Why my second channel is a thing
I’ve mentioned in this video (now unlisted) about the second channel, and briefly why, but I want to tell you a bit more vulnerable reason.
In the video, I mentioned that the audience prefers videos on more traditional topics, while I strongly prefer videos on more novel topics. Since I still want to make videos on the novel topics, I made the second channel to be on those, and the main channel will be on the more traditional topics. That’s certainly a more diplomatic way to put it.
A less diplomatic way to put it is that I have a weirdly visceral reaction when people say my videos as “great lectures / lessons”, or “helpful in my studies”. In my rational mind, I know this is a compliment (which is why I “hearted” most of those comments), but my gut reaction is that it is an insult. That’s because as said in that video, I try to make videos that are outside of anyone’s curriculum - even for traditional topics, I made sure to approach it at a different angle. Calling it a “lecture” or a “lesson”, or in other ways using my videos as a studying material, is, in my deepest mind, a complete negation of what I’m trying to do. That said, of course you can do whatever you want with my videos, and my rational mind will be glad that you find it useful; but there’s just something deep in me being extremely weird.
I try to read more of these comments to desensitise myself, but the more I read them, the more I feel attacked. And they are objectively nice comments that are intended to make me feel better! I’m literally making myself angry for no reason! The idea of making novel videos for YouTube, and watching novel YouTube videos, in the sense I outlined in the video, is such a core value to me that I can’t just shake it off. Sure, I can completely not read comments, and I already don’t after the first couple of days of release. However, I still want to clarify something if I wasn’t clear; and in many cases, talk about some extensions to the topic in the video.
The recent success of the differential forms video series is bringing this back to the spotlight, and of course, more people are actually making these types of comments. I expected them and still can’t train myself to be desensitised to these objectively nice (but weirdly hurtful to me for no reason) comments. That makes me even more inclined towards making second channel videos, which will hopefully make me feel much better about creating videos on YouTube again. This time around, I hope I’m attracting the right kind of audience who would appreciate these videos on the more novel topics.
Just to pre-empt the comments suggesting that I dislike teaching: no. I enjoy teaching in real life, and have taken up so many teaching roles during my PhD that is frankly making my productivity suffer. I just don’t like the fact that YouTube as a platform is about teaching and learning, and it has never been that for me. Maybe I’m just a bit old-fashioned but there are 2 reasons:
it gives a false sense of understanding. To be fair, this is the same as attending lectures. The real learning happens when you practice and actually think through problems. This is why I state in every video description “please please PLEASE do NOT use YouTube videos to learn a subject.”
the advantage of YouTube is that it algorithmically serves content, so it can surface topics that you don’t even know exist. If you know the name of the topic, you can easily search for many resources online; but if you don’t even know, you can’t! For me, YouTube’s role (probably the only role when it comes to maths) is to expose you to novel topics so that you can search for more resources on it if you are interested.
I’m well aware that most people will not relate to me, and that’s okay. Frankly, my life would’ve been so much easier if I can relate to most people in this aspect of wanting to make videos on traditional topics. But I still hope that you understand, perhaps not relate to, my perspective; and why I’m now more excited about the second channel than the main channel.
