I was a Youtuber for a couple of years. It didn't work out.

I was a Youtuber for a couple of years.

Not a popular one. But certainly a prolific one. I created nearly 800 videos in that time.

I was never successful on there because the platform wasn’t designed for channels like mine.

I was documenting my life in real time, speaking stream of consciousness in every video, exploring multiple topics in every transmission.

I didn’t introduce myself or ask for likes or comments. In fact, I turned comments off because I didn’t like the trollish and flattening nature of the interaction I received when I did.

I felt flattened by the platform and by my audience. And I discovered how quickly older content was completely ignored, by the platform and by my audience again.

That was not the kind of relationship I was trying to have on Youtube. I was trying to share my life authentically with the expectation other people would meet me there.

Hardly no one did. 

I considered Patreon, but that’s just a different angle on the same problem: you become a caricature of yourself, performing for people in the hopes they’ll contribute something in kind.

So Youtube was never going to work for me, and neither was Patreon.

I had another thing going for me though.

I’d been a programmer all of my life. I started in the sixth grade. Taught myself. So I knew what the structural issues were and I knew that the only solution that would work for me was something I built myself.

And so that’s what I did. I created Autonomy. And then I created a platform called Autonomy Realms.

From there, I can upload a video, create a transcript, use that to allow AI to analyze my video for metadata, automatically generating titles and keywords and other data, and create embeddings used for semantic search and filtering. And a lot more.

It is still early days, but I’m looking for other content creators – the archivist types – who want an alternative. People who have catalogs that matter to them. People who are tired of being flattened to death. I’ll help you build your own realm – reclaim your catalog and your relationship to your audience.

Check out my catalog here: https://rswfire.autonomyrealms.com.

And if you’re interested, reach out to me at rsw@rswfire.com.

Sam

Note: This is not an advertisement. I am not selling you anything. I am seeking aligned individuals who want to try out what I've created.