Questions from Patreon Part 52 - Content vs Personality
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https://www.patreon.com/SebastianSB/
Jenna Paikowsky: With the parasocial relationship video rattling around in my brain, I have an offshoot question. When planning a channel, or potential changes to a channel, how do you balance the demands of audience members who are very content focused versus those who are more into the parasocial side of fandom and are into personalities?
I am a very content focused person. As long as the person meets the basic bar of not being super-annoyingly hyper or completely monotone, I am much more interested in what games they are playing or types of videos they produce. I donate to you on Patreon because you fill a very specific niche that I found lacking and was frustrating me, you finish the series you start.
You mentioned Dodger in the parasocial video and that is what brought this to mind. She is a person who really cultivates her audience with her personality. She used to have a vlog series and now that she has moved to Twitch, spends a lot of time chatting with her community. I found her a long time ago on YouTube when she was playing Hatoful Boyfriend, a dating sim involving pigeons. I really enjoyed the game and the silly voices she used and stuck around her channel for that type of content, along with her vlogs. But over time she has changed what type of games she plays, half the time does not finish what she starts, and when she switched over to Twitch, I pretty much stopped watching her. I will occasionally watch a recording that she puts up on her YouTube channel, but I have moved on to other stuff. At the same time, I know that she still has a large audience who watch her because they like her personally, and the feelings that arise from being a part of that specific community.
This of course is not to point fingers and say "how dare you change". The person making the content is ultimately responsible for their own career and doing what they want to do. But I guess that is my question, how do you figure out how to balance all of that stuff. The people like me who will nope out with large content changes they don't like on a channel, the people who will nope out with a large personality change, and your own situations and personal desires?