What Happens When Value Outweighs Production? Is YouTube on its way back on returning to “the source”? The simple format of where it all started? Some might say so. You see, there is, at present, a quiet turn underway on YouTube; one that might easily be missed if you were only looking for spectacle. Videos featuring “ordinary individuals” in the best sense of the word- seated in their bedrooms, or walking slowly through a stand of trees, or leaning against a kitchen counter, speaking plainly into a camera. And from these modest settings, with little more than a phone and a thought, even just an outline, they’re managing to earn a living. For Tongal creators, this shift reinforces a familiar truth, that strong ideas and clear perspective can travel just as far as high production when they’re delivered with intention. They’re not making fortunes, and not becoming an instant celebrity, but rather something steadier and much more enduring: a few thousand views at a time, gathered consistently, amounting to a meaningful income month after month. It has the appearance of simplicity. It is anything but. One might say it looks a bit like nothing happening; and yet, quite a lot is.
So, what distinguishes these creators from the Casey Neistat’s and Mr. Beasts of the world, is not the absence of effort, but simple clarity. Their work is immediately legible. One understands, almost at once, who they are and what they are offering. There’s no performance, just directness, and the effect is disarming. It recalls, in some small way, the experience of sitting across from another person and listening; not because you have to, but because you want. And it crosses interests and specialties. Take, for example, historians like Heather Cox Richardson, whose appeal lies in clarity of thought, delivered with steadiness and purpose, based on her experience. Different medium, different stakes, but a similar principle: when someone speaks plainly and meaningfully, people tend to listen. She’s filming herself via her computer’s native webcam, native audio, sitting in front of a map of Maine’s coast (and now her own bookshelf) and sharing her knowledge and expertise in videos anywhere from 20-50 minutes long. Her YouTube has 1million subscribers and her Substack has 3 million subscribers. People are showing up for knowledge, not cinema.
And then there are creators like Rob So Far So Good; an artist who, after decades of creative pursuit through both triumph and hardship, simply turns on a camera and talks. Again, no elaborate staging, no performance beyond presence. On his YouTube channel (with 85k subscribers) he speaks about chronic pain, about persistence, about the long, uneven path of making a life in art. It’s not flashy in any way at all. It’s certainly not engineered for virality. And yet, it holds your attention- because it’s real and it’s lived. There is, in that, a kind of authority that cannot be manufactured, only accumulated over time.
A similar quiet gravity runs through the work of Wild Geese (aka Anna Howard). Her videos on her YouTube channel of 150k subscribers, unfold with a warm, reflective stillness full of observational, personal, often meditative daily philosophies without announcing themselves as such. There’s no urgency to impress, and no sense of performance for its own sake. Instead, there is a careful attention to thought, to feeling, to the small details that most content would rush past. It reflects the same underlying shift: when something feels considered and real, people stay.
What’s even more important to note here is that all their thumbnails are very simple; just their faces and a title for the video. If you know anything about YouTube strategy, you know thumbnails are perhaps the most important tool a creator has to grasp attention and engagement, and now, rather than the cadence developed by creators over the last 10 years involving art, graphics and spectacle from the video itself, these creators are just going as simple as humanly possible.
So, how are they generating revenue? Well, beside the standard Google ads that come with a successful YouTube channel of over 10k subscribers, they’re asking their supporters to support them on Patreon, GoFundMe, and sometimes (but not always) through direct ad sponsors.
For the larger truth, we might want to look towards a more enduring principle; the internet, for all its novelty, is governed by the same essential condition as any public square before it: sustained attention must be earned. It doesn’t indulge sentiment or reward effort for its own sake. And it certainly does not extend courtesy simply because one has shown up (though one might wish, on occasion, that it did.) What it responds to, what it has always responded to, is value. And value, in this context, is conveyed swiftly and unmistakably to those who have no prior reason to grant it. It’s here, more often than not, that attempts falter. For while it is easy to speak, it is considerably more difficult to say something worth hearing. Creators like these, making videos like this, are as close to “just the plain text, please” as a video can get, and people are showing up for it over and over again.
5 TAKEAWAYS FROM THESE PLAINSPOKEN CREATORS:
