[Rant] Do we owe anything to our subscribers?

[ellelletalk]

A couple days ago, a subscriber whose username I don't recognize (meaning, I don't believe I've interacted with this person before) sent me 10+ messages on instagram and youtube. He then "liked" 50+ of my instagram pictures so that I would "notice him".

The next day, when I hadn't replied, he left a comment on my video saying that he was unsubscribing because I hadn't answered yet and that he thought I "helped my subscribers."

This upsets me for a number of reasons:

1. I feel like I do a lot to engage with my subscribers. I respond to the vast majority of comments. I have live streams where I answer questions. I try to recognize people's usernames and respond to them as people.

2. I don't feel that I owe any of my subscribers a response. I try to answer most people's questions, even if it's just an "I don't know the answer to your question," but ultimately, I don't owe them answers. I make videos for myself. I'm grateful for their views and engagement, but I don't owe them a relationship. I don't owe them mentorship.

3. This person made me feel very uncomfortable. Even before the "unsubscribe" message, sending me 10+ messages and liking 50+ of my pictures feels like an invasion of my personal space. If I don't know you, and you begin bombarding me with messages expecting an immediate response, that's uncomfortable.

4. I'm a real person, with a real life. I don't sit around waiting to answer people's messages. I am incredibly grateful to have 3000+ subscribers, but if every one of them started messaging me at this frequency, I wouldn't be able to do anything all day. Obviously, this is an isolated incident, and I'm very capable of answering the messages that I get right now, but expecting an answer in 24 hours and getting angry at me for not replying is both selfish and unrealistic. Maybe I was busy. Maybe I was thinking of what to reply. Maybe I didn't feel like answering your question. Regardless, a 24 hour timeline is unreasonable.

5. I'm scared for my channel to grow now. I don't want to start receiving more of these messages. I don't want to get to a point where I have hundreds of people looking up to me and expecting me to be their mentor / guiding light / role model / whatever, and not have the time to answer them. I don't want to disappoint people.

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I know I wrote a lot, thanks for taking the time to skim through this.

Question : How would you guys deal with this?

[For the record, I have not contacted this person, and do not intend to contact them. I do not reply to people whose messages make me feel uncomfortable]

 

[Helen Czap]

I haven't delt with that yet.. and hopefully I don't but you have very valid reasons that you pointed out. You don't owe him anything. Don't let him scare you away from making more videos! He definitely just wanted to use you just for more subscribers.

 

[Justoshow]

We don't owe them because they chose to subscribe because they most likely like us the creator and the content. Some people have that you scratch my back and I scratch your back mentality.

 

[Scootakip [Lana]]

1) You don't owe anyone anything. People subscribe to you because they like your content, not as a favor.
2) People on the internet can be creeps, and this can happen in the future. My advice is to ignore it. Block these people, and add certain words to your comment's blacklist so that these kinds of things happen less often.

 

[Maksim]

I believe you do. YT stars would not be stars if it was not for their audience to grow them. Do you need to go out of your way? No.... but they are responsible for the success.

You also stated that you are doing the videos for yourself... Okay, so if you do not care about an audience, why are you uploading them to youtube for others to see, like, share, and comment?

 

[ellelletalk]

I believe you do. YT stars would not be stars if it was not for their audience to grow them. Do you need to go out of your way? No.... but they are responsible for the success.

You also stated that you are doing the videos for yourself... Okay, so if you do not care about an audience, why are you uploading them to youtube for others to see, like, share, and comment?

Making videos for myself does not mean that I do not enjoy attention. I love attention. hahaha

I provide videos => My audience provides me with attention.
They can just as easily choose to not provide me with attention, which would be upsetting, but well within their right.

I respond to the majority of comments as a way to encourage continued "attention getting" but I don't think that means that I owe anyone my responses.

If someone doesn't want to watch my videos because I don't talk to them, that's fine, but don't get mad at me. As easily as they are able to not watch my videos, I am able to not answer comments that make me uncomfortable.

You're welcome to disagree with my view, of course. I'm not trying to tell you how to run your channel at all!

 

[Maksim]

Making videos for myself does not mean that I do not enjoy attention. I love attention. hahaha

I provide videos => My audience provides me with attention.
They can just as easily choose to not provide me with attention, which would be upsetting, but well within their right.

I respond to the majority of comments as a way to encourage continued "attention getting" but I don't think that means that I owe anyone my responses.

If someone doesn't want to watch my videos because I don't talk to them, that's fine, but don't get mad at me. As easily as they are able to not watch my videos, I am able to not answer comments that make me uncomfortable.

You're welcome to disagree with my view, of course. I'm not trying to tell you how to run your channel at all!

If you like attention, you got it. =)

It comes with the ups and downs. Just ignore it. No sense complaining about it or dwelling on negative attention.

Personally, I would be flattered.

 

[KatyAdelson]

I've moved this to the strategy/technique advice forum. =)

I've ran into similar situations. If the person creeps me out, I ignore them...otherwise, if I start to recognize someone posting comments fairly often, I try to reply to them in particular. ^_^

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

I regularly get this type of thing. Like, at least once a week. Granted I've never had someone like a bunch of my pictures or try very hard to contact me outside of YouTube, but if they did, I'd probably just take note of it and then approach them like anyone else. Nothing online is my personal space, because it's available to the public.

Now, I don't know what they asked of you, but all anyone requests of me is for me to make certain videos. I get multiple requests for videos daily. Most are simply requests. Some are all too happy for me to even consider doing their request, even if it takes a year. Some make the same request or group of requests on every video I upload, and I upload daily. Some get upset and almost demand to know why the next video I put up wasn't there request. At most, I just notice their impatience and probably read their comments to my wife or someone just to get a reaction out of them. Usually these people only repeat their request on every video if I don't respond for a while. Like, I'm just now getting back to responding to requests after taking about 4 months off. I respond to these people the same as the patient ones. Just a simple "I've added your request to my list for me to check out". If they continue to request it, I have a response for that as well: "That one's already on my list for me to check out." I'll ignore multiple requests for the same video by the same person on the same day, but I'll probably reply with the same response if they do it again on a different day.

I have had one person complain belligerently about one of my videos in its comments section. I just replied with "You're Welcome!" They then said they were unsubscribing, lol. I didn't even know they were subscribed. They had only left one other comment before and it was earlier the same day. I decided not to reply, but someone else replied to them telling them off.

 

[KiddieToysReview]

I think we owe them 2 things:
1. entertain them
2. don't waste their time