Genuinely Awkward

Instead of dedicating time to find a cure for cancer, I’ve spent a lot of time lately watching the latest videos on Boogie2988’s latest drama.

For those who aren’t perpetually online, Boogie is a YouTuber that became famous by portraying a fat nerd who loves Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft back in the early days of the platform. YouTube OG.

Over time he sabotaged his own reputation through a complete lack of filter on social media, laziness, a perpetual victim complex, and kind of just being a dick.

The most recent update is he advertised a scam coin called Faddy Coin, claimed he needed to scam his audience to pay for cancer treatments, was called out for faking his cancer diagnosis, and is now wallowing in self-pity with a freshly destroyed reputation as the haters swarm him.

Now the question is: Why did I waste my life watching this pointless YouTube drama? Here’s why:

I am utterly fascinated by how easy it would be for Boogie to make genuinely funny content. His promo for Faddy Coin is an ironic Andrew Tate parody where he’s sitting in a hot tub, smoking a cigar, shilling a coin that will make people broke like him. It’s actually pretty funny. The problem is he also launched a real coin that his audience proceeded to buy and lose money on. The video without the coin is genuinely entertaining content that could get hits and ad revenue. But he only made it because he was offered money by the coin’s creator. He could do a whole video series parodying Andrew Tate faux-alpha-masculinity and it would probably do pretty well.

He also claimed he shilled the coin because it gave access to a Discord server where he can chat with his fans. Instead of a crypto currency, he could have easily set up a subscription service with a premium Discord server that fulfills that same purpose, but it’s a product instead of a scam.

Boogie already has what every aspiring content creator desires: an audience. All it would take is a little effort to make a video a week and he could live comfortably.

So that’s his life. His reputation. Most of the world doesn’t care. But there’s always an after-school special learning moment for everything, and here’s what I took away from it:

1- Don’t trust creators to not scam you. I am waiting for the moment when even the most wholesome creators have that moment when the bag of cash on the table makes their moral compass go south. I want to be a professional creator, but here’s the thing, present and future audience: I don’t (currently) intend to scam you, I’m grateful to you, but I want your money. So enjoy my work, I’m happy to engage with you, but buy a damn shirt, freeloader.

2- Lying online is dumb. Everything is tracked, compiled, and monitored by Redditors. You will slip up eventually and have every post you’ve ever made thrown back in your face. Boogie’s lie about cancer was picked apart by people with free time on the internet. So tell the truth or say nothing. So many people live in fear of their government prying into their deepest, darkest secrets. Who cares about the government? It’s the Redditors you have to live in fear of.

3- There is always an ethical way to “get that bag.” With genuine thought and effort, you can make a living. Make what people want and sell it to them. If they don’t want something, either sell something else or figure out how to make them want it. It takes work. It takes risk. It takes research. But if you put it all together, you can get a sustainable income. You can make a ton of cash through short-term, unethical behavior or you can make the same amount over a longer period of time while keeping your reputation, pride, and soul intact.

In conclusion, I am trying to justify watching slop on YouTube. So long as you learn something and make it a productive experience, any time spent is time spent wisely.