I'm not a YouTuber
May 31, 2026(At least, not anymore.)
Do you ever realize when something significant in your life changes... but only after the change has been in effect for a few weeks? It's not something that happens often but from my experience it can either be an abrupt reflective pause to whatever kind of flow you were in before or an oddly gratifying moment of self vindication after noticing that you broke out of a groove that was previously baked into your DNA. Of course, that is assuming that the change you notice is for the better.
I had one of these epiphanies a few days ago. While working on a video game mod (that I'm looking to release in the coming days) I checked the date and realized how close it was to being time for my annual big "Wacky Races PS2" video and that I should start working on it soon. It was only then when i realized that i not only hadn't been working on any videos in the background but I hadn't even been thinking about making videos for about a week.
In that moment, I could swear that my body felt a thousand times lighter thanks to the seemingly immovable "MAKE A VIDEO MAKE A VIDEO MAKE A VIDEO" weights being lifted off my shoulders. Not only that, but I also just so happened to lift them off my shoulders ages ago without even realizing that I had. Considering the fact that most people who have their sights set on Content Creation don't know when to stop, I'm quite surprised that it happened to me at just 20 years old.
And you know what? I'm glad it's happened.
Let me put this into perspective: I'm someone who stands their ground whenever something changes for the worse, and I'm often the first person to speak out about something dumb in my friend group whenever it happens. As a result, I'm a lot more perceptive to the problems that many major platforms are festered with. For a long time, many of the changes that these platforms brought weren't enough for me to stop using them, they were just inconveniences that I would always take time to bemoan. My biggest example for this is probably the oversimplification of their design languages which is a story for another day.
However, everything reached a breaking point in 2025. I won't go into detail about every small thing that changed, as I already plan on doing that at some point in the future when I know exactly what I want to say about the topic. Plus, it's not really the point of this post, so going over them again would be redundant.
After a particularly long streak of bad changes had been taken up by YouTube, I started to have doubts over whether I felt comfortable expressing myself creatively on a platform that I both didn't feel a connection to and actively hated the user experience for, and that lead to me dabbling into pushing more of my creative endeavors into areas that I hadn't given any attention to yet. That's what lead to the creation of the website you are reading this post from, as it was through a mixture of both my distain for YouTube and my desire to expand my personal skill set that lead to this site getting made.
Not only did I love what I was creating, but for a few months after creating the site I started to reflect on the videos I was making before and the circumstances they were made under. I didn't even realize at the time that I was bending what I wanted to put out to fit the mold of what YouTube wanted despite telling myself over and over that I was never putting views and viewer retention first. After putting this all together, I made the tough call to stop uploading new videos to my now 12 year old YouTube channel so I could solely focus on making and hosting content the way I wanted to do it.
A few people were surprised by this move and a couple of them were begging me to come back, but the vast majority of my viewer base were extremely supportive of this decision. Turns out I wasn't the only one who had this many pet peeves with YouTube, I was just one of the first to pull the trigger and declare when enough was enough. The only thing I use my YouTube channel for now is to post on the community tab to let people know when I release something new (which I recently found nets me MORE views than the videos I was uploading near the end of my channel's life span) and also to leave the odd comment on YouTube videos that I feel like leaving a comment for. (which is a lot rarer than you may think thanks to me using Invidious to watch all my YouTube videos)
That brings us to today. It's been about 3 months since I've left YouTube, and It's so much more refreshing to be in charge of what I create and how I create it that I feel no desire to ever go back to YouTube in any capacity. That obviously means that I'm not going to stop making original videos, those are still going to be uploaded to Hamm's Portal as usual. It just means that when you look at the stuff that I make you won't be confined to the common restrictions that the cycle of creative vision circumcision brings to the table. You won't be asked to give my stuff a like, I won't be begging at you to financially support me while I'm still in a good spot and I won't ask you to subscribe to keep tabs on my stuff.
If you want to stay up to date on what I make, check in yourself. You have the will to do it and you don't need an invisible entity telling you that I've made something new. That just makes it feel more disposable. If you want to tell me that you like my stuff, tell me directly. I have a guest book that you can leave your thoughts in on top of me reacting to any other messages that get sent my way. And most importantly, if you want me to kneecap my creative visions by forcing my works to conform to what people I'm not on the same wavelength with THINK everyone should be doing for the sake of making it easier for you to digest what I've put my heart and soul into, you have my permission to unsubscribe.
Here's to a new generation of videos and projects done MY way.