For some people, like myself, Youtube is work. Work doesn't have to be associated with something you don't like, work can be wonderful, and enjoyable.
I put hours upon hours into Youtube, I spend a ton of time both recording and editing videos. Doing new tags for all of my videos once relevance changes, updating thumbnails to be more "current" almost daily, and rushing projects seriously stress me out.
For example recently I had a video that I wanted to finish, I knew other people would do something similar, so therefor I wouldn't get Reddit frontpage and the attention it deserved if I didn't finish it fast. I worked many many hours a day, untill the final stretch where I sat down for 21 hours straight (of course with short breaks for food and toilet) and just edited.
I ended up making the video a success, however it can be a strain to do Youtube full-time. Especially since you have to live up to a lot of people's expectations, you have to keep increasing the quality of your content, you have to constantly innovate yourself. How much work any individual puts into Youtube is widely different, I know some vloggers that barely do anything but press record/stop.
For me I think calling Youtube "work" is very subjective, but if you are actually working there's no reason why you wouldn't call it work. I know many big Youtuber's schedule all uploads 4 weeks ahead at any given time, and then switch the upload date depending on which video would fit in at what time. Suddenly they find out that the video they were gonna record to be uploaded in 5 weeks is on a subject which is currently trending, then they have to rush their a** off.
I don't think calling Youtube work is ignorant, I think that not acknowledging Youtube as work is ignorant.
