Newscape Studios inc. reposted this
We received a package in the mail this weekend. I first laid eyes on a diamond play button ten years ago. It was after receiving a job offer to go work for the largest Minecraft YouTuber at the time. So I dropped out of college, and headed some twenty-five hundred miles west to Seattle. What a sight it was. But a diamond play button wasn't a goal of mine. It wasn't something I'd ever dared hope for. My one channel of 50k subscribers was a big enough deal to me. Ten million just wasn't comprehensible. I've been writing, shooting, editing, and posting videos since I was ten years old... not that I was very good at any of those things back then. We'd spent countless hours on Xbox Live, playing Halo, forging our own little worlds where anything was possible. Back then, creativity came out of necessity... and creativity was well in abundance. We grew up on Red Vs. Blue and Hollywood Halo. Sure, we may have just been kids back then, but to us, we were the camera operators of the digital age. And we had all the time in the world. With box TV's, tangled RGB cables and flimsy capture cards, we took to making our own masterpieces. We'd glitch the weapons out of our hands to achieve that cinematic look. We'd bob our heads and sync up audio and torrent movies to steal choice soundbites. We'd quit in a fit of tech-induced rage, but rest assured, we'd be back at it again in an hour or two. This was back before YouTube, when we uploaded our poorly constructed videos to a site called useruploads.mythica.org. Then we'd share those now lost gems on V-Bulletin forums and proceed to get roasted on a fiery spit -- something which built skill or resilience, oftentimes both. That all changed at age twelve when I signed my first contract with Machinima. Co-signed, I should say, once I'd convinced my dad it wasn't a scam. That was the big leagues back then, no doubt about it. I was doing what I always had. But now I was getting paid for it. I hit my first million view video at thirteen. I "went to the bathroom" every thirty minutes that day, heading straight for the library and hitting refresh over and over on the school computer, watching the views steadily climb by the thousands with each click of the mouse. I was hooked on a feeling. The amazing team at Newscape Studios inc. made this award possible. This is a token of their hard work, much more than mine. Nowadays, I throw ideas at the board, and they're the ones who make them a reality. I look at this incredible company, and I know who to thank. But when I look at this plaque, I think back to when I was just a boy. I think about how he didn't dream of this. He was too busy creating for the love of it, indulging in the joy found through expressing oneself. It's a feeling worth more than diamonds (or silver-plated metal or whatever this thing actually is). Create with care... there's no telling just how far it will take you. #youtube #youtubecreatoraward #tenmillionsubscribers #diamondplaybutton