Multiple high-level, professional YouTubers and Twitch streamers have come out in the past few weeks to talk about an important aspect of their careers and mental health: burnout.
Burnout in the Twitch and YouTube community isn’t new. Twitch introduced classes and seminars with casters in 2015 to help them improve their content and learn how to apply time management skills to their broadcasting schedules. In 2014, Fast Company noted that a “creator exodus” was potentially on the horizon at YouTube, as video personalities faced overwhelming burnout by trying to keep up with the punishing pace the company inadvertently set for its creators.
Olga Kay, a popular YouTuber at the time, told Fast Company that she rarely left her apartment because of the schedule she felt like she had to maintain in order to stay relevant.
“Sometimes it stresses me out more because I know I have to come back,” Kay said. “If I’m taking time off, and it’s a lot of time off, I have to come back and work twice as hard.”
““Sometimes it stresses me out more because I know I have to come back””
In recent weeks, creators like PewDiePie, H3H3’s Ethan Klein and Twitch’s Lirik have talked about the challenges they face because of mental health issues and burnout. Trying to produce daily content while also balancing anxiety and depression was difficult, they said in videos and on Twitter.
“I just don’t feel entertaining anymore and don’t really know why people continue to watch,” Lirik said earlier this month. “It’s like going on stage every fucking day and not knowing what to say anymore because you are out of material.”
He added, “Sorry, just need time off the internet. Gets tiring, mentally, living in meme land every day. Trying to figure out my next steps in life, change my habits, discover my goals, and ultimately find what the point is.”
Katrina Gay, national director for strategic partnerships at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told Polygon that burnout of this nature is common in industries where stars feel like they have to be on top of their game all the time. Trying to put on a persona and entertain when they no longer enjoy it, Gay said, leads to resentment for their jobs and the industry — and inevitably, to walking away.
“Making sure that you stay balanced is essential,” Gay said. “That means the demand of work life is something you need to be aware of. You have to really make sure you can’t allocate yourself in one particular area. There’s a lot of pressure and expectation, and stress is something that you have to manage carefully. You have to learn how to navigate that, how to step away — put limits on it — so you can put more effort into other areas of your life.”
This is an important part of a YouTuber or streamer’s career, and PewDiePie discussed it at length in a recent video. He said he’s noticed more entertainers talking about how they’re no longer fulfilled by what they’re doing, but feel a pressure, like he once did, to continue putting out content they think the audience wants. For PewDiePie, that meant playing a video game he wasn’t enjoying, but pretending like he did so his audience would be happy.
“The problem with being a YouTuber or an online entertainer is that you constantly have to outdo yourself,” PewDiePie said. “I think a lot of people get swept up in that … that they have to keep outdoing themselves, and I think it’s a good reflection of what happened with Logan Paul. I don’t think Logan is necessarily a bad person; I just think he really got caught up in that idea that he has to keep pushing himself to get those numbers.
“If you make videos every single day, it’s really tough to keep people interested, and keep them coming back.”
““The problem with being a YouTuber or an online entertainer is that you constantly have to outdo yourself””
There’s no question that YouTubers and streamers are trying to outdo themselves in an effort to remain competitive and relevant in a field of millions. Gay told Polygon that online entertainers have proved time and time again that it’s not a matter of whether they can physically do it, but how much of a toll that will take on their mental health. Eventually, they make poor judgment calls and suffer from burnout.
“They’re perfectly talented and equipped for their jobs,” Gay said. “But these are demanding, absorbing roles they’re taking on every single day. I think it’s important to be mindful of that. We have to remember it’s up to us to set our limits, not for someone else to tell us what we can and can’t do.”
The demand from viewers, the constant pressure of needing to perform, is an internal battle that just about every streamer deals with. Lirik published a lengthy post on his subreddit talking about his decision to step away from streaming, and mentioned the complaints he often gets from people in his own community who belittle him for needing to take a break. Lirik said that streaming takes up more of your life than just the on-camera time, because there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into a Twitch career.
“It burnt me the fuck out,” he said. “I have gone from chilling and kicking the shit with you guys to being self conscious of myself not being entertaining or up to the standards of other communities. Almost like I needed to constantly defend what I built. It made me sour. It also made me realize that I needed a break and more focus on my life. As much as I like streaming, it is all I do. Before you say you only stream 6-7 hours a day … streaming isn’t just an on-air job. Like, be realistic here people. It is lirikFR lirik here, not fucking Game of Thrones HBO production staff.”
The best thing entertainers can do when they begin to feel this way, Gay told Polygon, is to know when to take a break and focus on other aspects of life that aren’t related to constantly being “on” in front of an audience. Often, the time off eventually produces returns for entertainers, helping them rediscover why they wanted to get involved with YouTube and Twitch in the first place; Klein, who took a break from H3H3, is a good example.
“I was so focused on YouTube [and] making videos, it was the core of my existence,” Klein said, “and I had put on blinders to everything else that was important — doing anything that wasn’t working, stuff like that, not hanging out with my friends or family. I started realizing toward the end of last year that I had become a worse person all of a sudden.
“Part of healing for me is coming back … and doing it in a healthy way, a more fulfilling way.”
That self-realization is an important part of recovering from major burnout, Gay said, and it’s something that people need to learn for themselves. This is especially true for streamers and YouTubers, who don’t have bosses telling them when they should be working and when they should be resting.
“No one tells you how many hours you should be working,” Gay said. “You have to discover that for yourself. Maybe it’s after the fact, when you’ve realized, ‘I’ve overdone it and I’m not as healthy as I should be.’ You have to pause. The process of learning how to do that and when to do it is tough, but necessary. When people are learning to do that right in front of you, like YouTube, it’s modeling healthy behavior for an entire community.”