On a cool night in 2009, a nine-year-old, ruddy-cheeked kid was about to make the biggest mistake of their young life. They were about to look up photos of the then-Nicktoon Penguins of Madagascar. After a few clicks, they found themselves on a shady YouTube-esque website that only had links to YouTube videos. They watched a lot of YouTube AMVs featuring clips from their favorite show. The first of those videos being “I’ll Make a Man out of You”, sung by Donny Osmond, featured in the film Mulan. Other songs include Brittney Spears’s “Circus”, another song that they have never been able to track down that they only know now as “All About All About Love”, and the first ever YouTube Poop they watched titled “King Julian Dies”. That last video was something that they loved, considering they hated King Julien at the time. Eventually, this would lead to them getting a laptop for Christmas, that would be hooked up to a decent dial-up connection from Excel (then a subsidiary of the Canadian Bell corporation) which, on this day 15 years ago, would be used to make their own YouTube channel: Rusty3921. I know that story all that well, because that nine-year-old was me.
Yes, it is officially 15 years since I started my internet footprint, barring being a regular member of the Nickelodeon message boards. I wonder if I just doomed my YouTube channels into being deleted just because I admitted that they were made by someone under the age of 13 (and yes, I made more than one). Then again, it’s probably a good thing, considering those old channels are full of cringe and processed post-traumatic stress from my parents yelling at me for the consequences of their actions of throwing their kid in the deep end of the internet with a messy house, a decent internet connection, and a camera. But, that didn’t deter me from the online lifestyle, far from it. My footprint online seems to go far and wide, from forums to Twitter, from this blog to YouTube, from RetroJunk to a QR Code generator that I refuse to pay for because it sucks. Yeah, I’m in internet rehab as we speak.
Of course, the one centerpiece of my internet life that I absolutely tried to make work was my YouTube channel. No matter what I did, what editing software I used, what cockamamie video ideas, rants, and honest to god emotional breakdowns disguised as bad Windows 7 Movie Maker slideshows of fursuiters accompanied by a song from They Might Be Giants about a man who strangles himself to death after getting stood up on a date I had, I never, ever reached “YouTube Stardom”, whatever that meant. I did manage to alienate a few people, both online and off, but otherwise, I’m about as unknown as that hip young old guy who picked up his prescription Viagra at the Walgreen’s. Of course, relative anonymity is a blessing, unless you’re trying to make a living in the creative field and you rely on people liking your stuff so much that they’re able to support you via Patreon.
Yes, for seven years, I have tried, in vein, to support my floundering YouTube channel, that people only go to for funny FRC moments and Voss Water with a Patreon…and in that seven years, I have managed to only attract…3 people…and not all at one time, the most I was able to manage was 2…and I haven’t had anyone join since the end of 2021. For the 7 years I had that Patreon active (and deleted SO many posts) I have only received…about $100. Hey, that’s about $14.29 per year, I’m sure that’s minimum wage somewhere…like North Korea.
So, at the start of this year, I declared the Patreon page for my YouTube channel a failure and closed it. Of course, my financial situation has changed. I’m currently in between jobs, and my trust fund money is pretty well dried up. So, as you can see, I could use some funds to tithe me over, and also give me a nice little “side hustle” as the twats say. Basically, this is a long way for me to say that I am reintroducing my patreon, but for this blog.
There are only two tiers: the Tip Jar tier for only $1 for those who only want to support the website, and the $5 VIP tier, for those who want to read my next blogs a week early. If I timed it right, the next blog post should already be there by the time this is posted, and if not, then it should be around in a day or two.
I hope to see you there! The link is right here.
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