YOUTUBE CONTENT CREATERS QUITTING YOUTUBE : OPINION BY CHRISTINE TRZYNA

eI don't so social media.  Blogging can be social media but I turned the comments off on this blog long ago and rarely comment on other people's blogs.  I simply do not have the time to be all and do all.  I've put a great amount of time into this blog as well as some other projects I've worked on.  I hope other people will benefit a bit from my Writing Workshop posted here or enjoy the same music I do, but other than that, I do this blog for me.  To me it's like a scrapbook.

I walked in - late because there had been no prior notice - to a speaker at a library who was talking to a room of hopeful content creators who were determined to get as many hits as possible with as little dedicated time as possible.  I mentioned I blogged and the speaker pretty much laughed me out of the room.  "You still blog?" he said, with ridicule.

So I spoke up.  I said that I did so and that I never had done it for hits, but because I love my subject.  If just a few benefited from my work, that as good for me. 

I listed to a number of fairly recent YouTube videos of Big Shot content creators who are quitting. They were burned out.  They were unhappy with Adsense.  One woman in particular exhibited her anger and explained blow by blow about how her Adsense payout jumped around; she had taken screen shots.  Her complaints were dealt with by someone in another country who could only follow a script and not her complaints.  Many said that they had lost the love of the process or their subject was no longer of interest.  I admit to some anxiety when I feel that I have not posted as often as I would like because, as they say, "life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans." However, I also think that  a feeling of obligation to my readers when it comes to creating content has also been good for me, keeping me writing, keeping me thinking, and especially allowing me to express myself beyond my real-life relationships.

A major problem for the serious YouTube content creators is that the shorts have been prioritized. I find them distracting.  I'm the person who likes long episodes of deep concentration and hunts for videos on subjects that interest me that are longer.

I have long felt a concern when it comes to copyrights.

I feel that musicians and artists are always getting ripped off.  I seek out videos to post that do not have ads, comfortable for me is the long ago start up spirit of contributory and no charge.

But I benefit by being able to listen to songs I remember or discover without an investment in purchasing.

The chronic ads get to me.  I have never bought anything because of an ad that comes interrupting a video.  

Recently Google/YouTube decided I was male based on the music I was listening to and pitched ads for me also for erectile disfunction-type medications. I had a laugh with friends over that.  I have also discovered "oldies" I never knew about and have honed an appreciation for some newer artists.

I think the urge and need for hits in order to monitize, YouTube video creation as a chore rather than a joy is what has gotten to these content creators.  

I think they do need to move on and others will try to take their place.

For the viewer, YouTube video watching can become an addiction.

A decade or more on a subject is a whole lot.  Let's say goodbye to them with sincere well wishing.

Christine Trzyna

C 2024 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

A MAN OF MYSTERY ENTERS MY LIFE

For over a year I've been e-mailing with a man I never met in person.  Long Story but he was on a video I came across, a testimonial about his experience of a historical event in another country.  I realized that he and I might be related ; the connection would be with a woman who was born in the 1700's - the surname rare and noble.  I e-mailed to the web site and asked if they would contact him for me and why.  Three days later he wrote back. I was delighted. For much of 2023 he was actually back in the foreign country, living his life there, though his education, career, and life is in America. When I told him why I thought we might be related he attempted an amazing effort at researching for that connection, even personally going into the national archives there for me.  I'm very appreciative and, as of this moment, we cannot establish the connection, though there is still some possibility.

Though we didn't e-mail frequently, but rather sporadically, my e-mails were chatty and I revealed various things about myself, not so much stats but ideas, points of view, and little snippets - slices of life; I was trying to provoke him a bit to be more self-revealing himself.  He never took the bait.  

Months might go by and then he'd e-mail that he was having trouble with Google over there or that he had just done some traveling to his family's old estates, which are no longer their possessions.  I had a thousand questions, but because he seemed so unwilling to be open, I asked a few.

I sent a special message that I was concerned for him because of the war in Israel. 

Didn't write back that he was OK.

I wondered if maybe he is a spy.

I decided to think of him as A MAN OF MYSTERY.

Funny, but when I sent him a New Years Message calling him a MAN OF MYSTERY, he began to open up.  Back in America. He revealed that he had attended operas and plays while over there.

Ah, I said, "A Gentleman!"

In my imagination I imagined a woman with him - wearing a gown - bosom showing - wearing perfume.

I imagined that he has a mistress - maybe a few - maybe one there and one here.

When he wrote that he was going to the gym and that on New Years Day he takes a dip in the frigid ocean, I thought he intended for me to think of him as rugged.  As in individualist.

In my mind I heard him chuckle.

Lately, when I read his brief responses and subtle unveiling of himself, I sense that he's actually having a great time of it with me, sort of dolling himself out.  I still do not know if he has married (I considered that maybe, though there has never been anything outright flirtatious in our correspondence that he might feel some obligation to a wife) or if he has children. I hate the idea that he might be sneaking to e-mail with me.

All I know is that he used to live in LA and worked in aerospace.

So I asked him, "Have you seen any UFO's in underground facilities?  Were you involved in back-engineering?"

He doesn't answer.  I figure it's his security clearance.

He writes, "You write such great letters!"

Yes I do.

Or I think he is afraid someone - like maybe the Russians - will read our e-mail.

Maybe we should write in a secret code. So I suggest Proton mail as an alternative to Google.  Based in Switzerland, a neutral country, encrypted.

He says he'll look into it.

He says I don't seem like the kind of person who would want to retire.

He's right.

C 2024  Christine Trzyna

NATURAL CAUSES by BARBARA EHRENREICH : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

SUBTITLE : AN EPIDEMIC OF WELLNESS, the CERTAINTY of DYING, and KILLING OURSELVES TO LIVE LONGER.

Note: Ehrenreich earned a PhD in cellular immunology from Rockefeller University.

So... I loved this book and I happen to agree that people are obsessing over their heath and their upcoming death way more than they used to, way more than it is healthy to.  I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that medical treatment often feels just like a Ritual of Humiliation.  (And frankly, conversations that detail recipes and cooking, and medical conditions and treatment are probably my least favorite. But if we are friends and you get sick, I won't dump you over it like a fair weather friend will.) We need to strike a balance between the effort to remain well and allowing ourselves some foibles 

In this book she also talks about how certain foods and habits such as smoking, and so on have had socio-cultural assumptions about class tied into them. That is to say fast food, cigarettes, and a lounge chair in front of the T.V. - beer can in hand, is assumed to be low class. Into Wellness? You're rich!

What about doctors who only want rich patients?

What about all those TV shows, celebrities, and their audiences hawking colonoscopies and mammograms? The audience applauds...  These people come off as heroic but also as medical treatment sales people and promoters.

Over diagnosis - Over-medicalization - not complying with the wishes of a patient who does not want to be resusitated. 

Here are some Excerpts:

THE MADNESS OF MINDFULNESS

page 71)  In the struggle between mind and body, perpetually reenacted by fitness-seekers, the mind is almost universally conceived as "the good guy" - the moral overdog that must by all rights prevail. Contemporary fitness culture concedes a certain advisory status to the body" We should "listen" to it, since, after all, the body is capable of doing a great many important things on its own, from healing wounds to incubating fetuses, with no discernible instructions from the conscious mind,  So if your hamstrings are squealing with pain it may be time to recalibrate the leg lifts and squats....  

Page 72-73) But can the mind be trusted? Surveying today's fitness culture, a mid-twentieth century psychiatrist would no doubt find reasons to suspect a variety of mental disorders ; masochism, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and homoerotic tendencies (which were viewed as pathological until the 1970's) -- any of which could indicate the need for professional intervention.  Even the untrained eye can detect the occasional skeletal anorectic in the gym, sweating through hours of cardiovascular training, and start to question the assumed intellectual superiority of the mind.  We have come, hesitantly, to respect the 'wisdom of the body' but can we be sure of the wisdom of the mind?

***

Page 85) It was Silicon Valley, through, that legitimized mindfulness for the rest of the business world. If mindfulness had first taken root in General Mills, it would never had gained the status it's acquired from Google and Facebook.  Baking products just don't have the cachet of digital devices.  Silicon Valley, is, after all, the 'innovation center of the universe," according to its boosters, home of the 'best and the brightest," along with the new "masters of the universe" who replaced the old ones after the financial crash that temporarily humbled Wall Street  Mindfulness may have roots in an ancient religion, but the Valley's imprimatur established that it was rational, scientific, and forward- looking.

***

Quick note.  I edited this for errors in spelling that were mine but also the result of auto-"corrects," on November 11, 2022....  I hate auto corrects, especially when what appears to be correct, doesn't show up after one sends.  Shocking also to learn well used words that are not in the dictionary.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

9/11 as I REMEMBER IT - VIOLENCE REDEFINED

The morning of 9/11 I was listening to KFI - Bill Handel on the radio.  Bill is still on the air but I don't listen to KFI much anymore.  (Audio Books suffice.)  He is known for a sort of jokey sarcasm - and an exaggerated way of telling stories - on himself - and on others.  For instance, he once gave a blow by blow account of a death row inmate being fried that was compelling.  So Bill is a character - a personality - and when he started talking about what was happening in New York, there was a question in my mind - it's a joke right?  But it was not.  The television set confirmed it and of all people to call first, I called my then building manager. He didn't believe me. Then I called my best friend - who didn't answer the phone. Like everyone else, I was riveted to the television set. 

And then, then I became depressed.

Someone gifted me something I really needed, something that no one else on this earth at the time would have thought to gift me, something that no one else I knew at the time could afford, and probably the most generous gift I ever received, but the box sat there unopened.  I wasn't even curious to open the Apple box.  I was moving through molasses. I awaited word that we were going to war, that war had been officially declared and called war, rather than a "military action."

At this time I went to a number of coffee houses in order to write.   I went over to one where I had a coffeehouse friend who was an artist, a painter of dog portraits, whose work was even published in a book not of his own making.  The artist told me his own mother had been in the building that the first plane hit.  In fact it probably hit her very office.  His family in New York City wanted him to get on a plane and fly there right away.  They were in denial.  They wanted him to go to the hospitals looking for their mom.  He didn't go.  He knew there was no chance she was alive.

The impact of the loss of his mom in such a horrific way was so strong that this artist could not paint.  He could not hold a brush.  Months later he was trying another form of creative expression - writing songs - to overcome the paralysis. He was clearly not in his normality for a long time.

A couple weeks after 9/11, while still feeling angry and powerless, I went ahead and opened the gift.  It was a laptop computer and I needed it to write.  It was intended as a practical gift but it became one in which self expression was also a way of maintaining the healing I needed because of this horrible event.

While the construct and enormity of 9/11 made it a special attack on an icon of the United States of America, I realize also that it was the closest thing to a military attack ON OUR TURF since Pearl Harbor.  Imagine though what it was for the Japanese when the United States dropped the atomic bomb.  Or enduring the Holocaust.  Or any other violent events that have taken place on this earth - and do now.

Is the world really getting more violent?  Mass shootings for no good reason beyond someone's hatred or insanity seem to happen with regularity.  Would they be as appealing to their originators if it were not for the fast global news coverage made possible not just on television but internet and cell phones?

A recent foray into a Fundamentalist Bible Study - long story as I know you know this is not like me - has been interesting in that just about every other woman there believes with certainty that we are in the End Times. Some people there think that President Donald Trump is in place, no matter how he screws it up, to usher in the End Times, citing his recognition of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Trump and those like him are, to me, believers in the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of  New Age defilement of Christ's message. Christians feed the hungry, cloth and shelter those who have none, and there is a traditional acceptance and embrace of the poor as worthy human beings. The Prosperity Gospel to me is more like Janis Joplin singing Mercedes Benz.  I guess it could be argued that God gives prosperity to those who HAVE so they can give to the poor, but let's not talk about Amazon's unlivable wages, or that Google's blue collar employees live in RV's near the Silicon Valley "campus."
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Some think President Trump can do just about anything, because it's really Vice President Mike Pence who is the Real Believer and the Next President, one way or another.  There is lots of talk in this group about which politicians are "Believers" or not.  I'm not there to question the class or the teacher's belief system, just to absorb differences as comfortably as I can and learn some things that I didn't know about the lifeways of the ancient people of Bible times, particularly the few women mentioned.

As a more liberal Christian friend of mine said, "There have ALWAYS been wars.  So it's always the End Times."

One day in the class, someone said that Oprah Winfrey was leading millions of people straight to hell.  (On the list of deceivers was also Shirley MacLaine.)  So what is that if not intolerance?

And this is CALIFORNIA? 

I have no answers at the moment.  I just know that 9/11 became a pivotal moment in our history which marked a change of consciousness about our vulnerability and need for defense.

As a child in Catholic grade school we often prayed for the President, to make good decisions for us all, just as we did the Pope.  If you're a praying person, this is a good time to do so.

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

JOURNALISTS AGAINST JOURNALISTS?

video expired.  Taken down December 2024

Have been reading around Edward Snowden since the first reportage in newspapers, on the Internet, and in YouTube videos, I chose this video which expresses some of the concerns I have about the effect of both the NSA / U.S. Government monitoring electronic communications of everyone who uses cell phones and/or computers as well as the legal issues involved from all angles.

Having studied Journalism in college at a time when anyone with any ambition wanted to be the one who got the most important news out to the public, at a time when hard news, not soft, was important, it concerns me that a journalist who wrote about Snowden and the information he wanted to leak would be considered criminal for doing so.  Let us not confuse Journalist who are doing their jobs and the people and events they cover.  A news EZditor also has a great role in determining what will be printed and thus influence history by choosing what to print or not, but a good editor is on the side of the Journalist. A  Journalist relies upon and reports to the Editor.

Was it Edward Snowdens intent to shut down Journalism, Newspapers, and the Media?

Just the opposite.

GOOGLE DUMPS CHINA - A GOOD MOVE IN MY OPINION

The recent good news, reported in the Los Angeles Times and so very many other media, is that Google decided to withdrawal from China - but for the censorship free-er Hong Kong, despite the fact that they have also withdrawn from the World's largest potential market. Recently I received a number of messages in Chinese characters in the e-mail associated with this blog. I wondered if that was part of the cyber punishment China was using to revenge Google for their decision.

A news story by reporters Jessica Guyun and David Pierson in the LA Times on March 23, 2010, said that international websites such as Facebook and Twitter were always blocked by China. Obviously China does not want its citizens to be influenced by the values of people outside of China.

I'm going into my e-mails to eliminate all China originating or Chinese character messages and this blog will continue to not provide a translator in Chinese.

Christine Trzyna