#shittyprogressivethinkpieces

[phantomoftheblank]

Authortube is horrible and why I’ve turncoated to Booktube. I wont apologize but I will argue.

I’ve consumed about 5 hours worth of Authortube just to write a shitty think-piece about it, so now we gotta have this talk. If you’re unaware of what I’m talking about let me explain; YouTube is a website that used to be about cat videos but now splits itself into subsections THAT ARE DEFINITELY NOT CULTS, but kinda looks like it at times,

    Though these genre’s aren’t really official, there is a genre for just about everything, and creative things especially. You have plenty of genres and way too many Youtubers to express it, and despite my pretentious nature I actually love how congested it is because it means its accessible to almost everyone, anybody can pretty much join in,

(Yeah I know, what a progressive queen I am, please give me claps for the bare fucking minimum,)

Gaming is probably the biggest on YouTube right now, but we like to pretend that it doesn’t exist and consume that content in the darkest corners of our house and pretend we don’t like it. Anyways; Authortube is kind of self explanatory and despite what a man-splainer I am as a 21 year old female, I think you get the point on what it is,

Well, with Authortube, we are making books to be consumed, and with this happening, Booktube has also bloomed. And in my judgemental opinion, it is actually better, and no, I’m not gonna go on the rampant that “we need to learn our audience” because preying on a bunch of minors doesn't sound very nice. 

Or legal, actually, yikes. It’s not like that, don’t make a judgment, we authors just want their money, not their mental state. Okay, I need to shut up, let’s talk about shit posting again, 

It’s actually not all minors, there’s plenty of adults on BookTube as well, which actually makes it that much more relatable, as to where Authortube is mainly adults who are going through routes to publishing their book or already have. Now, don’t attack me just yet, it’s my turn to argue honey and I brought an unloaded gun to the canon fight, I have an example for you.

Let’s take a look at Jenna Moreci, who is lovely, but also pretentious as all fuck. So me, but successful, not broke, prettier and in video format. In all seriousness I understand her audience, it’s primarily youthful writers looking for advice or writers looking to self publish because they see a success story, but this advice is all very mediocre and this isn’t a Jenna problem, this is an Authortube problem, Jenna Moreci is just an unfortunate example to explain my point,

    She’s even made certain content I can consume and not wanna spittle up, but it’s only when she herself is in the frame, and mainly when writing is not what she’s trying to teach me about. Jenna as a person with personality is quite lovely and very watchable, but Jenna as a self-publisher is part of the reason why I’ve turncoated.

    Writers aren’t puppies, you can’t teach them tricks, and though writing advice is important to get, I don’t see there being a lot of purpose in having 18 YouTubers telling me Show not Tell, but never following the same advice.

    You don’t get that lecturing attitude from Booktube, you get lovely personalities like Ariel Bisset and hilarious reviews from Cat (Paperbackdreams) and it actually becomes more watchable because it feels more genuine because they’re actual people in front of a camera, talking about what they enjoy, that’s because they aren’t trying to sell you something. 

    To compare two examples, for Authortube we’ll use Jenna Moreci, and for BookTube, we’ll use LilyCReads,

    LilyCReads, a BookTube channel, who used to do hilarious reviews on plenty of books, in a more so ranting fashion, and this worked for her, her audience grew a lot because of it. But eventually, she felt so obligated to make rant reviews she stopped enjoying the process of making the videos entirely, so with this being her emotions, she took down her rant reviews due to feeling too negative about it. Her greatest fear was becoming a rant review channel focusing on negativity. Though many of these videos I loved from her, she took them all down, which at first, was a bit saddening for me, as I watched those videos after a long day, oftentimes repeatedly, but I could not deny her genuine emotion to not wanting to be negative.

    And honey, I can’t relate, but I can say LilyCReads is one of the most genuine faces you will see on camera now. Has her subscriber count faced a backlash to this? Yes, she took down what -- in my opinion -- was her best videos.

 I don’t laugh when I watch her videos anymore, so this isn’t to say Booktube is perfect but I can say she is much more of a person for it and has not re-uploaded the rant-reviews for viewership at my time of writing this.

And then we have Jenna Moreci, as we’ve discussed is very likable person and that’s why she’s succeeding, but it’s very hard to get a genuine feeling from her unless you have a bias to content you’ve enjoyed from her, so eventually “Cyborg” starts feeling less like a joke, and more like a reality,

    This leads us to a very conflictive point, which is Marketing; and trust me, I don’t wanna talk about the marketing of a book no more than you wanna read about it, but the bottom line is we can’t finish this topic without at least mentioning it,

    And it is worth mentioning because that is actually the drive that most people start these channels with. Though for some I’m sure they do actually enjoy it, but others whom I won’t mention, it feels as genuine as my hair extensions; looks right in certain angles, but is definitely about to come unglued.

    It’s worth mentioning that I only started this blog because I wanted to become involved within a writing community and eventually begin marketing my own shitty book I wrote, so I come at this with not judgment, but a realization. The only reason I continue to do this right now is because I find a genuine enjoyment from it, but I don’t get to choose when my writing feels genuine to you, and it is only fair to mention, that those were the intentions I started with.

    I understand the point of marketing but it’s also worth mentioning how fucking skeezy that actually is, when our audience is more of a person than we actually are as writers/authors. And if you’re reading this as somebody who isn’t a writer, but is a reader, then you’re in the clear, but if you’re a writer, be aware of this before you bleach the side of your head to maintain a “funky skunky stripe” and start a Tumblr blog like I did. 

I was a redneck before this, can you believe that? Shame. I feel lots of shame.

Now, I’m not saying marketing your book makes you evil, I’m just saying that it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the business mindset because publishing a book on your own is fucking terrifying. It’s scary to realize that you may have put months/years into a book that will flop because you made 2 less Instagram posts last week. Trust me, I get it, but at some point Authortube took a great plunge. 

And though yes, this is all my opinion, I think we all know it’s quite clear I really only care about what I’m saying at the moment, so I really don’t give two shits about who you watch on YouTube, but I will say, if you enjoy Authortube, you’ll love Booktube, and I hope you love both, because both have important places.

But I’ve become biased to people and I can’t help but scan every person I meet, see, or know to make sure they’re genuine. I like seeing people because we are surrounded by capitalization run amok. Everything is a god damn advertisement and it’s honestly driving me insane, so it is nice to relax, kick back and watch somebody read ‘Searching Around Nebraska’, a book I’ll never read, but listen to somebody talk about because at least I know they enjoyed it. 

And it’s important for me to watch people enjoy things, I’ve lost all happiness in the void of my self-conscience telling me to pay for Facebook advertisements, I mean god damn guys my pretentious mindset has me syringe-ejecting serotonin from videos about red pandas, and injecting it directly into the bloodstream. It’s like crack, but cuter.

My point is, reading is hard and writing has fried my brain, support nice people with small channels because they’re more likely to write a diss track on me and that’s all I truly want. Bully me, mommy.