NO MORE SWIMMING UPSTREAM! (Patreon)

Okay. Weeeeell... I hope this is the last time I'll feel a need to write about any of this.

It has been a long old road, but I've decided to stop trying to swim upstream with Biffovision/Digitiser. I'm fighting a losing battle. You can only keep boarding up the windows for so long before your arms get tired, and you let the rabble burst in and overwhelm you. You can only use metaphors and analogies for so long before it becomes trite.

Fact is... I've really, really loved the videos I've done with Sanja over Lockdown. Like, really loved them. Neither of us want to stop doing them. If anything, I want to do more videos with her of different sorts; they're the kind of videos we tend to watch on YouTube. Just that little bit cosier and more sincere.

But... it's pretty clear that the audience we've built up on the YouTube channel don't want that. 

The second any video goes up which isn't one featuring one of the Barshens alum - be it Lost Footage, or videos with Sanja and I in them together - we get multiple dislikes, before people could've even watched a second of them. They're simply reacting to it not being a video with the people they want to see. 

It's extremely telling that yesterday's video with Gannon has already done 70% better than any of the videos we've done since Lockdown began, and had just 1 dislike since it went up, which only arrived hours afterwards. When it's Sanja and I, we'll get at least half a dozen dislikes within seconds. Seconds!!!

And based upon yesterday's video, we now know for certain who - and why - we were getting those dislikes.

And on top of that, we shed subscribers. Not just a few - but scores of them. Every time a video goes live.. Even the most generous assessment would suggest the channel is in terminal decline if we stick with the current trajectory.

Yes, there's a school of wisdom that says don't pay attention to likes, dislikes, views, subscribers, comments... which I get. But if I'm ever to do another big, creatively challenging, project again, like Digitiser The Show, or Found Footage, Digitiser Live, or whatever... we need an audience to be there for it. I have to keep an eye on it, and I like interacting with the commenters. 

Until Covid hit, I had been running the channel more like a business for that reason... and then we switched to more personal stuff out of necessity, and it was like howling into a void when aimed at an audience that mainly just wants to see grown men and women dicking about. Albeit a void that was lobbing bricks at my wife and I. 

We'd already suffered the hit of the retro gaming crowd buggering off when I stopped covering gaming stuff.  Since the start of the year, it has been the Barshens/Cheapshow crowd.

It has been, as you know, deeply frustrating. I can't pretend that I'm not upset that Digitiser has been hijacked by Cheapshow and Barshens fans - and I can't pretend I'm not resentful towards a certain rabid section of that audience for the way they've behaved - but I have to accept that it's my fault for trying to build the channel largely on the backs of their fanbase. 

I had hoped that it'd work like a Trojan horse, and they might stick around for me when the others weren't there, but that sadly isn't the case. My on-camera presence just isn't a draw to them.

Gannon, because he is a good man, feels shit about it, but it isn't exactly his fault for being popular! Plus, at least this way I can in the future carry on collaborating with mates like Eli, Ashens, et al, because I enjoy it, without feeling my own internal resistance. 

But yeah... whatever it is that I offer, or want to do, isn't what the current audience wants to see. Digitiser - the brand - doesn't mean anything to the vast majority on there outside of the past couple of years. And on top of that, it's kind of upsetting to see people reacting to my wonderful and brilliant wife in such a negative way. She deserves better than that. 

So, I can no longer push against the perception of the subscribers we do have that my YouTube channel is essentially an extension of Digitiser The Show.

So, sod it... Biffovision - I'm now even toying with changing it back to Digitiser - will carry on as planned, in the sense that I'll still treat it like a kind of online TV channel, with short runs of different shows, and the Digi Mini-style episodes as the bedrock. And yeah, if and whenever I do another series like Lost/Found Footage that'll still be on there (as unpopular as it is with current subscribers). And it'll have Gannon et al on there, as before. 

But... stuff like storytime will no longer appear. Sanja's appearances will be limited, because I don't want her reaching a point where she feels bad because she hasn't had the decades of experience doing comedy as a Paul and Eli or Sooz.

BUT WAIT!

However, we're not going to stop filming our storytime vids. Sanja and I have toyed for ages with doing a podcast, but for now, instead, we have decided to launch a second YouTube channel. Actually, it'll likely be the Mr Biffo Number Two channel, but with a new name, rather than set up a whole new one, and it'll be just the two of us.  

We love filming together, but as a couple, want to try to find our own audience, and free ourselves from the Barshens/Cheapshow/Digitiser The Show baggage. We know it's not going to be as popular initially, but frankly... this wouldn't be done for the views. It'd be for us, and whoever wanted to watch us. If that's 15 people... so be it. If we find new viewers with none of that association with the past... then that'd be lovely. If some of you choose to watch the new channel... even better. 

When we're able, we want to take cameras out with us, and do more vlog-y type stuff, and we want to have the freedom to just be ourselves, and not feel the need to perform. There'll be a clear separation between what I do with Sanja, and what I do on the main channel... which will go back at some point to having that madcap, Tiswas-y, vibe. For now, we'll have to stick with finding ways to make it work via Zoom. 

Anyway. Yes. That's where we're at. How it'll work in terms of scheduling for both channels I don't know, but the videos with Sanja and I tend to have fewer bells and whistles as far as editing goes, and so take far less time to do. I'll probably continue in that vein with them. No idea when this'll happen, but we do have Part 1 of the Chernobyl diaries recorded, so that might be the first video on there. And it could be as soon as next week.

What we don't have yet, though, is a name for it. I'm going to be Paul on there, and not Biffo - so all suggestions welcome!

Paul