mrjtingles-blog

[mrjtingles-blog]

If you're new here, you may not know this but I nearly became a famous YouTuber.. there's a bit of a story behind it. This video is a eulogy to the channel that nearly took me there. That channel was called Mr J Tingles and it now no longer exists. So this is me telling my story.. Sometimes in life you have to let go of somethings (or someone) that you really love. One of my dreams growing up was always to be famous for making film. When YouTube came around and I saw kids like me making their living and changing their lives by creating videos they enjoyed for an audience of millions, I always wondered if I could do it myself. It then became not only my dream but my goal. For many years I enjoyed uploading to YouTube, even before 'Mr J Tingles'. It was a pastime more than anything else, a hobby. Life's circumstances always made it so my dream was constantly put on the back burner. Yet when I grew up to be an adult with a home of my very own, I took my dream out the attic, dusted it off, and got to work. One day I just spontaneously made a video. Little did I know that it was going to my first video on an incredible journey. I edited the footage and uploaded it to YouTube while thinking the video wouldn't get very far. That was ok with me. I would just upload because I liked the stuff I made. It was for me; if anyone else liked what I had made it was a bonus. This video I made was specifically for a blooming YouTube Genre. It had a particular niche to it. Thus 'Mr J Tingles' was born on June 1st 2015 My plan and dream was to become a famous and successful YouTube VLOGGER. So my strategy was to get a start in a genre that was easier to get noticed and grow and audience in. Once a substantial amount of people regularly watched me there, my plan was to then set up a vlogging channel and run it in unison with 'Mr J Tingles'. As soon as my Vlogging channel had taken off, my plan was to make it grow to a level that I could then use it to earn my living, thus realising my dream. I started making vlog style videos on this side channel called 'Twiglquirk'. I did this earlier than I had planned out at first. The name makes light of the fact that I was skinny like a twig and quirky. I started this sooner because I was just so eager to get it going. I always wondered though, for many years, "Could I at least reach 1000 subscribers"? If I ever did, I knew I was definitely on the road to making my dream my reality. That was yet to come and there was much work to be done to even get that far! So I made a start. The first video got way more views than I thought it would. I put this down to the considerably low amount of competition for this specific kind of content in the YouTube scene, compared to other genres such as gaming or vlogging. My second upload followed suit. Buoyed by the positive results, I began to upload on a regular basis. Aiming for one video a week. Soon I realised that people came back because I was making good quality videos they enjoyed. It wasn't just by chance. Soon I reached 100 subscribers. It hadn't been the first time in my life I had reached the 100 mark, (I had various YouTube channels throughout my teen years) so I felt just a fraction of the satisfaction I'd get from my dream milestone of 1000. I worked so hard to develop my own individualism and brand in this digital world where almost everything has been done before. After many tireless hours of experimenting in editing, I settled on a 'look', a 'feel' for my channel. I was truly unique. I had designed an 'intro' and 'outro' that would play at the beginning and end of each video, reminding people who they're watching and welcoming new ones to 'Mr J Tingles' and thanking them for their support, with plugs to other videos I had made, along with the request for new comers to Subscribe. At this point I should mention the only thing I had to work with, was my phone. I used it to shoot, edit, upload, and advertise everything I made. I downloaded some apps called 'PowerDirector' and 'PhotoDirector'. I used these apps to craft my videos and my 'thumbnail' images. I've spent so many hours using these apps. They're great apps and back then PowerDirector was yet to get all the updates it's had now, so it had much less 'usability' back then. Everything was bit bareboned when I started out, it's the same for many. I edited today's video with PowerDirector and it's the first video I have uploaded since Mr J Tingles died. Using it again brought back so many memories and I would like to carry on uploading. But I'll get to that later. The 'intro' and 'outro' would continue to be molded as I learned new editing tricks and as I grew more popular. The 'outro' forever changed when I was noticed by an already very successful YouTuber, one that is still a personal favorite of mine, one I've been watching for many years. I was on the App 'YouNow' watching Chris Kendall (AKA -- Crabstickz) in a live broadcast. He is loved by MILLIONS and has tens of millions of views on his videos. I watched a number of his broadcasts and even got a quick mention or two in a few of them which was pretty cool. Then I thought, "Hey wouldn't it be INCREDIBLE if I could get Chris to say "Thanks for watching Mr J" and then use it for my videos?? That'd be AWESOME RIGHT!?!" Well on April 27th 2016, in a live broadcast, after a number of attempts to be noticed, he finally saw my messages and checked out my channel -- this was in the middle of a live broadcast. At the 1 hour and 52 minutes mark he goes onto talk about me, my channel, and the genre for 5 minutes and 13 seconds. Again, this was in the middle of a live broadcast. He then encouraged everyone watching to subscribe to me. This may not be a big deal to anyone else but to me, I was over the moon! I was at the 400 mark by this point and with his plug I had a surge of viewers visit my channel and subscribe. I quickly reached the 500 mark and I felt so happy to be halfway to 1000. Luckily, by chance, he again noticed my messages in the flood of messages he was receiving in the live broadcast, and at 2 hours, 24 minites, and 41 seconds in of the same broadcast he reads out: "Hey Chris, would you say "Thanks for watching Mr J" and I'll use it for my videos" So he did ..and I got it on film. The footage I managed to capture with my phone wasn't great quality because Chris' WiFi wasn't great, so it was a little pixely, and by this time in the broadcast it was late at night, so he was poorly lit. What I had captured was a video of a video. The only thing I could really use was the audio, being the only thing about what I had captured to be of an acceptable quality for use in my videos. But I wanted to use the video footage too, so people would recognise his face not just his voice. They would think "Hey! That's Crabstickz! What's he doing in this guy's video?? That's so cool! I'm going to subscribe!" I was still so lucky and VERY grateful to have even a pixely, poorly lit video of a video. So I really racked my brain into thinking how I could improve this clip, because I didn't want to waste it! I contacted a friend of mine who works in IT. I asked if there was anyway to download past video broadcasts from the App 'YouNow'. I know how to download YouTube videos of course and I could do that from my phone even, but there was no way I could have done it with 'YouNow', not from my phone anyway, and at that time I didn't have a laptop or computer. My friend looked into it and came back to me saying that there wasn't a way to get videos from YouNow downloaded, and he saw no immediate way to be able to do it. He said with a little more time he could figure it out, but I realised he was a busy guy and told him to not to worry. So back to square one I thought of other ways I could get the footage of Crabstickz saying, "Thanks for watching Mr J". I traversed YouTube and looked for uploads of the live broadcasts I was mentioned in. I found one fan made channel that somehow managed to upload a few of the broadcasts to YouTube. I messaged them asking if they had the broadcast of April 27th, I desperately needed the footage, I said. They responded after a few days. They said that they had been working on trying to get the footage downloaded but they ran into some problems -- the same problems my friend had ran into earlier I assumed. They said they will continue to work on their computer and mess around with some code or whatnot so they could do it. A few days later I saw in my subscription list the video I needed and so I thanked the person responsible for all their hard work and downloaded the broadcast off YouTube and started fine tuning the footage to a quality that was acceptable. It still wasn't AMAZING quality but hey, it was still awesome! I added the final product to my intro and outro and it went down really well with my audience. After a while I used it exclusively for the outro and tweaked my intro as more updates for PowerDirector came out, making it possible for my edits to be smoother. Chris actually subscribed to me in another live broadcast. That was pretty awesome too! The last thing I did with Chris was meet him. On the May 9th 2016 broadcast at 35 minutes and 15 seconds in, he activates the 'guest' feature on the broadcast and beams me into a video chat with him while it's being broadcast live to hundreds and hundreds of people from all around the world watching simultaneously. We go on to talk for 13 minutes. It was an amazing experience. It was the next best thing to meeting him in person. Again I had been a fan of his for a number of years by this point and I dreamt about meeting him, so it was incredible to have a one on one chat with him. I never would have expected it would of been live over the Internet in front of hundreds of people watching from all over the world. That was one of the biggest highlights of my YouTube dream, to meet my heros. I did it, I met one of my heros. I've a had a few of my favorite YouTuber's reply to me in the comment section on their videos, people like 'KickthePJ'. But nothing compares to the time I spent meeting Chris live in a broadcast. After a while I reached the 750 mark. I started to really feel how close I was to my dream milestone. By this point my videos were getting around 1000 views a piece. Some of my videos were very popular! I remember making one video that got over 40,000 views alone. Then I got another sudden surge of viewers and new subscribers after what felt like a slow crawl. After countless hours of editing, 60,000+ views on 30 or so videos uploaded, 16 months, 2 days and just 1 mobile phone to do all the above. I achieved my dream milestone of 1000 subscribers on October 3rd 2016. I had answered that very question I first asked myself all those years ago. Could I reach 1000 subscribers myself?? I no longer had to wonder about it, because I had DONE it! Within a few short weeks I reached the 2000 subscriber mark. It took me over one year to reach 1000. Now I was at 2000 by November. Yes, this was truly the beginning of my dream coming true, my channel was snowballing and I had so many ideas and projects in mind. I was in contact with a fellow YouTuber who was also snowballing like me. He was called PJ (not the same one as before). He was at the 5000 mark when we first started talking. I was up and coming just a few thousand behind at 2000. We started talking about making a collaboration project. The videos we aspired to do together would have been a first in the genre. No one had done what we were going to do. PJ is now at 62, 000 subscribers. I can't help but know that if I hadn't stopped, I'd still be snapping at his heels, probably around the 50,000 subscriber mark right now. Which is halfway to getting the Silver YouTube Play Button Award for 100,000 subscribers. That was my dream too. It was around this mark you could really make a fair amount of money. I would be making an equivalent to a part-time wage from my YouTube career had I carried on. My ultimate dream would be to reach 1 Million Subscribers and make it my full time job. Another project I had on the cards was to create Mr J Tingles merchandise. I made a video on my channel reaching out to graphics designers asking for their help with a project. I was in contact with a number of graphics designers. I told them exactly what I wanted to do and what I wanted from their graphic. I went into great detail explaining how I wanted the nuances of the image to look. I wanted to be personally involved in every step in how it looked, everything from what was actually happening in the picture, all the way down to posture, colours, shading and style. I left the artists to their work but gave detailed feedback with every draft image I got, so I could perfect the final product into looking like what I had envisioned. I never got a final image finished, just a pretty cool looking draft. The final image would become my brand image and it was going to go on T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, phone cases, wristbands, and even Bedsheets! I was in contact with a few companies to make this happen. This is one avenue that YouTubers use to make their money. MERCHANDISE. I was excited to kick it off and I already had many viewers saying they were excited and ready to purchase my merch as soon as it hit the market. Just quickly, another project I had in mind was to create a product that was specifically designed for watching videos of this genre. I had a few blueprints and pages of research, but nothing tangible. The product was going to be something you could buy and wear specifically while watching my videos. I don't know how I was going to do this one but I didn't stop thinking about it. SO it was all going very well, it was exciting and attracting so many people, my dream was coming true.. why did I quit? Well, I have a life outside of the world of YouTube, other responsibilities and dreams. Ones that are far more important. I realised that by aspiring to be what I was becoming, I was about to compromise some values that I live by. My priorities got turned upside down and I knew I was getting a bit carried away. So I knew in order to regain control, there was just one thing I had to do. Shut it down. I had made a goodbye video that was very emotional, in which I gave a full explanation for my loyal fans and growing audience as to why I had to quit. It had the music you hear in this video playing in the background as I got all choked up talking about it on camera. I cried because it was sad but I had made my mind up. In the end I couldn't bring myself to upload that video. I thought the best way to go was like an old dog in his sleep. So without a warning or word to anyone, I abandoned all my projects, deleted all my videos I had spent countless hours working on, and deleted my channel. It was so difficult deleting each video, it felt like a knife in the chest, one stab for every video I deleted. When clicking "Confirm" to wipe Mr J Tingles from existence forever, I felt a deep sadness overcome me. I was saying goodbye to a big part of myself and to thousands of people that believed in me and supported my dream. That was it then. It was all over. My channel and my dream that I had spent just under a year and half pouring my heart and soul into, was now gone.. forever. Mr J Tingles died in November 2016 with the final count of 72,000+ views and 2145 subscribers. I retired before the real work even started. This doesn't mean that I still don't love making videos, as I said earlier I'd love to carry on uploading. But I won't be uploading with the goal to be famous. I'll be uploading because I like to create film. Not so I can succeed in the world of YouTube but because it's just my art now, not my goal. I won't even be asking people to subscribe and my videos will only be about what I want to make. I'll probably change my name and only upload when I have time. True, I never went on to become a famous YouTube Vlogger, but I realised that, in my life, there are more important things to do, bigger dreams to chase, and a greater purpose to be apart of. So no, I never made that particular dream come true. I did get closure though. Could I have become a famous and successful YouTuber?? Answer? Yes. I nearly did. Who knows where I'd be right now if I was. - Mr J Hayes -

[mrjtingles-blog]

So cute

my dog took a bullet for me