When deciding what to make videos about, I am usually drawn between several factors: most obviously, what I want to make. Second, what I think will do well, or what my audience would be interested in. Third, what I feel a responsibility to make.
The first can be gratifying, authentic, but also self-indulgent and unpopular. I have to make a living and ensure the viability of the channel in the future, and this isn’t always the way to do it.
The second – what I think an audience wants to see – is a useful corrective, but also keeps me connected to what other people think is important, what they want to watch. Taken to the extreme, this can lead to ‘selling out’, but I think when considered with the first, it allows you to think through how to meet your audience ‘where they are.’ It stops you from speaking simply to and for yourself, and forces you to consider how to connect with as many people as possible, which in turn might increase the influence you can build for when you do want to make something very personal or otherwise unpopular.
If you can spark something in people, earn their trust, understand their viewpoint, and then try to convince them of what you want to say, what you believe, then the argument will be all the better for it.
Then there’s the third factor – responsibility. Hopefully, this always has some influence on both. But sometimes there are topics that I am not hugely interested in spending my time on personally, nor are they likely to be the most popular. However, knowing they are important nonetheless, I am always drawn to spend as much time as I can at least understanding them. This is especially the case when the topic overlaps with my background in History and Politics.
I think that, in most cases, if you know more than the median voice on Youtube, you have a responsibility to try to say something. Otherwise, the public sphere is left open to those who have big mouths, small minds, and zero tolerance for research.
Sometimes, there is a tipping point; a moment when you feel a reasonable grasp on the literature and get a sense of the public discourse; when you feel compelled to say something rather than nothing. Because in this libertarian media ecosystem, I’ve seen videos with millions of views commenting with zero expertise, but also, experts who are very knowledgeable making dogmatic arguments which I know can be quite reasonably refuted by other experts. Furthermore, the mainstream media seems incapable themselves of providing good longform explainers and analysis. Both of which are increasingly rare, as all parties are incentivised to release sensationalist, short, and frequent content, in an arms race for clicks.
Ultimately, the ideal is to spend my time on topics which fit neatly into the middle of the Venn diagram of all three – what I want to make, what people will be interested in, and what I have a responsibility to make. The needle will always be shifting, but whether I am successful in balancing those factors, I’ll leave to you.
