Retrenchment, Day 47
Part of being a Public Historian on the web, I think, is being involved with the history others are doing in public on the web. People seem to like reading and watching history online, if it's interesting. One reminder of this is that when I look at my "Channel analytics" on YouTube, my current most popular video this month is my "Historian Reacts to Neoslavery". It's an 18 and a half minute commentary on Knowing Better's 76-minute video on "A Part of History You've Always Skipped". I do pretty well in views on "Historian Reacts" videos. For example, I took it down last year, but by far my biggest video ever was a reaction video to the Bill Wurtz video, "history of the entire world I guess". The original now has over 161 million views. Mine actually had well over a million and it's the video that pushed me over the edge in terms of subscribers and views, into monetization on YouTube.
Not that monetization on YouTube has really amounted to anything. It was a fun milestone to pass, but I'm making more on the occasional "Buy me a Coffee" than I am from YouTube. However the point, I think, is not to make a lot of money on the videos, whether they're my own content or reactions I do to others' historical entries, but to building my name and attracting subscribers for more substantial content I can sell, like books or courses. If I'm all about "Making History" in public venues rather than the classroom, then I need to demonstrate that by engaging with viewers and with other people who are doing this too.
In addition to reaction videos, the next most popular videos were the one on Lahontan and Kandiaronk, my notes on Niklas Luhmann, and several more about note-making and apps. Of the top twenty, more than half are about note-making and apps. So that's something I should revisit and get serious about. Including a course on academic note-making and writing.
In order to regularly react to things and stay on top of what's happening in the web world with Open Ed, History, and Note-making, I'll need to begin making a blogroll of links to things I can check regularly. One issue I have with Substack is that it is too much like Twitter in its being mostly of the present moment. I now subscribe to about 200 substacks on a free basis. Just a handful as a paid subscriber. I've also just added Medium. And I have my own domain and website. But it's very difficult to see into the past with substack and it's not trivial to try to keep up with what people are doing across the web. Need to make a list and check it regularly. I'm not thrilled with people who only summarize the news or curate the work of others. But I think it would be a value add for myself if I had a place to check, and it might be useful to others if it was a public list.