Everyone tells you the same thing when you start a YouTube channel.

Go niche. Pick a tiny topic. Build a small, loyal audience.

And to be fair, that advice isn’t totally wrong.

But YouTube just came out with a culture report and it complicates things a bit.

They surveyed 939 people between 14 and 44, and 63% said they watch content or follow creators that everyone they know is also watching.

Same as five years ago.

The niche explosion happened, sure, but people still want to feel like they’re part of something bigger.

The mainstream didn’t die. It just moved online.

And when they asked people what feels big and known right now, YouTube creators (77%) and memes (78%) came in at nearly the same level as Hollywood celebrities (79%) and the Super Bowl (83%).

Online culture isn’t competing with mainstream anymore. It is mainstream.

So what actually makes some creators blow up and others stay stuck at 200 views?

According to YouTube, it’s participation.

Whether people clip it, react to it, share it, or build on it.

The ‘Backrooms’ video, look it up if you haven’t, started as a single YouTube upload, turned into a whole fandom through community clips and remixes, and ended up as a Hollywood movie.

Nobody engineered that. It just made people feel something they couldn’t stop thinking about.

The clips followed from that.

Thing is, most beginners don’t think about that when they’re making content. They think about the next video. Not whether the video they just made can travel.

If your content doesn’t clip well, it probably won’t reach anyone outside of who already follows you.

And that's the part nobody tells you when they say go niche.

Talk soon,

Minosh

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