90 Day YouTuber

Newsletter + On This Day

Confession: I used to watch 90 Day Fiancé. I’m not proud of it, but most of us watch stuff we rather not advertise publicly. Right? Right.

Reality television has a way of pulling you in and making you care about things that, in the grand scheme of life, don’t matter at all. And yet, many of us still tune in, episode after episode (after episode), because the drama is addictive. And the stakes, while (mostly) manufactured, are more digestible and entertaining than real life.

Honestly, YouTube itself has become one big reality show:
One part game show. One part “news” show. One part soap opera.

On September 13, one of the “community guidelines” strikes YouTube so graciously awarded my channel expires. That means I’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief, having only one active strike instead of two. So my channel won’t be just one bot glitch away from being deleted. Cuz, like (inside) baseball, three strikes and you’re out!

To me, the YouTube creator ecosystem often feels like a chaotic mashup of Bravo, CNN, Faux News, and World of Wonder—creating the biggest, dumbest, mostly amateur reality TV network in history, complete with 24/7 “news” coverage, dramatic twists of fate, and sudden cast changes.

A perfect example of where YouTube’s priorities lie: In the last 90 days, for simply linking to sources of art photos, YouTube slapped me with not one, not two, but three (times a lady) weeks off the platform.

In my book, bots are dumb and bot-powered censorship is dumber.

These forced “breaks” didn’t just cost the channel three weeks of lost momentum (and monetization). As a contestant/creator, it felt like I was getting voted off the show without a chance to compete in the finale. In Big Brother parlance, I felt blindsided.

Though the channel suffered significant setbacks, YouTube’s endless overreactions about anatomy, history, and sexuality pushed me to choose Substack as my creative home base. So, there is a silver lining to this cautionary tale!

While YouTube punishes small creators like me for minor infractions, it seems to turn a blind eye to the controversies swirling around itself and its biggest creators:

1. Hasn’t said anything publicly about the controversies surrounding MrBeast.

2. Has seen many of its top streamers return to Twitch and/or start multistreaming.

3. Has shrunk the size of its Creator Awards, pissing off a lot of creators.

It’s hard not to feel like YouTube is making it increasingly difficult for anyone who isn’t already at the top to succeed on the platform. Without diving into the never-ending fake copyright claims and very real censorship bots, being a creator on YouTube can feel like navigating a minefield—constantly trying to produce content that won’t be flagged, demonetized, or outright removed.

For small creators, these hurdles are more than just frustrating: They’re demoralizing.

Yes, it’s their platform, their rules. But without creators making content, YouTube is just another empty website. So, I can’t help but resent the daily reminders of how little respect they have for creators. To say my relationship with YouTube is “complicated” would be an understatement. Even the cast of *90 Day Fiancé has a better chance at “happily ever after” at this point.

I might be playing their game on their platform, but the House of YouTube can’t always win. Every empire eventually falls. Just saying.

For now, I play to keep trying, two steps forward and one step back. (For the record, I also plan to focus on growing Substack and finding more fans and paid subscribers to help support my work.)

The YouTube reality game show may be rigged, but you can’t win if you don’t play.
Right? Right.

Thanks for reading!

Clint

P.S. Here’s a big-picture view of the channel’s recent performance. The fact that the graph looks like a rollercoaster seems fitting… because it’s felt like one too.

ANALYTICS = UPS + DOWNS + ALL-AROUNDS

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ON THIS DAY = SEPTEMBER 4

BIRTHDAYS

• GEORGE HOYNINGEN-HUENE (1900)
  Fashion Photographer

• DAMON WAYANS (1960)

  Comedian

• MARK RONSON (1975)

  Music Producer

• WES BENTLEY (1978)
  Actor

• BEYONCÉ (1981)
  Pop Singer-Songwriter-Filmmaker

(HORST P.) HORST TORSO BY GEORGE HOYNINGEN-HUENE

EVENTS

• Los Angeles is founded by 44 Spanish speaking mestizos in the Bahia de las Fumas (Bay of Smokes). (1781)

• The day after Britain declares war on Germany, Alan Turing registers for the military. (1939)

• The original The Price Is Right premieres on NBC. (1956)

• The Wolfenden Report is published in England which recommends “that homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offense.” (1957)

• Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, calls out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. (1957)

• The Beatles release their fifth studio album Help! (1965)

• Actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick get married. (1988)

• Xena: Warrior Princess premieres in syndication. (1995)

• Alicia Keys releases Girl On Fire, the title track for her fifth studio album. (2012)

• The Democratic Party becomes the first major U.S. political party in history to publicly support same-sex marriage on a national platform at the Democratic National Convention. (2012)

• Canada has discreetly granted asylum to 31 gay men from Chechnya working with the NGO Rainbow Railroad, a clandestine program unique in the world. (2017)

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