- I'm wearing a hat.
And I'm making myself the person that can wear hats
and not think about it.
But at the moment I'm over thinking it,
so I'm not enjoying it.
So that's...
Anyway, pretty much like our channel.
- Yeah, okay.
So we wanted to make this video because
we are in a bit of a slump.
- A schlump.
- We feel like we're having a YouTube dilemma.
And I think the best way for us to get you in the mindset
of how we're feeling is to go through the history
of Niki and Sammy.
- We're gonna give you a time frame.
- I think the context here is we started Niki and Sammy
three years ago once we left Uni.
We emulated channels that we loved,
like Grace Helbig and other channels like that.
The precursors to the big YouTube wave.
And we made it a show.
- We had a curated version of ourselves
that was kind of like a hyper-real version.
And Louise said something very similar in her video.
It wasn't that it wasn't us.
It's just that it was us at our best.
- Yeah, and not the down parts in between.
- We argue most videos.
- Yeah.
- And we always cut that out.
But in the hindsight I kinda wish I'd leave it in.
I know will, from now on I will leave the arguments in.
- YouTube pegged us at the start as a channel to watch,
'cause our channel grew exponentially very fast
and we--
- Oh my god, the pressure.
- We were included in the greatest documentary
alongside Zoella, one of the most successful
channels in the UK and Tom Scott,
equally as successful in his own right.
- Lucy said this in her video.
If you haven't watched that it will be linked below,
along with Louise's,
'cause I think they're both good watches.
YouTube has this sort of plan for channels to grow.
You know, we followed this...
They call it a playbook
to make your channel grow as best as possible.
Because who doesn't want something they put time into
to be successful.
- They give us all these tips to grow our channel,
but unfortunately YouTube itself doesn't know
how to grow a personable channel.
- There is not like a recipe to success.
Well there is.
Like you could just do what a lot of YouTubers
seem to be doing I noted in the US,
which is upload very long videos
and because of that, the way the algorithm works,
is the longer the video, the longer the watch time
and the more interaction on that video
it means that the next video will do really well
and kind of like that.
See our channel was, for all intents and purposes,
exploding in a really...
Like it was great, it was so great.
Everyone was watching our videos.
It was doing really well.
It was getting loads of subscribers.
- But we tried to strike this balance
between hitting the topicality of a video.
Like reacting to Taylor Swift's new album launch
or something like that.
- Or see this latest music video,
which is, by the way, amazing.
- Yeah, but then also trying to get that balance
of personality in there so that if people found us
through these topical videos,
then they'd stick around, because they thought
we were nice guys,
but ultimately by sticking to what YouTube said,
frequent videos, shorter videos, topical videos,
we were losing out.
- We just got a lot of dead weight.
So like people...
We have 200 000 subscribers.
Nearly-ish.
I mean, it's gonna take forever to get there.
But we're basically 200 000.
But that doesn't mean that all of those people
want to watch our videos.
Subscriber base that is subscribed to us
for a lot of different content,
because we made it back in the day thinking,
"Great, this will do well.
"We'll react to Taylor Swift's new video.
"We'll do a candy video."
- So we had it drummed into us that success
was achieving numbers, was achieving subscribers.
Over time, this sort of wore away
at what we were trying to put into the video.
And I think ultimately we both agree
by twin myths Which was last year, last December,
we sort of lost the battle between
topicality and personality.
And we became demotivated.
And I think our whole twin myths
we were unhappy with
because it didn't receive as many views.
And the reason I say views mattered to us then
is because if you're putting what was a month's work
into a range of videos
and we were working non-stop up until Christmas Eve
and they didn't receive the reception
that we'd like them to, then--
- It was just a shame.
- It's a bit of a shame and a bit of a put down.
- Because obviously we were making these videos
thinking that's what these guys want.
They would want a whole month of colab videos for Christmas.
- Because it is fun.
- And we tried to get in new guests that we
hadn't had before.
We colabbed with Dodi with Hannah Witton,
with loads of other YouTubers
that we've not had with.
- And let me tell you,
that's pretty bloody difficult because there's
what I like to call flaky YouTuber syndrome.
- YouTubers just generally give up on like anything, so...
- Yeah.
- Views are kind of like a superficial things.
Because views don't give half the story.
So on our K-pop video for example,
this was one of my most favorite videos
we've made recently.
- Passion, yeah.
- We're talking about something we're passionate about.
That video got like 600 comments of you guys
talking about your favorite songs, why you don't like
K-pop, why you do like K-pop.
Commenting on what we liked.
And I got so involved in the comments in that video
that I really enjoyed it.
But it got like 7000 views.
- So we've sort of placed less value on
views and have done for a long time now
and placed it more on being personally fulfilled.
But we've reached this point where
we've kind of hit a brick wall where if
we don't acknowledge the underlying problem,
I feel like we're gonna be frustrated for a while.
- And we're just gonna be like super passive aggressive
in videos and nobody needs that.
So there's a few things that I think
have shaped our channel.
And one of them being this hat
not working.
Second thing being we're quite open
to other people's opinions
and when someone that maybe an influential YouTuber
tweets something along the lines of
"This type of content is crap"
we take that to heart and we think about maybe
we have been doing something that's not creative,
not worthwhile or nobody's enjoying it.
- I think the problem is we let too many opinions
shape what we did and--
- So we're gonna, like, from this point on,
we're just gonna make what we wanna make
and this video is a long-form way of saying that
if I wanna make a challenge video that I have enjoyed
on say, Joe Sugg's channel, I will make a challenge video.
But like we can do that and it not be a problem,
because I think we have let ourselves be shaped
by so many opinions.
I think we forgot why we started the channel
in the first place.
- This is a metaphor for life.
If you let other people's opinions form a prison,
you will never escape.
And hopefully you see this as us being
completely real with you.
I am not funny 90 percent of the time.
- No, you're not.
- I'm probably funny one percent of the time.
- If that.
- I like peanut butter a lot,
K-Pop and Anime has really influenced my life
the last eight months and I wanna share this stuff
with you guys.
Also for the record, I hate attending events
and other things where someone says fan, fame or celebrity
around any YouTuber.
It physically makes me wince.
I will never, ever endorse anything like that.
And traditional media will.
Traditional media like newspapers and magazines,
TV say that because they don't understand
why they're not.
- The only fan I enjoy is the brass one,
copper actually, that I got from Robert Dyas.
Not so fun,
but it was really good and it was--
- You are the most important input we have to this channel.
- Validated.
No, wait, what?
My foot's gone numb,
I'm a bit sweatier than normal,
because I'm a bit tense about this video.
- I'm in a lot of angst here.
I'm like.
Okay, we're gonna go now.
Thank you for watching.
- Remember, don't unsubscribe. - Do drugs.
What?