Last year, a video came up on my YouTube homepage about a kebab that looked suspiciously like a human shit.
The video was made by a popular YouTuber I’d never heard of, and because it was the first video he’d released in a while, the algorithm was doing its thing and pushing it onto random homepages on the off-chance people wanted to see it.
I watched it.
And I loved it.
^ The video in question.
I was in Sydney at the time, scoping the city as a potential next home base. My days were full of meetings, explorations, and general hangouts with friends to see the city. Basically, I was too busy to watch a 25-minute video about a shit-kebab, but I did it anyway.
Here I am in Sydney. Really wish I had moved those rubbish bins for this photo…
🥙 How the Shit-Kebab Cut Through The Noise
500 HOURS of video content get uploaded to YouTube every minute.
And somehow, this strange man and his strange obsession with this strange picture managed to capture my attention and hold it for half an hour, despite me having a bunch of other stuff I should’ve been doing. That’s an incredible feat.
Nowadays, as a creative person, the most valuable asset we yearn for is attention.
You spent days, weeks, months, years, working on your creative product? Guess what? Nobody cares. But, they will care—if they’re the right audience and your product is presented to them in the right way, at the right time.
Connecting with our genuine audience has become a creative person’s steepest challenge.
How can we cut through the noise?
🤷♀️ Don’t Worry if You’re Not Shit-Kebab
The majority of us won’t enjoy the astronomical success of YouTube or TikTok stars. Some of these teenage kids are making millions of dollars doing pranks or pretending to be video game characters controlled by viewers.
For real, it’s a thing.
Online content creators can attract an audience of thousands, if not millions, if they manage to catch a break. They have to write/create a decent product, sure. But timing and the current social landscape are also key factors in a creative’s success (just look at Barbenheimer’s incredible success this past weekend!).
Most modern creators are savvy as heck when it comes to this game. They make sure they have the snappiest title, the most eye-catching thumbnail, the funniest ‘hook’. They don’t post at random times; they have schedules. They know their audience, and they know their niche. Despite what a lot of creators portray, nobody effortlessly outputs what they want, when they want.
It’s a job. It’s work.
It can be easy to feel deflated when confronted with the challenges of being a modern creator. The possibility of immediate success and the ever-increasing examples of it can make us feel like our work is lacking if it doesn’t reach a bananas level of views (or sales) in its first week of existence.
If your work isn’t immediately loved by a gigantic audience, does it mean you’ve wasted your time?
💃 Honestly, Don’t Worry
If you spend your time working on your craft—writing your book, making your film or recording your music—you will be happy. You’ll look back with pride when you reflect on how you spent your time. And if you create consistently and use joy to fuel your flame, your work will get better and better.
As your work gets better, your audience will organically grow. The more quality work you produce, the more your audience will grow, and the more that audience will trust you.
You can’t control the social landscape, and you have a finite amount of control over timing, but you can control your effort, persistence, and output.
Shit-Kebab guy didn’t just make that video and become hugely popular and successful. He’d been making videos consistently for years, as well as growing his community and audience, and honing his craft. The result of this led to a committed army of fans who created so much traffic for a video about investigating a kebab that looks like poo, that it got to the YouTube homepage of an unsuspecting writer in New Zealand.
The moral of the story is: Don’t try to hack the system to cut through the noise. If you’re consistent, you will be heard eventually.
✨ Tips for Long-Term Success
- Don’t expect an audience immediately. Don’t get tempted to look over your neighbours’ fences and compare their success with yours.
- Play the long game. Be consistent and honest, and the right people will come.
- Collaborate and partner with other boats to help raise the tide (it’s what Stormhouse is all about - interconnected novels).
- Keep the following formulae in mind:
Effort + Consistency = Genuinely Good Work
Genuinely Good Work + Time = Committed Audience
Committed Audience + You = Creative Happiness