I watched a video on YouTube the other day that I felt especially compelled by. It got me to stop and think a bit more about my previous YouTube channels and to reconsider posting videos.
When I decided to close GameGirlsGallery (GGG), I also deleted my ASMR and Thrifting channels as well. They other two had fewer than a hundred subscribers, so it wasn’t any real loss.
After 18 months, GGG had well over a thousand subscribers and I regularly got comments and engagement on the content I posted. The decision to close the channel was difficult, but necessary. It was the same with removing that type of content from this website (Hard Choices: Removing Site Content).
Well, yesterday, I decided to go ahead and try again with YouTube. I’m terrible with following through on plans, but I will try to do a live stream every Wednesday and a recorded video once a week.
Ideally, I would like to be able to livestream with my phone, but you need 50 subscribers to do livestreams using the YouTube app. I thought about doing it in the office, but its so messy here, I’d be quite embarrassed.
I ordered an action camera off of eBay for 20 bucks and that should arrive sometime next week if holiday traffic doesn’t slow the parcel down. Its magnetic and has a lanyard and metal pad that can fit under clothes. That will allow me to film while I am out sourcing, but still keep my hands free.
I really wanted an Insta360 Go 3S, but its way out of my price range. My wallet can’t handle anything that fancy. Hopefully, the generic I bought will be able to manage my needs.
Other than videos related to eBay, I will likely include some slideshow videos of my domestic travel blog series.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?
A couple weeks ago I made the difficult decision to cease providing wiki pages and game art galleries for several mobile titles.
I was under a certain amount of duress after receiving multiple complaints and strong suggestions to make a change.
You may know, earlier this year my YouTube channel GameGirlsGallery was shutdown, most unfortunately. Complaints about the amount of sexually suggestive content present in mobile games, ranging from game art to dialog and plot lines, had built up over the years and ultimately killed the channel.
The reasons for the recent site content removal are the same as those that caused GameGirlsGallery to be removed.
The Top Girl / Apex Girl wiki hosted on fatwalletrefugee accounted for nearly 84% of all site traffic. The remainder of site traffic went to the mobile game art and character galleries.
Top Girl had been initially rated mature, but after being removed from the Apple Store and worries over possible removal from the Google Play Store they released several updates that brought the rating down to Teen.
Despite the artistic changes there was still a good amount of sexual suggestion and lewd imagery present. In fact, I think most regular people, if looking at most titles in the Google Play Store rated Teen, might think the games were for Mature audiences, and not be suitable for the age ranges the ratings board has decided on.
Even playing merge and puzzle games rated E for everyone, I still see ads for games rated Mature, AI dating chat bots, hookup apps, romantic story apps, and Harem anime games.
All this plus the mounting complaints and suggestions of actions taken led me to the hard decision to purge the site of all offending content. I deleted all of the posts, pages, wikis, and site media including images and videos that were likely to receive further complaint.
I was contacted by multiple subscribers afterwards asking where everything went and had to explain the difficulties I went through deciding to stop providing that type of content.
I had in fact been expecting to hit the 1 million page views mark by December this year, a new milestone stone for this site. Prior to the content removal, my average daily site traffic in early November was around 6k views. Sadly, now my average is closer to 450 views per day.
Total Weekly Site Traffic
As you might imagine, my ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. While I had recently received my first payout from WordAds since signing up in March of 2024, I am likely not going to receive another payment for some considerable amount of time hereafter.
The question as to how to recover from this loss also comes up. I still provide guides for family-friendly mobile games. I am in the process of detailing a guide for Fable Town at the moment. I am also expanding the written content for buildings and units in the Puzzles and Chaos wiki.
I used to get good traffic from Google and Reddit for my game guides, but once I began focusing on Apex Girl and Road to Rich, that traffic dropped and the algorithm sent those folks to other resources.
Fable Town: Merge
There is also the Travel and Food section of the site which hasn’t seen much writings since my last trip in 2019. That was originally what started my blog. A trip to New York City to see family prompted me to make kasanje.home.blog and years later I bought the fatwalletrefugee.com domain.
There are also side projects I started but never finished like the FatWallet Forums archives and the Lost Media directory.
Recently, I began redesigning the Travel page and restructuring the page hierarchy for that section. This also involves adding pagess for each US state I have visited and a separate section for my international trips.
My vacation to Washington last month inspired me to travel more locally here in North Carolina. I also was gifted a new camera. It’s an Olympus E-M10 II. There are two swappable lenses, one telephoto and a precision close up, and three batteries.
In the past month I have visited and photographed 6 towns and a state park. I am planning a trip to visit the Outer Banks next year.
Hopefully this move back to this site’s roots will boost site traffic and begin to shift the algorithm back home.
I never quite got a handle of the best use for social media platforms.
I think I must spend the majority of my time watching YouTube videos.
I am not sure if I would really consider YouTube to be a social media platform. Beyond the comments section, there is little interaction with viewers.
I tried my hardest to adapt to the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter when they were just starting out. It was all just so foreign to me.
Especially Facebook. I mean my friends were just a walk away or I would see them in class. I didn’t see the need for it.
My Instagram account is just mostly pictures of food or the garden. I also made a separate account for gaming stuff.
I did use reddit for a long time to talk about doing games and offers in Swagbucks and other services. In fact, some of my early successes with this site came from what I learned from blogging subreddit.
At some point though I deleted my reddit account. I don’t recall why I thought it needed to be so.
Twitter never really took off for me. I don’t think my tag use was good. I would either use too many or not enough.
I also tried my hand at Tumblr, but I didn’t like all the adult content on the platform. No matter how many times I blocked someone or said I wasn’t interested, the site kept pushing adult content into my feed.
Instagram also has a problem with mature content. There are many accounts that are used to disseminate adult content despite the terms of service.
Reporting those accounts is useless. No humans are involved in the process and bad actors have free run of the platform.
The world of social media can be dangerous. You need to stay alert and be careful of what you click on.
That’s it for now.
Questions or comments put them below and thanks for reading.
Many years ago I got hooked on YouTube videos about self sufficiency and living in nature. There was stuff about building bamboo houses, making bricks, forging bronze tools, and clearing land for rice paddies.
At some point I got it into my head to try making a primitive furnace out back. The soil in these parts is all red clay and I thought I could replicate what I was seeing on the TV screen.
I spent a couple weeks tearing up the lawn, cutting down trees, and digging a large pit. My first goal was to make charcoal. So, got together a bunch of wood and built a tepee shaped tower.
Afterwards, I worked the clay into coils and blocks and built a very ugly tower around the wood and then filled in any gaps. I left a small opening near the ground in the pit and the top had another opening.
I then spent an hour or so trying to light the wood on fire. It did catch, but after awhile the clay began to dry out and crack in spots. Parts of the clay fell away from the tower. Worse still, I had left air pockets in the clay and they began to explode.
After getting hit with little bits I panicked and dumped a bucket of water on the tower. Now, if you go out back all there is left of the furnace is a lumpy spot on the lawn. It is overgrown with weeds in that one spot, if you pull up the weeds you can still find parts of the clay bricks.
It was a sobering experience, I learned my lesson and stick to watching YouTube and not living it.
I will quite often skip the description for a new television program if it is more than a single paragraph. Too often have I encountered a description that explained the entirety of a show before I watched it.
I enjoy listening to ASMR videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, of late, there has been a spike in adverts that play both during and after such video content.
Videos I have watched in the past and know not to have ads, and say as much in their descriptions, now have very loud ads that play.
Frequently making coffee, drinking coffee, and then going for refills seems to fill my day. If only the cup were considerate to my wants.
I’d like a cup that would stroll over to the coffee pot and refill itself, add some cream and sugar, and finally present itself, heated to a pleasant degree, ready for my consumption.
Well, it turns out that today is my 1st anniversary of having started my YouTube channel.
There was a small notification that quickly disappeared on my dashboard this morning. I wanted to grab a screenshot, but it was gone before I knew it, so I’ve got this stock image of a birthday cake instead.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has joined me along the way. I don’t think I would still be here putting together videos without your support. Your expectations give me reason and purpose to continue this loving work.
오늘은 제 1주년 기념일입니다.
저를 지원해 주신 모든 분들께 감사드립니다.
Kasanje 올림
Your support is very much appreciated, and I look forward to bringing more entertaining content to the Game Girls Gallery channel.
Social media and other content platforms are moving vessels with no set direction. They and their content are always shifting and forcing in new ways.
Recently, YouTube made changes to the platform, including removing the dislike counter’s visibility on videos. The video Creators can still see dislikes on their content, but individual users will not see the total.
Concerted campaigns to “cancel” content that favors or disfavors a position have become commonplace in online spaces, although this type of behavior is not a new occurrence.
I agree with the removal of publicly visible dislike counters. I feel like they are more often than not being used to censor or bully content Creators.
Remember, you can still dislike a video or comment on a video that you didn’t like. As Creators, we can curate our content in part based on the feedback you provide.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I want to terrace a portion of my backyard for additional growing space.
I have been watching YouTube videos and am particularly fond of the Primitive Skills channel.
Since I have an abundance of red clay available, I think I will be able to manage similar constructs. Though, of course, I will be using an actual shovel since I am in a hurry.
I do have two varieties of bamboo planted, however, they are not plentiful enough to use.
Perhaps the greatest challenge with all of this is all of the mosquitoes.
Fat Wallet Refugee 