my life changed in a pretty profound way
when i was 14
and now looking back i can see a very
clear before and after
and that was the first year that i ever
owned a smartphone
right as i was entering one of the most
confusing phases of my life social media
made its grand entrance
and this isn't just my story i believe
this is the story of billions of people
around the world over the last decade
and yeah this video is useless
let me first rewind to before that big
change
when i look back on old footage of
myself as a kid i feel like i'm peering
into another world
and you know it kind of makes me laugh i
could almost see my
kid baby self processing information
in my kid baby head
i feel like without doing that it would
all become
just too much at once sometimes and you
know
to tell you the truth i really miss that
time i
miss having that space to think and to
reflect and to process
and then on christmas of 2011 i got my
first smartphone
from that moment forward i can see now
that the gaps in my life the moments for
processing got shorter and shorter
i feel like i filled my life to the brim
with projects with interactions with
adventures with feedback and
it's been beautiful i mean truly and i
mean this
from the bottom of my heart i am
grateful to be alive in this day and age
i would not trade it for anything else
i feel like i'm meant to be here in this
time in this place at the core of all
this i am
an optimist okay but there are also
times where i feel like
it just all becomes too much and i can't
think clearly anymore so like i said
i am going to be taking a break from
social media
for the longest time since i was 14. i
can completely understand why this might
seem confusing
after all i've made an entire career off
of social media and once again i'm
grateful
for everything that social media has
brought to my life
the doors that it has opened the people
that it has allowed me to meet but it
feels like
i have opened pandora's box and
too much of anything can turn that thing
into something that is harmful this
isn't
clickbait i really am going to be taking
a break from youtube and
actually i'm going to be taking a break
from all of social media a lot of this
has been inspired by the documentary the
social dilemma which was recently
released on netflix and i'm sure a lot
of you guys have already seen
but i've been playing with these ideas
for a long time now there are three main
reasons why i'm doing this
that i am going to share right now with
you
self-image as a kid i had
a lot of fears i was afraid of
everything
from freeways to the dark
to movie theaters to
even the playground
it's okay come on sweetie let's go i was
just a very
sensitive kid and i've been kind of on a
lifelong journey
to accepting myself and to
facing these these these fears that i
have and
you know making these videos and the
reaction that i've gotten
has this is gonna sound cliche but it it
has made me feel like a giant it has
been
so incredible the reaction that i've
gotten this has been a gift you know
biologically
and this is very often cited now all
over the place
we were meant to live in groups of like
150
right i can just anecdotally say that
for me personally i find it difficult to
maintain even 150 close relationships in
my life it's probably not even close to
that number and already in modern
society
we have pushed the boundaries and we've
completely changed the ways
that we live and i think any of us can
easily say
that we've interacted with far more than
150 people in any given year
right now in this last decade it feels
like we have just thrown
gasoline on the fire with the advent of
social media it's like we're in turbo
mode right now that's what that's what
it feels like to me and it feels like
there's a bigger and bigger gap between
our hardware
right and our software whatever this is
and again
this for me is not like a uniquely
pessimistic message because there are
definite perks to the world that we live
in and i am grateful
to live in this world to be able to put
out a message that reaches so many
people is just
unbelievable to me but again for me
personally the number of
close relationships that i'm able to
maintain isn't even close to even
150 and so there's just something
bizarre about interacting with over a
million people
it doesn't really strike me as normal
and you know on this topic of feedback
it's not just about hate comments right
because hate comments
they they can hurt right but they're to
be expected there's always going to be
like a two or three percent of people
that don't like what you put out into
the world and i can handle it i can take
that
i've gotten pretty used to it at this
point it's also kind of innocuous
comments that i receive on my
appearance on how i talk on my
personality on how i wear
a mask on how i pronounce a certain word
some people think i'm wise some people
think i'm
painfully naive some people think i'm
too serious some people think i'm not
digging deep enough into the topics that
i touch on on my channel
there's a lot of analysis that makes it
hard to feel spontaneous
and it's also a lot of pressure i mean
this is a lot of eyeballs
on this on this the truth is i care a
lot about what you guys think
and that's not going to change i mean
it's i think it's part of my psychology
as a human being and the thing is i'm
extremely grateful for the feedback that
i've gotten i've learned
so much from suggestions and
counterpoints that i've been
provided in the comments section or in
private messages or emails that i've
received
i'm grateful for that but pairing all of
these messages plus
the constant movement of social media
and an
endless doomsday-like news cycle
and it's just a lot i feel like my
headspace has been
all of the real estate has been taken
it's very difficult for me to articulate
this
but in a weird way the fact that i don't
have any more
mind real estate left actually feels
like it degrades my quality of life i
feel like i can't enjoy
all this amazing stuff that's going on
in my life and i think it's perfectly
normal to want to have little breaks
from this crazy machine that we're all
part of
attachment i've always been blown away
by
our capacity as human beings to
acclimate to pretty much anything
this honestly sucks to say out loud but
i got used to
getting a certain amount of views on my
videos a certain amount of reach
and once you hit a certain point
whatever it may be
1 000 or 10 000 or 100 000 or a million
views in a certain time frame you don't
want to go down from that
you only want to go up but we don't live
in a world where you can
always have perpetual growth that's just
not how life works here's the thing i'm
not stupid
youtube studio is designed to play
on our psychology youtube studio does
this thing that drives me insane which
is
that it compares the performance of your
latest video with the last 10.
and again if the video ranking is like
one or two out of the last 10
it feels amazing it is like a drug
honestly
and if it's ranked nine or ten it's
awful it's like what what did i do wrong
i've observed my thoughts
always go towards either how can i do
more of this
that works really well or how do i
bounce back from
this thing that didn't work really well
and that's influencing
what i create in a way that isn't
necessarily
positive i feel like what youtube studio
tries to do psychologically
is turn us into like these monkeys that
create material that works really well
for social media as a whole for the
algorithms
instead of i don't know instead of
making
meaningful art and of course this all
applies to pretty much every
social media platform you know it could
be a photo that you post on instagram
that performs really well
versus not or a tweet on twitter or
whatever
i hate that i have such a strong uh
reaction to these numbers
but it's not even necessarily my fault i
mean this is how our brains
function there are powerful incentives
at play here
i kind of jokingly say i've made a deal
with the devil but
more and more i feel like we're playing
with fire here this makes me think of
the garden of eden biting into the
forbidden fruit
again just like anybody else on the
planet i want social approval too and
here's the other thing too
i will see people all over the internet
say don't compare yourself
to other people compare yourself to who
you were yesterday right and i
hate that quote it sounds good on the
surface but it's almost
as bad as comparing yourself to other
people because in life
there are ebbs and flows sometimes it's
not a good idea to compare yourself to
who you were
yesterday because yesterday he might
have been on fire but today
you're in a different place and that's
okay i go through periods of production
expansion and output and then i also go
through periods of retraction
and reflection and input i think these
cycles are really important i mean
they feed each other and i kind of think
that is a little bit where i am right
now i'm in a period of retraction
because i need to just
process everything that has happened to
me over the last two years
something tells me this is part of the
creative process and in order to dig
deeper
it is good to question yourself and to
pause and to
be critical of what you've done so far
oh my goodness that's what we just went
under
yeah when they're doing so do you see
that in america no i don't think so
i really don't think so whatever the
case may be comparison
is how our brains work we use contrast
to evaluate good and bad
and many other things in life i'm not
saying that's necessarily
inherently a bad thing what i'm saying
is social media
is set up so that that's constantly
happening and that
that kind of constant comparison is what
becomes harmful in my opinion either
between you and other people or you and
yourself
this attachment to performance
incentivizes certain kinds of content
i know what works i know what has a good
chance of going viral and getting
millions of views
i've done it about a dozen times already
i'll get surprised every now and again
but at this point i have a good idea
but i don't always want to do that
forever i want to keep experimenting i
want to dig deeper
i want to see where things take me
creative violence
since october of 2018 when i began
posting regularly
on my channel again i have put out into
the world
over 1 000 minutes of material
just on this channel long so that's not
counting patreon bonuses and exclusive
material
or you know videos that i posted on my
second channel that's like
seven full length feature films worth of
material i still
edit all of my videos because i like to
you know that's i think it's one of my
favorite forms of self-expression
and it doesn't make any sense to me to
delegate that to somebody else i mean
it's it's the creative work that i want
to do i don't want to get to a place
where i'm just
you know building a company where i just
manage other people
like that's not that's not in my
definition of success this has been an
incredible run you know over
50 million views
like ins it's just an insane number
really my grandma is the real star of
the show i don't feel burned out
necessarily so there's no need to be
dramatic here about all this but
i am starting to feel a little bit worn
out and it's not going in the right
direction
i think i just need a little bit of an
off season just like any tv show
or sports season or school year and for
my well-being i need to change things up
i do not want to continue as i have up
to this point
youtube and all the algorithms make it
so that you're
always or at least i have always been
terrified of losing
the momentum that i've built right
there's a fear that the algorithms will
drop you like a rock if you don't show
up often enough
but this is a risk that i'm willing to
take because
something within me is telling me this
is what i need to do
you know i have total belief in myself
as a content creator as as an
artist if you will and this is just this
is the direction i need to go in
i just need a chance to recharge my
batteries a little bit so that i can
come back
energized and bring this sort of
creative
violence that i feel i need to my work
i've talked about this in previous
videos but one of my north stars is to
become
the best storyteller that i can become
and if i just let
the social media incentives the
algorithms
decide which direction i go in i feel
like that's going to derail me i don't
think that fully aligns with
what i want to do october 1st i turn 23
and as a little gift to myself i'm going
to be taking the entire month
off of social media and i'm not going to
be thinking about thumbnails or
titles or performance or comments
or any of it depending on how things go
i may be gone for longer than that
i'm not sure i do promise that i will be
back
but i can't promise that it's going to
be
the same something tells me that i may
only post
one maybe two videos per month on this
channel in the future when i come back
so they can be masterpieces so that i
can pour my soul into them
i have this vision of almost like a kind
of new genre if you will where i blend
vlogging and documentary and all the
other things that i've done
in the past together into into one there
are certain content creators out there
that get away with posting less often
and you know it's a risk this is a leap
that i'm willing to take because when i
close my eyes and i think about this
it excites me again it's a challenge
it's a new direction that i feel like i
need to take this feels like the next
step
in this journey that i'm on when i'm
back i will continue to post
on my second channel as well where
things are more laid back
and they're easier and they're simpler
and i really i really enjoy posting on
there what helps me
psychologically about all that is that
there are no rules on that channel and i
love that what i can say for certain
is that i'm not done making things the
day that i say that
is the day that my life is over there
are few greater joys in life
for me than making and sharing things
this is why i say
that the internet social media isn't
evil
in and of itself i think it's just it's
just
too much sometimes i just need a little
bit of time offline
to work on some other stuff to
to change things up a little bit i have
ambitions outside of youtube you know
and uh honestly i don't know where this
is going to take me i guess we'll see
i have probably already made this uh
overly sentimental but i just want to
thank you guys one more time for all the
support for everything from these last
couple of years it has been a crazy ride
all right my dudes please take care of
yourselves and i'll see you soon
[Music]
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