[Rant] Do we owe anything to our subscribers?

OrbitGuy

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I think you have to draw the line somewhere. I have a lot of people either ask me things or suggest me things in my comments and I say that I will try my best to look at them but I don't guarantee anything.

Especially if it makes you uncomfortable I think you reserve the right to decline that/any interaction. You do have to draw the line somewhere and you're not a 24/7 helpdesk lol.

At the end of the day you do the best you can do and that's it. If I can't get to something then I've told people that it's not personal it's just I have lots of things taking up my time outside my channel and sometimes the requests and suggestions simply don't fit with my vision for the channel. Some people will overreact and that's just out of your control.

The only person you owe anything to is yourself. I know the subs got you there but your personal/mental health has to come first if it becomes too much like that. I still try to be as respectful and helpful as possible but you have to stand your ground and shield yourself if it becomes overwhelming and uncomfortable.

I try my best to be fair but you have to put yourself first if it's impacting you like that.
 

TheSwedishTraveler

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When people ask more and more from your channel, wanting things you are not comfortable with, is where I have to draw the line!
 

Larya

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I don't think you owe anything to anyone, but as bigger you get on youtube...or probably anywhere else, as demanding people get...and that is a FACT unfortunately. I guess you just have to move on and try to engage with your subscribers as much as you can, if you feel like of course. But isn't it a bit harsh to just assume you only make videos for yourself? I mean that is a good thing but in your context it sounds like you ONLY do that for yourself...
Other than that, there is not much you can do..
 

Daisyah

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No, you definitely don't! That must have been irritating. If you are engaging they shouldn't have any problems with you.
 

adams eats

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For me personally, I absolutely love it when my subscribers contact me in any way, and I will always help if I can. I'm thankful for each and every one of them, because they make the channel just as much as I do. I can see how if someone is being a bit too pushy, is going to be annoying though. Maybe you could create a one page website with some faq and lay down some basic requests. Then if you get some awkwardness you can refer them to that page.
 

Scootakip [Lana]

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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?
Even so, people sub to a youtuber so they can enjoy their content, not sot they can get favors in return.
 

braixen1264

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This might be a bit of an unpopular approach, but I prefer to leave the majority of comments unanswered and let other people answer things that I don't really need to.
My theory is that this helps communicate that I don't try to, nor am obligated to reply to every comment and give my subscribers a lot of attention. Not to say that I don't reply to any comments, because I do. But I think this also helps 'raise the value' of my interactions with my subscribers. Kinda like the low rate of reply raises the value of my replies?
I only answer genuine questions that I haven't already answered 10 times before.
 

Sibernethy

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You're not alone, my friend. I had the exact same experience with one of my subscribers. He was harassing me on Discord (obviously he wanted things from me that he hadn't earned the right to have) and when I tried explaining this to him, he got moody and defensive. It got to the point where I blocked him on Discord. Now I wanted to protect his privacy and not humiliate him in any way by talking to anyone about it or saying his name.

A couple weeks later, he posts a comment on one of my videos saying I was mean to my fans and that he was trying to help me.

Do not let people like these scare you out of growing your channel. If it happens to me and I can deal with it, so can you. You know whether you're fair with people or not and most of your viewers are probably just as understanding. Just establish better privacy controls so people can't get too close to you without having earned it yet. It's a tough lesson to learn but even I won't be able to respond to every message I get one day and I'm already establishing filters that limit how many people can see me at any given time. The people who already are in my friends list can be enough of a handful to manage.

This is a good reason why Youtubers past a certain size (and understandably and rightfully so) are hard to reach.
 

Loki Doki

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i think it can and does cross a line, but don't feed the trolls/pervs/weirdo's any attention for them is good attention. just put them on ignore and move on. also. Get used to it, theirs millions of them out there :)
 

dech

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I checked your channel and you do respond to a lot of comments you get, I don't think you owe anyone anything really. I try to respond to a lot of my comments but I get around 500 a day. I had a similar thing when I let a sub be added to my steam account and he spammed me with almost 50 messages while I was at work and then got mad I ignored him when I wasn't even home to see them. Although I would of deleted him from my steam anyways for spamming me like his personal assistant.

Subs are great but when one sub gets too needy I wouldn't go out of my way to spoil them. You do owe your community interaction I think but not every comment or message.