This is YouTube.
YouTube is a constantly changing landscape
in which nothing ever stays the same.
Trending topics come and they go.
Popular video fads that were popular yesterday could not be popular tomorrow.
Once popular types of videos,
creative ideas, fade away and become unpopular.
It's a pretty normal cycle of YouTube life
But did you ever think what happens to the people that are behind those videos that get unpopular and fade away?
Do the people behind these videos fade away into obscurity or they choose to try and adapt?
Nowadays, you might know Pyrocynical as the funny British lesbian, who does entertaining commentary videos,
but just a few years ago, that was not the case.
You might know NFKRZ as the funny speaking Russian who does commentary videos, but a few years ago, that was not the case.
You might know Dolan Dark as the Twitter guy who does funny meme compilations on YouTube, but that has not always been the case.
So this begs the question: What happened in such a short amount of time?
How do we go from this and this to this and this?
Let's examine how exactly did we change our channels so much without anybody even noticing.
Fucking hell, that intro took a long time to make.
Hello Blazers, NFKRZ here.
How you guys doing today? Welcome to a brand new video.
And today's video might come as a surprise to a lot of you guys,
because a lot of your favorite youtubers, and myself guys... I've changed a lot.
But today, guys, we'll take a look at how exactly me, Pyrocynical, Dolan Dark, and a bunch of other ex
MLG youtubers how exactly did we survive on this platform, and are still managing to make successful videos today?
I mean, well, Pyrocynical and Dolan Dark are successful... Me; I don't know.
I don't know if you can count that as successful to be fair
Ok I count myself as successful because I actually managed to build up a fanbase that
actually likes my videos and the big majority of ex MLG channels that used to be in the same community as us,
a lot of those tried to break away from MLG and try to make commentary videos in the same
genre as we do, as me/Pyrocynical.
I think I just like to shit and everybody just started
unsubscribing from them and now all their channels are completely dead.
So, basically, me and Pyrocynical before we made sort of commentary videos that we do now who made those so-called
MLG videos or montage parodies they were basically parodying this entire gaming, quickscope,
competitive, no-scope, Faze clan culture with this ridiculous doritos and mountain dew sponsorships and stuff like that.
And these videos were absolutely ridiculous.
They were edited to absolute crap who spends a lot of time on editing.
The sound was distorted to absolute shit
There was a huge community
Built around MLG where all of us started out on reddit and on a subreddit called Montage Parodies.
On that exact subreddit, thousands of people would come to watch new videos, and upvote, and upload
their own creations. A lot of people were getting a lot of subscribers
and were getting more and more famous, because their videos were actually pretty good.
So in that subreddit, r/montageparodies, there's a lot of us like Dolan Dark,
Pyrocynical, me, Materialisimo, Ancient Reality
Snipars, Vagabonds, just to remember a few.
Those were the people who got really really big, because they were-
their videos were pretty popular on the subreddit, and it was a really really fun time
I met a lot of great people there. There was a real sense of community, everybody was helping each other , collabing with each other
it was really fun, but at one point
I think in May or April of 2015 it kind of started feeling like the montage parody fad was starting to die out.
Nobody was really making that much videos anymore some youtubers have already quit for example snipers has completely stopped uploading and people like vagabonds have
tried to quit montage parodies, try to make gaming videos, but vagabonds in particular has gone really shit about it
He basically made a video saying that "I'm not gonna be making MLG anymore
and if you don't like it fuck you and unsubscribe" and since then basically
his videos started going down with views and his channel kind of died
I have nothing against Vagabonds though because actually he was one of the first people who ever told me that I should monetize my videos
Because fun fact is that before I had like 60,000 subscribers, I just made my videos from pure enthusiasm
I did not get a single penny off of them
That is how fun this community was but at one point it kind of started feeling really really stale and at one point
I think in like May 2015. I actually considered quitting YouTube
Yes, that was like the worst time pretty much when I was like yeah
Well the MLG fad is kind of dead, and I have nothing to do with my channel
You know nobody on my channel actually likes me for my personality
All they like me for is these edited videos so it's like well
This is the end of my channel that I cannot really do anything about it
But then thankfully, through the genius of Pyrocynical,
Me and him started doing gaming videos together and fun fact is that's a lot of those videos were quite unsuccessful
I would say I was still I was still not getting a lot of views and so we started putting out a little bit more
Personalized concepts we started putting out those gaming videos that had still a bit of an you know MLG editing in them so that people
Would ease into them a little bit more we were trying to basically turn our channels into gaming channels with MLG edits at one point
So that people actually start appreciating us for us
And not the, you know, the shitty
MLG Teletubbies videos we put out.
And it didn't start working out for a long time for me at least because when I was uploading
Gaming videos I would lose like 300 or 400 subscribers every single time
It was really bad
And then funny thing which has basically started the huge uprise of my channel and Pyrocynical's channel is that is that Leafyishere
Has become really really popular in YouTube so Pyrocynical was like "How about we nab this guy's format?"
Yes, guys. It's pretty true. Me and Pyro, we did not steal from Leafy. We were just very very
inspired and we've seen that well this content seems pretty fun to make and
We could incorporate a lot of our editing in it to make it even better than Leafy would, because obviously
We're better than Leafyishere, let's be fair.
And so that's how this entire thing came about with Pyrocynical being affiliated with Leafy. Pyrocynical edited a couple of videos for
Leafy, I edited a couple videos for leafy and basically just in a few months
we ended up being a part of a commentary community.
Actually fun thing is that my very very first commentary that I've ever uploaded on this channel was on guess what?
DJ killer keemstar. Yes, I've never liked the cunt since 2015 and I still don't fucking like him
And I I think it's mutual.
"Hey guys NFKRZ here, and this is a commentary video.
You know, I don't normally do this type of videos but I just felt like I could
Spend my channel to do most of and better things"
we started out making really really small quick commentary videos and that is because you know the whole thing with ten-minute ad
Revenue was not was not known yet
actually the first person ever to start making 10 minute videos was actually leafy we were like well Leafy's making 10 minute videos and
It seems like you can put multiple ads in there. That's fucking genius
Let's just do that and yeah my first video ever was on keemstar
It was like 4 minutes long
And it was you've got absolutely amazing feedback like that video got more views and more likes than my MLG videos did
And I still had the same fanbase so I was really really confused at how this is working
But it started working out.
"And guys have a great Friday and a great weekend. I'll see you in the next video.
Peace."
I started making more and more videos and essentially my subscribers started going up and up and up so basically by radically changing up my
Content and putting more personality in it, and putting a bit more
YouTube drama cancer in it, I get about 300,000 subscribers in a year and then in the next basically well
It's technically like one and a half year since then I'm on five hundred and sixty thousand subscribers now
I don't know why but my channel growth has slowed down a lot exactly then in about I think December 6th
2016 that is when this entire sort of algorithm change that was going on everybody was talking about it
No, h3h3 was talking about it. I don't know absolutely everybody was talking about it back
then; how Youtube was changing up the algorithm and they were
unsubscribing people and everybody is getting not as much views and subscribers as they used to
That hit me really really hard in October of 2016 so basically what happen is that in like September 2016
I would get from 200,000 to almost 500,000 views on every single video
And then it kind of dropped down to a hundred thousand
And then it kind of drop down to this sort of norm that I have right now from
50k to let's say a hundred and fifty K on every video
but overall I can say that I'm not I'm not...
I'm not too sad with the way my channel is going right now
It could be a lot better, and I'm trying to always improve, but of course
I would really really love for my channel to grow as much as it did in 2016 because that was the best
Amazing pretty much year for me everything was going so great and you should was so much fun
But I guess something had to do with the change of the
Algorithm or maybe I just I just became fucking boring to people and generally the exact same thing was going on with Pyrocynical except
That he had more subscribers at the start when we just started
You know changing up our content. I think at that point
He had like two or three times more subscribers than me just from MLG videos because his videos just tended to go a lot more
viral than mine
And so gradually he also gained the big following and
You know has, he has way more subscribers than me now so I got fucked by the algorithm pretty much
You know a lot
But still I I could say that I'm grateful for what I have currently and I'm working with it
And you know I'm just trying to make videos, and entertain people and entertain you guys out there
And hopefully one day, maybe I get my growth back you who the fuck knows YouTube YouTube is just YouTube is just
99% luck 1% talent at this point
So yeah guys, that was the sort of story that I had for you today on how me and Pyrocynical
How exactly did we change our content and how we changed on YouTube.
Yes, everybody changes, and it's a normal thing.
Sometimes change is needed in order to achieve new possibilities in new grounds, and I mean perhaps
Maybe I could change someday if you have might-
One day, I could stop making commentary cancer and start doing something completely different, and if that happens one day
I hope you guys do understand and stick with me, and if you don't, Well, I'm sorry.
But yeah guys, hopefully this was sort of entertaining
I hope this was interesting for you out there or small you know maybe small youtubers are aspiring to become big
Hope you maybe can take in something from this experience that I had from this story
I hope it was beneficial for you in some sort of way or interest or just interesting
Hey guys, that is pretty much going to do it for today's video if you guys did enjoy
Please make sure just slap the motherfucking like button and I will see you guys in the next one
Peace (Subscribe To Dolan Dark)