Talking About My Creative Process and Motivations

After months of emotionally taxing content, I need a breather to create something light and personal, yet uniquely mine.

For about six months now, this channel has been one extremely intimate, revealing, painful, and emotionally taxing video after the other. Every other month, it's about themes such as "to love another person is to acknowledge that you're never going to be complete" or "this cute thing that I started doing quickly turned in a way for me to stamp out my own agency in my adulthood" or "the only legacy you ever leave behind is a lifetime of miscommunication." To be honest, I've got a video plan that's going to cut deeper than anything I've ever put onto this channel before, or at the very least, one that's going to be cutting into me deeper than anything I've ever made. That's kind of just what this channel is most of the time nowadays. While I wouldn't change that for the world, I need a little breather before I can move on to my next batch of extremely intimate, revealing, painful, and emotionally taxing videos.

To that end, I've titled the text document that I'm writing this script in something stupid. I just need to make a video that doesn't hurt me to make. I didn't even know what this video was going to be about until a few sentences ago. All I knew was that compared to a psychoanalysis of my theory and dissociation or a documentation of my experiences with generational trauma, this one was going to be something stupid. I was thinking I'd either give my thoughts on the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection and document how faithful these ports of my all-time favorite game series are, or I'd make a quick video about how much I love my Steam Deck, especially after setting up a Nintendo Switch-style docking setup so I can quickly and seamlessly move my games from the living room to the porch and back again. But the problem with those two ideas is that anybody can make them, and I haven't committed six years of my life to this channel just so that I can make videos that anybody else could make. Even when I need a break like right now, I only want to make videos that only I could make.

So, let's talk about my creative process—something only I can talk about. Let's talk about why I do the things I do on this platform. Let's talk about why Leadhead is so weird. In this video, we're going to be covering my ever-changing creative motivations and the very concrete and definable creative goals that I've had for my work over the years, as well as some stuff about my writing process, filming, and editing, and finally how I engage with the meta side of YouTube—everything outside of actually making the videos. I think almost two years after announcing it, I've finally figured out what exactly Leadhead Phase 2 is, and wow, I did not realize it's been a whole two years.

Here's some background for you. A little over six years ago, I was thinking about how Prey 2016—I'm sorry, 2017—capitalized on its themes of empathy to draw parallels between the parasite-minded Typhon species and the players themselves, who will happily quick save a game just to try and kill all of their allies out of boredom because, like the Typhon, players lack empathy for those NPCs. I thought this meta-narrative was so interesting that I made a YouTube channel, and my very first video was discussing Prey's meta-narrative. After messing around making similar videos about artful games and the ways that they capitalize on their medium for a while, I set my sights on Metal Gear Solid 2, which was my favorite game of all time back then. To be honest, sometimes it still is.

Art is a mirror reflecting our personal insights and growth.

The MGS2 video had to be perfect. I had so much to say about this game. Whereas almost every script I've ever written for this channel is put together in about three days—sometimes less, sometimes a little more—I spent about four months on the MGS2 script. Once everything had taken shape for me, I realized that everything that the game was talking about was incredibly relevant to a YouTuber making video essays about art. MGS2 is all about how the objective, authoritative perspective of art and its meaning is functionally useless in a world which can only ever be perceived subjectively by its inhabitants. That's when I realized what the purpose of my channel was. That video was where Leadhead Phase 1 began.

Leadhead Phase 1 was primarily about me trying to teach people how to use art as a mirror. In my mind, the greatest function of art in a conscious society is to let viewers vicariously experience all sorts of scenarios and emotions, and then to teach us lessons about ourselves. We can use art as a mirror to learn about ourselves and become better people, and video games can absolutely be a part of that. The motivation behind almost every video I made for a few years was to create a counterpoint to videos with titles like "The Shining Ending Explained" by focusing on my own subjective interpretations. I didn't want to talk about the author's intentions; I wanted to talk about what these things said to me and how I personally related to all of this art I was observing.

In my mind, it was a good way to tell bits and pieces of my life story while setting a positive example for my viewers that all the art they consume is ultimately about them. I always hated the idea of people seeing a video like mine on the Roger Waters album "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" and coming out of it with the perspective that everything I said is exactly what Waters intended. Truth be told, that video was just about the voice in my head that tells me how fun it would be to delete my channel and start using drugs again. I've never had any interest in Roger Waters's intentions; that video was just another example of how you can gain a lot of personal insight by making the art you consume about you.

So, I made videos like that for a few years. When I could, I would relate the art I was talking about to my personal life experiences, but mainly I just wanted to show people that there is value in subjective opinions. This is where I initially got the idea in my head that I only ever wanted to make videos that only I could make. If I were just going and watching a bunch of Roger Waters's interviews and researching his personal life at the time, I would only ever be able to regurgitate the same facts that everyone else already has access to. By essentially banning concrete behind-the-scenes context from my scripts, I was making videos that were coming solely from me and the art that I was consuming, and I was proud of that. It felt more transformative that way; it felt less like I was just a leech.

It was around that time that I was working on the MGS2 video that I rewired my brain to stop myself from watching any other videos for similar reasons. I watch a Folding Ideas video on occasion because most of his subjects are so far from the type of things I cover, but that's about it. No more Noer for me. However, as time went on, my life got more and more interesting, and the list of games, movies, or music that I felt I had anything original to say about grew shorter and shorter as I slowly worked through all these things that I really cared about. But more to the point, when almost every single one of my videos was being made with that exact same motivation of teaching people how to use art as a mirror, it started to feel more and more like I was just making the same video over and over again, and the subject and surface-level message of the video was just an aesthetic flourish that got swapped out once a week. I got bored and ran out of ideas.

My videos now dive into the darkest parts of being human, but always end with hope and resilience.

Phase one of my Metal Gear Solid analysis concluded around the time I made my second and definitive Far Cry 2 video. Shortly after, I officially announced Phase 2, which was about two years ago. At that time, I had no clear idea of what Phase 2 would entail. After creating videos based on any decent idea that came to mind, I eventually decided to cover a broader range of topics that weren't strictly related to a single piece of media. Parasocial relationships, love, sobriety, puppy girls—nothing was off the table.

Over time, I realized that these videos were becoming more about myself than any specific piece of art or even art as a whole. The easiest way to differentiate this new era for my channel is that the videos about games still feel like the videos that aren't about games. Take my previous video on Ico, for example. Yes, I'm talking about the game, but ultimately, all I'm really doing is telling a very real, very personal story about something that's happened throughout my life using the game as a framing device. This approach was evident in my Infinite Wealth video, my Minecraft video, my newer Disco Elysium video, my Death Stranding video, and my Sims 3 video. This has been going on for a couple of years now.

Ultimately, while I've been doing this sort of thing for a while, it wasn't until recently that I saw the patterns in these Leadhead Phase 2 scripts that revealed to me what my intentions have been for the last couple of years. My life got a lot more interesting a couple of years ago. All sorts of things kept happening to me as I navigated my mid-20s and slowly lost touch with my old nihilism and Carefree Outlook. As I learn and grow from all of these experiences, it's impossible for me not to see how hard of a time so many of my peers have talking about their traumas, fears, and darker thoughts. These are the types of things that don't exactly keep them up at night but will evoke incredibly strong feelings five years from now—shitty things they've done, weird rabbit holes they've let themselves get sucked into, and behavioral patterns that led to a life that feels utterly meaningless sometimes.

I go through all of that stuff just like everybody else. I just happen to be someone who's very comfortable with sharing those thoughts, stories, and scenarios with a bunch of strangers on the internet. Once I noticed that this is what my channel had become, I realized its value and finally had a creative goal once again. I want to bring people into the abyss with me. I want to put words to the nagging, painful thoughts that so many people try to ignore and repress. I want to make people confront the shittiest parts of being human and be the first person to look them in the eyes at the end of the video and tell them that it's going to be okay and that they can survive it.

This is why all of my videos, no matter how depressing or painful they might be both to create and to watch, have happy endings. My video about losing my home had an optimistic ending, and my eventual video about finding a new home ended with me feeling like I could finally heal from all the stress and relationship strains that came with relying on others for shelter. That's why I'm not afraid to make that video plan that's going to cut deeper than anything I've ever put onto this channel before. It's going to hurt me a lot when I feel like I'm finally ready to make that video, but I know that someone out there will be able to relate to it. That person will see me in these situations that they're in and be optimistic about it. By the end of the video, maybe they'll feel like they'll be able to beat the same demons that I was fighting.

There is going to be someone who can relate to it, and that person is going to see me in these situations that they're in and feel optimistic about it. By the end of the video, maybe they'll feel like they'll be able to beat the same demons that I was fighting. That knowledge is all it takes for me to feel like I'm invincible, no matter what I say about myself in these scripts. When I see the DMs and the replies telling me that even something like my video about puppy girls made them understand a part of themselves better than they ever have before and feel hopeful about a subject they went into the video afraid to even think about, I know that Leadhead Phase 2 is a worthwhile cause to dedicate myself towards. Bringing you into the abyss and showing you that there's light on the other side of it—that's what Leadhead Phase 2 is all about.

I'll be honest, that's the stuff in this video that's going to be the most interesting to me. However, for the sake of completionism, let's get around to that other stuff that I said I'd talk about. People are always asking me how I write my scripts and even asking me to proofread their scripts. I've never quite known how to tell them this, but I don't even proofread my own scripts most of the time. I think a big part of the appeal of my channel is that it feels like you're just hanging out with me, listening to me give you my thoughts. One of my favorite types of feedback I've ever gotten is that my videos feel like you're just sitting in the car with me, listening to me get super personal, like one of those conversations you have with an older sibling that you're never really going to forget.

In order to preserve that, I do my best to keep my writing as natural as possible. About two-thirds of the time, believe it or not, proofreading my scripts just gets in the way of that goal. I'm serious. Sometimes I'll go back and change a couple of things, work the metaphor of the video into the earlier sections of the script once I've written enough of it to have a firmer understanding of the mechanics of the metaphor and its function in the video, but that's about it. Most of the time, most of my writing is done exactly how those same deep conversations are had—sitting on the porch, chain-smoking for an hour or two, just working through my trauma while trying not to be too much of a downer. When I'm in the right headspace—the only headspace I'm even capable of writing in—the words just flow to me exactly how they do in those same hard-hitting conversations I'm always having on the various porches of my life.

Once I've started writing, I never get writer's block for more than a few seconds at a time as I try to readjust my head to beginning a new sentence instead of prolonging one of my many, many run-on sentences. The only part that I sometimes struggle with is the happy ending. Usually, I save my traumatic experiences for long enough that the happy ending has actually happened by the time I get around to writing about it all. But in some cases, like my Minecraft video, there is no happy ending, and I'll spend days or even weeks trying to figure out a way to end the story that I'm telling that leaves the viewer with some sort of warm feeling as a reward for facing the cold personal stories that these videos are usually all about.

If you watched my last video on Eco, you might remember that I straight up had to pause all work on my channel for a few days just so that I could wait for the happy ending to happen so I could write about it earnestly instead of just writing down how I assumed I was going to feel. As a result, I got an even happier ending than I was planning on and got to talk about reconnecting with my family in a way that I honestly was not even expecting to be a part of that story, and the video is a lot better for it. Truth be told, I felt really bad about how negative that video was towards these people who have helped me so much, but that ending is what made it feel right for me to say all those things.

Writing regularly transformed my ability to communicate clearly and confidently, even in casual conversations.

The video is a lot better for it, truth be told. I felt really bad about how negative that video was towards these people who have helped me so much, but that ending is what made it feel right for me to say all these things. Unfortunately, if you were coming here for practical advice about writing video essays, I really don't have too much to share. These things are so different from what most people think of when they think of video essays. They aren't critical, they aren't researched, they aren't based in fact; they're just kind of raw, chaotic self-expression. The only real advice I have about writing is to do what feels natural to you and don't do anything else.

There's a lot more nuance to writing than a lot of people realize. Everybody who's worth a [] has their own style, and to become worth a [], you have to spend a long, long time honing that style. That said, I do have one piece of advice that might help keep you encouraged over that process of developing your own style. Earlier in this script, I said something about the words in my scripts flowing just as easily for me as the words I use in those same conversations. I thought for a second about how many people in my audience might not be able to relate to that sentiment at all. I know a lot of people who aren't so good at forming their thoughts into sentences. To be honest, I was horrible at it before I started this channel, as you can probably tell from my early videos. However, as I wrote and wrote and wrote, eventually I got really good at pushing my thoughts through the mesh filter of language.

If we were having a one-on-one conversation, I could tell you exactly how I feel about anything without ever having to pause for more than a second or two, assuming I'm familiar with the subject to begin with. I know that this whole video has already been super self-congratulatory, so I'm not even going to stop myself from saying that I'm pretty sure I'm better at communicating my thoughts than anybody else I know. And God, that is such a sharp contrast from how I was before writing became a regular part of my life. So hey, if all of that stuff I said earlier about how you have to spend years developing your own writing style was discouraging, getting better at communicating with your peers is a much faster benefit to practicing writing and something that can really help you feel like you're progressing as a person. Even if your progress as an artist is a little bit slower to unfold, you can look forward to always having something to say and very rarely getting lost in thought mid-conversation as you try to process your feelings about the world around you.

Of course, that also just comes with growing older, but ironically, sitting down and writing my feelings down for you all has been the number one thing that's helped me develop my skills with other people. Honest writing so much has kind of made me a better flirt too, so if that's your thing, you can look forward to that.

Okay, I promised I'd talk about how I film and edit these videos, but fair warning, this part is going to be embarrassing. I am not a professional in the slightest. As a matter of fact, this is the third time I've had to record this entire probably 40-minute video because I just keep on being lazy or messing up something with Audacity. So look, the most fundamental thing about using a green screen is to make sure that the green screen is as evenly lit as possible. While I'm super thankful that I have a room that's dedicated exclusively to filming after years of doing it in my living room, my bedroom, or my mom's hoarder closet, this room is just way too small to do what I need to do in terms of lighting my green screen.

Master your green screen setup by being smart with your shots and edits, even if you're working with limited space and budget.

If you're smart about how you edit things and what shots you choose to attempt in the first place, you can make it work. However, honestly, you want a lot more space than I have. I have to sit in a very particular pose, or else my head, hands, and feet no longer fully elude the green screen and they just get cropped out. Alternatively, I have to slap some secondary footage over a part of the video where it doesn't feel natural to compensate for my financial and spatial limitations.

I use a Canon M50 with its stock lens to film, although using the stock lens is definitely not good. I think I want one with a wider lens, but I don't even know what I'm talking about with this stuff. Additionally, I have a cheap little teleprompter that I just slap my phone onto. It's a sort of 45-degree angle one-way mirror with a camera right here and a phone projecting inverted text right here, so it reflects off and I'm able to look directly at you while still reading the words on the script. If you ever see me fiddling with this remote in a video, it's actually just me adjusting the scroll speed or manually scrolling the teleprompter app on my phone. No, I do not just memorize my own scripts—that would be completely insane, especially with my scatterbrain. Honestly, half the time I can't even stick to the script as I'm reading it.

As far as camera settings go for the green screen, I'm really just not the person to talk to about this stuff. Ideally, you want your scene to be lit way more brightly than I'm able to do, so I have to adjust my camera settings far from the ideal to accommodate for that. Essentially, you want to keep the ISO as low as possible, which is going to make your scene darker, but raising the ISO introduces video noise and all sorts of other artifacts. So, you just need to find a good balance that fits with your lighting setup. Honestly though, the best that I can do for you in terms of the technical side of this stuff is to direct you to a YouTuber Wolf Omry and his series on green screen filming. It's actually been super helpful to me, even if I don't have the same spatial or financial budgets that he has.

In terms of green screening yourself into game worlds specifically, this is something I can give a little bit more insight on because I've done it a lot at this point. The fundamental thing that you need to be very specific about is the camera angles that you're trying to film yourself into. It needs to make spatial sense or at least look like it might make spatial sense. Plausible deniability is all we're really going for here. That's why you never really see the legs of my chair. Try out a bunch of different slightly adjusted angles in the video games and see if you're able to make any of them look natural. A lot of games are extremely finicky with how you're able to film them. Some games just have no-clip modes, free cam mods, FOV sliders, or the ability to hide your weapons either through in-game actions, console commands, or debug menus. But some games, oh my God, some games make it difficult. Third-person shooters where your character is always on screen are about to become your worst enemy.

For example, in a shot at the end of the Death Stranding video, I had to position Sam in such a specific way where he was just barely hidden. In fact, I believe I actually had to build a structure to put him onto so that by putting the camera in front of the structure, it would push closer to Sam and less of him was on camera. Then, I was able to crop him out, only losing a little bit of the total clarity of the picture. Headbob is also going to be the bane of your existence. Let me show you what all I have to do to get a solid background shot in Metal Gear Solid 2, one of the absolute worst offenders for filming green screenable background footage.

Getting the perfect green screen shot in Metal Gear Solid 2 is a nightmare, but it made me a pro gamer!

When filming green screenable background footage, there are several challenges to consider, especially in games like Metal Gear Solid 2. Standing up in first-person mode introduces a significant head bob, making it impractical for capturing smooth footage. Unless positioned on a staircase to adjust the perspective, Raiden's standing viewpoint is too tall for shots where the space where the chair contacts the floor is meant to be just out of view. Crouching slightly reduces the head bob but doesn't eliminate it, making it another impractical option.

One of the only ways to make the head bob nearly invisible is by going prone. However, Raiden's perspective when prone is far too low to be useful. Fortunately, in first-person mode, holding R2 and L2 allows Raiden to peak upwards, maintaining a negligible head bob while raising the angle. Despite this, the angle is often still too low for the desired camera shots. Positioning on a staircase can help, but Metal Gear Solid 2 has very few staircases that aren't connected to narrow catwalks, which are too small to fit a chair and side table.

To avoid the head bob, a secret trick involves pressing Raiden against a wall, which lowers the head bob even more than proning. The issue arises when tilting Raiden's head for different angles, as this causes him to lose contact with the wall, bringing back the head bob. Consequently, most green screen shots had to be filmed with the camera pointing straight forward, exactly 90 degrees perpendicular to the wall and parallel to the floor. Maintaining this position requires continuously holding the movement stick forward and the R1 button to stay in first-person mode, making each shot a physically demanding task.

Additionally, there's no way to jump to a specific level in the game without having multiple save files at various points in the story. This means that capturing a specific shot, like one with the Tengu in the background, involves loading the latest save file and playing through the game for 30-40 minutes just to see if the shot is feasible. If it isn't, the process must be repeated. This rigorous process has inadvertently made me an incredible Metal Gear Solid 2 player, even achieving a Big Boss rank playthrough for the first time, which was a significant achievement for me.

However, this level of effort shouldn't be necessary. Many games have insane limitations that require learning obscure mechanics, like the nuances of a 2001 game's first-person head bob. In contrast, covering a Source engine game is much simpler. Using Garry's Mod, I can load maps and assets, place lights and cameras, and use console commands to quickly jump from map to map and adjust the field of view. I can even create a green screen within Garry's Mod for special effects, achieving more even lighting than with traditional methods.

Creating content is about having fun and pushing your creative boundaries, even if it means navigating a jagged workflow and facing your insecurities.

Truth be told, the thought of pushing this insanely jagged workflow through the tarpit of having to use a capture card and then transfer the files from my PS4 to my computer is the main reason that I haven't done another video on The Last Guardian yet, even though I really want to. Anyways, now you've got your perfect footage, traumatized though you may be, so all you have to do is toy around with color correcting your real-life footage until it looks like it belongs in the scene. Sometimes using multiple color correction layers for different parts of your footage is necessary. Like you might have noticed in my eco video, I had my BB pod lit more brightly than usual. In fact, I'm going to do it in this video too. Let me just demonstrate: if I put my hand here, you'll see it's brighter than it's supposed to be. That's because there's an invisible mask going all around this that is its own color correction layer to make it look like it's glowing brighter than the LED inside. Oh well, turns out the batteries are not in there, but brighter than the LED inside would allow it to do on camera.

Sometimes you'll even want to do animated color correction masks for things like flickering lights. You can see that at work in my infinite wealth video, where in the first or second shot where I'm outside on Ichiban's porch, you can see the neon light over on the right side of his porch shining onto me in a dynamic way. This part is both fun and a complete cakewalk compared to actually getting the background footage in question. A couple of other tricks you can do are to apply a noise effect to all of your footage to make the video game footage look like it might just have been filmed with the same camera as your real-life footage. If you want to get fancy with it, you can even apply a small, subtle amount of camera shake to the whole image to make everything feel like it's grounded in the same environment—something I also did in the infinite wealth video because that game had such a big social media theme.

So why do I do all of this? If my bragging in the earlier parts of this script is anything to go by, the real meat of my videos is absolutely the writing, right? Well, maybe it's a part of my old lead head phase one mindset creeping in. Maybe it's just something that I feel sets me apart from other creators in this space. But I've always liked the idea of my videos feeling like an extension of the game itself. At the end of the day, though, I think it's just fun for me, and that's reason enough to do absolutely anything if you're being creative—or at least almost anything. I think that's really all I have to share about the production side of things.

If you're somebody who wears makeup, you usually want to do your makeup a little bit louder and more garishly than you would in real life so that it translates better to video. Speaking of, good luck facing all of your insecurities. Looking at footage of yourself and hearing recordings of your voice for several hours a day is incredibly mentally taxing. I cannot emphasize it enough. But no matter who you are, getting comfortable with it is absolutely a skill that you can develop with time. I mean, I do it all day every day, and in spite of all my insecurities, I really don't think about it when I'm working most of the time.

Creating videos is my passion, but the moment I hit upload, it feels like trauma.

Making videos, or at least making my videos, is a challenging endeavor. Oh my God, am I horrible at just actually being a YouTuber. In a normal business, there'd be one person who writes and films the videos, maybe a second creative mind to edit them. Then, you'd have a PR person who manages social media accounts and interacts with the audience, and another person who keeps an eye on analytics and gives input on the directions that the business should be going. But as a one-person operation, I'm expected to do all of those things myself, and well, I refuse.

Whether my channel is doing well or horribly, I cannot look at my analytics without instantly spiraling into a panic attack. These videos are extremely personal to me. I say things in some of these videos that I would be nervous to say to people that I know and interact with daily in real life. The fact that tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people see these videos makes me feel like I just absolutely have to be dreaming, and that's the only rational explanation for any of this happening. My brain just cannot process that this many of you know the nuances of my relationship with my mother better than she does, or that this many of you have heard me talk about my many failed attempts to quit smoking or my history with drug and alcohol abuse. It's completely unfathomable, and so rather than fathom it, I dissociate and instantly repress as much of it as I can the moment I finish work on a video.

As soon as I hit upload, I do my best to forget that I ever made whichever video I just finished. To be honest, the best way that I can put it is that every leadhead video becomes trauma for me the second I finish making it. For that last video about Eco, the song I used in the credit sequence kept on getting copyright claimed, and having to open up the premiere file twice to re-edit it again after I had already finished work on the video genuinely felt like when a shitty ex comes by your apartment to pick up their stuff after you break up with them. That really is the best way to describe the relationship I have with just about every video I've ever made.

Weirdly enough, I almost never feel that way while I'm actually working on the videos. It's just positive, positive, positive all the way up, but the second I hit upload, it instantly becomes trauma. From the moment I start working on it, from the moment I conceptualize it to the moment I hit render, I feel extremely well about everything I make, but it just so quickly goes away as soon as the prospect of other people seeing it comes up in my mind. I know that it's extremely unhealthy, but at the same time, the logical side of my brain knows that I'm making a positive impact on the world with my work, so I keep going with the caveat that I will absolutely never have the stomach to make community posts promoting my work, or go and reply to a bunch of comments, or answer every single fan DM. Hell, half the time I don't even have it in me to click on the new video to copy the link so I can make a Twitter post and a Discord ping advertising it.

As a matter of fact, once a video is scheduled to go live, I do my absolute best to stay asleep until about 1:00 p.m. the next day so that I'm not awake when the video goes up, and I hopefully get an hour or two of my day before I remember that I published a new video and start stressing out. So yeah, if you were looking for hot YouTuber tips about search engine optimization, or how to grow your audience with shorts, or communicating with sponsors, or anything like that, you've just come to the wrong person. That's all there is to it. Like I said, I think I'm pretty good at making videos, but I am not a good YouTuber by any means.

Thanks to my Patreon supporters, I can stay true to my passion and create content I genuinely love without compromising for views.

This is where my Patreon comes in. While I could shift my channel towards topics that would get me way more views by becoming a Source Engine YouTuber or making a bunch of videos about hyper-popular games like The Last of Us, Skyrim, or Five Nights at Freddy's, that stuff just doesn't interest me in the slightest. I would quickly devolve into doing the worst thing I could possibly do on this platform: making videos that anybody else could make. It's thanks to the Patreon supporters that I'm able to do this full-time without making compromises like that, which would completely kill my passion for my work.

While I still begrudgingly run ads on my videos, I'm at a point in my life where every cent counts a lot. By making my Patreon my primary source of income, I've gotten to the point where my actual audience of 300,000 or so people is less of a priority in my decision-making than a more or less direct contract with the about 300 people who pay me directly to make these videos. Suddenly, I don't have to worry about appeasing hundreds of thousands of people with each video I make. As far as I'm concerned, if I can just make those 300 or so patrons feel satisfied with the fact that they contributed to my work, I've fulfilled my end of the bargain and done everything I need to do to feel good about accepting those donations.

While I don't like plugging my stuff, if you would like to become part of the 0.1% of my subscribers that support me on Patreon, I would greatly appreciate it. The less shackled I am by advertising revenue from Google, the more I can just fearlessly be myself on this channel. I watch a lot of YouTube too, and personally, that is what I want for every single YouTuber I watch. I want to see them be themselves in spite of everything.

I hope that last segment didn't give the impression that I'm not appreciative of every single one of you because I am. Let me explain why. While the Patreon members are the ones that I feel like I literally owe these videos to financially, every single one of you who watches these videos is the reason that I can look inward towards myself and say that I've left a bigger impact on the world than anybody I know. Egotistical though it may be to think that way, I'm incredibly happy to be able to think that I can say that and genuinely believe it.

While I said earlier that I don't respond to every message that y'all send me, I do read them. The amount of times I've been told that my work helped somebody in real tangible ways with difficult things in their life is just... well, anytime that I'm worried that I'm not contributing enough to the world, all of the stories and experiences that you all have shared with me where my videos helped you with something are enough to completely quiet that feeling.

I'm not going to be around forever. Someday, I'm just going to make my last video, and you all and myself might not even know that it's my last video. But to know that I've touched so many people's lives is just a more incredible feeling than I could have ever asked for upon entering this world about 26 years ago.

Let's wrap this up so I can get to work on something that isn't quite so self-indulgent. I can get into little conversations about this stuff with users in my Discord server from time to time, but getting to put all of this stuff out there as part of the official Leadhead video timeline or whatever has been super refreshing for me. By pure coincidence, I started work on this script almost exactly on the 6-year anniversary of my channel, and you know what? I think I'm down to go for another six and just see where this road takes me. So, I guess I'll see you all there. Thanks for watching.

Before I close out today's video, I would just like to, as always, give a verbal thanks to my Patreon supporters, especially those who are donating $10 or more monthly, such as Juniper Olive, Agatha, Sorceress Rogue Planet, Lovely Lla, Hunar, Catalina, ACC Cadre, Vivian Ling, Clever Bacon, I Teeth, Orange Remake, Camy Burger, Allison, DOD Cinema Critic, Edelis, Bri Mas, Stephanie Starfire, Pumpkin, David Braw, Alex, Isa, Oneeyed Wy, Maddie Doen, Metam Maniac, A Lunam, DJ Jax, Babylon, Broken, The Narcissist Cookbook, Yo 12, Asun, Spooky Ena, Guybrush, Lyn Payne, Mcoy Lake, Even Knight, Mr. Cocao, Gwy T, Shay Theus, Nomad, Lila, Jester Borb, Lily, Leon, FIA, Shan Hamilton, Haunted Mystic, Charlotte, Rio, Laura M, Poof Donut, Fboy Fishing, Aeat, Sylvan Pasco, Joanis, Aro, Aelia, Vegan, Nelson, Demise, Mia Maple, Nicole, George Rosenbom, Neuro Filter, The [__] Slayer, Summer, Seline, Garet, Midnight, Big Time Jim, Darius Faier, Almost Dead Again, Gab, David Kaiser, Erica, Cortisol, K Boya, and CEO.

I know that this was a super indulgent video where you could totally read it as me just bragging and being super cocky about myself for the whole 35 minutes or whatever. I think that's offset by the fact that so many of my videos are pretty raw and just about the things that are kind of horrible about me as a person. So, I figure, you know what? I deserve one where I'm just feeling myself and actually being happy with the way I'm living my life.

I guess that was a weird way to put all of that, but I'm going to get to work on something a little bit more serious. I think my next video—don't hold me to this—but I am about to start writing a script called "Demystifying Sex." That will probably be a very interesting video. No, before you ask or think this, that is not the one that's going to be cutting into me deeper than anything I've ever made before. That still has a little bit of time, let's say, in the oven before I'm ready to make that.

But yeah, I'm going to go ahead and get started on my next script. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thanks to everyone who supports on Patreon and YouTube memberships, which I'm trying to take a little bit more seriously. I know y'all have not been getting the benefits you were promised, and I'm very sorry about that. As you saw me talking about in the video, I'm pretty bad at managing the business side of this whole thing. With that, I will see you all out. Everybody, have a good week.

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=E54n6bptlJA