Why I’ve Started a YouTube Channel

Is it really that cringe? It certainly doesn’t have to be.

I just opened Medium for the first time in a few weeks. I know, I know — I should really be on here more often. But I have an excuse.

I have just finished my final exams and am soon to be graduating with my Bachelor’s degree. In 7 days from today, I will be moving out of the town I have called my term-time home for the last three years and, shortly after that, moving to a totally strange city to start a totally strange career.

That, if you ask me, is pretty exciting. And a pretty good reason to have given Medium the cold shoulder for a little while. My apologies to anyone who would’ve considered themselves a regular paying customer of my content!

That said, you can now find me on YouTube instead!

Why am I now on YouTube?

I came to YouTube for four reasons.

1. It’s fun!

In a time when I’m actively trying to shut myself off from other social medias, I do still find myself coming back to YouTube again and again. It’s a source of knowledge and entertainment, for me, like no other platform. There is such variety on there — from memes to short films, from entire documentaries to funny sketches or to-camera monologue vlogs — that it can scratch any digital whim or fancy.

There are a number of YouTubers that I have really looked up to over the years. One of them is Cosmic Skeptic — a philosophy student, now graduate, who started making videos on philosophy and religion when he was at college and now makes it his full-time job. Watching his transition to veganism was influential in me making my own changes. Plus, I was lucky enough to have dinner with him few months ago, and he genuinely made YouTube sound like a hell of a lot of fun.

Another recent favourite of mine is Mark Lewis in the health and fitness niche of YouTube. Any followers of mine might know that I’m very keen on my fitness, and while that isn’t due to Mark, it’s certainly helped by his insightful and often very funny videos on the topic. He even commented on my first YouTube video!

Given how much I enjoy YouTubers like these, there is such a lot of fun in effectively trying to mimic their process, to come up with videos that I might enjoy, and planting myself on what I consider to be their platform. I have almost no equipment or software, very few videography-relevant skills, and almost no experience in making videos. But that doesn’t mean YouTubing can’t be fun.

And let me tell you: it is!

2. It’s useful!

My job, which I start 3 weeks from today, will be as a campaigner for a leading vegan charity. The job role is incredibly varied from day-to-day, but I can only imagine that having some level of skill in front of and behind a camera will be incredibly useful. Whether that’s producing short films of investigations, street activism videos, speeches, or anything else — I figured that being able to film and edit videos will be of some importance.

So far, I’ve learnt a whole lot about cameras and video editing software — and, more excitingly, I now know just how much more there is to learn. Before, I’d watch one of Mark’s videos and thing ‘Gee, that’s a good video’. But I never truly appreciated all the minutiae that go into editing those videos. Smooth transitions and well-made animations now boggle my mind; they used to merely minorly impress.

There’s certainly a lot to learn, then — but the progress I’ve made in simply feeling comfortable with video-making technology feels like an incredibly useful progression.

3. It’s good for keeping in touch with people

I mentioned above that I’m moving away to a totally strange city to start a totally new career. That’s a big thing in anyone’s life. I will be at least three hours from any of my family members as well as from most of my current friends. It’s certainly daunting, but, mostly, it’s exciting.

I keep in touch with my friends and family all the time through text and social media, of course. But it’s hard to properly convey a life through text and photos alone. Videos seem like a far better way of showing my friends and family what I get up to — and they already have been! In my last few weeks here at university, I’ve made half a dozen videos of kayaking, hiking, swimming.

Already, these have been really great ways of showing my family the sorts of things I’ve been doing in my post-exam, post-degree, pre-job freedom. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my life via video to people I’m close to. Frankly, I don’t mind all too much whether strangers like my videos — although it is nice to have my work appreciated by those who could equally well ignore it or hate it!

4. Memories.

This might be the most important reason for my having started a YouTube channel when I have. I am in a period of my life that is effectively a whirlwind of events right now. I am going from a relaxing week seeing friends, swimming in the local river and sunbathing, to upping and shifting my life from one side of the country to the other, to starting a new job, in the space of a month.

I have a feeling, then, that this month will be one that I will want to remember. A lot has happened. A lot will happen. If I can capture any of these precious memories on camera and store them on YouTube for myself in, say, ten or twenty years to look back on and smile at, then I’d say setting up this channel now has been a fantastic idea.

I am ready to move on in life — but that is not to say that I want to leave my present life behind. Archiving it on the internet as videos and snapshots seems like it’ll pay dividends in the future.

Is YouTube still worth it?

Let’s circle back. I opened Medium for the first time in weeks earlier today. The very first article that popped up was this one:

In it, Isaiah McCall argues that YouTube is a dying platform and that TikTok is replacing it. He seems to have little fondness for either platform, to be fair, but his arguments seem relatively sound. YouTube does seem to be in a period of turmoil with censorship and creators leaving or criticising the platform.

Still, though, it isn’t impossible for new creators to make it big. Mark Lewis’s story proves that: a year ago, two years ago, he was a small-time creator. Now, he’s huge.

But even if it were, that isn’t the reason I’ve started the channel. I don’t particular want to be a YouTuber — as in, a full-time content creator on YouTube, vlogging everything I ever do.

Rather, I like being small-time. I like making little videos of going kayaking with my partner, or hiking with my brother. I enjoy the prospect of filming fun things for my present friends and family and my future self to look back on and see what life was like for Rory Cockshaw, circa 2022.

It’s an enjoyable thing, a pleasant thing, and a useful thing. So if you want to smash that like button, then fantastic. If you don’t, then no harm done. I like what I make enough to make it for the sake of it. And when I stop enjoying it, I’ll stop doing it.

Such should be the way with life — especially life on social media.