So, we've made the move and posted our farewell video to YouTube. What a strange experience it is to reflect on the past year and see all that we've learned, experienced, and been grieved by because of that site! As I type this, I feel a strange mix of emotions: a sort of detoxing sadness, relief that it's over, excitement to put our energies into fewer Internet things so that we can focus on Real things, and a strange sort of disbelief that we had been a YouTube channel. If we knew then what we knew now, we would have never made the channel to begin with.
As you will see in the video, we are not leaving YouTube because of the new policies and monetization rules. We were never in it for the money, and we never wanted to "get big." Our whole reasoning to put out a channel was to share our journey with our family back home and to also get to be a part of the online homesteading community that we've learned (and are learning!) so much from. And while that desire is still there, we just can't be part of a website that we have so many issues with.
The sort of videos that make YouTube what it currently is are the "circus" part of Bread and Circus, and we're not willing to play that game anymore. Our content isn't what they want, and so we're choosing to read the writing on the wall and leave now before things go any further. We're not angry, and we don't feel like YouTube owes us anything--they can do whatever they want with their site! We just don't want to be a part of it any more.
And it's a relief. Andrew and I are, by nature, quiet, simple people who just want to be left alone to live as we feel convicted. Being associated with that whole world suddenly feels laughably contradictory!
So here's the ending of one thing, and the beginning of another. We'll give DTube a try as we continue sharing bits and pieces of our homesteading journey through SteemIt! But at the end of the day, we're happiest knowing that we can close the computer, look at the moonlight hitting the grasses of our homestead, and breathe in a deep lungful of real, Ozark air. The frustrations and complexities of the Internet pale in comparison to what we really get to do out here.
