Stage 4 - Part 4 - "The (Potential) Power of Integrity"

WARNING!! - TOTALLY NOT A VIDEO GAME RELATED POST BUT I STILL PLAY VIDEO GAMES ON MY CHANNEL SO I HOPE THAT THERE IS A SMALL GLISTENING RELEVANCE THAT HOLDS THROUGHOUT THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

I have just recently spent the day spunking my wad "YouTube Style" all over my Channel, and was happy doing so. Some few of you may recognise that I have had to sacrifice 180 videos and approximately 40 subscribers worth of work to start over properly, so every now and then I attempt a game of catch up to appease the unsatisfied YouTube gimp deep inside me.

THE BIG 3 (We should start calling them that)

Strange how I work; I have 3 separate communicating channels through which I put my material; soon to be 4. There is, of course, the domain upon which my videos are posted, Twitter, where the first port of call is made for new uploads, which then directly links to the Facebook page. There are subcultures of behaviour of these 3 sites that have caused me to respond with conflicting morals and somewhat shameless promoting. But one thing that has certainly struck me today, has allowed pause for thought in the manner of which I create, produce and publish my stuff. Before I bestow such a lesson upon your beautiful, impressionable minds, I will explain what I am to understand about the operation of Facebook Page's "Likes", Twitter's "Follows", and YouTube's "Subscribers" and how they all affect the post's popularity.

Ultimately, all 3 of these things are one and the same; a (FB Page) "Like" works like a "Subscribe" which works like a "Follow" but a YouTube "Like" operates like a regular Facebook "Like"... you follow? What they are suggesting is that a person, group or organisation has shown enough interest in another person, group or organisation that they wish to see or hear more of it on a regular basis. That's the simple, middle of the road, vanilla ice cream operation of it all. But then, you add popularity, potential sponsorship, the ability to earn some cheddar on the way and it changes everything! People make agreements, arrangements and deals, some long term, some not so much! This is where it gets silly.

On Facebook, it doesn't seem to happen so much, and I am happy for it. People are free to like your page, and don't ask for anything in return, because they are liking it out of their own... well, liking it. Twitter, however, is like some strange warehouse full of lost wanderers, where handshakes are made every other second, "Follow" for "Follow" and such. It almost seems to be an unspoken rule now, as random people will just "Follow" me, and then "Unfollow" me a day later, because I shared no interest in partaking in their little deal. It felt dirty, impure and BLERGH... YouTube is different, and I know it happens, because it happened today and opened my eyes to a world that's only purpose now is to remind me that I am making good decisions. But it doesn't seem like a working tool on YouTube, as opposed to how it is working on Twitter. There are a couple of reasons, but I'm getting there.

Now, for some reason, on Twitter, I have fallen victim to this "Follow Back" game, and while I was always sitting on a negative imbalance of followers to followees, this game has put me a handful of followers up, so I'm happy! Why? Because my micro-posts on Twitter get out there to a few more people with an increased chance of my videos being watched... when this person subscribed to me today and IMMEDIATELY IN THE COMMENT SECTION OF ONE OF MY VIDEOS requested a subscription back, I was annoyed. I am not sure, EXACTLY, why, but it really bugged me. I still checked out the channel, looked at a couple of videos and then looked around a bit.

People were asking him how he had acquired so many subscribers (450, with 94 videos which by any Gaming Channel standards, is not really all that bad!), and his response...?

"Subscribe to my channel and I'll subscribe back"

I wasn't sure if this was him giving advice or literally his robotic, soulless response to any communication with another channel.

It really is... am I being arrogant...?

Safe to say, I left it. But what left me laughing, even with less subscribers, videos and viewership, was one simple fact. His videos were particularly bad... and that's being nice. The notion that simply having more subscribers was going to get this guy anywhere was mildly laughable, because SURE he may get more views, but eventually they may tail off when it is clear that, for a year, he refuses to buy something better than a bag of sand to record everything with. Also, having recently watched the AMA with Arin and Dan from Game Grumps (thanks, Scott!), they gave me a deep, content feeling that I was heading in the right direction, with still a long way to go, but not making massive mistakes so far.

I may say it with arrogance, perhaps pretension, but to gain viewership and favour of the crowd simply through my material is a far greater success to me than "Handshaking" my way through a cloud of "Will it, won't it" while my videos continue to lack improvement or sign of positive change. At least then I will know for certain if what I am doing is or is not working!

If you have anything you wish to share with me or indeed the readers, feel freeto comment or e-mail me at twentyfiveand0@hotmail.co.uk - Don't forget to check out the What Have I Been Playing pages found on the right! OR Check out my channel at www.youtube.com/ike1luv