The past few months on the internet have been really frustrating for me. One of the reasons I have started two separate channels this year was in the hopes of spreading out to a wider audience, getting to interact with different sectors of YouTube and just to talk about things I really, really like. While they have provided that, I've also felt the same lingering problems lurking in every area of my online life and that is assholes. I'm not talking abut trolls or random hate comments and I'm not just whinging because people are being mean to me. I've been doing this for five years and am fully aware of what the anonymity of the internet can do to people, but this is more than that. It's just getting to the point that it's not fun anymore.
Every single video I post, I'd say about 30% of the comments are pointing out a fault I made, questioning an opinion in a disrespectful manner, correcting me even when what I have said is actually correct, et cetera. I do not script my videos. I do not sit around thinking over everything I want to say in a video. That has never been me and I never want it to be me because it's SO EASY to see when people do that and I don't consider it vlogging. It's not a style of vlog that I enjoy doing because the fun of vlogging is just having something to talk about and work through my thoughts in a medium with an open discussion. It's just gotten to the point where everything I say is suddenly a cause for attack and I am always "wrong" and because there is so much content out there, I am being compared to so many things that I am not at all influenced by and it's just getting so old.
Getting harassed over why I keep my private life private, be it my relationship, my uni, etc, is getting old. Getting called out for everything I say is getting old. Getting told that I need to pin my hair back because it's bothering people whose head the hair is not on (mine) is getting old. People not understanding that just because I don't do something on camera on the internet, I don't do it, is getting old. People telling me that I can't take constructive criticism is getting old.
On that note, I AM NOT ON THE INTERNET FOR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. Talking about things in my life is not some sort of art I am perfecting. I am not trying to become a professional video blogger. I do not want to be a model. I don't study English or want to be a literature professor. Nothing I do on the internet is because I want to improve in any way. For some people, yes, sure. For me? No. I do not make videos to better any skill and therefore writing off your asshole comments as "constructive criticism" does not make you any less of an asshole because I don't need your developments. I just do this for fun, but just every aspect of it is becoming less fun because people just think that they are so fucking entitled to more than I give them or think they have a right to tell me how I should make my videos or live my life.
I seriously don't record a video anymore without having to rerecord half of it in fear of saying something that could, in some way, make people pick me apart. I am a very confident person, but it's just getting to the point where it just feels masochistic to even make videos. I can't read comments anymore without getting so angry as to why people feel the need to be so RUDE. I've always been one of the people who reads every comment and responds to as many as possible, but I can't even do that anymore because there's just so much negativity. As I have made it clear on my blog and in videos in the past, I find negativity the most draining thing in the world. Being surrounded by people who are inherently negative makes me really unhappy and it's the same crushing feeling when I read the majority of the comments of my videos. I like people and the internet and I have so much respect for both, but my adoration for them is dwindling.
I am sure there are loads of holes in what I was trying to say in this blog, but I just needed to vent. I regret nothing I've said here. Are there awesome people on YouTube? Yes. Are most of the people reading this probably in that category? Yes. But I don't know where to go from here. I'm seriously considering my life on the internet and what this all means for the future. There's just very little fun in it for me anymore because it's being crippled by the internet's constant need to tear people down and be right about anything. Essentially what it comes down to is that it's not fair that I have to put up with this. Being a person on the internet does not give people the right to say the things to me that they say. It does not give them the right to tell me how boring, ugly, wrong, bitchy, whatever I am. Because I am none of those things. (Well, I'm wrong about some things.) No one has the right to make me feel like I am and the fact that it's take five years of this to have people drill me down to this level is a sentiment to how much I believe in myself. This is not a weakness in my character and I don't want to look back on this blog in a few years and think that I was weak enough to let people get to me. I am not weak. I am tired and I am not having fun and that's all there is to it right now.
I wish I could say I am going to take a break, but I have some pre-recorded videos and things come up all of the time that make me want to make a video. I just don't think I'll be as active elsewhere, including the comments. I have so much else to be doing with my life right now that having people tell me how much of an idiot I am for not wanting to talk about what uni I'm at or how annoying it is that I move MY hair out of MY face or how much they hate me because I didn't like The Hunger Games film (which, no, I won't be talking about anytime soon anywhere online) is just something I don't need in the picture. I don't know. I'm just angry and bored of putting up with it all. But no one is making me, but me. So we'll see, I guess.
This has been a post.
