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Who knew hard work can be hard, this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid. >‘

Who knew hard work can be hard, this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid. >‘invisible’ labour such as interacting with fans is ‘a major contributor to occupational stress. In many cases it can contribute to PTSD’. Are you kidding me? they are not fans they are your "customers" or at least your "consumers" public and customer relations are a key part of nearly every business out there that doesn't rely on accidental walk-ins for the majority of their business. If you can't handle it then hire someone who can or find another business, PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma, what you have here it just a lazy person that realized that omg running a business that serves tens of thousands of people daily is hard.

CamperBob2 8y ago
To be fair to the Youtube stars, this is exactly why famous authors and actors have publicity agents. The notion of celebrities interacting with the hoi polloi on a daily basis is a brand-new artifact of the Internet age. What's happening is that today's celebrities are learning why their predecessors locked themselves away in secluded Hollywood mansions and rode around wearing sunglasses in heavily-tinted limousines.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  So do "YouTube stars" most of the large channels are run by media companies either established one or ones that was set up to support the channel. All the people they interviewed are relatively no-body they are small fish if anything their "mistake" wasn't taking it as a business they thought they can record a few videos on their phone edit them in FCP and make a metric ton of money hence the "winning the lottery" analogy that went through the article. There aren't shortcuts in life people shouldn't expect to get paid for little to no effort put in, and yes if you are reaching 50,000 people by selling yourself you need to be willing to well whore yourself out because you are the product, if you are running a tech channel or something similar then you often run it closer to say how a TV channel would be run with different shows/segments, you can and do hire additional hosts/anchors and eventually build a whole media production group. But even the "vlog" channels aren't a solo gig all the large ones did a behind the scenes videos which they showed just how many people are involved in producing those videos, if you have a revenue of say $500,000 you can't expect to be able to do on your own, even on half of that you can easily hire multiple people and still make a more than enough money. Cameramen/crew, editors people to handle PR and out reach can be hired for $50K even with experience and in reality much less especially considering that given the production scope you can afford to hire people straight out of college or even high school.
throwaway9922 8y ago
> this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid. That is clearly not what they were saying. That is an incredibly callous way of dismissing someone else's problems. From the article: > Lees developed a thyroid problem, and began to experience more frequent and persistent stretches of depression. There is a well-established link between thyroid issues and burnout. See this comment from Amy Hoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 The deeper takeaway is that burnout is not just someone saying "oh I don't like my job". It is a specific condition with measurable physical effects. I almost burned out a few years ago. I quit the job I was working in, took a few months off, then looked for a less-demanding freelance job to recover. The thing is, in the "recovery" job, I actually worked about twice as many hours and was about 4x more productive. But it was majorly less stressful - I simply came in to the office in the morning, picked the latest tickets on Trello, worked on them, then went home. In the previous job, I probably did about 20 hours actual work/week, and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs. But the organisation was in total chaos, with projects started and cancelled all over the place. I could go the extra mile on a piece of work and have it completely ignored, then get chewed out publicly for something I'd had no idea I was expected to do. I tried to be proactive and solve these problems, but it was an exercise in futility and frustration. Burnout is not caused by "working hard", it's caused by a combination of things, usually some form of working hard and failing repeatedly, especially when the failure was caused by factors beyond your control (such as management politics, or in the case of YouTube stars, the all-powerful algorithm). This has been fairly well-researched and documented. Amy Hoy described it as "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", which is pretty succinct. (For anyone who wants to learn more - burnout is pretty common amongst programmers and startup people - this is a good resource for overcoming some of the cognitive issues involved: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/ https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/). The Youtubers in the article described their problems clearly and eloquently, it enrages me to hear people callously dismiss them in this way.
- throwaway9922 8y ago
  Edit: Amy Hoy did not mention "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", it was this commenter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618
bonesss 8y ago
> PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma There is a solid kernal of truth here, PTSD generally relies on clear and obvious trauma... That said, CPTSD has lots of nuanced angles, the original quote was "contribute[s] to" PTSD (not "cause"), and I think the required emotional investment to produce content vs horrendous comment content from YouTube commenters has been overlooked. Particularly on an IT forum: stress stemming from continuous urgency and unending negativity, a la customer support or helpdesk work, is a major problem and a silent killer. Combined with burnout? That's where you get into serious health issues. Chronic stress combined with feelings of helplessness, being overwhelmed, or being attacked cause trauma by themselves. Socially we are terrible at addressing those burdens on our employees, and it stretches into PTSD-ish territory Reading fan mail? How about rape and death threats? How about invasive comments about how your nipples have been showing more/less with each video? How about abject racism and brutal sexism and blatant trolling about your appearance? That's before we get to unrelenting shit talking about you and your work... You may very well be right that PTSD isn't always a precise diagnosis of the issue. But if anyone is getting regular death threats based on something important to them over a long period of time, then the nuanced distinctions between life-destroying stress conditions, PTSD, and CPTSD are something they're gonna spend some time discussing with their therapist. That's how our brains work.
raverbashing 8y ago
You are very uninformed at the potential for being bullied and pressure being a public figure on YT may entail. It's the same with actors/actresses, I'd say it could be even worse. Open Source developers suffer some of this as well, no wonder Linus has to "bang on the table" once in a while. It is to cut on the BS

CamperBob2 8y ago

To be fair to the Youtube stars, this is exactly why famous authors and actors have publicity agents. The notion of celebrities interacting with the hoi polloi on a daily basis is a brand-new artifact of the Internet age. What's happening is that today's celebrities are learning why their predecessors locked themselves away in secluded Hollywood mansions and rode around wearing sunglasses in heavily-tinted limousines.

dogma1138 8y ago
So do "YouTube stars" most of the large channels are run by media companies either established one or ones that was set up to support the channel. All the people they interviewed are relatively no-body they are small fish if anything their "mistake" wasn't taking it as a business they thought they can record a few videos on their phone edit them in FCP and make a metric ton of money hence the "winning the lottery" analogy that went through the article. There aren't shortcuts in life people shouldn't expect to get paid for little to no effort put in, and yes if you are reaching 50,000 people by selling yourself you need to be willing to well whore yourself out because you are the product, if you are running a tech channel or something similar then you often run it closer to say how a TV channel would be run with different shows/segments, you can and do hire additional hosts/anchors and eventually build a whole media production group. But even the "vlog" channels aren't a solo gig all the large ones did a behind the scenes videos which they showed just how many people are involved in producing those videos, if you have a revenue of say $500,000 you can't expect to be able to do on your own, even on half of that you can easily hire multiple people and still make a more than enough money. Cameramen/crew, editors people to handle PR and out reach can be hired for $50K even with experience and in reality much less especially considering that given the production scope you can afford to hire people straight out of college or even high school.

throwaway9922 8y ago

> this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid. That is clearly not what they were saying. That is an incredibly callous way of dismissing someone else's problems. From the article: > Lees developed a thyroid problem, and began to experience more frequent and persistent stretches of depression. There is a well-established link between thyroid issues and burnout. See this comment from Amy Hoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 The deeper takeaway is that burnout is not just someone saying "oh I don't like my job". It is a specific condition with measurable physical effects. I almost burned out a few years ago. I quit the job I was working in, took a few months off, then looked for a less-demanding freelance job to recover. The thing is, in the "recovery" job, I actually worked about twice as many hours and was about 4x more productive. But it was majorly less stressful - I simply came in to the office in the morning, picked the latest tickets on Trello, worked on them, then went home. In the previous job, I probably did about 20 hours actual work/week, and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs. But the organisation was in total chaos, with projects started and cancelled all over the place. I could go the extra mile on a piece of work and have it completely ignored, then get chewed out publicly for something I'd had no idea I was expected to do. I tried to be proactive and solve these problems, but it was an exercise in futility and frustration. Burnout is not caused by "working hard", it's caused by a combination of things, usually some form of working hard and failing repeatedly, especially when the failure was caused by factors beyond your control (such as management politics, or in the case of YouTube stars, the all-powerful algorithm). This has been fairly well-researched and documented. Amy Hoy described it as "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", which is pretty succinct. (For anyone who wants to learn more - burnout is pretty common amongst programmers and startup people - this is a good resource for overcoming some of the cognitive issues involved: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/ https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/). The Youtubers in the article described their problems clearly and eloquently, it enrages me to hear people callously dismiss them in this way.

throwaway9922 8y ago
Edit: Amy Hoy did not mention "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", it was this commenter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618

bonesss 8y ago

> PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma There is a solid kernal of truth here, PTSD generally relies on clear and obvious trauma... That said, CPTSD has lots of nuanced angles, the original quote was "contribute[s] to" PTSD (not "cause"), and I think the required emotional investment to produce content vs horrendous comment content from YouTube commenters has been overlooked. Particularly on an IT forum: stress stemming from continuous urgency and unending negativity, a la customer support or helpdesk work, is a major problem and a silent killer. Combined with burnout? That's where you get into serious health issues. Chronic stress combined with feelings of helplessness, being overwhelmed, or being attacked cause trauma by themselves. Socially we are terrible at addressing those burdens on our employees, and it stretches into PTSD-ish territory Reading fan mail? How about rape and death threats? How about invasive comments about how your nipples have been showing more/less with each video? How about abject racism and brutal sexism and blatant trolling about your appearance? That's before we get to unrelenting shit talking about you and your work... You may very well be right that PTSD isn't always a precise diagnosis of the issue. But if anyone is getting regular death threats based on something important to them over a long period of time, then the nuanced distinctions between life-destroying stress conditions, PTSD, and CPTSD are something they're gonna spend some time discussing with their therapist. That's how our brains work.

raverbashing 8y ago

You are very uninformed at the potential for being bullied and pressure being a public figure on YT may entail. It's the same with actors/actresses, I'd say it could be even worse. Open Source developers suffer some of this as well, no wonder Linus has to "bang on the table" once in a while. It is to cut on the BS