Monday, May 2, 2022
4:30 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
It’s the craziest thing, but it’s four-thirty in the morning. I’ve been up since three-thirty, and I don’t feel tired at all. I got less sleep than last night in terms of actual hours, but I feel much better. It appears that the nature and quality of your sleep matters as much or more than the amount.
It’s kind of appropriate that the very first thing I encountered this morning was a technological puzzle. I reread my journal entry from yesterday and fixed up the punctuation. And then I copied and pasted it into the Planet Doug website. And then, just for the experience, I wanted to copy it to my Patreon page. The eventual idea is to make my journal entries available there as an early-access perk for patrons before it shows up on my website. But when I went to my Patreon page, there was no way to add a post. I added one post before. And it was a simple task. There was an obvious button to click on to add a new post. And then you were presented with a menu system for selecting the type of content you wished to post, whether text or video or photographs. It functioned very much like a simple website.
However, this morning, I couldn’t find the add post button. There was no way to add a post. This confused the heck out of me right out of the gate, and I found myself doing what I always end up doing: searching all the help pages for information, and finding nothing. And then I found myself typing weird sentences into Google in an attempt to track down the answers. My Google Search History would be an interesting historical document. It might show the slow unravelling of a human mind in the twenty-first century as I type in stranger and more awkward and poorly worded questions as I try to find information that no normal human being should ever have to track down. My questions often have the tone and awkward structure of an insane mind. I always seem to be searching for the most bizarre things.
In this case, I had some surprising success. Very early on in my Google Search madness, I got a result. Someone on Reddit was asking the exact same question I was asking. And I noticed that this person got the annoying answer that everyone always gets. I find this to be another interesting aspect of human nature. People ask a question, and rather than answer that question, other people will respond with alternatives that have nothing to do with the question being asked. In fact, these answers will negate the question itself. These answers generally provide an alternative, which I suppose is helpful, but at their core, all they do is invalidate the question being asked.
In this case, the person was asking how they can post items to their Patreon page BEFORE they officially launch it. THAT was the question. Like me, they want to get their Patreon fully organized and figure out how everything works BEFORE it goes public. And that seems entirely reasonable to me. Then the question becomes, “How can I post multiple items to my Patreon BEFORE launch?” And people answer them by saying, “If you launch your Patreon page, then you can post multiple items.” And that is such a frustrating answer. It completely ignores the actual question being asked. The entire question was predicated on NOT wanting to launch. The question was how to post items WITHOUT launching. Then what is the point of answering them by telling them to launch? But people always do that.
To my delight, however, someone else replied with an actual answer. And they said that if you edit the URL in the browser window by adding /post to the end, then you will be able to post. It turns out that the capability to post items before the official launch is built into Patreon, but they don’t want you to do that. So they hide the menu item that controls it. But you can still get there with a trick by simply by altering the URL. I tried it, and it worked.
I’d like to be able to write about something else now, something from the real world, but I had no interaction with the real world yesterday that I can remember. There certainly wasn’t any memorable interaction. I spent the entire day lost in the virtual world. I completed the final set-up of two new YouTube videos for the Loop Series. However, I was still suffering pain from the memory of the long and boring video that was my previous Premiere. And I was now rethinking my plan to post all of the Loop Series as Premieres. The next two videos struck me as every bit as boring and pointless as the first Premiere. If I were in the middle of an ongoing trip, then videos like that might make sense. But now that the second trip around the Mae Hong Son Loop is over, and I’m posting the videos now, they feel devoid of story and useful content. The first video consisted of me just critiquing the layout and design and details of my bungalow in Ban Tha Song Yang and wondering if, in the context of Thailand, it was worth the cost. And I ended the video by contrasting and comparing it with the room I got at the Mitaree 2 hotel in Mae Sariang. And I guess a video like that would be fine if it was preceded and then followed by actual travel videos about my trip. But I didn’t shoot any video of the actual trip. I just rode my scooter to Mae Sariang, to Mae Hong Son, and then to Pang Mapha without shooting any video at all. So the next video consisted of me mainly talking about my new bungalow in Pang Mapha.
I created thumbnails for these two videos, and I wrote the tags and a video title. But then I was reluctant to set them as Premieres. In fact, I was reluctant to post them at all. My instinct was simply to forget they ever existed. I thought I could keep them on my YouTube channel as an archive for myself, but never make them public. But then I thought I might as well post them. And I decided to just get it over with, like tearing off a bandaid. I set one of them to go public at 5 p.m. here in Thailand, and I set the other one to go public right afterward at 5:40. And then, wisely or not, I had this idea to make the second one an Instant premiere. This is a feature that I had never used in YouTube, and I was curious how it worked. And this second video seemed to offer a chance to test it out without any real harm. So at the last minute, I changed the video from Scheduled to Private. And then at 5:45, I made it Public as an Instant Premiere.
I can’t say that the video Premiere itself was a success. No one knew about the Premiere in advance, of course, so there wasn’t much of an audience. My system listed one person as watching, but that one person was probably me. So there was actually no one there. I didn’t mind that, to be honest. The video itself struck me again as so utterly boring that I didn’t want anyone to watch it. I just wanted it to play in secret and then be forgotten. However, a few people did start trickling in. At its height, the audience probably consisted of 14 people. But when the number grew to that size, it quickly dropped down to 5 or 6 as people got bored and left. I could feel their pain, because I was equally bored.
All that being said, at least I got the experience of doing an Instant Premiere. And it’s nice to know how they actually work. The basic idea is that with an Instant Premiere, you can’t really do anything. The second you hit the button to make the video public, a 2-minute countdown begins. And the countdown defaults to the classic theme. You can’t choose which theme plays. And you can’t choose how long the countdown lasts. Nor can you insert a trailer or a redirect. At least, I saw no way of doing any of those things. The whole process was automated. I don’t know if notifications went out to subscribers. I assumed that they would, but I’m not sure about that. I saw no evidence of it.
And after that, the video played just as a normal Premiere. The Live Chat window was open, and I could leave commentary there and chat with people. And when the video ended, the Live Chat window stayed open for perhaps two minutes longer. Then it went inactive. One surprise to me is that when I selected the Instant Premiere option and saved the changes, I was not taken to the video itself. And I guess that makes sense. In order to do this, I had to be in YouTube Studio. That’s where you edit the video and make it an Instant Premiere. And when you save the changes and the video starts playing as a Premiere, you are still in YouTube Studio. And videos don’t play there, of course. So I had this momentary burst of panic as I realized that my own video was now playing as a surprise Premiere, and I wasn’t even watching it myself. I had to go find it and open it on my YouTube channel myself. That makes perfect sense, but it still took me by surprise. I quickly went to my main channel page, expecting to see the video thumbnail up at the very top as the very next video. But it wasn’t there! I had to scroll down through the long list of videos to locate it. At first, I couldn’t even find it. I’d just made the thumbnail, and I didn’t have a strong memory of what it even looked like. And I was scanning up and down and up and down my own YouTube channel, trying desperately to find my own video that was now playing as a Premiere. I was like a guy who threw a party but then had no idea where the party was taking place. YouTube never ceases to surprise me at how badly organized it can be in some areas.
The rest of the day is kind of a blur – a technological blur. I was working on more videos. I created thumbnails and completed the details for a couple more videos in the Loop Series, and I set the next one to play as a Premiere on Tuesday night of this week. Hopefully, this Premiere won’t strike me as being as painful as most of them have been so far. At least I do something in this video. I get on my scooter early in the morning, and I go to Ban Jabo. And things are happening in Ban Jabo. People there were celebrating their New Year with firecrackers and processions, and some of that is on video. And then I enjoy a coffee and some feline company as the sun rises. It’s probably too long, too slow, and too much like a guidebook entry, but at least it has some content.
I’ve noticed since I started doing Premieres that I have a tendency to treat my videos as if I’m creating a guide to these places rather than an entertaining video about my personal experiences. And given my personality, that makes sense. My instinct is always to organize and sort information. I’m currently editing the final video in the Loop Series, and this video is about visiting Zone 2 of the Chiang Dao Cave. But I’m now acutely aware of my plans to show this video as a Premiere. And when I look at it through that lens, I notice that half of the video or more is just me giving information about the temple and the cave, how it is organized, and how one would go about visiting this place. And it is probably a bad idea to do that.
From this perspective, all this pain I’m going through with these Premieres could be a good thing. I’m being forced to view my own YouTube videos through the eyes of another person. And that is presenting me with a lot of new information, most of it negative and painful, but at least new.
And I understand all that. I understand why my videos are not very popular. However, I do end up wondering about the things that other YouTubers get away with. In recent days and weeks, there has been a flood of YouTube travel vloggers returning to Malaysia. I think these YouTubers all realized the same thing: that Malaysians are an eager audience. I’ve seen it multiple times that a YouTuber will arrive in Malaysia with 1,000 subscribers and leave with 50,000. And they carry those new subscribers and viewers with them when they leave and go to new countries. It is like Malaysia is a gas station for YouTubers. People go there to fill up the tank, stock up on subscribers and viewers and then they leave to go somewhere else. And now that Malaysia is opening its borders, all these YouTubers are flocking back there to get their fix, to get that boost of interest in their channel and their videos.
Of course, Remote Darren returned to Malaysia. Ken Abroad flew to Malaysia from Sri Lanka. JetLag Warriors just showed up at the airport in Kuala Lumpur. Travelgrammers are also back, and maybe a bunch more. And you can see how people feel about Malaysia even in the titles of their videos. The thumbnail for JetLag Warriors reads “We are back!” In their minds, the video is a message to their friends in Malaysia. It is a homecoming for them because they know that they will get a warm reception there. And I have to admit that when I watch these videos, I often am puzzled why they are so popular. Ken Abroad’s video about his return to Malaysia struck me as quite ordinary. Nothing really happened in the video except that he went from the airport in Sri Lanka to the airport in Malaysia. He went through airport check-in procedures in Sri Lanka. And then he went through customs and immigration in Malaysia. And then he stayed at a hotel at the airport. That’s the whole video. Yet, at the moment, it has been viewed 46,000 times. And it’s difficult to say what the appeal of the video is.
And many of these YouTubers don’t seem to get called out on certain things. Ken Abroad’s video, for example, uses clickbait in the title. He called it “I had to leave Sri Lanka. And I returned to Malaysia.” He’s implying that something terrible happened in Sri Lanka and he was forced to leave. Maybe he was kicked out? Was there a military coup? Was he robbed? But when you watch the video, you find out that he just came to the end of his 90-day tourist visa, and it was time to leave. His visa was expiring, as they all eventually do. There was no drama or excitement. And all the Malaysians in the comments eagerly welcomed him back to Malaysia, and many talked about how he got back just in time for the Idul Fitri celebrations – the end of Ramadan. Yet, I’m not sure that Ken is even in Malaysia anymore. One of his subscribers left a comment saying that Ken was already back in Germany. Therefore, all of the “welcome back to Malaysia” messages didn’t really make any sense. He’d already been in Malaysia, left, and was already in Germany. And Ken replied that it’s not realistic to expect YouTubers to post videos in real time. It takes time to edit them and upload them. But it seems like if he is already back in Germany before his video even has him arriving in Malaysia, that’s kind of important to know. But I’m not really sure if he is already back in Germany or not. I haven’t seen any references to exact dates.
I just watched the first eleven minutes of the return to Malaysia video from JetLag Warriors. It’s interesting to see the difference with Ken Abroad’s video. The JetLag Warriors put far more work into the editing, that is for sure. There is a lot of extra information on the screen in the form of graphics and maps and text and things like that. They also seem to be using a variety of cameras, which means assembling the video clips from all those memory cards, organizing them, and then putting them together would take quite a bit of time. They’re also able to pack a lot into each video. So far, in eleven minutes, they’ve gone from Toronto to Vancouver to Tokyo to the airport in Kuala Lumpur and then to downtown Kuala Lumpur to find some street food. And this all appears to have taken place in one long day, and they filmed most of their activities along the way – the meals they ate in the airport lounges, the meals they had on the plane, the trip to the airports and from the airports, going through the airports, boarding the planes and getting off the planes, etc. They covered all of that in eleven minutes, which is quite impressive. Of course that suits Steve’s personality. He speaks and moves like he has ten thousand volts of electricity going through his body at all times – super fast and erratic as he bounces all over the place and the words spill out in a torrent. There was one funny moment when Ivana was filming through an open door into an airport. And there was a man in there just standing by himself and dancing. And I thought to myself, “Hey, there’s a friend for Steve. He’s acting just like Steve – all alone and yet moving and shaking and dancing in the airport.” But, of course, when Ivana got closer, I realized that it was Steve. He’d just gone ahead of her.
Also on the technology side, I noticed that the audio levels were quite erratic. They use a variety of shotgun microphones, and depending on who was holding the camera and who was speaking and how far away the other person was from the camera, the audio levels for their voices went up and down like crazy. Sometimes it was really quiet, and I would turn up the volume, and then it would get super loud, and I’d have to quickly lower the volume. That got a bit frustrating for me as a viewer after a while.
Since I’ve started looking into platforms like Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon, I’m noticing them more on other YouTube channels. Ken Abroad and JetLag Warriors both have accounts with Buy Me a Coffee, and there are links to them on their YouTube Home Page and in their video descriptions. It looks like both of them kept it quite simple. They haven’t set up memberships or monthly subscriptions and perks. Ken leans into that idea heavily in his summary on his BMAC page and emphasizes how easy it is to do: no need to sign up for an account or register. You just send him money as a one-time donation. I don’t know how successful they’ve been with that. JetLag Warriors appear to have just eight supporters. And I think that means there have been eight transactions in total. At least I only see eight in the list. And I noticed that on BMAC, they don’t list the date when it happened. So I have no idea how often people send them money through BMAC. Ken Abroad has 44 supporters. That language is a bit confusing, though. They’re called supporters, but in reality, I think that means that 44 people have “bought them a coffee.” It’s not like they are ongoing supporters. These are all one-time donations.
I just checked, and I don’t think any of them have a Patreon set up. I keep going back to Patreon myself, though. I like the way it looks and feels. It feels more established and more detailed and more solid. It suits me, I think. I’m fairly certain that I will continue to put my effort into my Patreon page. And I can have the BMAC page just for people who don’t want to bother with the complexities of Patreon. I can just list it as an alternative and not make a big deal out of it.
I don’t know much about the Travelgramers. I don’t think I’ve ever watched one of their videos. But checking out their channel now, I see that they arrived in Kuala Lumpur by bus from Singapore. And then they took a flight to Langkawi. The video is quite short at less than seven minutes, and is quite simple in terms of production. They don’t do any editing to speak of except trimming clips and putting them together with some music. Plus, the guy, Joao, did some narration, and they inserted the narration (with video) into the bus journey so he could explain what was happening. He and his wife/girlfriend, Cristiana, are from Portugal. They both speak English well, with just a bit of an accent. I’m not sure what kind of camera or microphone they use, but the image quality of the video is quite nice. It’s not a GoPro. They don’t have a Patreon or BMAC account. But they do have a one-time donation link through PayPal. This is part of the PayPal.me system. I keep seeing that listed on my own PayPal page, but I haven’t looked into it yet. I don’t know what the .me system in PayPal is.
In these videos from Travelgramers and JetLag Warriors and in the comments, there is discussion of all of them getting together for some kind of reunion. From that chatter, it sounds like Ken Abroad is still in Malaysia. But other people say he is already back in Germany. I don’t know what the reality is.
As for me, I don’t have any big plans for today. Tomorrow is the big day for me to return to the hospital. Hopefully, there will be a vaccination clinic underway and I will be able to get a booster shot and get that taken care of. I might spend some more time today organizing some thoughts for Patreon. Perhaps I will look into getting name cards produced. I started working on that yesterday.