Updated: Jul 13, 2022
For some time, I have found it rather repulsive when celebrities brag about their success, as if that validates the things they say. You want to hear bragging?
One of my videos is nearing a hundred million views, all by itself. My collective videos over the last decade have gathered nearly two billion views. This fact could be observed in 2016, right before YouTube cracked down on content, blindly and recklessly flagging millions of innocent videos from countless creators and making them unprofitable.
Before YouTube furthered their crackdown, I deleted thousands of my own videos to prevent unfair actions being taken against my channels for their brand-new made-up rules. I saw a friend of mine nearly lose his channel because of a harmless video he had made some time back. He was a YouTube icon, and YouTube showed him no mercy.
Basically, imagine everyone has been fine with alcohol being legal for the last 10 years, then suddenly, alcohol is magically illegal. What I did was got rid of all my videos that may not fit the advertisement standards, before YouTube pounced on me like I had seen them do to other comedians. If alcohol became illegal? You'd probably destroy your stash, save yourself from the new fabricated morality of your government.
However, before that, yes, I had over 2 billion video views on YouTube. When you delete your videos, your collective view count on your channel goes down as well, sad.
Does the fact that possibly a quarter of the planet has seen my face? Does that make me cool? No. Does that make me smart? No. Does that make me better than anyone? Nope, not unless you consider working day and night instead of having friends, for a decade, better than actually having a life and building something, like, a stable career. What it makes me is pretty much nothing. Because even if I had made better choices with the foundation of my life, we're all, still, nothing.
To confirm how many video views, I gathered on all my channels, Onision, OnisionSpeaks and UhOhBro, all you have to do, is use an archive site, that records everything you ever did online, permanently. You, reading this, could probably look up your old MySpace profile on an archive site, right now, it's kind of cool.
I also was featured on America's Funniest Home Videos, Ridiculousness on MTV, Tosh.0 on Comedy Central, and repeatedly featured on MTV Italy. I actually made a decent lump of cash thanks to Italy's MTV before I was even out of the military yet. It paid for my washer, dryer, fridge and stove later in life.
But looking back, at the classic YouTube channels I had, you'll see over 600,000,000 views on one channel, hundreds of millions of more views on another channel and so on, till, you get to over 2 billion. Again, this was back then, now? All the deleted videos reduced that number, painfully.
Why did my success happen?
It happened because I was an algorhythm god. What that translates to: I figured out how to make the system work in my favor, and milked it for all it was worth, till, 2016, when it all changed. If you had to map my success, my rise was 2010, my grand fall was 2019.
The beginning of the end, however, was when we all found out, a reality TV star, was going to be our next president. Talk about dark days, and the worst time period of my life. I'm not even saying anything about his ability to be president, I'm just saying, while the country was losing their minds politically, I was losing my mind financially, and career wise as well.
But why am I telling you all this, here, now? Because it occurred to me that many people, throughout their books like to talk about how much money they made, how many people care about them existing, how much success they've found, and reference how special they clearly think they are as a result of the fruits of their labor. And yet, behind all this talk, we're all just little people. Sad, scared, hopeless individuals questioning why we exist or why anyone should care about us.
Congratulations, you learned how to play the guitar and made millions. Congratulations, you figured out how to push numbers in the stock market in your favor till you turned your tiny bank account into a fortune. Congratulations, you were born hot and now you're a famous model. To all this, who cares? I just don't give a crap. I've met your type, you're a drug addict, or an emotional wreck, you're a people user or a shallow jerk who only thinks of yourself. I'm not impressed by folks who live to serve themselves. My heroes? The people who live to serve others.
Do you know how many celebrities, who had it all, wind up face down in a hotel room, veins pumped full of drugs? Do you know how many millionaires wind up with a broken home, and angry ex-wife and one hell of monthly alimony payment to make ever month? Do you know how many people are the center of the world's attention, yet feel like they are completely alone?
Envy, no one. Because everyone, is a messed up, fearful, and fragile human.
Speaking of fragile humans, let us allow 4th grade to begin. My school, in Auburn, the same school I had attended since 2nd grade, was in the middle of the woods, literally surrounded on all ends, but the entrance, by evergreen trees. It was my favorite school ever. You had to drive through a suburban oasis to get to the school, and once you arrived, a new building, with massive fields and gorgeous vegetation complimented the campus, almost like the mountains made Hogwarts that much more magical in the movie/book series Harry Potter.
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