1 million subscribers on YouTube is basically a litmus test for whether your favorite creator is still gonna be good or they're gonna get into controversy.
I call this phenomenon of cultural bottlenecking or general decline the Million Follower Shift. Despite the name, usually it's two things that can shift once a content creator surpasses a million followers.
1. Their content and reputation stay the same, yet their achievements and demographic shift gradually by means of cultural osmosis, some being more well-known than others. A good example is Neil Cicierega, who while not having surpassed a million subscribers on his YouTube channels (he's an exception in this regard), he has been around for long enough that fans will usually remember different things he made throughout his career. Younger Gen Xers and older Millennials know him for Animutations, younger Millennials and older Gen Zers know him for Potter Puppet Pals and his music (mainly his Mouth series and his Lemon Demon material), and younger Gen Zers might only know him for being Lemon Demon.
2. Alternatively, the content will shift, if it's made at all, and the demographic will leave if the content creator is mired in controversy. Good example is Ukinojoe/Unklejoe/Joe Gran. Back in the early to mid 2010s, he was a juggernaut in the YouTube animation scene, best known for such projects as Blonic, Idiada Jodes, 90s Nick, BARM, Great: The Show (a personal favorite of mine), and We Gotta Get SpongeBob Back, among other things. But of course, in 2021 he bought into the NFT craze and tried and failed to sell some of his videos as NFTs, and has been on a downward spiral mentally ever since. There is a recent and ongoing (at time of writing) influx of new videos on his channel that barely break 30k views nowadays, a far cry from getting at least 100k on his videos back from 2008-17. It doesn't help that other recent controversies involving falsely accusing animators of doing nasty stuff to him and telling people to off themselves online have also happened, and his once big fanbase has split since then.
But anyway, I have noticed this phenomenon happen a lot, and I just wanted to remark on it. This is, after all, a blog about everything and nothing. So if you took the time to read my lutrine ramblings, congratulations for reading all the way through.
