你曾经梦想过成为一个职业up主吗？每天拍拍视频享受人生？或是不尽的鲜花和掌声？然而今年有一群著名的YouTuber公开表示自己其实疲惫不堪甚至充满抑郁情绪，究竟发生了什么？问题又该如何解决？
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YouTubers are exhausted
For years, YouTubers have believed that they are loved most by their audience when they project a chirpy, grateful image. But what happens when the mask slips? This year there has been a wave of videos by prominent YouTubers talking about their burnout, chronic fatigue and depression.
多年来，YouTuber一直认为，当他们展现出一种欢快、感恩的形象时，他们最受观众喜爱。但是当这样的“面具”揭开的时候会发生些什么呢？今年，一群著名的YouTubers发布了一大批视频，谈论他们的疲惫、慢性疲劳和抑郁情绪。
“This is all I ever wanted,” said Elle Mills, a 20-year-old Filipino-Canadian YouTuber in a (monetised) video entitled Burnt Out At 19, posted in May. “And why the fuck am I so unfucking unhappy? It doesn’t make any sense. You know what I mean? Because, like, this is literally my fucking dream. And I’m fucking so un-fucking-happy.”
“这就是我一直想要的，” Elle Mills，一名20岁的菲律宾-加拿大裔YouTuber，在5月份发布的一段名为“Burnt Out At 19”的视频中说。 “为什么我这么不开心？ 它没有任何意义。你知道我的意思吗？这是我的梦想，但我是在太不开心了。”
Mills had gained a lot of attention (and 3.6m views) for a slick and cleverly edited five-minute video she posted last November in which she came out as bisexual to her friends, family and followers (many of whom had been asking about her sexuality in the comments).
去年11月，Mills发布了一段精心剪辑的5分钟的视频，并因此获得了很多关注（视频的观看次数达到360万次），其中她以双性恋身份出现在她的朋友，家人和追随者身边（评论中也有许多人一直在询问过她的性取向）。
She went on to be featured on the cover of Diva magazine, and won a Shorty award for “breakout YouTuber”. But six months later she posted the Burnt Out video, explaining how her schoolgirl ambition of becoming a YouTuber had led her to bigger and bigger audiences, but that “it’s not what I expected. I’m always stressed. My anxiety and depression keep getting worse. I’m waiting to hit my breaking point.”
她随后登上了Diva杂志的封面，并凭借“突破YouTuber”获得了Shorty奖。 但是六个月之后，她发布了Burnt Out视频，解释了她上大学时想成为YouTuber的雄心壮志让她吸引了越来越多的观众，但是“这不是我想要的。我总是很紧张。我的焦虑和抑郁情绪越来越严重。我在等待我的极限。”
The same month Rubén “El Rubius” Gundersen, a 28-year-old Spaniard who is currently the world’s third most popular YouTuber, with more than 30 million subscribers, talked about how he felt as if he was heading for a breakdown, and had, as a result, decided to take a break.
28岁的西班牙人Rubén “El Rubius” Gundersen是目前世界上第三大最受欢迎的YouTuber，拥有超过3000万的粉丝。同一个月，他也谈到自己感觉几近崩溃，因此决定休息一下。
They are the latest in a string of high-profile YouTubers, including Erik Phillips (better known asM3RKMUS1C, with 4 million subscribers) and Benjamin Vestergaard (Crainer, with 2.8 million), to have announced hiatuses from the channel, or described their struggles with exhaustion.
还有一系列著名YouTuber或者宣布暂时退出，或者描述了自己疲惫不堪的挣扎。其中包括Erik Phillips（更为人所知的是拥有400万粉丝的M3RKMUS1C)和Benjamin Vestergaard（Crainer,拥有280万粉丝）
The anxieties are tied up with the relentless nature of their work. Tyler Blevins, AKA Ninja, makes an estimated $500,000 (£384,000) every month via live broadcasts of him playing the video game Fortnite on Twitch, a service for livestreaming video games that is owned by Amazon.
焦虑与他们工作的不可间断性有关。Tyler Blevins（又名忍者）通过直播自己在 Twitch玩电子游戏Fortnite，每月收入大约500000美元（合计384000英镑，即3432100元）。这是Amazon旗下的电子游戏直播服务。
Most of Blevins’ revenue comes from Twitch subscribers or viewers who provide one-off donations (often in the hope that he will thank them by name “on air”).
Blevins的大部分收入来自于Twitch的订阅用户或提供一次性捐款的观众，一次性捐款者通常希望Blevins能在直播中点名感谢他们。
Blevins recently took to Twitter to complain that he didn’t feel he could stop streaming. “Wanna know the struggles of streaming over other jobs?” he wrote, perhaps ill-advisedly for someone with such a stratospheric income. “I left for less than 48 hours and lost 40,000 subscribers on Twitch. I’ll be back today… grinding again.”
Blevins最近在Twitter上抱怨说，他觉得自己无法停止直播。“想知道与其他工作相比，直播有多困难吗？”他写道。一个收入如此丰厚的人有这样的想法，是有些令人匪夷所思的。他补充说，“我离开了不到48小时，就在Twitch上失去了4万名订阅用户。我今天还会回来......咬牙坚持再直播一次。”
There was little sympathy on Twitter for the millionaire. But the pressure he described is felt at every level of success, from the titans of the content landscape all the way down to the people with channels with just a few thousand subscribers, all of whom feel they must be constantly creating, always available and responding to their fans.
Twitter上很少有人同情这位百万富翁，但是不同层面的人都能感受到他所描述的压力。从内容领域的巨头到频道订阅量只有几千人的主播，所有人都觉得他们必须不断创造，总是在线可以随时回应粉丝。
“Constant releases build audience loyalty,” says Austin Hourigan, who runs ShoddyCast, a YouTube channel with 1.2 million subscribers. “The more loyalty you build, the more likely your viewers are to come back.”
Austin Hourigan说，“持续的更新会建立起观众的忠诚度，忠诚度越高，观众回来的可能性就越大。”他运营着ShoddyCast频道，这个频道在YouTube上拥有120万订阅用户。
When a YouTuber passes the 1 million subscribers mark, they are presented with a gold plaque to mark the event. In this way, the size of viewership and quantity of uploads become the main markers of value.
当YouTuber有超过100万个订阅者时，就会得到一块金牌来作纪念。如此一来，浏览量和上传量就成为主要的价值标志。
For researcher Katherine Lo, ‘invisible’ labour such as interacting with fans is ‘a major contributor to occupational stress. In many cases it can contribute to PTSD’.
研究者Katherine Lo,认为， 与粉丝互动这样看不见的劳动是导致职业压力的主要原因。在很多情况下这会导致创伤后应激障碍
“the Algorithm”
Professional YouTubers speak in tones at once reverential and resentful of the power of “the Algorithm” (it’s seen as a near-sentient entity, not only by creators, but also by YouTube’s own engineers).
谈到YouTube的“算法”，职业YouTuber虽是表现得恭敬，但却深有不满。（YouTube的用户和工程师都认为这个“算法”就像一个有感觉的存在）
Every time you log on to YouTube you are presented with videos chosen by the algorithm. The idea is that a clip particularly well suited to your tastes will inspire you to click the Subscribe button – which, hopefully, will bring you back to watch a new episode tomorrow.
只要你一注册YouTuber，你就会看到由该“算法”推给你的视频。YouTube认为推给用户一个非常合其口味的片段会促使用户订阅——并且，用户很有可能还会在第二天观看下一集。
The viewer feels that YouTube understands what he or she likes, while advertisers are reassured that the video in front of which their five-second commercial will run will reach an appropriately targeted audience.
用户因此会觉得YouTube似乎明白他们的喜好，广告商也会很放心他们插播在视频片段前的五秒广告的效果——在这样的运行模式下，广告会自然而然地推送到目标受众。
When your income is dependent on the number of people who watch your videos each week, this code can decide what, or even whether, you eat. And, 13 years into YouTube’s existence, many believe it has come to sit at the core of a growing mental health crisis among video creators.
当你的收入与每周观看你视频的人数有关时，这一套评判准则便会决定你消费什么内容，甚至会不会消费。在YouTube运营13年间，很多人认为YouTuber持续恶化的心理健康问题与这有很大关系。
In April this year there was a particularly extreme example, when 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam entered YouTube’s Californian campus and opened fire on employees with a 9mm pistol, wounding three before she killed herself.
今年四月有一个很极端的例子，38岁的Nasim Najafi Aghdam手持9mm的手枪冲进YouTube在加利福尼亚的分公司，在伤害了三位雇员后，她选择了自杀。
A video Aghdam uploaded prior to the attack suggested that it was driven by her belief that the company’s algorithm had passed over her videos; in March she posted on Instagram, “All my YouTube channels got filtered by YouTube so my videos hardly get views.”
在Aghdam袭击YouTube分公司前，她上传了一段视频，这段视频暗示了她的作案动机：她认为YouTube的算法有意忽略了她的视频，今年三月她在Instagram上写到：“我所有的YouTube的频道都被YouTube过滤筛选了，所以我的视频的点击量很少。”
Algorithm-led content curation makes creators feel disposable, challenging them to churn out videos in the knowledge that there are younger, fresher people waiting in the wings to replace them.
算法引导的内容管理让创作者感觉到作品是一次性的，这挑战他们去大量地制作视频，因为他们知道有更年轻、更新鲜的人在候补。
For YouTubers who use their daily lives as raw material for their videos, there is added pressure, as the traditional barriers between personal and professional life are irreparably eroded.
对于那些以日常生活为素材制作视频的YouTuber来说，由于个人生活和职业生活之间的传统障碍已经无法弥补地被侵蚀，因此他们面临着更大的压力。
At a recent party at a conference for YouTubers and streamers, Hourigan was standing with a group of YouTubers when he quipped: “I think every YouTube career should come with a coupon for a free therapist.” Everybody laughed, he recalls, but “in a sad way”.
在最近一次YouTuber会议和剪彩活动的聚会上，Hourigan和一群YouTuber站在一起，他打趣道：“我认为每个YouTuber的职业生涯中都应该有一张免费治疗师的优惠券。” 在场的人都大笑起来，不过都“笑得很悲伤。”
“By the way,” he adds, “I’m medicated and have a therapist.”
“顺便说一句，”他补充说，“我在进行药物治疗并且有心理治疗师。”
The solution
As part of its Creator Academy, a vast online “school” covering everything from how to “enhance your channel’s search and discovery potential” to how to “make deals with brands”.
YouTube有一个巨大的网上学校“原创者学院”，内容涵盖了从如何“增加你的频道的搜索和发现潜力”到如何“与品牌达成交易”等各个方面。
YouTube recently commissioned a series of videos designed to teach its partners how to avoid fatigue. (Few of the people I speak to who run YouTube channels are aware of the resource.) The video on burnout has been viewed just over 32,000 times.
最近YouTube制作了一系列视频教导合作伙伴如何避免疲劳。（我采访过的YouTube频道运营者中很少有人知道这个资源。）关于精疲力竭的视频被浏览了32000多次。
It’s written and presented by 34-year-old Kati Morton. A licensed therapist based in Los Angeles, Morton has been posting videos to YouTube for eight years. As such, she is well placed to understand both the problem and the potential solution.
莫顿是一位在洛杉矶注册的治疗师，她在YouTube上发布了八年的视频。因此，她对问题和潜在的解决方案理解地很到位。
Every time Morton posts a new video she is expected to be in the comments, responding to questions and suggestions, before starting work on the next. “I have trouble with boundaries,” she says. “I always feel like I should be working, or that they’re counting on me.”
每次莫顿发布一个新视频，观众都希望在评论中与她互动，希望她能在开始制作下一个视频前回应大家的问题和建议。她说:“我无法正确处理工作的界限。我总是觉得我应该一直工作，观众在指望着我。”
For her, the solution comes back to the algorithm. “YouTube rewards people who produce daily,” she says. “They made the algorithm, so they have the power to remake it. If they set different criteria, it would help. We are human beings. We need some time for ourselves.”
对莫顿来说，解决方案回到了算法上。她表示:“YouTube会奖励那些每天制作视频的人。他们既然创造了这个算法，就完全有能力改变它，如果他们设定不同的标准，必然会有所帮助。我们是人类，我们需要一些属于自己的时间。
The hidden trouble in the future
“The journey to creative stardom used to take more time – learning the ropes and developing a thick skin, and having a team of advisers and trusted friends,” says Chris O’Sullivan, from the UK charity the Mental Health Foundation.
英国慈善机构心理健康基金会(The Mental Health Foundation)的Chris O’Sullivan表示:“过去，成为有创造力的明星需要花费更多时间——学习诀窍，培养厚脸皮，并拥有一个顾问团队和一些可信赖的朋友。
“Today, you can become a superstar online with one viral video – at any age or stage and from any location. Without support and guidance, the potential to be burned by the exposure is great.”
但今天，你可以通过一个病毒式传播的视频成为网络上的超级明星——在任何年龄、任何阶段、任何地点。失去了应有的支持和指导，这样的‘明星’极有可能会被大量的曝光伤害。”
As time goes on, and life grows more complicated, the sense of isolation, anxiety and weariness is exacerbated.
随着时间的推移，生活变得愈发复杂，孤独感、焦虑感和疲惫感都在不断加剧。
来源：www.theguardian.com
编译| 李昕瑞 苏娟 马林 杨林姗 张文钰
排版| 张文钰
