Why Do YouTubers Stop Making Videos?

We've all grown up on YouTube. Whether it's cooking or commentary, you get to know your favourite creators and form parasocial relationships with them.

You watch them grow little by little each week till they have millions following them. However, consistency is rare.

Over time, they upload videos less frequently, the quality takes a hit for the worse, and they feel rushed. From uploading videos every week, they slowly fade until they upload once a few months. Why?

They may just be taking a break for their mental health. Fame takes a toll on people. Creating fresh content round the clock can be exhausting. It could also be burnout.

Pewdiepie took a break and said, "I wanted to say it in advance because I made up my mind. I'm tired. I'm feeling very tired."

The line between their private lives and the content they create become blurred. Creators market themselves. The more the intimate the content, the greater the number of clicks.

The YouTuber could also be working on bigger projects or may have chosen to prioritise quality over quantity, given their growing follower base.

An ongoing trend seems to be creators diverting to smaller second channels. They leave their main channels and work on small channels.

The answer to that is a long convoluted one. While it may seem redundant to "restart," looking at the beginning of YouTube may bring about some clarity. When you observe some of the oldest creators like Lilly Singh, Ryan Higa, and Smosh, you may notice that they all started creating content for fun and for friends to see. The videos didn't have budgets or pressure of productivity. However, they soon became brands and had followings of millions, a lot of which they may have been unprepared for.

For a lot of creators, this pressure isn't what they initially signed up for. Or maybe, they find themselves not being able to keep up with the rigid schedules.

So it is natural to see more vlog or gaming channels putting up content consistently where the creators don't have scripted content and the content focuses on the creator's regular life and activities.

The part of the audience who migrate from the main channel to a second channel is the part that is most loyal to the YouTuber. The creators get to relax and take it slow and the subscribers get to enjoy their favourites be their authentic selves, the ones they fell in love watching at the beginning.

D'Angelo Wallace is a brilliant example of this. The YouTube sensation posts long researched video essays on his main channel and shorter more casual opinion based videos on his second channel.

We could compare the second YouTube channel to spam Instagram accounts or finstas. An account just for your friends, somewhere you can be yourself. The same logic applies to creators just on a larger scale because most creators are just looking for intimacy and the sense of community they had when they just started out.

Aryah Jamil is mediocre at everything except laughing at their own jokes Tell her to stop talking at jamil.aryah@gmail.com