A couple months ago I said this:
Let's get to 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year!
I said it as part of a joke, not expecting to actually get there.
And then it happened.
So thank you for a thousand subscribers.
I love making videos,
and I'm really grateful to have such a cool and kind audience watching them.
Whether you've been watching since I was an embarrassing 11-year-old or just found
my videos more recently,
each and every one of you
is numerically helping me feed my desire for fame.
Okay, I guess we've stopped with the genuine sentimentality part of this video?
Oh no, I'm being completely genuine.
I only care about the numbers.
I don't care about the content or quality of my videos.
I don't care if you're entertained.
I don't care about trying to make you feel something.
I don't care about showing you that beneath this twisted algorithm-driven capitalist dystopia
of mass-produced web content, there still exist traces of meaningful humanity.
No!
There are three things I care about and three things only.
Number one.
Subscriber count.
Number two.
Watchtime.
Number three.
Cheez-Its!
Made with 100% real cheese.
And look, I thought reaching a thousand subscribers would fill the gaping hole in my heart, but
really it just made me realize that the emptiness went far deeper than that.
And that the only way to fill it was by completing the Selling Out Process.
Now there are three primary steps
to completing the Selling Out Process.
Step one.
Make bad videos.
[ding]
Step Two.
Get sponsored.
And I had a logical way to do that.
I've long had a mutually beneficial professional relationship with Cheez-It, in which I promote
their great products
in my videos, and in return, they don't acknowledge me.
So first I reached out to Cheez-It over twitter with a formal sponsorship request.
But after not getting a reply, I found a phone number online and gave them a call.
[answering machine] Hello, and thank you for calling Kellogg consumer affairs.
Our family of brands includes Kelloggs, Keebler, Pringles, and Morningstar Farms products.
And Cheez-It.
To continue in English, press one or stay on the line.
For questions concerning our Kelloggs Rewards Program or any other promotion, press one.
To report a quality issue with one of our products, press two.
For help understanding how to read a better "if used by" code, please press five.
For hilarious cheese-based puns, press eight.
To listen to my soothing voice sing lullabies, press fourteen.
For prophecies about the fall of mankind, press 37.
But I quickly got bored of their extensive answering machine and gave up.
It had been an arduous five minutes, and I was getting discouraged on the sponsorship front,
so I turned back to twitter, asking whether anyone would be interested in sponsoring this
video at a rate of 1 cent per minute of promotional time.
[boom]
This video is brought to you by Mel!
Made with 100% real Mel!
Mel. Mel. Mel.
Mel. Mel. Mel. Mel.
How many seconds are we at?
Mel genuinely makes really great videos.
She talks about LGBT issues, college, and mental health, and her videos are thoughtful
and calming and pleasant to watch.
I always really enjoy watching them, and I honestly would recommend her channel even
if I weren't sponsored.
But I am sponsored.
Because I'm someone who people want to sponsor.
Because I'm an influencer.
And that's what really matters here is that you are being influenced
BY ME
to check out Mel's channel.
For a free trial of Mel, visit her YouTube channel at youtube.com/melsig and enter the
promo code 6 Y 3 H
what this is a YouTube channel where would I enter a promo code
5 H 9-
[buzzer]
This video is also brought to you by Liz!
Made with 100% real Liz!
Liz. Liz. Liz.
Liz. Liz. Liz. Liz.
I don't want to do two sponsorships in a row.
I'll finish this one later.
Anyway, I had successfully found some sponsors.
[ding]
And now that I had a 2 cent budget from my lucrative sponsorship deals,
I was ready to get started on step three of the Selling Out Process:
Advertising.
I started by spending $100 of my budget on an ad campaign in Montenegro.
You may remember that a couple weeks back I made a video specifically targeting the
people of Montenegro.
Zdravo Crna Gorci!
And it was not a success.
I only got one view in Montenegro and they only watched half of the video.
But once I set that video as a pre-roll that exclusively ran in Montenegro, I got over
2,000 Montenegrin views in under a week.
As it turns out, when forced to see me for 5 seconds, roughly 33.8% of Montenegrins choose
to see me for 30 seconds or more.
Heartwarming.
So I decided to start another ad campaign specifically targeting my friend Daniel,
who's an 18-24 year old male, not a parent, currently living in Fenway-Kenmore, Massachusetts
and interested in entertainment and technology.
Hi!
If you're not Daniel, you can feel free to click the Skip Ad button that should have
just appeared down there.
If you are Daniel,
thank you for being a great friend.
You've always been there for me, and I really appreciate you,
but you do have some flaws.
And I'd say your biggest flaw is that you're not the most consistent viewer of the high
quality web content at youtube.com/theletterfifteen.
Subscribe today!
And also subscribe to Liz!
Seriously, check out Liz's channel Just A Peach, where she makes thoughtful life advice
videos.
Liz is such a kind and supportive person, and she brings so much positivity and warmth
to the YouTube community.
Théo, this is supposed to be a cold and corporate sponsorship.
But I genuinely like these people.
Well stop that.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I meant, Liz produces content that is worthy of your watchtime.
Liz.
Liz!
Liz.
Liz!
Liz.
Lllllliiiiiiiii-
I am so good at being sponsored.
iiizzzzzzzz.
[buzzer]
This video is also brought to you by Colleen!
Made with 100% real Colleen!
Colleen. Colleen. Colleen.
Colleen. Colleen. Colleen. Colleen.
Okay, so I sent out that tweet requesting 1 cent per 60 seconds of video sponsorship,
and Colleen replied: Your 60 seconds is worth more than that.
Not true, Colleen.
I've spent hours promoting Cheez-It at a far cheaper rate.
But then Colleen sent me 5 dollars.
[boom]
So I hope you enjoy the next 8 hours and 20 minutes of uninterrupted Colleen advertising.
Colleen does great work as a special collections librarian at the University of Iowa,
and if you're interesting in archives or collections, her twitter @libralthinking is
a really interesting follow.
[incomprehensibly sped up talking]
and that's how Collen single-handedly invented the turtle.
Way to go, Colleen!
[buzzer]
Because of my $5 budget increase from Colleen, I decided to run a final ad campaign, this
time on an ad that ran all throughout the United States.
Hi, I'm an advertisement!
But what are you advertising?
Unfortunately, nothing.
When I decided that I wanted to be an advertisement, I considered a lot of different possibilities
of what I could be an advertisement for.
At first I thought, maybe I can just advertise my face.
Yes, my face.
Check out my face.
What a phenomenal face.
And then I realized I'm actually more comfortable keeping my face for myself.
So then I thought maybe I'll advertise Cheez-Its.
Yum!
Cheez-Its!
Made with 100% real cheese!
But I think it might be illegal to advertise a product you're in no way affiliated with,
so I'm not gonna be advertising Cheez-Its either.
Other possibilities I considered running ads for included the gay agenda, the number 37,
the burden of human consciousness.
But ultimately I realized...
There are so many advertisements out there that are for something.
They're for dishwashing detergent or for the next Marvel movie or for earbuds.
But why aren't there more advertisements that are just for ourselves?
For you and for me.
And for one brief, beautiful moment of human connection.
That's what I want from this ad.
And I'm honored to be sharing that moment with you.
Capitalism is weird, huh?!
Thank you for not clicking that Skip Ad button.
I'm sure it was frequently tempting.
The pre-roll is over now.
I hope you enjoy your actual video.
Uh...
Advertising complete!
[ding]
[robotic voice] You have completed the Selling Out Process.
Congratulations on your cash and fame.
I've done it!
At last my heart is full!
Except obviously not, because if you care about the numbers, then no matter what number
you reach, there will always be a higher number.
Unless you reach a million because I'm pretty sure that's the highest number.
But social media has built this weird atmosphere where we value authenticity while simultaneously
valuing views and subs and watchtime,
and you can't really do both.
Or at least you can't really do both all the way.
So we get these little bursts of authenticity hidden within the algorithmic game.
But the thing is that the numbers are so arbitrary.
Like I used a coupon for all of the pre-rolls in this video, and I got like 3,000 views
and counting from it.
I got thousands of views from a promo code.
It's not because of me.
It's because of a promo code.
I did nothing of value.
So don't focus on the numbers.
Focus on the authenticity.
And you should take it to heart when I say that
because I'm an influencer with over a thousand subscribers.
Join them by checking out youtube.com/theletterfifteen.
Okay that's the end of the pre-roll.
What?!
We've been in a pre-roll this whole time?!
[boom]
Thank you for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
And thank you for 1,000 subscribers.
See you next time!
Also, to keep with the selling out theme, I have a new Patreon perk up.
At the $15 reward tier, I will take $1 from your contribution and put it towards an ad
campaign targeted specifically at you.
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