Thanks for the kind words everyone. I wish YouTube paid well enough to do the 4x4 adventures full time, but alas it does not. It doesn't even cover fuel expenses. Sadly, injecting drama, click-bait titles, and scantily clad women in your videos boosts views and revenue, but I won't stoop to that level. Kudos to groups like expedition overland for making such a successful video series without any of that garbage.
I appreciate the kind words from those who like what they see. It's too bad that creators mostly hear from the grumpy complainers. Just like how watching the news for hours on end is depressing, so is being a smaller YouTube creator. 90% of the comments we receive are negative, judgmental, and downright cruel. If it were paying well, it'd be worth the abuse, but this is a labor of love. It's been a way for me to give back to the 4x4 community, but it's exhausting getting picked apart for every little thing. There are hundreds of shots I filmed, but decided not to edit because the YouTube backlash wouldn't be worth it. It's easy to pick apart what someone else has created, but not so easy to be a creator. I don't know if it's the anonymity, entitlement, the American Idol mentality where everything is a judged contest inviting people to rank everything, or people's insecurity that causes them to hop on to YouTube and pick creators apart.
I wish YouTube had a filter that would only show comments from people who have posted 10 or more videos of themselves. It would really change the tone of comments. The negative nancies are never creators themselves.
