 So I wasn't even planning on recording a video today, but seeing James Charles and just about every other creator freak out, I decided that we need to talk about this. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community, try to see what lessons we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And yeah, for those of you who follow me on Instagram or Twitter, by the way, follow me on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul, I just posted kind of just me talking a little bit. I wasn't planning on doing a video today. I'm really trying to switch my content up and dive back into psychology and philosophy and just adding more, adding more to my content that kind of separated me before. So I'm not a huge fan of just hopping on here and sharing my opinions. Like everybody has opinions and like, I don't know, for a long time I was different, but anyways, anyways, make sure you follow me on social media. So yeah, you probably heard the news, everybody's getting unverified. What's that mean? There's a little check mark on YouTube and YouTube sent pretty much, I don't know, they sent just about everybody this email saying that they weren't getting it. I'm not getting it. Other big creators, like people like millions of subscribers, they're going to be unverified and people are upset. So check it out. I want to talk about why YouTube did this, how it's ridiculous, but most of all, I want to talk about the life lessons that all of us can learn from this situation because holy crap, you would think that we just got warned that we're about to be hit by a nuke or something like that. But anyways, YouTube says that they're doing this because they've heard a lot of people bring this topic up, but literally nobody has ever said that. It's kind of like when politicians, like when you watch the Democratic debates and stuff, when they're like, people want their private health insurance. I haven't heard anybody say like, I love my health insurance plan and the deductibles I got and all this other stuff. I really haven't heard people talk about that. I've never heard anybody say, I love spending this much money on healthcare. So YouTube kind of just pulled that on them and I get everybody's frustration because YouTube keeps talking about being transparent with us and they keep BSing us. All right? I understand from a business standpoint why YouTube does a lot of the things it does, but I wish it would just be like, hey, we're not going to explain every part of this or we are. It's one of the two. But we creators, the YouTube community, we're not nearly as stupid. So when they say stuff like, oh, a bunch of people didn't like this. So we're doing this. It's like nobody asked for that. So I understand why creators are upset and I empathize with people who are upset too because this is kind of like an achievement, right? So I get why people are upset. Like a lot of people are upset. I've seen some people say they're quitting YouTube and stuff like that. Just like this is the straw that broke the camel's back. But real quick, let's hop into some philosophy, some psychology real quick of conspicuous consumption. All right? So this is something, this is a term that came out when pretty much like royal families and people who had money, they wanted to be able to separate themselves from us low-level commoners and everything like that. So they started wearing fancy things or buying fancy things and all those, right? So they would wear these things to say, yo, look, I'm different than you. I'm better than you. You're here. I am here, right? And this is something that we see throughout life. Like this has happened for hundreds of years. Today, you might buy a watch or a car or a certain phone or wear certain clothes to put off this message of, this is my status, all right? And it's interesting how we do that because the question is, it's like, does that really matter, right? Does this really affect your well-being, right? Because as many of us know, we know people who have the nicest things on earth and they're not happy. Well, today in the realm of social media, that verification is what separates people. Like, look, I am verified. I am an official YouTuber or Instagram influencer or person on Twitter. It is, I am above. Look at this cool little check mark I got, right? For those of you who aren't YouTubers watching this and if you're wondering like, what does that do? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like, it's just, it separates people a little bit. When I'm in a live stream with my check mark, if I say something, if I type in the chat, it separates me from the other people. If I comment on another YouTuber's video, it'll give them a notification like I get notifications when another verified YouTuber comments on my videos and everything like that. But as far as like money and things like that, that people are making, it doesn't affect them in any way, shape or form. So the bigger lesson that I want to talk about when it comes to this, I'll start off by saying where I was seven years ago. Seven years ago, I was a hopeless drug addict. I had a 10% chance of living, all right? They called my mom from the hospital and said, you should come down to Las Vegas so we don't think your son's going to live through the night, all right? I thought I was going to die. I was ready to die. I had given up on life. And I'm so grateful for the experiences I've been through. And you might be able to relate to this. Like adversity is one of the best things that you can go through because that makes you strong. It makes you resilient. In one of the books I was just finishing, they were talking about this kind of thought experiment of like if you had a child and you could see every time they were going to face a challenge in their life like, you know, heartache or getting fired from a job or just friends, you know, backstabbing them or whatever, like if you could alter that, would you? Like as a parent, you're like, yeah, I might, right? But like, I also want people to think about that for themselves. Like if you could erase every bad thing that ever happened to you, would you? Like I know a lot of us, we still carry around pain and that's why you get therapy. But for a lot of us, it has made us bad asses, right? Like when I got sober, I had nothing. I started with nothing. I had like three pairs of clothes, no money and an oxygen tank because I had congestive heart failure and my life is phenomenal now. So those of us who have been close to death or just been through any kind of adversity, like we don't sweat the small stuff, all right? That's why we talk about Cadillac problems. That's why I've been talking more on my channel about when people are like, all of our feelings are valid. No, sometimes we blow things way out of proportion like this checkmark, all right? So anyways, for those of you who don't know, I got canceled earlier this year and I think like I was just talking with some other YouTubers about this. I think that's why I'm very indifferent about this checkmark because I've been through adversity and your opinion might be, oh, Chris deserved it, all right? But check it out, all right? One DM that I sent that got spread around and some kid calling me a fake therapist led to my downfall, all right? I hit 100,000 subscribers and lost them before I got my silver play button, okay? I've lost over 20,000 subscribers since then as well. I never got a join button on my channel even though smaller channels have gotten it and I lost a lot of money, pretty much all of my ad revenue gone when I got canceled. And, you know, some of you were like, well, you deserve it, Chris, you deserve it, whatever your opinion is. But like, let me say this is, and this is going to sound harsh, but it made it so I'm not a wuss, all right? Like I'm seeing people just freaking out over this checkmark. I'm like, I have lost so much stuff this year. And like I said, I've seen people talking about quitting YouTube, like you guys, like I had channels making videos about me, getting hundreds of thousands of views, just talking crap about me. There are people out there who still find me to leave hate comments. And then like, YouTube's like, hey, we're going to take your checkmark away and people are like, pfft, I'm out. So like, for all of you out there, all of you non YouTubers, like appreciate the challenges you've gone through. Like I sit here, I sit here and I watch people just breaking under the smallest things. And I'm like, wow, thank God I've been through some stuff because this is nothing to me. This is absolutely nothing. Do I think it's a dumb decision by YouTube that makes absolutely no sense? Of course. But on the great in the grand scheme of things, does it really affect me? No, not really. I'm not going to lose an ounce of sleep over that. You know what I mean? So again, like, I just really hope that a lot of you watching this, you're grateful for the struggle you've been through, like just check it out. Like I something I do on a daily basis, I watch people who clearly haven't really been through any real adversity, just whining complain about the the smallest things, right? I'm like, man, like, I don't know, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I've been through stuff. And it, you know, toughen me up. I used to think that my dad was just this, you know, this jerk, because he never like talked to me about my feelings. And he would just tell me to walk it off if I was, you know, sad as a kid, or even when I was a teenager, I went through my first breakups. I'm like, geez, like, like, maybe that toughened me up a little. So anyways, moral of this story, be grateful for what you've been through. It's made you a badass. It's made you a warrior. All right. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon, and everybody who supports the channel in other ways like buying merch or the books and stuff like that. Because like I said, YouTube has taken away pretty much all of my ad money. So there you is. That's all I got for this video. I'll see you next time.