Imagine you had a friend who was a potter, who threw new creations on her wheel every day. You’ve purchased her work in the past, quite a bit of it actually.

“I have a new collection,” she says, “Would you like to buy some?”

“Not today,” you say, “But I love your stuff. I’ll certainly buy more of it at some point.”

“Why can’t you just be SUPPORTIVE?” she says, and storms off.

One thing I hear over and over from YouTube creators is that they don’t get enough “support” from other YouTube creators. By this, they mean that other YouTube artists don’t watch their videos enough, or subscribe to their channels. It’s an interesting conundrum, since videos are free to watch and take nothing but time. That said, watching videos in a long subscription list can take up a good chunk of your day, and if you’re trying to make your own work, there’s often not enough time to spend watching other creators’ videos.

There’s also the matter of taste. While many of us are sharing the same platform, that doesn’t mean that we all are interested in the same things, nor do we find the same style of video, topics, or visuals interesting. Is it being unsupportive if you aren’t watching something you wouldn’t be interested in anyway?

While it would be nice if everyone liked our work and had time to help build our numbers, support can take many forms. Encouragement, sharing links, advice, connecting creators to one another…all of those things can count as support, and they don’t make every relationship between creators one based on transactions. Remember that someone’s eyeballs on your latest video aren’t the most important thing they are.

Support comes in many forms. It would be wise to appreciate all of them.