October saw me returning to Istanbul after a month and a half’s absence. Berlin was fun, but Istanbul is home at this point. As I come up on the five year mark in September 2016, I’ve been thinking more and more about leaving. It’s probably time, but damn it I love Istanbul! It’s just a great place to live. If my video project survives beyond the US election, I’ll probably be happily forced to stay. As of this writing, between freelancing and Patreon I’m finally making enough money to live comfortably in Istanbul. Revenue would have to at least triple to allow me to move to even a small city in the United States. Also impacting these calculations, Most of my family and friends are in New York and Washington, DC, two cities that are not the least bit small or affordable.

Speaking of Patreon, October 2015 was a banner month in that department. Patreon is a kind of on-going Kickstarter that allows people to donate a buck or two (or 5 or 8!) for each video I produce. It started off slow. In October, after six months, donations had finally reached a point where it made sense to take my first actual chunk of money from the website. Seven months later, I now make as much as I did those first six months every month. I am extremely grateful for that. My video channel certainly has an audience, the 20 to 25,000 views I get each month make that pretty clear. But that’s nowhere near enough to keep bread on the table through advertising alone. Patreon is getting to the point where it provides a real chunk of that bread. I’ve only got a few Patrons that I don’t know personally, but the group now stretches pretty far beyond the people I see day to day, or even year to year. I’ve been honored by the willingness of folks from every phase of my life to support my weird little project. I’d be grateful if you too, dear reader, considered doing the same.

For October and November I secured a sub-let in Istanbul’s Pangalti neighborhood. It lent itself well to productivity. I managed six videos in October 2015. “Pope Francis’s Decision to Meet With Kim Davis Was Genius” was one of my most transparently headline driven videos ever. Have you already forgotten who Kim Davis is? Good. I won’t explain her. I think the video makes a valuable point though. The current Pope is an extremely effective politician. His willingness to advocate for more traditionally “left-wing” causes is a savvy switch on the part of the Vatican, after two more reactionary popes. I should probably do a Pope Francis take-down at some point. Sure, he’s a more effective 21st century communicator, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less of a weird medieval theocrat than Benedict was. Rarely have I been happier to be wrong than I was with “Marco Rubio Is Probably The Next US President“. And yes, even with the threat of a Trump Presidency, I still think it’s good that Marco Rubio has been shuffled off the stage. It’s a sign that the current two-party system, which has been failing so miserably for so long, is about to be scrapped as well. 20 years from now we’re almost certain to still have Republicans and Democrats, but they will both be very different animals. This process won’t be pleasant, but it’s getting us to a better place.

“Vladimir Putin: An Appreciation” points out what an incredible service that man has done for the American public. Putin’s actions have been horrible for Ukraine, unfortunate for Syria, and will almost certainly end up being terrible for Russia. But the way that he has run circles around Washington, DC has highlighted just what a mess the Military Industrial Complex has made of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Facing up to this idiocy is long over-due. Putin should be thanked for highlighting it. Occasionally I’ll see a film so bad that I have to make a video about it. “Black Mass Is A Very Bad Film” is a product of exactly that kind of experience. “How Benghazi Gave Us Donald Trump” lays out the way that Conservative media made Donald Trump’s take-over of the Republican party easy. As a side-note, I’ve just changed the name of this video to “How Fox News Gave Us Donald Trump”. Changing the name and/or the Thumbnail of a video can help it to become much more successful. When I published the video Benghazi was in the headlines. Now that that has faded, it makes sense to high-light a more “evergreen” aspect of the video’s message. “Cops Are Victims Too“, this month’s last video, makes the essential point that society as a whole is much more to blame for the crimes of policing than individual officers are.

Views fell again in October 2015, falling down to 11,037 from 13,002 in September. One of the top five, and three of the top ten videos in October were produced in October. Four of the six videos crossed 100 views on their first day. 7 months later, all six videos have topped 200 views, and four have topped 300. At the end of October 2015 we had 125 videos, all but three of which were viewed in October, 65 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 21 of which were viewed more than 100 times, and three of which were viewed more than 1,000 times (FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton).

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September was a fascinating month. YouTube operates a number of Spaces throughout the world that are available to its larger producers. The resources are fantastic, including cameras, multiple stages, green screens, courses and professionals on staff that can help you operate everything and teach you how to improve every aspect of your channel. To access most of these spaces, you now need to have 10,000 subscribers. But last summer the Berlin space was just getting started, which meant that they were happy to take anybody who had more than 1,000 subscribers. As of July of 2015 that included me.

My month in Germany was great. I got to meet a lot of people who understood what I was doing, which was a pleasant change. The workshops I did, with input from directors, and fellow YouTube producers were fantastic. It’s amazing how something as basic as an Adobe Premiere keyboard shortcut can revolutionize production. Everyday at the space I learned something new. There were drawbacks as well. I didn’t realize just how weird what I’m trying to do is until I got there. The other video creators were lovely, but none of them were trying to do any political content. The YouTube market wants video gaming and make-up tutorials, not political essays. My audience is one that I have to build from scratch.

Also, I couldn’t really use the resources on offer for video production. My work isn’t exactly what you’d call strictly compliant with traditional approaches to Intellectual Property. I’m confident that everything I do fits under an expansive view of “fair use”, but Google is not interested in helping to produce anything that doesn’t fit under the strictest interpretation imaginable. To produce something at the studio I would have to track down permissions for every video clip and photograph I used. It just wasn’t possible for the videos I was producing that month. With some planning, I am confident that I can fully use this resource at some point in the future.

Berlin, by the way, is fantastic. The museums and cultural offerings are all top notch. More importantly for my purposes, the history is unparalleled. It’s got everything. Highlights for me included the Hohenzollern palace at Potsdam, and the alien like Soviet war memorial at Treptower Park.

Somehow, between all the walking and the learning, I managed to produce six videos this month. The first was the product of some incredibly good luck. In the first week of September, the Syrian refugee crisis came to a head at the Keleti Palyaudvar train station in Budapest. This happened to be a 10 minute walk from the AirBnB I was staying at. My footage from the train station became the centerpiece of “The Syrian Refugee Crisis Was Created By US Policy“. Next up was “Deez Nuts Is More Serious Than Donald Trump” which uses one of my favorite stories from the early election cycle to take a quick jab at Donald Trump.

“#BlackLivesMatter Does Not Cost Black Lives” is a preemptive attack against the growing chorus of voices claiming that the “Ferguson Effect” keeps cops from doing their jobs. “Why Rudy Giuliani Makes Me Angry” is my least watched video of 2015. This is frustrating because I still think it’s quite cleverly constructed. But if I’m going to complain about a politician, I shouldn’t deconstruct the rant, as I did here, I should just go ahead and rant. “3 Reasons Refugees Are Awesome For Germany” was another bit of preemptive propaganda. In September Germany was pretty pleased with itself and its generosity. Less so now. Sometimes the Military Industrial Complex really makes it too easy. A Harvard think tank’s offensively idiotic report forecasting imminent war with China prompted “Harvard Is Trying To Kill US! China, Think Tanks and War“, this month’s second installment in the Military Industrial Complex series.

Views fell a bit in September 2015, falling back down to 13,002 from 16,485 in August. One of the top five, and two of the top ten videos in September were produced in September. None of the six videos crossed 100 views on their first day. 8 months later, five of the six videos have topped 200 views, and two have topped 700. At the end of September 2015 we had 119 videos, all but one of which were viewed in September, 76 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 17 of which were viewed more than 100 times, and four of which were viewed more than 1,000 times (FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, Syrian Refugees).

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August initially found me back in Istanbul doing some serious couch-surfing. I’m extremely grateful to the folks who were kind enough to put me up. Istanbul is a bit miserable in August. Washington, DC, where I spent much of my 20s, is worse, but they have air conditioning absolutely everywhere. Istanbul does not. About halfway through August I gave up and fled the country, not making it back until October. Homelessness has its perks. First I went to Budapest, Hungary, where I found myself in the middle of the migration crisis that the world was about to notice. Budapest is strikingly beautiful and shockingly affordable. Over the course of a full week I spent less than 300 dollars total, including airfare. Budapest has also got some troubling nationalist undertones, that I really need to get around to making a video about. After Hungary I proceeded to Berlin to take advantage of the city’s YouTube Space. More on that in next month’s report.

Despite all the travelling I managed to have a fairly productive month, producing six videos. I don’t do much of what you’d really call “film-making” but I’m really pleased with how “America is Old – A Conservative Manifesto” came out. It’s kind of a Vlogbrothers style “Thoughts From Places” video, that uses the aging infrastructure of New York City’s commuter rail to talk about the advanced age of US institutions and why that age is a good thing. I really like the video, and as is traditional with such videos, very few people have seen it. “Trump Free Republican Debate Highlights” took a loooot of work for not all that much reward. It’s a bit dated now, but I think it provides a nice introduction to the clown car that Trump eventually demolished.

“What Is The Military Industrial Complex“, the first of two installments in the MIC series this month, has done very well. It hit that sweet spot of answering a very search-able question in a satisfying way. Viewed over 3,500 times and counting 9 months later. Vids like the next MIC video, “The Last Ship Is US Military Propaganda” are fun to make. Crafting commentary about TV shows or movies using available footage is fun, not too challenging, and visually interesting. Unfortunately they are also a good way to get into copyright trouble with YouTube, so I don’t think I’ll be doing too many more of them going forward.

“You Won’t Believe Who Has An Ashley Madison Account!!!” is exactly the quick grab for views in the wake of the infidelity facilitation site hack that it looks like. But I think it also makes a valid point about privacy, and the way we overlook its erosion whenever it impacts someone we don’t see as worthy of protection. “Donald Trump Is A Democrat” gets a few of the details wrong. It turns out he can, in fact get the Republican nomination. 9 months later though, I find the central argument more compelling rather than less compelling. Has anybody done any investigative work on his Old Post Office contract? They really, really should.

As I’ve covered earlier on this blog, I had a theory about a “summer slump”. Turns out I was wrong, because August 2015 views were great, shooting up to 16,485 from 11,745 in July. None of the top five, though four of the top ten August videos were produced in August. Four of six videos broke 100 views on the first day. 9 months later, all six videos have topped 200 views, and three have topped 1,000 views. At the end of August 2016 we had 113 videos, all but three of which were viewed in August, 75 of which were viewed 10 or more times, 17 of which were viewed 100 or more times, and 5 of which were viewed more than 1,000 times (FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, China, Sanders-Paul).

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July of 2015 involved a lot of running around the United States. I stayed with family in Connecticut and then drove up to Northern Michigan for my annual Fourth of July reunion with my college buddies. There are few things more American than a long drive. The 17 hour solo trip from Northern Michigan back to CT was probably unwise, but there’s nothing quite like putting on some country music, throwing in some dipping tobacco and just driving. If I can get the Patreon support over 100 bucks a video I intend to rent a car and spend a few weeks driving through the states to cover the US election this upcoming July.

All of last July’s travel cut down on video production a bit. I only managed five videos, but I got started on a series on the Military Industrial Complex that I’m very proud of. First up we had, “Kids Are the Worst: How Colorado Is Beating Poverty“. The video celebrates Colorado’s incredible success in reducing teen abortion and pregnancy through state provided contraception (duh!) but it also lays out one of my favorite points: that poverty is essentially impossible in the United States if you don’t have children. “3 Ways Vox Doesn’t get the American Revolution” was a response to a snarky article they published, claiming that the American Revolution was a mistake. I love responding to articles with video, but it’s important to get the timing right, or rather immediate. Because of travel, I didn’t get around to publishing the video until 12 days after the article it was responding to. This was waaay too long. Any buzz the conversation had on social media was long over.

The next video was one I had been building to for quite a while. “3 Iran Facts Every American Should Know” was the first of a series of videos on the Military Industrial Complex that I am still churning out months later. The “MIC” series hopes to show what the MIC does, who and what it is, and how we can save the world from it. This first video, traces the history of the US conflict with Iran, one of the MIC’s most conspicuous victims. The second video, “The Survival Of The Human Race“, lays out the stakes in our struggle to understand the MIC. I’ve still got a few more MIC vids to push out, ten months later.

Also published in July was my first and what I hoped was my last video on Donald Trump, “Everything Worth Saying About Donald Trump“. Unfortunately this ended up being the first of many videos on that particular subject. This first one, however, is probably the best. We wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in today if more media outlets had followed my lead in their coverage of Trump.

In July of 2015 viewership fell again, from 13,142 views in June to 11,745 views. None of the top five, and only two of the top ten videos in the month of July were produced in July. Only one of the five videos broke 100 views on the first day. 10 months later, all five July videos have broken 200 views, but only two of them have broken 300. At the end of July 2015 we had 107 videos, all but one of which were viewed in July, 63 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 17 of which were viewed more than 100 times, and 5 of which were viewed more than 1,000 times(FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, China, Sanders-Paul).

July was a very US focused month, both in terms of my physical location, and the videos I produced. The US is the country I know best, and it makes sense that I would do a lot of videos on the topic. But having an entire month’s production be almost exclusively about the US is something I should probably avoid. This is good to keep in mind as the 2016 US election process begins to really heat up.

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June 2015 was the last month of a lack-of-money-induced exile in Istanbul. I couldn’t afford to fly anywhere, so I spent a lot of time sitting in a very small room, thinking about how to make better YouTube videos. I prefer the more mobile lifestyle I live now, but I did get a lot done during this pre-exodus period. From this month through January of 2016, I didn’t live anywhere for more than a month, and very few places for more than a week. That got pretty old too.

I didn’t start travelling until the end of the month, so I managed to get a fair amount done, doing a lot of freelancing and producing seven videos. We started off with “FIFA, FATCA and the New World Order“. It may seem like a bit of a stretch to use the FIFA prosecutions to talk about FATCA, but I think it’s valid. We have to be careful about cheering the prosecution of bad guys, both internationally and in the US. When you give a government the jurisdiction to prosecute someone who needs prosecuting, no matter how bad that actor is, that grant of jurisdiction can bite you in the ass. The production of this video looks a bit silly to me most of a year later. The sound is terrible, and I was obviously watching a lot of After Effects tutorials that week. The animations are a bit rough and over-used. Learning: It’s a process.

The next vid,”Rand Paul Vs. Bernie Sanders in 2016 Would Be Awesome“, illustrates nicely how unpredictable and unjust YouTube success can be. I typically put between 15 to 20 hours into the writing, performance and production of each video, over the course of at least a week. Some of my videos marinate in the back of my head, or in half-written states for months. This video took about 6 hours from idea to publication, and that includes two hours of upload time. It’s rambling, repetitive, semi-coherent, and is basically just me riffing on a theme. It had one of my biggest opens ever, almost 300 views the first day, and it remains the channel’s sixth most watched video almost a year later. Its success has something to do with the public’s thirst for news about Bernie Sanders, but it’s mostly just a title that people want to click on, and a message that people agree with, no matter how poorly executed it is. Improving my craft is important to me. I like the more complex videos I make, and I want to get better at them. But if I want this YouTube channel to be successful, I need to throw more shit at the wall to see what sticks. I should be producing at least one improvised video a week to accompany my more produced videos.

“Egypt And A Plea For Mohammed Morsi” is a video that took awhile. It involved actual research on the history of Egypt, Turkey, and Russia, as well as some less jarring After Effects animations. I think it does a good job of making its central point, that killing old leaders is always a mistake. “Jeb Bush Is Not Electable in 2016” Is another quickly produced riff on a good idea, inspired by the success of The Paul-Sanders video discussed above. It closes with a farewell to the big pink wall that served as the back drop to my videos for most of a year. God that room was small.

“Rachel Dolezal, White Envy, and White Guilt“, is not a video I wanted to make, but it’s since become one of my favorites. The Channel’s first Patron outside of my gene pool requested it, so I did it. It allowed me to do some truly horrific rapping, and get a number of other thoughts off my chest. It’s a fitting 100th video, and has a lot of elements I should use more often. I’ve found that going after specific politicians who make me angry is not such a great strategy, and it didn’t work very well for “Santorum and Huckabee: Attack of the Hate Zombies“. The vid took forever to cross 200 views. But man, I hate those guys. It was a delight to watch them get exactly what they deserved this election cycle: total obscurity. BTW, I published this video a week before the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage nation-wide, so my estimate in the video of how long that would take is obviously a bit off.

Ah, now this is how you use Adobe After Effects! “The 3 European Myths That Brought Us The Greece Crisis” is a pleasantly surprising video to view most of a year later. I like it a lot. The animations are unobtrusive but effective, it covers a lot of history, and it explains current events in unique way. If only the sound wasn’t so terrible. I am generally pretty critical of my videos, so it’s nice to see one, especially from this far back, that I can uncritically enjoy.

Views made a small recovery in June 2015, going up to 13,142 from 12,434 in May. None of the top five videos was produced in the month of June. Four of the 7 videos produced broke 100 views in the first day, 11 months later, they have all broken 200 views, and 4 of 7 have broken 600. At the end of June 2015 we had 102 videos, all but two of which were viewed in June, 64 of which have been viewed more than 10 times, 18 of which were viewed more than 100 times and a very impressive six videos were viewed more than 1,000 times( FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, China, Black On Black, and Paul-Sanders ). This month was great, and it was a fitting end to my Istanbul exile. My skills with After Effects made great progress, and I learned a lot about YouTube. It was exciting to be getting out of my small room in Tophane, though I would come to miss it in the coming months.

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So in May views came back down to Earth. I found it pretty depressing. For the second time, a video had done really well, leading me to believe the channel was finally taking off. And for the second time that video’s viral moment came and went, leading to a massive decline in viewers. Views for “FATCA Explained in 4 Minutes…” rose and fell between April and July 2014, and “How Powerful Is John Oliver” rose and fell between January and May 2015. The graph below shows the whole arc of monthly views from the start of weekly production through to April 2016.

The impact on my mood is significant because it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The one thing I’ve learned for sure about the YouTube algorithm over the past couple years is that it values quantity. More videos is always better. No matter how those videos do, the more often you post, the more likely YouTube is to serve up your entire back catalog of videos. In May of 2015 I got depressed about views and only managed to complete my required video a week. Less production due to less views leads quite directly to even less views.

Getting bummed and unproductive is unwise, and it is also unjustified. A longer-term review of the viewership stats makes this clear. After both of these roller-coaster rides, the level of views was set at a new level. Before the FATCA video’s rise, views hovered around 2,000 a month. After that vid died down again, monthly views were in the 5 to 7,000 view range. After the John Oliver video died down, views settled around 10 to 15,000 views. The slump of a heavily viewed video is annoying, but some of the eyeballs that come in stick around, and if the other content is at all decent, a semi-viral video will do any channel a ton of good.

This was a fairly light month for videos. In the Spring of 2015 my savings were dwindling so I started taking freelance projects, which slowed down video productivity. We started off with the “5 Dumbest Parts of The Black on Black Crime Myth” a topic that really gets to me. The vid is super simple, but with some good stats, and a dollop of anger it has performed really well. “Macedonia and the Endless Falls Of Empire” is a fun one as well. I like taking more obscure news items and using them to draw broader lessons. This gun battle in Macedonia, that nobody was talking about, provided a nice window on the history of the Ottoman, British and American empires. This is also one of my first videos to intensively use .SVG maps. This has become more and more of a thing over the past year. Prior to this vid, I put together older map videos in photoshop, which involves a lot of work and isn’t very precise. Starting here, I switched to vector based graphics, which allows for quicker workflow, and much more powerful animations through the use of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. Fun stuff.

“The New Economy And What We’ve Lost” is a weird one. I think it’s well produced, and I like the graphics and the music shift. What’s weird about it is the way making these videos takes me away from what I think I believe. If I were more serious about Libertarianism, then inequality would be a topic to avoid. It is something I think about a lot though, more so this year as the success of Sanders and Trump makes it clear that it’s something we need to deal with if we want a functioning system. I’m not all that doctrinaire, so it’s fun to see the way that thinking about these issues actually changes my mind. My thought process is very much on display in this video, and in later vids on the topic like this one. “Sri Lanka and the Power of Elections” was fun to do. We hear a lot about Democracy’s failings, but less about its successes. This vid was consciously aimed at Turkey’s election in June, which resulted in a slap in the face for another strongman. Unfortunately the story did not end as happily in Turkey, mostly because the opposition could not get its shit together. Argh! But I digress…

As I mentioned above, views collapsed in May 2015, falling from 17,963 in April down to 12,434. Only one of the month’s top five videos was produced in May. Two of the four videos produced broke 100 views on the first day, and 12 months later all of them are over 200 views, and three of four are over 300. At the end of May 2015 we had 95 videos, all of which were viewed at least once in May, 68 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 13 of which were viewed over 100 times, and four of which (FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, Black on Black Crime Myth) were viewed more than 1,000 times. It was a good month, but I wish I had produced more videos. The balance between freelancing and video production is one that I continue to struggle with. There’s only so much time really.
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This was a great month. The six videos produced are all killer, no filler, and it features two of my favorite vids ever, one of which was super successful, and one of which annoyingly continues to fail to find an audience. I also like the range of this month’s vids, from Abortion to TV shows about Vikings.

When I started this channel I promised myself I would never touch two topics: Abortion and Israel. My thinking was that bringing them up was a no-win proposition, guaranteed to lose me half my audience. I started off this month by violating this resolution and covering Abortion with “Purvi Patel and the Truth About Abortion Politics“. I think there’s a fair amount here that both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people can agree on. It was also fun shooting this with some members of my Improv group The Clap. I’ve actually shot a video on Israel as well, though I doubt that will ever see the light of day.

It may seem silly today, but 13 months ago Jeb Bush really looked like the most likely Republican nominee for President. This prompted me to make April’s second video “Why Jeb Bush Should Not Be President” as a counterpart to my perennially popular “Why Hillary Clinton Should Not Be US President“. Looking at the Jeb video now, I’m kind of amazed at the amount of stuff I have managed to pack into it. In just over three minutes it’s got a pocket history of the Bush family, and the Medici family as well as the rise and fall of the Florentine Republic. Not sure if this style is the best for viewers, but I certainly enjoy it. Makes me think my recent videos have gotten unnecessarily bloated.

Next up is one of my aforementioned favorites, “How Wall Street Killed the State of New York“. It’s well researched, has great visuals, a strong and innovative argument, a good title, a picture of my high school car … and took over a year to pass 200 views. Annoying. Next up was “Vikings and the Rebirth of the History Channel” which may reveal a bit too much about my misspent college years. “3 Reasons China Will Never Rule the World” is another one of my favorites, and one that has happily been super successful as well. It was my fourth video to pass 10,000 views. Fun note about this one, I think it may have experienced the attentions of the Chinese government’s legendary social media army. Throughout its period of fastest viewership, the like and dislike tallies were kept suspiciously close together. The month closed out with “Who Really Runs The United States” which does a bit of presidential history, and points out how the old regional power bases that used to trade the office back and forth are now being replaced by a single massive oligarchy generated in ivy league schools.

April was another good month, though viewership fell from 20,410 in March to 17,963. The bulk of views was once again January 2015’s John Oliver video, but it had fallen of from last month by about 5K. Compensating to some extent was Hillary Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy for president on April 12th, 2015. The “Why Hillary Clinton Should Not Be US President” video had been ticking over slowly since it was produced in July 2014, averaging 100-150 views a month. On April 12th, it got 366 views, and the monthly view count hasn’t fallen below 1,000 since. Here’s a graph. April 2015 is pretty clear.
A year later the view count just keeps rising, which I hope it will continue to do through November. Only one of the month’s top five videos was produced in April. Four of the 6 videos produced broke 100 views on the first day (OK the China vid was only 99), and 13 months later all of them have broken 200 views, and 5 of 6 have broken 400. At the end of April 2015 we had 91 videos, all of which were viewed at least twice in April, 76 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 13 of which were viewed more than 100 times, and four(!) of which were viewed more than 1000 times ( FATCA, John Oliver, Hillary Clinton, and Kim Kanye ). At the end of last month I was once again contemplating the prospect of ever advancing view counts and sure success! That’s not what I got in April 2015. It demonstrates the power of a single video. It didn’t matter that April was a bigger month than March on almost every other metric. The biggest vid fell by 5K so that was that. Nertz.

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March was a fantastic month. Views doubled from the month before, giving us our second best month to that point. Looking at it now, this month’s vids were pretty heavy on the “big pink wall” I used to shoot in front of in my room in my old apartment in Tophane ( as opposed to my new apartment in Tophane ). I do not miss that wall. Maintaining a good mix of formats of videos is a big concern of mine, and a lot of the videos this month look distressingly similar. I’ve got a lot more tools in my arsenal now than I did last year.

After the success of February’s “How US Bombing Helps the Islamic State” video, I decided to start this month with two Iraq videos. Almost a year and a half later, it’s striking how relevant they both still are, and how the US government is still making the exact same mistakes. Both videos, “Why Attacking Mosul Is A Big Mistake” and “Why It’s Time To Admit We Killed Iraq” refer to the impossibility of maintaining a unified Iraq when our main ally is the sectarian Shia Iraqi government. This problem has only grown in the year since. On a brighter note, “Why Are There Still Poor People” points out how our efforts to help poor countries have been much more successful than is recognized.

The next two videos provide an interesting case study. “Why Washington, DC Won’t Change Income Inequality” and “The Genius of John Le Carre’s The Looking Glass War“, released within a day of each other, initially performed horribly. Both took weeks to cross 100 views. But in the 15 months since, their behaviors diverged. Here’s a Graph.
The Inequality video finally crawled above 200 views after 9 months, but the John Le Carre spy novel review regularly picks up 35 to 50 views a month. This makes it one of my top 40 performing vids. Its certainly a better video, but what makes the difference, I think, is the subject. By mixing a well known novel, and Iraq War Villains in the keywords, the Le Carre video has more legs. It has less “likes” than the Inequality video, and didn’t get its first comment until about a week ago, so that’s not it. These are the things that I ponder into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe I should do more book reviews? More weird juxtapositions? Sigh.

The last vid for the month was a fun little meditation on the worth of popular culture, and a transparent attempt to get clicks entitled: “Are We Doomed? Kim, Kanye and Popular Culture”. The vid somehow manages to feature both Kathy Ireland and Prince Potemkin, which is something I’m very proud of.

Views this month more than doubled, going from 10,055 to 20,410. This was overwhelmingly on the back of one video, “How Powerful Is John Oliver” which received 14,894 views. I don’t know if I’d call that viral, but it’s pretty damn good for my channel. Only one of the month’s top five performers was published this month. Only one of the 6 videos broke 100 views on the first day, but 14 months later, all of them have broken 200 views, and 4 out of 6 have broken 500. At the end of March we had 85 videos, all but two of which were viewed at least once, 60 of which were viewed more than 10 times, 12 over 100 times, 2 over 1,000 (FATCA and…) and one over 10,000 times (John Oliver). At the end of this month I was pretty ecstatic. It was finally happening! After the disappointment of a channel that died after early success with one video almost a year prior, things were finally taking off! Surely this time growth would continue and the sky was the limit! To be continued…

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The big news this month was the John Oliver video I had produced the month before. In under a month, it zoomed up to become my second most watched video ever, doubling monthly views for the channel and driving them over 10,000 for only the third time in the year since I started. fifteen months later, monthly views still haven’t fallen below 10K. If it weren’t for this video, I’d be sitting in a law office somewhere right now. Its success convinced me to stick with the channel and look for freelance jobs rather than go back to full time employment. This month also featured my first tentative steps into crowd-funding, setting up my Patreon page, which allows supporters to chip in on a per video basis. This was a pretty pivotal month. Speaking from a year or so later, when Patreon and freelancing are combining to provide a decent for Istanbul lifestyle it’s interesting to look back to the beginnings. It took another five months before the Patreon page produced enough to even bother taking a payment.

This month’s videos played with format, and they played with ideology. Any body of thought is going to have weird edges and contradictions to it, especially one that has existed over any length of time. This month’s first video makes a “modest proposal” to the US National Rifle Association, that it broaden its demographic by fighting drug prohibition. It’ll never happen, but the reasons why are worth thinking about. Next we questioned just how conservative Ted Cruz’s war mongering is. The month’s most successful video “How US Bombing Helps The Islamic State” pointed out just that. Next up was a “Bitter Island” a parody video, and an homage to the great Adam Curtis‘s Bitter Lake. We learned a valuable lesson here. I didn’t mark it clearly as parody, and some regular viewers were pretty confused(!). It was also fun to work collaboratively, which I need to do more of. Our last February video took a look at Tourism, and how important it is for economic development.

As I mentioned above, views finally topped 10K again this month, going up to 10,055 from 5,385 the month before. Only one of the month’s top five videos was produced in February. The big story was the John Oliver video, which racked up 4,953 views all by its lonesome. Only one of the five new videos broke 100 views on the first day, but 15 months later all of them are at over 200 views, and three of them are over 600. As of the end of February we had 79 videos, all but one of which was viewed at least once, 57 of which were viewed over ten times, 12 of which over 100 times, and two of which over 1,000 times (FATCA and John Oliver). This was a tremendously heartening month. I decided that I would keep on trying to make it work as long as I could stay above 10,000 views a month. So far so good, 15 months later!

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So January was meant to be the month I gave up. I started looking around for work, and thought about wrapping things up on the channel. One theory about the all-powerful YouTube algorithm is that it likes frequency. The more often you post, the more likely YouTube is to put your stuff in front of people. One mentor in particular had been urging me to post more frequently all year. I had a bunch of scripts lying around so this month I decided to give it a shot. It went really, really well. I am not 100% sure that this theory is correct, but it’s worth mentioning that my most successful videos in 2015 have all come in or around weeks where I posted more than one video.

I started off the month with a discussion of the US government’s disturbing announcement that it was responding to an alleged virtual attack from North Korea with very concrete sanctions. The next week I did five videos, an interesting experiment that I haven’t felt the need to repeat since. It almost killed me. On Monday we produced a somewhat grim meditation on that month’s Charlie Hebdo massacre and what it didn’t say about the “Clash of Civilizations”. On Tuesday we uploaded a faux-interview with one of my favorite punching bags, Rudy Giuliani, on his obsession with “Black on Black Crime”. I’ve done a lot of vids on this subject, finally working it into a format that people wanted to watch last May. On Wednesday we covered why Wall Street likes it when we talk about the 1%. Next up, on Thursday we exploded the idea of the “Islamic Reformation” in what remains one of my favorite videos ever. This may be a case for churn by itself. From 8 months later the first two vids this week look embarrassingly rough, but this one still works for me. The self-inflicted over-work may have thrown up a gem that wouldn’t have otherwise been produced. If Thursday’s video showed the benefits of churn, Friday’s showed it’s drawbacks. I’m visibly exhausted and half-assedly deliver what should have been one of the most devastating videos I’ve ever done, simply documenting how US government policy since 9/11 has made us much more insecure. Instead of being a block buster it remains one of my least watched videos ever.

The five video experiment was very worth doing however. As I sat exhausted at Cafe La Viola, my hookah bar, the next Saturday, I quickly banged out a script on John Oliver. I am a big fan of the show, and the video is basically just an appreciation. “How Powerful Is John Oliver” was the second video I published the next week, after a celebration of progress on civil asset forfeiture. The Oliver video through some combination of the right title and an inoffensive message really took off. It became my second truly successful video after FATCA. In January it only got 800 or so views, but even that level of viewership made it a success from the start. Whether it was algorithm voodoo, or just a result of good video-writing muscles, the 5 video week was apparently worth it. I closed out the very busy month with “Why I don’t Care About The Environment”, a video that is certainly not very popular, but I think answers a question that was worth covering.

Views fell again this month, from 5,785 in December, to 5,385 in January. Things were looking up though, three of the top five performers in the month were actually produced in January, and it was already clear that the John Oliver video was going to continue to do well. Only two of the nine videos broke 100 views on the first day, but all but one of them has broken 200 views eight months later, and 6 of 9 have broken 300. At the end of January we had 74 videos, all but two of which were watched at least once, 49 of which were watched over 10 times, 10 of which were watched over 100 times, and one of which broke 1,000 views (FATCA). This was the month we finally broke 100,000 views. It’s always nice to see a new digit turnover, and it just felt a little more legit to have a 6-figure view channel than a 5-figure one. At the end of January I was still looking for a job, but hadn’t found one yet…

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