What's up everybody my name is Ashley Wylde and welcome back to my channel.
Yesterday I sprayed hair spray into my eyes. I'm a little scarred about styling my hair.
This is 90% bedhead, and we're just gonna go with it. Let's get one thing straight. You love you-tubers
and I mean who doesn't? You're subscribed, you have your notifications turned on, you're following the creators on social media
Maybe you're even a patron. Go you! That's an excellent start. I've been posting videos for the last 7 years.
Whether it's fans of my writing, fans of my original funny gay kids videos or people who just think I'm cute.
I realized that the fans that I most adore and appreciate have certain things in common.
This video is a generalized list of those preferences whether a YouTube creator that you like is big or small here are the do's and
don'ts of YouTube fandom. Do consume content and share with friends and family, tell people about it.
That is how the word gets out there about a creator.
Don't spam or repeatedly comment. When you say the same things over and over YouTube often rules this out of spam anyways.
It's really distracting and it can turn your favorite creators off to you as a fan if they feel like you're just trying to elicit
attention from them as opposed to participate in the content
they're creating. Do support creators financially if you can. A mentioned patreon earlier, maybe your favorite creator has a patreon.
Maybe they have a PayPal donate button or they're doing paid content to be able to make a living out of
creating content is not an easy feat,
so if you want to see more and better content from your favorite creators help them get there by
financially supporting them. This one is touchy, but don't ask people to check out your channel.
I'm positive that other people feel differently, but for me there's a huge difference between saying' here's a video
I made that I feel is
specifically relevant to what you're talking about and just a general catch-all
statement of "check out my channel". Hey, have you seen this video on this same subject? A+ do that.
"Hey, can you check out my channel!" Especially repeatedly, don't! In the same vein for me
please do send me direct
messages or in the comments share your personal stories tell me how my content has affected you, ask me a question
genuinely engage with me. I don't always have time to respond to all of them, but those messages
I read and deeply appreciate. However, please don't send me your unsolicited nudes. In the comments
please do give helpful and specific feedback a good example is: Hey, It's kind of hard to hear you in this video."
I also love to have topic suggestions in the comments. However,
please do not comment with things about my personal life
or especially my body that you think should be different or you wish were changed. Those are unwelcome comments
I don't appreciate that from fans. It makes me feel like my humanity is being brought down a level.
Please do help caption and translate the videos of your favorite creators.
This is something that it's sort of costly to pay someone to do and it's
exceptionally time-consuming for one person to do it for themselves especially if your videos are really long,
but if a community can come together and help to caption videos and translate them and that really helps your favorite creators. Closed
captioning not only makes your videos more accessible it also helps your search engine optimization
It's important for inclusivity and accessibility
and it also has the dual purpose of helping videos be more searchable.
Do encourage growth and accountability framed with support if your favorite creators are being
problematic. Say to them, "You're being problematic. Here's why, here's some resources, I care about you and your content.
Please hold yourself accountable, and I'd like to support you in being better from here on out". Whether your favorite creators are demonstrating racism, transphobia,
misogyny, homophobia
or any other level of prejudice or intolerance it is your responsibility as a fan to call your favorite creators out,
but encourage them and support them in being
accountable. Don't just drag them. Being dragged doesn't help a person grow, so if you're wanting to be a great fan
stand by creators who are willing to be accountable and grow and change.
Do not seek
discuss or divulge personal or private life information about your favorite creators. Don't seek out their phone number or their address.
Don't seek receipts on things that your creators are not sharing with you openly. That feels really intrusive
especially as someone who has a lot of their life on the internet
there are still things that I would consider private and in the past
I have been hurt really badly by fans who tried to cross that line. And
especially if you do have an upon some piece of private information don't share it. It
just really makes someone feel like a spectacle and as creators
we want to be able to engage with you without feeling like zoo animals. Please do not show up somewhere especially
someone's house if you know where a creator is and it's not a scheduled meet up
I would say as a rule don't show up there! That being said if you come across your favorite creator and passing
Please do say hi, introduce yourself, make a short and sweet comment about why you love that person's content.
But please do not go up to your favorite creators in the bathroom, while they're with their
family or on dates or while they're somewhere personal or private like the doctor's office or the gym. Introduce yourself,
absolutely, but be aware that there's a time and a place where maybe it's not appropriate.
Please do not demand or expect a response to every comment, direct message
or tweet mention that you may put out.
I want to be able to engage as my fans especially my fans who are engaging me with legitimate questions and real stories,
but if there's a guilt element it leads with a bad feeling and it makes it harder for me to stay engaged with my fans.
Fans are amazing! For me personally great fans
are what make YouTube worth doing an ongoing basis.
I have become great friends with some of my fans.
Even my partner was first a fan of my work
and I was a fan of her work. We were mutual fans before we met and now we live together in a house that we both own.
Fandom is a really special relationship and it's really important.
And that's why I wanted to make this video to help you figure out how to avoid some ways that you might have
unintentionally been causing harm. If you care about your favorite creators,
these are some things you can do and not do to position yourself as the most supportive fan
you can be. Thank you all for watching, and I will see you next Monday. Bye. Bye
Thank you so much for watching my video today about how to be an amazing fan.
I just got back from VidCon, Australia
and I've been thinking a lot about fandom, what it means and what the ups and downs are. I hope you enjoyed this video.
Please don't forget to like it.
Please don't forget to subscribe, click the bell and turn on notification. If you think what I'm doing matters,
please support me on patreon. Catch you later!