- Community Guidelines,
you didn't break Terms of Service,
you didn't do anything in terms of copyright.
- No, after about a year and a half,
I finally just kind of at random met one of the engineers
who builds out the algorithm,
like one of the YouTube, Google employee, the engineers,
and we had a sit-down.
They were nice enough to just pull up my channel
and bring all of their diagnostics fancy tools
that we don't have access to.
- Right.
- Should be really great but we don't.
(upbeat music)
I was like trying to like,
I was trying to mimic his motions
but I'm going to let choreograph.
(laughs) What do I?
- Hey everybody, it's Roberto,
I'm here with my good friend Spankie Valentine, AKA Swoop.
- What up?
We're finally doing this.
- Yeah finally. - It's finally happening.
- That's what all of you have been waiting for, right?
So, Swoop, you have a super interesting story
when it comes to YouTube because first of all,
you're a two times silver play button winner.
(laughing)
- I like how you just dropped that.
- Yeah, award-winning filmmaker,
like massive creative talent,
you've been doing performances, music, all kinds of stuff.
But it all hasn't been sunshine and rainbows.
- Not by a long shot.
Hey friends, Spankie Valentine here,
welcome to my face and today we're gonna...
I don't think I can keep doing this.
- So why don't you regale everybody
with where it went wrong
with your 600,000 subscriber channel.
- Alright yeah, so it's been kind of an interesting story.
I had another channel that I started several years ago
that I grew to about 650,000 subscribers
and at a specific point in November
of two years ago, so 2016?
- Yeah.
- Just about two years ago now, I,
everything on the channel instantaneously like died,
like tanked like all of my views for all new uploads
basically zeroed out on everything,
and like it was just a dramatic overnight change.
- It was actually literally impossible to find your videos.
- Yes, like it was everything,
was just like obliterated and gone.
I had no idea what was going on,
I suddenly couldn't reach my subscribers,
I couldn't communicate
and I couldn't like really do much of anything.
I could still upload, still post when I was doing that, but.
- But YouTube wasn't distributing the content.
- Right, it wasn't distributing it,
it was like not showing up in search.
My old stuff was still getting some,
you know like historical traction
but anything new that was happening was just gone.
So I spent the next year and a half
trying to find out what went wrong, obviously.
- Yeah.
- And of course I was doing all these different strategies
and tactics, I was talking to you quite a lot.
- You reached out to me, you reached out to Darryl,
but like even Darryl looked at the backend of your channel
and said, "Oh my God, I've never seen
"anything like this." - Right, yeah,
that was his response, same from you.
You had like several theories but it was like you know
we couldn't figure it out.
Darryl didn't know what was going on,
I talked to a lot of like--
- Yeah, I've only seen it like one other time
on an older channel as well.
Something I was calling the legacy luck.
- Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So after about a year and a half,
I finally just kind of at random met one of the engineers
who builds out the algorithm,
like one of the YouTube, Google employee, the engineers,
and we had a sit-down,
they were nice enough to just pull up my channel
and bring out all of their diagnostics fancy tools
that we don't have access to.
- Right.
- It should be really great but we don't.
And so they looked at my channel
and I didn't really tell them what I had seen had happened,
I just wanted to get their assessment.
- Yeah, without, without you in like inferring it.
- Right, yeah.
So they kind of dug deep and they kind of you know
did this like deep dive and peaking into my channel
and pinpointed the same dates that I had picked out
and found the specific date and looked at it
and we're basically like oh yeah, you got screwed.
I was literally told that.
- Like you, you were debating and we had talked about
like we went back and forth several times
about you possibly just starting over
and starting a new channel which I know is not,
well I mean, for me it's the exciting fun thing to do
but not in those circumstances,
not when you have worked so hard for like six, seven years
to build something and then it's kind of more or less
all taken away from you. - Right, right.
- And that's not even your fault, you didn't do anything,
you didn't break Community Guidelines,
I think that's important
for people to know. - No, yeah.
- You didn't break Community Guidelines,
you didn't break Terms of Service,
you didn't do anything in terms of copyright, none of that.
- I was literally doing the exact same stuff,
I mean this was happening to my hero content,
it was like the time of year
where a lot of my hero content would come out
and so I was doing the exact same stuff
that I had been doing,
that was working very well for the channel--
- [Roberto] Growing it, you were all the way to a million.
- [SWOOP] Yeah, so for it to just instantly
like everything just flat lines,
like okay, obviously there's a serious problem,
that's not on my end. - Yeah.
So what happened when you asked
you know this YouTube employee
if you should start a new channel, what was their response?
- It was a very interesting response.
Well so they first told me that I was,
basically the channel was hit by what they said
was a very rare algorithmic anomaly.
- Right.
- Which is like okay, I guess that's a thing.
- But like for clarity for you guys,
don't live in constant terror of that
because it almost never happens.
- Yeah, no, they said it was an extremely rare occurrence.
So like it does happen but it's extremely rare
and it obviously happened to you
so it's basically, they likened it
to being struck by lightning.
So just keep that in mind,
like not everyone in the world is gonna be struck
by a lightning. - Yeah, good news is
you have a better chance of winning the lottery
than your YouTube channel being destroyed overnight.
- Great, so you know (laughs).
I'm batting at those wonderful odds right now.
Oh my gosh.
So I asked them, at this point I was like okay,
well it's been a year and a half
and obviously nothing's turning around on it
so should I start over?
Like is the channel completely dead which obviously it was
but I just had to ask. - Yeah, of course.
- And I was like is the channel completely dead
or can something be done to fix this issue?
- Something you can do
or even something-- - Or something.
that they can do. - They can do.
- Right, to fix the issue or do I need to start over?
And the response was, well, if you don't,
like if you get sad looking at your analytics, then why not?
Sure, start a new channel.
Like literally if your analytics depress you,
then okay, start a new channel.
- See, like you were making your full-time income
off of your channel at this time, if I'm not mistaken.
Or at least the majority of it.
- A good, yes, a sizeable percentage of my income
was coming from my channel
and then of course all of my outside work
and projects would often relate back to the channel.
- Right.
Sometimes they would cross fund each other.
- They would cross fund,
or they would actually get me additional work,
or you know I'd be referring people to the channel
for my production work-- - Your body of work.
So you needed this to be successful for exposure,
and then in your case
because you're a filmmaker and entertainer,
like stuff not working, not getting views,
no matter how good it is, in your case,
just makes people question a little bit of your legitimacy.
- Right, absolutely.
- So this undermined-- - People don't pay attention
to your quality, or like, oh well, you must not be good
because you're not getting the numbers,
not knowing what's actually going on underneath everything.
- Right, so this not only like hurts you
from a YouTube career standpoint
or your YouTube channel. - Right.
- This hurt your actual career as a filmmaker
and entertainer. - Yes.
- Because of how you were marketing yourself.
- Yes, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
It's just this constant downward spiral
when everything kind of feeds it off of each other.
- Right, so you launched a new channel
and how long did it take
to get to over 100K on the new channel?
- Well the new channel when I launched it which is SWOOP,
my very first video that I posted to that channel
was describing what had happened
and kind of telling the story
of losing the 600,000 subscribers.
The way I equated it because I could no longer communicate
with those subscribers. - Right.
- Well I didn't even explain like what they said
with what happened to the channel
was it was systematically like instantaneously dropped
from all home screen search. - Right, which means--
- No notifications, like-- - So yeah,
we talk about the fact that it's like,
okay, the videos aren't going to your subscribers,
the videos aren't going to your subscribers,
people are not getting what they signed up for
and that in general is a problem
for most content creators on YouTube
that don't do serialized context,
meaning episodic like okay,
every video is exactly the show that you signed up for,
no variety, no random, no vlogging,
like it's just what you signed up for, right?
Like that's a thing in YouTube where most people
still aren't getting notifications,
most people's stuff doesn't go on the homepage,
YouTube recommends what it wants.
- Yes. - But in your case,
you were dead to your audience altogether.
- Yes. - Like it wasn't even,
like it wasn't even incremental,
it wasn't a percentage of them, you're just gone.
- It was just gone. - Ghost.
- It was just like, and so, you know,
even my ability to be able to say,
hey everyone, I'm starting a new channel
was nearly impossible because I couldn't,
I just couldn't get through to them.
- And YouTube was the main social media platform
you communicate with your audience,
you weren't as diversified like today,
you've been doing you know that a little bit more, but.
- Yeah I mean I was on Instagram
but I wasn't like as active on Twitter as I am now.
- And you hadn't grown the Instagram as big.
- Yes. - Not even close.
Like how big were you on Instagram at the time?
- Oh at that time I was probably at like,
I don't know 10, 20,000,
I don't remember. - Right, so like
not even a fraction
really of your audience. - Right, right.
- So yeah, so this is where you know
you guys know I've been talking about
diversifying your platforms, diversifying your income.
Like everyone I think that wants to be a YouTuber
is getting over-leveraged in YouTube
because of the era like you started back in the day.
It was always YouTube first and focused on YouTube
and not also the common knowledge of wealth
that's where most your money is coming from,
then focus on it. - Yeah.
I mean I was always focused on the channel
and then all of my outside productions.
- And that's a lot.
So I'm not blaming you for not, you know, for context.
Context matters, like I'm not blaming you for that
but I'm cautioning people that if it wasn't this,
there are people who, well YouTube changes policies.
- Yes.
- The government's gonna start regulating social media,
we get new influencer FTC guidelines,
whatever your plan or your business model around
one channel if that's what you have,
or YouTube, or Instagram, or Twitch or whatever it is.
- Right.
- Overnight something you can't control
could really drastically change
and undermine all of your hard work,
and you can just like be giving all your leverage
and power to a platform that could abandon you.
- Absolutely, absolutely. - 'Cause you felt abandoned.
- Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not,
obviously this is not something that as creators
you think should happen to creators
or that the system should even be.
I know that there are things that are just beyond control
and when like AI gets so advanced and so out there,
like you can't predict everything
but of course you'd like to think that creators
who are bringing content, who are bringing advertisers,
who are bringing so much to a platform--
- Or doing everything right.
- Right, you'd like to hope that a glitch like that,
a lightning strike like that is impossible.
- Or that you'd get some support.
- Sure.
- Or that maybe they'd take some form of responsibility.
- Sure, yeah.
Which is you know just a very complex issue.
So to answer your question about starting the new channel,
SWOOP, so I started SWOOP,
the first video was about this story so I was,
I don't know lucky or whatever it is,
the video kind of went viral,
especially for your very first upload for a new channel.
- I don't think that was luck,
you put a lot of work into it.
- Yeah, yeah. - You reached out to people
to get shares, shares are the most underutilized
resource in YouTube. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
So because that took off,
that like sparked a pretty nice surge of growth,
so the channel got to a 100,000 subscribers
within like two months maybe. - Yeah.
- You know when it was first started
and has continued to grow.
So that was nice in that you know I was able to get
some form of an audience fairly quickly,
to be able to communicate
what had been going on to my other channel.
- But you also do cinematic content,
so you can't do daily uploads to take advantage
of what the algorithm wants right now.
- Yeah. - You can't do,
your stuff is so produced. - Yes.
- And you don't do like three minute videos,
you don't do three minute viral videos,
you put in a lot of this stuff is like scripted.
- Right.
- It's production, it's like different set pieces.
Like guys, like this is like the quality content
that YouTube says it wants, this is the quality content
that you guys say that you want,
you want to see creators put in effort
and I don't see, like I don't work as hard as SWOOP,
not on YouTube anyway, I work as hard as that on my business
I don't work like that on YouTube.
Like so, yeah, I mean, it's just interesting
that you're doing everything right
and yet it feels sometimes like victory is out of reach.
- It's definitely,
I mean it's definitely a perspective thing, for sure.
I'm way more satisfied
and confident in SWOOP in the new channel
and I love the new content that I'm doing.
Even way better than what I was doing on the other channel
so like in one sense,
if you're looking at the sunny side of things,
then it was a blessing that that channel got struck dead.
But, um, or you can bleep dead.
Demonetized. - Nah, I think we're fine,
I think that's fine.
I say dead all the time. - Okay, okay.
So but yeah, it's definitely a perspective thing
'cause of course you know
because of the level of production
that I've been putting into this,
yeah doing daily would be impossible
to maintain the storytelling and quality that I want.
Which that makes it much more challenging for me.
- Yeah, absolutely.
This weird algorithmic anomaly,
all of your hard work for years,
kind of feeling like it was thrown away,
like how did that affect your mental health?
- Oh it was terrible.
I mean it was extremely depressing
and you know like I always say like work-related,
you know depressing but of course
because my old channel and everything that I've done
is so anchored to me as the brand
that you then take these things personally as well
and you feel like well I'm putting my life and my passion
and this is what I feel like I'm here
and created to be doing. - And it was working.
- Yeah and it was working, then it was instantaneously not.
So that became very personal.
So it got very difficult and even starting over with SWOOP
and the new channel, even though it was growing very quickly
when I first started, I was like running in like
on the brink of burnout mode every single day for six months
because I just wasn't sleeping at all
so that I could build this whole new channel
and create this whole you know new brand.
- Would you say that even though it was temporary
that that unhealthy hustle was necessary for you long-term?
- I think it was, especially I mean,
there's a lot of like surprising pressures that come
especially if a piece of content goes viral
to then make sure you're maintaining that quality
and the story so I was writing,
scripting a whole bunch of stories and narratives
to keep feeding that off of that.
- The threshold of acceptable quality
for you was not what is for most people starting a channel
because you were coming from that previous level
and there were expectations. - Right, yeah.
And I mean I put very unrealistic expectations on myself
most of the time as a creator,
it just, it's always been that way and I'm trying to learn
to kind of dial back at times
and everything doesn't have to be so big and grandiose
but I absolutely had a breaking point,
you know emotionally, but then you know,
I made a film about it.
Took it to Buffer Festival - Right, and it won,
and it won an award. - Yeah, it did, so you know.
- You know one of my pieces of advice for you
would be my friend Shonduras talks about this a lot
like one of my pieces of advice for you,
we talk all the time about this stuff like so
but like something I don't think I've talked to you about
is my friend Shonduras showed me
and talks to a lot of people
that you should just be having fun no matter what you do.
Like even when it's a disaster,
have fun because you're never gonna get the time back
so you might as well.
You might as well go along with it, laugh at yourself,
like you know keep from crying.
- Yeah, yeah. - And just like
do what you can because like you only got
like as Gary Vee would say, one life.
- Yeah, exactly. - So you might as well
go balls to the wall, have fun, enjoy it,
and just kind of like enjoy the process.
- Yeah. - If the process becomes pain,
you gotta do something else.
- You definitely have to make some alterations to it.
- Yeah, so again, thanks so much for sharing your story.
- Yeah, as painful as it was, you know it's for the better.
I'm glad to make this pivot
and this reinventing so to speak.
You know I hate losing all those years of work
but at the same time all of those years of work
just went into now, you know.
- I think you'll be bigger and better and stronger for it
like because again like in under a year,
you've come back strong,
you're making better content than you've ever made.
I think you're gonna be happier with your body of work
going forward and you know obviously I'm here for you,
anything you need. - I appreciate it.
- And so is a lot of the community,
in fact, anybody in the create awesome community,
anybody who if you haven't seen me constantly
sharing SWOOP stuff in the Community tab,
I think now you also aside from her just being a homie,
I think you get a sense of why that I think is so valuable.
But yeah I think that one of the cool things,
I'm like super proud of you,
is like not everyone can reinvent themselves.
A lot of people just roll over and quit.
So I'm super proud of you. - Thank you.
- For like just fighting for your creativity.
- Thank you, that means a lot, for sure.
And we all should do that,
just keep fighting for your creativity.
- Absolutely.
Anyway, thanks so much SWOOP for being here on the channel
telling some of your story
and you know just giving some value to the community.
Where can everybody find you in all of the socials?
- Well everyone can find me on YouTube
if you just look up SWOOP
and I'm sure you'll have a link or something.
Yeah link down below and then everywhere else
you can either search SWOOP or Spankie Valentine,
pretty easy to find.
- Yeah all of those social media links will be down
in the doodly-doo as the kids say.
- The doodly-doo, I like that.
- Yeah I know, I still laugh from The GREENS.
- Nice.
- Anyway, like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe,
check out both of us on all of the channels.
As always you guys, thanks so much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today, take care.