I Was Released From a Contract

Hey awesome people of the internet! So as mentioned in the title of this post, I will no longer be associated with the multi channel network I’ve been with for the past two years. BroadbandTV is dropping me due to YouTube’s recent changes in the partnership program. Although I have fulfilled the required amount of watch time on my channel, the growth of my audience (subscribers) has only been 1/5 of the required amount within the past year.

How do I feel about this? I am choosing to look at this as a way for me to have a fresh start to what my online content is about. Will I continue to post to my YouTube channel? Of course I will! But…. I have decided to take my content to another platform as well. Prior to writing this article I have created a page on Patreon where, if you would like to, my viewers are able to support me directly for my video content. Feel free to check out my page here: www.patreon.com/jdpianokeys

My focus is to helping others understand the diversity in this world. If I can offer insight in how I interact with my own communities, connect with others who share the same labels or serve as representation, a seed can be planted in the minds of viewers. My hope is that by sharing my story, and inviting guests to share theirs, consideration for those who are different will happen with my viewers.

But some projects I have in mind are going to cost me time, energy, and even money. With the support of my viewers big donations for small, it can help me to achieve what I want to accomplish with my presence online. If you would like to be part of having early access to YouTube content, or exclusive content available only to Patreon Subscribers, click the link about and see what perks are available for joining Team Awesome!

 

 

Activism is for those who CARRY the label, not those outside of the community

Hey internet, man this has been one hell of a year for public opinion. This is the year I have taken a look at myself as an Indigenous person. (To those of you who are quick to call out my skin color, my body does not produce much melanin. I have albinism.) Not only the label Indigenous, but also the fact that I continually need to mention my genetic condition to set people straight about my ethnicity, has become increasingly annoying. If you’re subscribed to my channel http://www.youtube.com/jddalton you may have seen my latest upload This has been the most traffic my channel has received in one week since half a year ago. Why all the views? Because I wanted my voice heard in response to another YouTuber’s video where they spoke about Indigenous cultural appropriation. This YouTuber however, is not Indigenous.

Instead of making this post super long and explaining what happened, I will leave a link at the bottom of this post for you to watch the video for yourself. The point of this blog post is to discuss further why I called out this person for how she approached this subject with her audience. First of all, I understand that my voice alone does NOT represent the Indigenous community as a whole. We are all individual thinkers and our own experiences with our ethnic culture are going to be different just like our opinions about this other creator’s video. Second, I would like to address some comments I made about this creator in my response video. I mentioned that it appeared to me that she is only on the platform for the business part of it, along with mentioning her subscriber count, and the fact that no other YouTubers seemed to be featured on her channel tabs. I had mentioned this because as a person wanting to spread awareness, her own channel page did not appear to be set in a way that emphasized “networking with others.” I mentioned subscriber count because I felt it was important to at least give my viewer an idea of how many people could have watched her video I was discussing.

Back to my point (see title). You have every right to call yourself an ally to any community that is a minority. We will always welcome those who wish to spread awareness and participate in being educated about socioeconomic issues that minority communities face. But let’s get one thing clear, EVERY community has a voice. And as an ALLY, you recognize that you are not included in that community and the experiences that people OF said community face.

You want to help educate? Feel free to do so, but when using a platform it is basic respect to turn the attention to a voice FROM the community you wish to have represented. If you do not carry a certain label, show respect for those who do carry the label, by referring other viewers to their channel, or extend the courtesy of inviting a person on your channel to collaborate with. Regardless of intentions, know that taking the mic on issues that personally do not affect you, is not only disrespectful, it’s disparaging to that particular community.

Indigenous voices are present on the YouTube platform, but yet our number of subscribers does not even compare to that of other creators from other ethnic backgrounds. Why? Many topics related to the Indigenous community are still discussed today. (Dakota Access Pipeline, 45 mocking us by using Pocahontas’s name at an event honoring Native Veterans) These are issues that WE are able to speak to ourselves. Instead of having outsiders comment on our OWN history and experiences of cultural appropriation, we need to call them out by telling them that their voices are not what we need. We need you to support the voices of the community. Who better to speak about the issues we face than those who LIVE the experience and those who are AFFECTED by these forms of oppression???

Apparently, this other creator was asked to make her video from a viewer who identifies as Indigenous. Her viewers are using this fact as an excuse for her covering the topic in the way she did. Another Native also commented on my video saying that she is excused because she used humor in her video to send the message. Had she been a Native creator, those of us calling her out would more than likely have no issue with the video. Does her ethnicity matter?? In this matter I say YES it does. There have been several other Native YouTubers who have done this concept on their own channels. These videos have been up for a while now, before she uploaded her own version. I will conclude that she did not know of these videos existing before she published her own version. But I still say that she COULD have thought about collaborating with a Native creator. This would have been seen as respectful and would have shown that she truly values the voices of Indigenous people.

My response video can be seen by clicking here.

I knew this would happen!

So if you are a follower of mine, you would know that I have recently been slightly open about what my profession is. I do not disclose where I work, but I have mentioned a couple times in my videos that I do work in education at a middle school. This is something that I have kept in my mind as a thing that would eventually happen….. A student from my school has found my channel and is now a subscriber.

This has been something I have been processing for the past 48 hours. This person also has their own channel. But one thing that keeps coming to mind, is the question of should I block this user from my channel? Of course my channel serves as a purpose of education. I WANT younger individuals to be able to come to my channel and think about the topics that I discuss! But the issue lies in that some of my topics fall into the grey category of some families thinking that it would be inappropriate for their children to watch.

Yes, I talk about my disability and invite other disabled creators to discuss accessibility and accommodations. These are major things that I strongly believe people need to be aware of. I talk about growing up and living with my condition, how it made me feel, how it has shaped my character today. But I also discuss my coming out story as well as other LGBT related topics. Every now and then I feature my boyfriend in videos in which we discuss our relationship. (to a small extent)

Some of you may think, well it’s what comes with using a social media platform. And I acknowledge this. Almost everyday I hear students talk about YouTube channels, and to some I mention my experience at VidCon and meeting certain creators. But the professional relationship remains only on campus, during school hours. And yes, they are children within my community, but the discussions that are present on my channel, could arguably still be on too high a level of maturity for the students I work with.

Expect more in a video I will be uploading soon. I am happy to provide ANYONE with information and the chance to learn from my story. But things change when you see me irl. My presence online is not completely who I am irl. And in order to prevent the constrictions of mixing both worlds, I feel I need to do what I can to keep them apart.

Creating Content for YouTube

What does it mean to be a YouTube creator? The problem with answering that question is that there is no simple answer. If you watch just as many creators as I do, then you should know just how diverse the content can be. People sit and talk about their personal lives. Others review items like technology, makeup, food, and even show you what clothes they bought. There are channels out there that educate you on science, history, sociology, languages, math, and even educational videos catered to toddlers. There are channels that are made to entertain every audience type. So when we stop and ask ourselves as creators, “What does it mean to be a YouTube creator?” The only response that I think is good enough, is just to make whatever you enjoy doing.

Now you have probably come to this post from my new video that I have yet to record. If you are subscribed to this blog as a reader, I thank you for your interest in hearing the random thoughts that come from my head. If you have come from the link in my channel, I thank you as well for wanting to hear more of what I have to say on this subject. I will try my best not to repeat myself here but after all, I am writing this post first before I go home and record. So some thoughts may be repeated but the overall “voice” of what I say will be different.

Honestly this topic was inspired by a “Life Update” video by Mark Miller and it made me think of what I’m doing with my channel, how I interact with my audience and how my channel has impacted my personal life. Like many other things on the internet, this media platform has connected me to amazing people from around the world. People who inspire me, people who can connect on certain subjects, and people who like to interact with me in return. All because I decided one day that I would sit in front of a camera and talk to it.

People have asked that I present at various summits and conferences and even my first time ever at VidCon I was a featured creator. When I started, I did not have any of these notions in mind when I knew what I wanted my channel to be about. All I knew what that there was a lack of content that could serve as a resource to a specific community that I was part of. Not only has my channel helped me in having my voice heard, it has also impacted my own self-awareness. I am able to go back and look at all my videos (public and private) to see how I have changed and what I have accomplished.

I am no longer afraid of what people think of me as a gay person, as a disabled person, or as an indigenous person with albinism. The best way that I can describe how the ideas for my content come to me… is that I see what topics are lacking in terms of public attention and discussion. I have a perspective or notice a different perspective on a situation that I wish to highlight. When I first started my initial goal was to talk about my own experiences and share my own story of how I maneuvered around different obstacles socially and mentally. I’ve done various videos about advocacy and explaining to other people why it’s annoying to ask me how I see.

But now I feel that I have exhausted my own viewpoints and since last year I have been trying to highlight the diversity within our own communities.  Like I have said in the video, ideas come and they go. More recently I have become more comfortable with the idea of letting some video concepts disappear completely. Sometimes this happens because something new has just occurred and I feel the urge to vent about it, or I lack the resources to actually pull it off the way I want it to be executed. As an artist, it’s hard when you do not meet your own standards of quality with your work. When an idea comes to you, it can be very elaborate and colorful. You want to give that idea justice in getting it done as best you can.

I have now discovered that good ideas will often come back, or be closely related to another one that you will have in the future. So if you are reading this and consider yourself to be a creator, know that it is okay to leave some ideas and move on. Those ideas will work their way into future projects, or maybe they were meant to be put on hold so that they could grow into better ones.

 

Native American YouTubers

I started my channel to share my story of living with albinism as an Indigenous person with a visual impairment. Not too long after I began uploading to my channel I decided that I was ready to come out to my family as part of the LGBT community. Talking about my genetic condition, my disability, and my sexual orientation has always been easy on my channel. Although I do not know of many creators with albinism, I do know that there are a few successul blind content creators who have channels of their own, and of course a huge amount of LGBT vloggers on YouTube. But why is it that my identity of being Hopi, is not as popular of being discussed in my videos?

Honestly, the answer is that it is my choice. I know what will get a bigger response from a majority of my audience, and a majority of my audience is not Native American. This is not to say that I am ashamed of my heritage and culture. I have been very fortunate to have grown up in my village and to have participated in just about every village ceremony throughout my childhood. I have family members who have been Urban Indians their whole lives and although they are Native, they know very little about their own culture. Since 2008 I have lived in the city of Tucson, Arizona which is over 300 miles away from my homeland.

My most popular video on my channel is one in which I share footage of a ceremonial social dance from my village and explain the virtues of being Hopi. It is making its way to reaching 10,000 views! But as far as my Native topic videos on my channel, that is the only one that has a significant amount of views. All my other popular videos are the ones in which I discuss my visual impairment and albinism. So as passionate as I am in wanting to bring more light about my Indigenous background and experiences, I know that the engagement will be minimal compared to other content that is featured on my channel.

Where are my fellow Indigenous YouTubers??? There are several I have subscribed to and they have also subscribed to me. But I am really surprised that there is not a larger list of Native creators out there who upload on a regular basis! Why don’t I talk much about Indigenous topics? Because there is a very low chance that such video topics will lead to an open dialogue with other people either in the comments, or via video responses. We already know that there is a low number of Native YouTubers, but that number gets even lower when you consider a creator’s consistency of uploading videos to their channel. There are numerous channels you can give me, but not many of them upload on a regular basis to connect as strongly with their viewers and, as a result, have a lower amount of subscribers. There are creators that I would love to see more of, but have not uploaded any new content in months!

There are many reasons that factor into a Native American’s channel and it’s potential to “succeed” in terms of views and subscribers. Most reservations have poor internet access and little resources for gathering equipment for high quality recording.  The majority of the Native community is not as outspoken and are very cautious as to how they appear to others in how they act and talk. Like most small communities, being different is more than often made fun of. There is also the aspect that technology and social media is making a negative impact on Native youth as it pulls their attention away from traditional lifestyles of the tribe. Urban Natives more than likely know very little about their tribal culture so their Indigenous identity is hard to be vocal about other than just “looking” like a Native.

These are just some of the issues we face as being Indigenous people in the modern world. I honestly sometimes think that most Native people tend to overlook me and my channel purely due to the fact of my skin color. I have received numerous comments from ignorant people claiming that I am “posing” as a Native American but really am not because I have blonde hair. I don’t look like a Native, so I obviously can’t be one of them.

I want to collaborate with other Indigenous content creators, but in all honesty it is hard on my end to get a response from the numbers that I want to reach. If we as Native people want to see a change in representation online and on YouTube, then we must come together to discuss the topics that affect us as a community. If young Native children are complaining about not seeing a role model from their ethic background then it is up to us to be that person for them to look up to. We need to inspire Indigenous creators to pursue their dreams and network with others to learn and grow.

Where are my fellow Native YouTubers???

A video I made a while back discussing this.

Why “pianokeys”?

So, there is most likely some people out there who wonder, “Why is his username jdpianokeys?” Most, okay basically all of the things that I post to my channel have nothing to do with the piano…. at least in the past couple years. Yes, I do indeed play the piano and no, I was not a music major in college. 🙂

So if you are fairly new to my channel (like you have only started following me in the past year or so) you might have missed that my current main YouTube channel is actually my SECOND channel that was created. That’s right! Before I started vlogging I had a different channel that I used to upload videos to. Yes, that channel’s name is [now currently known as] JD PianoKeys. A year before I ever thought about doing vlogs, I was set on becoming a musical sensation on YouTube! In fact the very first channels that I was subscribed to were piano channels like fantasiex3 (Sherry Kim) and Kyle Landry!

When I first moved to Tucson from the Hopi reservation in 2008 I went from living in Bedrock to a world of internet connectivity! This was also around the time that I was finally able to begin learning the piano. Of course where did I turn to learn songs and find pianists to be inspired? YouTube! Every evening and weekend I would spend hours watching video tutorials and get excited whenever I would see someone upload a new recording. These people shared a love of piano and gave me the inspiration to learn new songs, discover new artists, and eventually I would compose songs of my own! It wasn’t until 2011 that I would have the courage to record and upload my own videos.

The username “jdpianokeys” didn’t actually come to me until 3 years after I started my music channel and over a year since I had started vlogging on my second channel. I used “jdpianokeys” when I finally gave in and joined the world of twitter in 2014. I thought it had a cool ring to it and was quite proud of finding something nobody had claimed yet! After that I realized just how unique it was to my online identity. There are a lot of JDs out there but how many of them play the piano? (If your name is JD and you play the piano please comment!) LOL

Anyway, after twitter I also finally caved in and joined Instagram, again, nobody had claimed the username so it became my online profile name! Now all you have to do to find the REAL me (like anyone would want to pretend to be me) is look for username jdpianokeys. It’s used for my twitter, facebook page, instagram, and blog!…. No, I refuse to use Snapchat AND Vine! You can’t make me!!!

My Journey

Hey there, my name is JD and I am a visually impaired, LGBT, Native American with albinism. Quite a lot of minority labels for one individual to hold. Due to my identities I am also a YouTube content creator. My videos revolve around my thoughts, experiences, and feature friends from my minority communities. Through my platform I wish to spread the message of encouraging social interaction to bring awareness of diversity and education. We all have a voice and we all want to be heard.

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My channel essentially started because I saw that there was no content creator I could find who talked about living with albinism or having low vision. I figured, why not be the person to start? I talked about my condition, using visual aid devices, not being able to drive, and other things caused by my visual impairment. Not too long after I started my channel however, I made the decision to finally come out to my friends and family. Since then, LGBT topics were also featured on my channel. A little while later I became frustrated with the reality of predominantly white creators in the YouTube spotlight, so I started finding ways to incorporate my cultural background into my videos as well. Networking and finding new friends in the LGBT community, disabled community, and Native American community on YouTube has been amazing and is a major source of inspiring me to continue my hobby.

As an artist, I know that my true pleasure and comfort lays in creating things. Never would I have guessed that I would develop the skill of video editing, especially considering my  low vision. But, here I am. After almost 4 years of uploading content to my channel, I continue to think of ways to engage my audience and inspire them to embrace what makes them different and to speak up against discrimination due to those differences. I will be a featured content creator at VidCon 2016 in Anaheim, CA this June. There I will be talking to fellow YouTubers about my channel and how to go about creating projects of their own. I have made wonderful friends in this community and I hope to still make even more connections with other talented and inspirational creators.

This is my journey, and if you would like to hear more about it, I invite you to stay. Maybe I can hear some of your stories as well. 🙂