The year is 2016,
That means I have been on YouTube for 10 Years
and I have seen YouTube change and develop and grow, and YouTubers come and go.
and I've had so many different channels, I've had successes and I've had failures.
And in this video I just want to focus on my journey over the last 10 Years.
And sort of some of the things that I've learned and I've seen.
So 10 Years ago I was about 10, 11, when I first got my YouTube account.
I don't know specifically the date, but I do remember being on YouTube AT LEAST by 2006.
I could have been on in 2005 but I was so young and it was so long ago, I don't even remember.
Now this account was creatively called: Jamie Whiffen. (How original)
Under my name, I had no ideas at the time, no plans to make videos, it was literally just sit and watch.
I didn't have the money, the equipment or the time or sort of anything like that to start producing my own videos.
But then that day changed when I realised, everyone was doing tutorials, computer tutorials.
Everyone was using notepad to explain their videos.
There was spelling mistakes
everyone used to do those back in the day, you would have terrible Darude, Sandstorm, music and 009 sound system.
Because I realised, I didn't need a mic, I just needed to download HyperCam 2, if anyone out there remembers HyperCam, you've been on YouTube a long time!
Especially being able to get the program for free by a guy called Gideon something.
You had to pay for it but there was a tutorial showing you the serial code, you just pasted it
and you would get HyperCam 2 for free!
and that was when my YouTube channel.... it changed, I just started to make YouTube tutorials
videos on absolutely useless stuff like how to make Star Wars appear in Command Prompt.
and how to change, like, weird settings on your computer to make your computer look cool
I don't know who was watching those, but they were starting to gain a following.
This sort of developed over time and I got some subscribers here and there.
Nothing entirely special, but I just did that for a while as a kid
and it started to develop and I eventually got a video camera, well my parents got a video camera
and I realised, 'Hey! I could get them to record me and make videos!'"
So I got my dad to record me doing magic tricks in my bedroom, I remember that quite well.
and that lasted for a few years until I was in secondary school when
friends I guess got jealous and decided to mass report my channel
everyone flagged it at the same time for absolutely no reason at all
and because YouTube was so early back in those days
There were no moderators that would look at it, if a computer saw 6 or 7 reports within the space of 2 hours it would be like 'INSTANTLY BLOCKED!'
and I lost that channel, I lost everything
and I was forced to rebuild on my second channel, creatively called 'Whiffen'!
I just scrapped the Jamie out of that part!
I just started to do the same thing with the tutorials and that eventually led to the biggest part of my YouTube career
which was my gaming channel which to this day has got over 26,000,000 views and nearly 100,000 subscribers
Its been my most successful thing that I've done
and this all started to happen around 2008, it was nice to start over again as it gave me a fresh start
a beginning
As you can probably tell, this is not that channel, this a third channel now, which is unrelated to gaming and more more about me and photography and film making.
But by this point its 2008 and I've seen YouTube develop and change, the homepage was ALWAYS changing
I remember when people first went to Vidcon and it was really weird to just see this popular YouTubers
like one would live in New York and one would live in LA and you'd get one in England like Charlieissocoollike.
He was the biggest guy, you have Ray William Johnson, he was the biggest guy.
and when you started to see all this personalities meet and you'd see them in one video, I think it was the first every Vidcon
it was like mind blowing and now obviously you see YouTubers collaborating all the time.
But back in the day I remember them first meeting, I think it was Toby Turner and iJustine
and Smosh at a resturant or something
and it was like "Whaaaaaaaaaa?!" everyone is together!
It was just really weird!
So the Whiffen channel was around for a while, it was doing the tutorials but it wasn't growing that much.
But this is where those friends that reported my channel and got it blocked were..... I guess they redeemed themselves.
Because those two started to make their own gaming videos on Minecraft
and I happened to watch that video and think that looks like a lot of fun!
To sort of record your gameplay as I was fascinated by the fact that I could do a lets play of me playing Minecraft
and I could read the comments of people watching me play and they could say
oh at 3 minutes 12 you missed this Diamond block and I could go back the next episode and find it
It kinda blew me away having that interactivity
so I started to do that and the videos weren't that great at the start
I mean I was SUPER nervous the first time, I remember sweating, absolutely everywhere
I had a red face, I was really really nervous. I'll show you a clip right here
Young Jamie: If you push 'i' it will come up with your inventory, this is where your armour would go
Young Jamie: this is your inventory, this is obviously the scroll bar down here and this is the crafting bench.
So if we put our one piece of wood we can make wooden planks.
I think my confidence has grown, I can now talk straight to the camera this easy with absolutely no problem
and slowly I started to develop a style, my voice, I found it, I me someone called PapaSmurf124
We used to make a bunch of videos together and that helped me get really into Minecraft as we played a bunch of games.
It was so much fun to do.
Cut ahead like 2 years in, 3 years in to 2012 and I got a Machinima contract which in the day was the best thing ever
you couldn't beat it, Machinima contracts were like *Kisses hands like a little Sweet French Man tasting his stew"
The diamond!
Everyone hates them now, I hate them now, its why I don't make many videos on that channel anymore
because they made me sign a contract signing my life and channel away.
For 7 years!!
I'm still not out of the contract until 2019, it's 2016 right now, I've been in there since 2012!!
They take all of your money and they control everything, its horrible. It's horrible!
If you happen to be doing a gaming channel, just as a side note, do not sign with Machinima.
There are plenty of other networks now but at the time they were the only one.
