Screw Tube

Manifesto, ja?

🎭 The YouTube Catch-22: How the Algorithm Kills Its Own Artists

1. The Million-View Mirage

Since its inception in September 2011, my channel has accumulated 1,009,789 views — that’s one million, nine thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine.

Over a thousand videos.

More than three thousand subscribers.

A decade’s worth of content — experimental music, audiobooks, occult history, art, horror, and the paranormal.

And yet, after all that?

I can’t even qualify for monetization.

Not because my work breaks any rule, not because the content is offensive or plagiarized, but because the algorithm decided I’m invisible.

2. The Kafka Machine

YouTube is the modern bureaucratic nightmare Kafka never lived to see.

To qualify for monetization, you need four thousand public watch hours.

But to get watch hours, the algorithm has to show your videos to people.

And the algorithm doesn’t show your videos to people until you’re “trusted” and monetized.

That’s a perfect digital Catch-22 — a closed loop of endless labor.

I create; the machine tests my video on a handful of viewers; it doesn’t blow up in the first hour, so it’s quietly buried.

Meanwhile, “trusted” creators — many of whom violate the same terms that crushed my channel — are rewarded with front-page visibility, ads, sponsorships, and algorithmic oxygen.

YouTube calls this quality control.

I call it economic gatekeeping through automation.

3. The Cult of Clickbait

YouTube doesn’t reward art. It rewards velocity.

The algorithm’s only loyalty is to whatever gets the fastest clicks and keeps eyes on the screen the longest.

That’s why you see the same faces, the same reaction thumbnails, the same “Top 10 Shock Moments” garbage recycled a thousand times.

It’s not about originality; it’s about predictability.

The algorithm wants creators it can model, not creators who surprise it.

If your work doesn’t fit neatly into a pre-existing category — if it’s experimental, hybrid, or genre-bending — you’re considered a risk.

And risk is bad for ad revenue.

So the machine quietly caps your reach.

4. Reused Content, Reused Excuses

I once gained traction by posting short clips of musicians and cultural icons — Kurt Cobain, Jello Biafra, Keith Morris — all legally edited and contextualized.

Those videos exploded. Tens of thousands of views.

Then YouTube flagged me for “reused content.”

No strikes. No warning. Just demonetization.

The system decided I wasn’t “transformative enough.” Meanwhile, larger channels repost the same interviews wholesale and make six figures.

Because they’re “partners.” Because they’re profitable inventory.

The punishment isn’t for using the material — it’s for not being big enough to get away with it.

5. The Glass Ceiling of the Creator Economy

YouTube likes to pretend it’s a meritocracy — a digital playground where anyone with a camera and an idea can “make it.”

That myth is the carrot on the stick that keeps the treadmill turning.

But behind the curtain, there’s a glass ceiling built of advertiser comfort.

The algorithm exists to maximize revenue for corporations, not visibility for artists.

Small creators are data points — unpaid beta testers training the system that will later ignore them.

You can pour ten years of your life into your craft, and a faceless “brand safety” filter will still decide your audience for you.

It’s exploitation disguised as opportunity.

6. Life Is Too Short for Robots

After over a decade in this circus, I’ve realized something liberating:

You can’t win at a rigged game.

The house always wins — and the house is made of code.

So I’m done trying to play by its rules.

From now on, I’ll post what I want, when I want, how I want.

If they take it down, fine. If they bury it, fine.

I didn’t come here to appease machines.

I came here to create.

Life’s too short to second-guess a system built by billionaires who wouldn’t last a day in the trenches of independent art.

7. What Comes After the Algorithm

Platforms like YouTube are not the end; they’re the middle.

The real work — the human work — happens in the places that algorithms can’t quantify: passion, curiosity, obsession.

I’ll keep uploading, writing, painting, and recording.

But I’ll also keep building outside the walled gardens — on Vocal, Itch.io, Archive.org, and anywhere else that still values art over engagement metrics.

Because at the end of the day, a million views mean nothing if you had to sell your soul to get them.

But a single view — from someone who understands — that’s priceless.

🩸 In the End…

YouTube’s algorithm may have the power to bury creators, but it can’t erase the reason we make things in the first place.

The artists were here before the algorithm, and we’ll be here after it forgets our names.