Michaël | HouseStationLive.com<p>YOUTUBE'S BENCH<br>May 5, 2025</p><p>I spent 18 months trying to make it on YouTube: livestreams, editing, shorts, chaptered reviews, commentary, no shortcuts. I got silence in return. This is not a rant. Not a thread. Just a text — written at 5:09 AM, on May 5, 2025 — when I realized the algorithm had never planned to let me play.<br>¯</p><p>_<br>5:09 AM</p><p>I can’t sleep. These past few days have been chaotic. My dream of becoming a YouTuber has collapsed. Eighteen months of relentless work, only to realize: insisting any further would just be a waste of time. I don’t have the right profile. I don’t meet the criteria. I bring no fame to the table, and I can’t afford to build it. YouTube doesn’t want me. My videos are online, I follow all the rules, but I’m playing alone in a corner. No one’s looking for me. No one’s finding me. The algorithm put a dunce cap on my head. But YouTube doesn’t humiliate people individually. That’s the magic of the system: no one is more important than the platform itself. The logo is huge. Your channel name? Tiny. Your avatar? Hidden. Your link? Buried. Your calls to action? Ignored. You’re not at home on YouTube. You’re on their turf. YouTube is the only star. And to keep it that way, it rotates the faces in the spotlight. No YouTuber is bigger than YouTube.</p><p>The algorithm decides. The algorithm selects. The algorithm benches you like a football coach who makes five billion players believe they’re all starters. You’re on the bench. You stay on the bench. And you can’t leave. Two views. Three. Sometimes twelve. Rarely seventeen. Everyone sees you sitting there, waiting for your moment. But it never comes. Even when another player gets injured and there’s five minutes left in the game, you don’t go in. You’ve become a vagrant of the system. You sit there, stuck in humiliation. And the worst part is, your failure is public. Your “3 views” are carved in stone. Everyone sees them. Like a giant sign saying: “Look at this loser.”</p><p>So I ask myself: what did I do to YouTube? Did I kill their mother? Did I insult their religion? No. It’s just how they operate. A massive filtering strategy. Let everyone in, hoping to spot one Samuel Étienne, tired of French public TV, one Jamy, bored with his retirement. YouTube is like a spoiled child who got a billion toys for Christmas and can’t pick one — so he chooses no one. He opens them, discards them, sighs, and moves on. He doesn’t need to choose. He’s no longer capable of it. So he stops choosing. And we, we stay there, hoping to be picked. Still believing in the miracle. Because despite everything, YouTube has a baby face. A familiar face. You can’t really hate it. That sweet face is what makes the trap perfect.<br>¯</p><p>_<br>|| <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/HSLdiary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HSLdiary</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/HSLmichael" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HSLmichael</span></a></p><p><a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/YouTube" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>YouTube</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/Algorithm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Algorithm</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/ContentCreators" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ContentCreators</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/Shadowbanning" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Shadowbanning</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/Burnout" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Burnout</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/PlatformCapitalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PlatformCapitalism</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/DigitalCreativity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DigitalCreativity</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/Fediverse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Fediverse</span></a> <a href="https://hear-me.social/tags/HSLtv" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HSLtv</span></a></p>