deny that birth control is a very important thing, but it really should be used more for things like bodily autonomy and to ensure that children are born into families who are able and willing to care for them.
Tom had announced way in the past that he'd be stopping, that day just finally came
Mostly just clumping because of all the high december revenues, so waiting till new year to make an annoucement. Also, Tom Scott is still doing his podcast/game-show thing
I'm sure this has been coming, but it does feel suspicious given the timing of other youtuber scandals at the moment.
What scandals are those? The only thing approaching "scandal" I've run up against in my corner was the Linus Tech Tips thing, and that only because tech is my professional field. I've never seen the appeal, personally.
I've also had to fix a few fuck ups by people who don't listen to the warnings and attempt some of the dumb shit they do on that channel. I can't entirely blame LTT for that, I suppose, but I don't love them for it either.
There have been a few recent scandals. Off the top of my head, last month a big expose by Hbomberguy accused multiple major content creators of plagiarism, most notably Internet Historian and James Somerton. I've never heard of Somerton, but he was a major focus of the video and from what I can tell had his career ended by it.
Then right before that, The Completionist was exposed for not donating any of the $650 money raised by his charity for dementia research. And before that, a major YouTube named SSSniperWolf doxxed one of her critics, which is an entire mess of its own. Though seems she's still uploading stuff and getting along fine. And then there were the grooming allegations about Yandere Dev, the developer of Yandere Simulator, which is another giant mess... (On that note, when a friend first mentioned the Completionist my first thought was "oh financial corruption is WAY better than what I expected," which says a lot about how YouTuber scandals usually go.)
Note, I don't follow any of the channels I mentioned (except Yandere Dev). I honestly hadn't heard of most of them. But those scandals were big enough to get mentioned all over the internet and well beyond their fanbase.
The only one of them I follow is Internet Historian, and honestly, plagiarism is neither a shocker, nor as heinous as I would've expected.
I'll have to check that Hbomberguy video out.
It’s probably good for YouTube in general. If there are less content creators, the existing ones should see more views and earn more for the same amount of effort.
I was shocked too, but I get it. YT is more than a full time job and he runs a legit company. I'm only a few years younger than him. I can only imagine what it's been like doing his job for so many years.
The signs have been there though. The people taking over hosting have slowly shown up more and more in his various channels. So his audience have had time to get used to seeing these new people.
I'll definitely miss him on screen, but I think the new hosts will do well in his stead. He'll still be bts, so the heart of the theory channels will be safe
I don't think I've watched the Game Theorists since around the time MatPat gifted the Pope Undertale, so this feels like catching up with a friend I haven't seen in years. Nice to see he's still got that upbeat yet contemplative attitude that's worth learning from.
Even though his work skews towards a younger audience, I've always gotten a sense of maturity from Matt that I feel is rare in the YouTube and E-Celebrity spheres, and his decision to step back and prioritize his family certainly follows from that. He's earned his retirement, and it'll be interesting to see how his legacy is carried on by his colleagues.