I have never considered myself a YouTuber, since despite having uploaded videos to YouTube, I do not make money from YouTube, and I have no intention to. I am not a "content creator" either — I dislike the term and how the corporate web flatterns different kinds of art or creative output into a broad, meaningless term of "content", so I refuse to identify as a "content creator" and be called a "content creator".
The videos I upload to my YouTube channel are also footages from video games I love or play a lot, especially footages of cutscenes that very few people or even no one else has shared on YouTube. I shared these videos for free for others to enjoy. I made the deliberate decision to not add my voice commentary to the video game footages I uploaded, because I also shared these videos for archival and reference purposes.
Unfortunately, I have learned that my most frustrating aspect about sharing videos on YouTube, is receiving comments that ask questions that were already answered in the video description I wrote. I make use of the video title and description field to write information about the videos I uploaded, such as how to trigger the cutscenes shown in the video, but there were still occasions where someone would ask in the comments how did the cutscene happen. Time and time again, I had to tell those commenters to read the video description before asking questions that were already answered in the video description.
Getting asked questions that were already answered in my video descriptions reminds me a lot of my situation of making video game mods for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series, where I had multiple mod users ask me questions that were already answered in the information I wrote in my mods, or reporting "bugs" when the issue happened due to the user not following my instructions for installing the mods. Similar to me sharing videos on YouTube, I make video game mods as a hobby that I do not get paid for. Therefore, in my same-gender romance mods for KotOR 2, since those were my most popular mods for the KotOR games, I had to emphatically tell users to read through my instructions and my FAQ article before asking questions about my mods.
If it has not existed already, I would like to propse a variation of "RTFM", an initialism of "read the fucking manual", for when commenters clearly do not read the video description — RTFVD, initialism of "read the fucking video description".
Commenters asking questions that were already answered in my video descriptions had happened enough times that I was already planning on writing this article to coin "RTFVD" for a while. The last straw for me to decide this article needs to exist, was a comment I received on one of my Cassette Beasts video footages, after I told a different commenter that they should read the video description so they would not ask questions that were already answered in the video description:
[...]an advice i could give you is to explain such things in a nicer way (idk if it was on purpose but the reply sounds really condescending) most people barely read the title, so either explain it again, it costs you nothing, or point to the description in a nicer way. being nice is a good trait to have as a content creator
I responded to that random commenter:
I am not a "content creator". I never called myself one, and I refuse to be called one. I do not make money from YouTube, and I have no interest in doing so. I upload these videos for free. I also dislike the term "content creator" and dislike how the corporate web flatterns different kinds of art and creative output into a broad, meaningless term like "content".
It costs the audience nothing to spend a few seconds to read the information provided to them, especially when the information is being provided for free, which is exactly what I am doing for uploading these video and writing the video description. I do not get paid to keep explaining the same things over and over to people who refuse to spend even just extra seconds to read the information I provide to them for free.
You called my reply condescending for telling an audience they should read video description before asking questions that are already answered in the video description, but don't you think you are being condescending for giving unsolicited advice to a complete stranger like me, by lecturing me on how a content creator should act, when I never identified as a content creator, and in fact refuse to be called one and dislike the term?
How do you know "most" people barely read the title? Do you have statistics for that? Do you have evidence to back up your claim?
I cannot emphasise enough that I share videos on YouTube as nothing more than a hobby, and a hobby that I have zero intention to monetise, so I do not get paid for the extra free labour of holding viewers' hands when they are unwilling to read the video description I spent time in writing for free. At essence, me asking viewers to read the video description is to ask viewers to respect my time and effort in sharing these videos for free.
This is also why I find it insulting that that random commenter assume that "most" people barely read video title. What evidence did they have to make such a claim? Has the internet culture of fast food style "content" consumption got this bad that asking viewers to read the information provided to them is too much to ask for?
If you agree with my sentiments in this article, especially if you also share videos to the public, feel free to share the link to this article when you encounter a comment that asks questions that were already answered in the video description.
In conclusion, read the fucking video description!