Thoughts on the recent MatPat thing.


People keep asking me for my thoughts on the whole MatPat thing, so here ya go.

It reminds me of a marketing strategy I had heard at a YouTuber gathering maybe 2 years ago.

By NOT crediting anyone in your videos, you create this personable dynamic that can take advantage of casual viewers (especially younger ones). no matter how big your 'team' is or how much involvement you even had in a video (such as JUST being the voice) you make the video 'yours' by being the face. YOU made the video, YOU are the star, YOU are the memorable person that viewers see/hear. By introducing more people (or crediting them) you are removing YOUR stamp on the video a bit (its not as impressive anymore). but when each video gets several million views, a 'bit' goes a long way.

It's more impressive to think one person made this video. and by "one person (or just a few) making this video" you get the idea across that its a personable 'work of art' to an extent. but the moment there is a credits section listing a bunch of people and things, it goes from that to a 'product' or 'another video.' "Movies and TV shows have crews, not youtube videos" and even if only subconsciously, that impacts the memorability and marketing of a channel. you arent feeling an attachment or relating to the thoughts of ONE person, but to several, and thats too much work. So it makes business sense to only credit or reference your team or crew of people when expressly necessary. (like when throwing them under the bus).

Upon hearing this though I went the other way, this was during a transition time for my own channel, we we're going from me doing 80-90% of the work, to maybe 50% as I was bringing in others to help regularly. So I made it a point to start saying we/ours instead of I/my/mine. and it took a while to get used to but now its hard for me to differentiate it.
Plus when using fanart we try our best to credit the artist, especially lately, we're not perfect obviously, but if an artist comes up claiming some use that we missed, we add their credit to the description. It's a non-issue (so long as the artist doesnt make it an issue).

enough patting myself though, while I understand the strategy GT uses, I'm just not a big fan of it myself, it seems manipulative. and there are a LOT of manipulative strategies they use. not so obvious from the outside, but I and many other youtubers know about it. but could you imagine the backlash from any sort of "calling out matpat" drama video? not the kind of attention most want.

anyway, overall I get it, both points of view really, doesnt mean I agree with their methods though. at the same time, being a big popular youtuber that already gets quite a bit of hate, the amount of hate so suddenly now is pretty extreme. like egad. sure its a butt move, 100%, and he's not exactly owning up to it, (a normal human reaction) but still. why cant we all be cool to each other?

I dont know, from how I see it, as per usual, the internet is overreacting. does it deserve some backlash? yeah, its a not-nice thing. but to be so explosive? ooph.

And those are my thoughts.

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