Vidme is shutting down and I don’t like it. Coulda’ been good, coulda’ done things the right way for content providers. At least, that’s what I WANTED it to be as Rome was burning – i.e. “The Youtube Adpocolypse”. If you are not sure what the adpocalypse is, in a nutshell, it was basically just Youtube cracking down on “non-commercial friendly content”. They did this by demonetizing that undesirable content, deleting videos, deleting channels, and other nefarious tacts to discourage and, sometimes, successfully drive off the undesirables.

You could call this censorship, however, let’s remember that Youtube is a business and it has every right to run it’s ship how it wants. As a content provider, I experienced the crunch of the adpocalypse myself, going from making fifteen to twenty bucks a month on ad revenue, to fifty cents… I shit you negative fiddy cent. So, in my experience, this apocalypse was less about getting rid of the riffraff, and more about not being able to pay out to its content providers. Everyone got hit! I made completely inoffensive videos about bigfoot, by the way, so it’s hard for my to buy into the censorship slant.

So why couldn’t Youtube pay? I’ve heard that it was because some people were successfully uploading porn and beheading videos, so, naturally the advertisers paying Youtube got spooked, up-sticks, and left, leaving Youtube unable to pay me. Thanks guys. These are all just rumors and it’s not like I’m able to talk to Youtube, all I know for sure is, is that I went from being able to buy a nice case of craft beer every month on account of my video making, to not being able to buy a candy bar. This I know for a fact. So, naturally, I chose to demonetize, as I wasn’t going to subject my audience to advertisements if I’m not getting paid. I deserved that tip money and people delivered that to me by sitting through an ad or two.

Needless to say, I now only use video sites for what they are best suited for – a promotional tool. I would pursue and create more compelling videos and get back on Adsense (Youtube/Googles revenue program i.e. how I got my beer money) if Youtube fixed itself and/or another video hosting website was able to do it right. R.I.P. Vidme, and best of luck to Youtube trying to become the next Netflix and Hulu. I don’t think people want to pay a 9.99$ subscription fee to watch scented candle unboxings and the “original content” Youtube Red is producing looks more bland and useless than a show on The WB. But then again, the Opium of the masses seems to be a nice spoonful of tripe, so, they will probably be very successful. God bless America.