## Highlights One percent of channels ever make it past a hundred thousand subscribers, and that number is important because it's the very rough benchmark of making a reliable living off YouTube. Although I have seen some enterprising channels do it with far less. Out of those people, only 0.02 percent of channels ever surpass a million subscribers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq6gs09c0p0ptvma9h0gd95k)). ^oskww7 To me, YouTube videos are a little piece of who you are and what you care about, compressed into video form and shot across the internet ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq6hv61sep73yncndfzew5wb)). It becomes a measure of you both as a professional and as a creative, an undeniable metric for how valued you are as a human ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq6k0sh7f2k6ctt00vfz6qbq)). ^q66g8g People getting a little dopamine rush for those first couple of dozen views leads to the obsessive cycles of behavior we've talked about. This is clearly not for the benefit of creators; who it benefits is YouTube. It is a system they have facilitated to keep people scared and pumping out content that keeps the platform afloat ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq6kajm49b8rq62q87v7ed84)). ^cboenc The way media and technology has gone, it's conditioned us to believe that our creations only have value if someone else is watching. And it's not true. There is nothing wrong with you if other people don't pay attention to your art. That art is for you; that is enough ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gq712vzv8t08cyzyedmdvgyr)). ^hcmby7