YouTube partnership changes

Well, I'm livid. And I apologize this is going to be scatter brained, I am writing this as my brain flounders through the situation. I'm going to do a video on it tomorrow after work, but for now I want to say SOMETHING SOMEWHERE. I've been on YouTube since the EARLY days of YouTube, like back before they were bought out by Google. And I've been a YouTube partner since 2008, but coming up in February I'll be losing my partnership status with YouTube. Because the new guidelines of the site say that you have to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months. I have 59 subscribers and just under 20,000 minuets watched for my ENTIRE channel history (or at least since Sep. 2012 when they started counting watch time). That's right around 330 hours, for about five years. And A LOT of that watch time was in my AMV's that I deleted when I decided to try to do YouTube as an actual way to make a living. And I didn't want to argue with copyright stuff And they want people to have FOUR THOUSAND(?!) hours watched per year? Oh, wait, not people, corporations. A lot of people have been saying for a while now that they're trying to take the “You” out of YouTube. And I've always chuckled at them. Because I had always believed that the average person making the random video was the entire point of YouTube. But I guess they want to get rid of the “Bad Actors” that have been causing problems for the site. But the problem that I see is that the “Bad Actors” are the major players on the site. Logan Paul? he's been a trending topic most of this month. PewDiePie? He's one of the highest subscribed people on the site. They are NOT going to be seeing any kind of effect of this. But some guy in Kansas trying to share is opinion on things he comes across? He's screwed. I was working on a kind of war of attrition idea when it came to making a living on YouTube. Back several months ago they made an announcement that they're going to restrict monetisation to channels that have over 10,000 views or more on their channels entire history. I was slightly nervous as to how this would effect my channel, because a good chunk of my views are still towards my old AMV's that I have deleted and I didn't know if that would make a difference, but it didn't seem to because my videos were still monetized even after that change. heck I've even seen an uptick in income from videos, fourth quarter last year was one of the best of all times, but never more than a couple of cents a day. So it would have been a long time before I would have received a check from YouTube because they only send out a check once you reach $100 (or your countries equivalent) and by my reconing I wouldn't have recived a check for another 55 years or so, but seeing the stats tick up bit a bit every day kind of gave me hope that one day I'll make something of myself on the site. I will still make videos for YouTube (I have WAY too many video ideas just to wad them up and throw them away) But this latest news just makes the dream feel so much farther off. I've had people heavily suggest that I just focus on a niche or focus more on trends. But I don't want that kind of channel. If I want to make a video about something I want it because I wanted to make a video about something. And not because, well I can't make a video about this topic because that is outside of my topic. And I REALLY don't want to make videos that only follow trends. Because A) You'll always be a day late and a dollar short on every single topic that is popular. If you make a video because it's popular chances are every one that has something interesting to say about it has already said it. And B) You'll always be chasing the dragon {not exactly the right metaphor but try to come up with a better one}. In the meaning that what is popular today, or even yesterday will be completely forgotten tomorrow. You'll be completely throwing ever green material out the window to try to catch the hot trend for today and that just seems weak. And C) You'll just fade into the white noise. Everything you make is because a thousand other people came up with the same idea to do the same video topic. Which is kind of D) as well. If you're only making something because a thousand other people are doing the same video why call it YOUTube. I think that's enough of a rant for tonight, I have to work early tomarrow, and I have to come up with those store stories lol