In a video posted on New Year's Eve, YouTuber Jacksepticeye explains that he was thinking of quitting YouTube due to the difficulties and stress he faced throughout 2020, but is hopeful of what 2021 has in store.
Jacksepticeye is one of Gaming YouTube's biggest content creators. With over 26 million subscribers, earlier this year, Jacksepticeye led multiple charity fundraisers and charity livestreams, such as his session for the Thankmas campaign, which raised over $4.7 million for the Red Nose Day charity. In total, Jacksepticeye over $6 million during charity livestreams on his channel alone. But that level of fame on the internet can lead to a lot of pressure from a content creator's fanbase and YouTube itself.
The global pandemic surrounding the COVID-19 virus made 2020 the most difficult year yet for many, including Jacksepticeye, who wanted to take a moment to describe what he's gone through in the past year. In July of 2020, the content creator took a break from YouTube due to exhaustion, which lasted a total of a month, and upon his return, Jacksepticeye announced that he would be cutting back on his two-video-a-day schedule because it was so mentally and physically draining. Now, Jacksepiceye admits he was thinking of quitting YouTube altogether.
In a December 31st video titled "2020 Almost Made Me Quit YouTube," Jacksepticeye takes some time to describe the challenges he's had to overcome throughout the year, despite all of the large charitably successes on YouTube that also occurred in 2020. Some of the exhaustion and stress were products of the several medical issues Jacksepticeye had in the first half of the year, he explains in the video.
But this resulted in Jacksepticeye not having time to do anything outside of his YouTube channel, he says, and he's beginning to blur the lines on where Sean McLoughlin ends and Jacksepticeye begins. "I've been doing this for so long that I don't know who I am," he says, "so I took a month off to soul search and reflect on myself." Luckily, this time off benefitted his mental health and he was able to return to his channel with more confidence about who he is.
"If my channel died and I did quit," Jacksepticeye says, "I would be perfectly contented." And a little further into the video, he says he still sometimes thinks about quitting: "What if I just quit?" And sometimes these feelings don't pass and it's something he's still struggling with, Jacksepticeye explains, as well as with the mental and physical health problems.
In 2021, the YouTuber plans to do more of what he wants and more of what makes him proud to be a content creator.