The very first video I posted to YouTube was in October, 2014. It’s been 9 years. And I thought I’d take a pause from regularly scheduled programming to reflect on those 9 years.

To do so, I’m combining several TarotTube or Pagan Youtube (Occult Tube?) community tags on the subject. If you loiter in any of those networks then you may have seen some. I’m going to do my response as a blog post. And I think that in and of itself probably says something.

Where Do I Belong?

I don’t believe I’ve seen any tags/prompts with this particular question, so it might be my own. But if you’re an author or content creator like me who is kind of all over the place, then this question does come up.

I still think of myself as being part of TarotTube, for instance, but if you’ve seen any of my recent video shares, then you’ll have noticed that it’s actually been a while since I’ve done anything on point about the tarot.

I don’t believe you need to post tarot topical content to be part of the tarot community. I consider myself part of the tarot community because most of my friends are tarot people and who also happen to be tarot authors, deck creators, or professional tarot readers.

PaganTube is broad enough of a category that I think I often get tucked in there. But do I belong there? Am I a pagan? My stance is, I’m cool with whatever you want to call me. If you wouldn’t label me as pagan, I’m cool with that. If you want to include me under the pagan label, I’m cool with that, too.

I’ve been sharing a lot of culturally East Asian content as of late, and yet I’m not really part of the designated Asian American YouTube community. Meaning I doubt I’m being associated specifically as an Asian YouTuber, even though factually that’s an accurate description of my identity.

Sometimes it can feel like no matter which niche we’re talking about, I’m located at the fringes of that niche.

What Type of Content to Create

Specific to YouTube video content, I struggle with this, a lot. Because I try to ask myself, “Why am I sharing my thoughts on this subject publicly in video form? What is my true objective for putting this out there?”

And if I can’t come up with a not-vapid response, then I talk myself out of making the video. A few times I’ve failed at that line of inquiry, not being honest with myself, and then came to regret the upload. So I’m trying to learn the lesson of realizing just how important that line of inquiry is.

When I first started out, my intent was to make voiceover + b-roll footage educational videos only. I wasn’t planning on showing my face on camera. Voiceover + b-roll footage videos take up a lot of time and effort to make, and so at some point I guess I gave up on that and went for the talking head. =P

Sharing culture- and tradition-specific content with an audience that is primarily not from that culture or who might not have any prior familiarity with that tradition is a delicate balancing act.

When something is very precious to you, and sacred no less, the last thing you are interested in doing is sharing that which is precious and sacred to you with someone who is going to be disrespectful. It leaves you feeling worse than neutral about your return on investment– because it leaves you feeling like they don’t even deserve to know about this, and here I just wasted my time, effort, and conscientiousness for it to – not just go un-appreciated – but spat on. So now for each and every tradition-specific video, there’s just this paranoia-level amount of thought that has to go into processing whether I should be making that video.

One thing that does give me a lot of comfort is my growing audience of Asian Americans (or Diasporic Asians/overseas Asians) who don’t feel like they’re connected to their heritage but want to be. Often if I have a hang-up over posting on a particular subject matter and am hesitating, but I think it might be useful to Asian Americans for reconnecting to their heritage, I’ll post it.

Sharing tarot content, I find, is easier on me. Though lately it’s hard to come up with a topic I want to make a video about. I do my deck and book reviews here on the blog, not on my YouTube channel.

I will say that my personal favorites to do are commentary videos, but lately it’s just not the right climate anymore to be making commentary videos willy-nilly. We’re way past the innocent neolithic times when you could put out an opinion sound bite on a topic you don’t know very much about. Also, people on the internet don’t actually want to be challenged; they want to be validated. People go on social media to proselytize and to get instant highs on emotional extremes; they’re not on this incredible diverse platform to learn, to expand their horizons, and to achieve a greater sense of collective unity with the varied and manifold whole.

Favorite Video You’ve Made

I can’t pick one single video I’ve made on my channel that’s my favorite, but my Introduction to Taoist and Buddhist Mysticism is my favorite series, though I have yet to complete the final installment, Video 6.

I’ve outlined and gathered the b-roll footage, images, etc. I want for Video 6, but just haven’t gotten around to organizing it into something cohesive yet concise. And also, what do I want to focus my coverage on and what do I want to leave out?

The Sightsee the Tarot series is one I’m really proud of. I love how it showcases many different tarot perspectives and practices, showing how diverse the field is. For those who don’t have the funds to pay for tarot workshops, I hope this video series is the next best thing.

Likes and Dislikes about YouTubing

What I like and dislike the most is the same thing. That which brings you the light can also be that which burns you.

I love the camaraderie when it’s there. I like connecting with kindred spirits. In our real life communities, it can often feel like you’re alone, you’re in the minority, you’re in the margins, so I love that social networks give us this opportunity to connect with kindred spirits. I love the realization that I’m not alone, that there are lots of very cool people who think like me, who are interested in the “weird” things I’m interested in.

Yet I equally dislike the close connections that social networks foster, resulting in the lack of boundaries. My whole mission is to advocate for access, but what I dislike is when it turns into entitlement, when the people trying to engage with me seem to be encroaching into my personal space– and to be fair, I don’t ever think it’s intentional. I don’t blame anyone. I think it’s the nature of the platform. It blurs boundary lines.

In real life, when you read a book and get to a passage you’re confused about, it would never occur to you to drive over to the author’s house, ring the doorbell, and request a sit-down conversation so you can ask all your questions and get clarification. But with the Internet, most people do feel like it’s okay to email, direct-message, and pursue every contact method they can think of to ask their questions to the author.

I don’t always love that. It’s not that I don’t want to answer the question. Actually, I do. But I don’t want to answer a hundred questions. And that’s what happens. It isn’t one question from one person. It’s a hundred questions from a hundred different people coming at me from multiple channels requesting personal one-on-one time. Not to mention it’s never one simple answer. I reply, they reply back with another question, and now what? Wouldn’t it be rude to ignore the second question? But I’m also feeling my personal space encroached upon. What does one do? When it gets that overwhelming, it feels easier to just ignore everyone.

This non-responsiveness from an author then irritates and frustrates readers, and I get it. From their perspective, their question only takes a minute to answer, maybe even less than that. So why won’t the author just answer?

From the author’s perspective, it’s a hundred different people tagging you and asking questions all at the same time, every time you log in, to the point where logging in becomes a frightening experience. (I have all social media notifications turned off on my phone, so the only way for me to see tags is to manually log in.)

And again, rarely is it “just one question.” They start with just one question, and then follow it up with three more. Then there are the questions preceded by ten long, meaty paragraphs of text, and the only way to properly answer their question is to closely read the ten long paragraphs of text… Like, what is one to do? It’s overwhelming.

I also love the democratization of the marketplace of ideas that an online forum like TarotTube or PaganTube facilitates. The platforms mean that more marginalized perspectives and own voices are given opportunities for visibility, something that really didn’t happen before. Not every practitioner has the means for writing and publishing a book, but most can start a YouTube channel or blog. PaganTube helped to make primary sources — content created by native practitioners from a diversity of cultural traditions — more directly accessible than ever.

I like how my YouTube channel becomes a beacon for connecting with like minds. But I really, really dislike how the nature of this subject matter means we also attract a lot of … gosh, what’s the word I’m looking for. Fringe of even the fringe. People who don’t believe in science. People who think their religious ideas are “facts.” Like, after you use the words “astral projection,” you can’t then say you’re providing a statement of rational, scientific fact. It’s your belief, dude. I dislike encounters with people who take themselves or their ideas way too seriously.

Perhaps my biggest dislike is a condition that doesn’t necessarily stem from YouTubing per se; it’s just the inevitable new hazard anyone who publishes a book in the 21st century or has any public presence to any degree on the Internet has to deal with. People have no problems spreading factual inaccuracies about you. Or they put out defamatory statements and provide zero receipts. Let’s not even get into the impersonators and all the fake accounts out there of people pretending to be you.

Another dislike about YouTubing is one that spotlights a universally recognized human trait that every civilization throughout history has a word for, has a whole system of beliefs around, and that is the evil eye. It will perplex the gentle soul how accurate and how true, how wise the principle of the evil eye is. When people see you doing something they wish that they themselves could do, they will cast the evil eye at you. It’s not the effects of it that bother me; it’s having to confront this ugly side of humanity that is indigestible. I want to preserve my belief in the good of people, and witnessing the activated evil eye makes it really hard to do that.

Tech Used

Let’s lighten this conversation up, shall we? Okay, so one of the prompts you often see in the reflections-on-YouTubing tags is to talk about the tech you use, how you film and edit your videos.

I was recording my videos with my 16-year-old laptop, the one I had since law school, up until 2019/2020. This was the laptop I took my bar exam on. It’s that old! It was state-of-the-art tech when I first got it – touchscreen monitor, super-thin and lightweight, had its own webcam, did lots of cool tricks – but as it goes with tech, it became a relic real fast. Hence the shoddy quality of my videos for the longest time.

I use Windows MovieMaker to edit my videos, and I do a lot of editing because I don’t want to post hour long videos. Every 20-minute video you see on my channel begins with 40 to 60 minutes of raw footage. Then when I go to edit, I realize sometimes I get way too granular into the weeds of the subject and it’s not necessary, or it’s way too much of a tangent, or I didn’t flesh out the idea well enough so either I take out the sub-topic entirely or I have to re-record supplemental chatting to flesh it out (and always opt to just delete than to re-record), or — and this is common — I realize I’m just repeating myself over and over with different words. =P

I don’t film with my camera phone because it’s way too much trouble to figure out how to migrate the recorded videos onto a desktop to then edit and publish. So I film with the webcam perched atop my desktop monitor.

Btw, just two weeks ago I found a coupon code for this audio/video editing program so I’ve signed up for a short-term subscription. So far I’ve only made one video using that program, the most recent one on my channel. We’ll see how that goes. =) I may or may not renew the subscription after the discounted period.

Personal Opinions on Monetization

I am glad that options like patreon, paid membership services, and pay walls are available to content creators who want to monetize their content or condition selected content on pay-to-play.

These are necessary, welcomed revenue streams that provide incredible opportunities.

We do live in a capitalist society, and monetization is an incentive for creators to continually put out high-quality content. If you do not support monetization, then you are going to lose a lot of fantastic creators to burn-out.

And yet… It is my opinion that bringing monetization and opportunities for profit into the realm of spirituality turns what ought to be consecrated ground into a minefield.

But if there isn’t monetization and opportunities for profit, then we would be deprived of accessibility. It’s a catch 22.

We turn cultivation of spiritual practice into potential for personal profiteering and we risk tainting the entire sea. It’s a form of pollution of what had been so pristine and natural. It’s corrupting.

And yet just think about how we, as individuals in this society, even get access to our favorite resources on spiritual practice. If it weren’t for capitalism, we wouldn’t get the wealth of diverse resources we have at our fingertips right now.

I try to balance between having to realistically navigate living in a capitalist society and living by democratic socialist ideals. So I do try to keep a lot of my content free and accessible.

But I don’t think my approach is for everybody, nor do I wish it upon others, nor do I think, if implemented as a general policy, it’d be sustainable. So I would never, ever impose my way of thinking onto others.

I just think that monetization is a minefield upon which we need to tread with care.

Have You Thought About Quitting?

It intrigued me that a variation on this question showed up in several tags. It goes to show how common the burnout problem is.

At least once every quarter, I seriously contemplate quitting. And that’s because in terms of the balancing between likes and dislikes, pros and cons, the dislikes and the cons outweigh the positive. YouTubing feels like a personal sacrifice, not a personal gain.

For anyone who wants to keep separate in-person professional life from metaphysical and occult philosophy content you create under a pen name — having a YouTube channel where you show your face and film unfiltered without a green screen from your home is utterly foolish. Here I am, the fool.

Engaging publicly and creating content publicly on social media is like playing with fire. Visibility paints a target on you.

Some people have the thick skin it takes to deal with that, and accept it as a consequence of getting to do what they love to do. I know I don’t have the thick skin for it and I’m constantly questioning the so-called “return on investment.” Not from a business financial sense. But from the constantly questioning of “what exactly am I getting out of all my time and labors spent on this” sense.

It’s a constant inner tug-of-war. The moment I start to feel the pull toward being a hermit, shutting down all social media and returning to in-person contacts only, something inspires me back toward staying online and trying to be helpful, staying engaged with community. The moment I start to feel the pull toward online community engagement, something drives me back toward detonating it all and becoming a hermit.

But it’s also a “me” problem. Human nature means we focus and magnify the negative, and downplay the positive. Nine people comment positively and express their appreciation. You scroll past them. One person leaves a negative troll-y comment and you zero in on that and fixate on their remarks for the rest of the week and let it eat away at you. So it’s a “me” problem. I still need to figure out how to focus on the nine and dismiss that one. I’m sure I’m not alone in this problem.

Key Takeaway Lessons

What have I learned from YouTubing in a niche witchy community for nine years?

Don’t argue on the Internet. Big one. If you take nothing else away from me, take that. Please. You’re welcome. Do not argue on the Internet. Complying with that principle is so hard, I acknowledge. People will slide into your comments section to poke at you, to trigger you, to incite you to engage in a really stupid debate. Don’t do it. Just don’t. Let them be wrong. Let them sit in their own ways. You don’t have to convince them of yours.

This next one isn’t a rule I came up with; it’s one taught to me, and it’s so wise I’ve attempted to adopt it for myself. Yeah, I said “attempted,” or attempting, present tense ongoing. 🙂 The rule is if someone comments to something you’ve posted or commented on that is in disagreement with you or is trying to challenge your stance, you can — if you want (although even this is discouraged) — you may engage 2 additional times. Meaning, they reply to you, you can reply back #1. They reply to you again, you can reply back #2, and now you’re done. Tap out. Never engage beyond that, goes the rule.

I’ll say this. I’ve broken the rule several times and every single time I’ve broken the rule and engaged beyond reply back #2, I’ve regretted it. 100%. So it’s actually a good rule if you can muster the the wisdom to follow it. =P

Also in general my personal policy is to not correct people on the internet. So even if I see a factually incorrect statement about, say, tarot history, or Taoism, or what not, I do kind of tense up and get mad for a second by myself, but I release the tension and scroll on by. I don’t engage. Leave their factually incorrect statement be.

Remember that people are seeing you in 2-D, so they are going to treat you like a two-dimensional character. Don’t be mad, or sad, don’t blame anyone, it’s just the nature of the platform. If you want to be visible in 2-D, then be prepared to get objectified, to get reduced to a caricature of yourself.

You have to learn to deal with misinformation and disinformation about you and your work. You can’t make it a habit to go around the interwebs leaving comments and trying to correct every single misconception or factual error about you. You can’t let it get under your skin. You can’t cry defamation. You have to learn how to let it go and deal with people trying to tarnish your reputation. You have to hope that most people will see right through their hate and jealousy.

Speaking of the number nine, famous closing statement from Verse 9 of the Tao Te Ching:

功遂身退天之道

Withdrawing upon completion is the Way of Heaven

The passage is often translated to “retreat after success.” After you’ve achieved what you had set out to achieve, it’s time to retire. Don’t wear out your welcome, as they say. =) This is the divine wisdom of the Tao.