Trail Thoughts ✦ June 2022

Hello everyone! I'm super excited to sit down and write one of these newsletters again. I cannot believe it's July though. This summer is already going by way too fast.

This month's Trail Thoughts will be pretty chatty, so if you enjoy reading, you'll enjoy this!

First, welcome in to all the new Patrons who joined in June and these first few days of July! This is my Trail Thoughts newsletter that I write at the start of each month and within this newsletter, I share my data and analytics with you all, talk about the previous month and what happened, and discuss what I have planned for the month ahead. These are posts that many folks look forward to reading and it provides some different content here on Patreon to sprinkle in between everything else. I really enjoy writing these, sharing my progress, and being transparent with you all about how things are going!

IMPORTANT: Vacation

I will be going across the country this month to hang out with my best friends! I'll be leaving my home sometime on the 15th and won't be returning until late on the 24th. How will this impact things?

• There will be no Twitch streams. My last stream will be on Tuesday, July 12th and the next stream will be on Tuesday, July 26th
• There will be no public YouTube videos published. Well, it's very likely that a video will go out on the day I leave (15th) and then there won't be another one until two weeks later
• For here on Patreon, I'm not sure if I'll have any exclusive reactions or uncut reactions to movies ready to go. I hope so! But I don't know yet.

Are any of you going on vacation this month? Even if it's a staycation? Let me know in the comments!

Right now, I'm dealing with stress because I can't find my passport and I'm about to literally turn my house inside out to try and find it. While I don't need it for a domestic flight, I prefer using it and having it in case my flight has to redirect to an airport in the States for whatever reason. Sigh. Anyone else ever deal with something like this? 😭 I'm sure all will be fine, but JEEZ.

Okay, on to the fun stuff!

June Twitch Stats

• # of Streams: 6 📉
• Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 39 📉
• Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 32 📉
• Unique Viewers: 1,042 📉
• Unique Chatters: 153 📉
• Chat Messages: 4,548 (avg 758 per stream) 📉
• New Followers: 57 (avg of 9-10 per stream) 📈
• Subscriptions: 54 (avg 9 per stream) 📈

The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month.

June Twitch Thoughts

Despite the numbers being down nearly across the board except in follows and subs, it was a great month, and my attitude towards the numbers has vastly improved in recent months. My new avenue with YouTube and Patreon has certainly helped with that, but gosh it's really nice to just go-live, play some games, hang out with people, and feel good about it, regardless of that data and "performance". This month, I just chugged along in my Ruthless playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins and my first playthrough of Star Wars: KOTOR II. Both games and playthroughs are making me feel so happy right now and I'm really loving it.

June was also the kickoff of Summer HomieFest 2022, which is an event that myself and a bunch of friends are a part of! It's really just a huge summer long collaboration event across a group of friends. I was part of the kickoff event on June 10, which was a huge Gartic Phone stream followed by ranking the characters of Stardew Valley on a Tiermaker list, and that was hosted by my friend Bree. 😅 

July on Twitch

Because of my vacation, there are not that many streams this month on my channel, but things will be trucking along as normal with DA:O and KOTOR II.

As for HomieFest streams, I will be participating in two this month. The first is this Wednesday, July 6th at 17:00 MDT / 23:00 UTC. I'll be on Bree's stream again playing some Animal Crossing with some of my friends. I haven't played the game in ages, so excited to get back into it. And maybe it will motivate me to finally finish my island. The other stream is on Friday, July 29th at 17:30 MDT / 23:30 UTC and that is on my friend Bopper's stream and we'll be playing some Uno with friends. 

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June YouTube Stats

• # of Videos: 24 - 8 public and 16 for Patreon 📈
• Impressions: 3,679,040 📈
• Views: 191,937 📈
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): 4.1% 📈
• Watch Time: 28,742.7 hours 📈
• Average % Viewed: 18.9% - how much of the video did viewers watch on average 📉 (this is kind of an irrelevant metric since a lot of folks click on a reaction video to watch just a scene or two)
• Unique Viewers: 108,823 📈
• Net New Subscribers: 895 📈

The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month.

June YouTube Thoughts

This was a really strong month for me and I'm really pleased with everything. I published reactions to The Dark Knight Rises, Pulp Fiction, and The Prestige, along with the last three episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I also put out a fun Short video that I made for TikTok and Instagram.

I will admit that it was very overwhelming for me to react to a TV show (and edit it) at the same time as movie reactions. I'm glad that I had OWK to test that with, but until I have help with editing, I think one reaction per week on the channel alongside the exclusive stuff here on Patreon is a good amount of work for me. Even though TV show episodes are much easier to edit, I don't want to stop movies any time soon. Going to keep going ahead with my strategy of movie reactions on YouTube and TV show reactions here on Patreon.

This month I had two experiences occur that were... interesting.

First was the response to my reaction to Pulp Fiction. Prior to watching the movie, a good friend had reached out and said that it might be worthwhile to look up warnings/triggers about the movie since it does contain some heavy stuff within it. I haven't ever had a movie really bother me, but I figured that it was probably a good idea to look into anyway just to familiarize myself with what kinds of things I can expect to see. I wasn't spoiled, but I saw the warnings and thought, okay cool, and didn't think much else of it.

Since I'm an open book, I mentioned in my intro to Pulp Fiction that I had done this and holy moly, the older generation of men really came at me in my comments about that. I've deleted most of them now, but you can see the worst ones highlighted in a reel I uploaded. 😂 Y'all said the Star Wars fan base was toxic and hateful. Well, I am going to say that I would deal with the Star Wars fan base any day over the men who think Pulp Fiction is the greatest movie ever made. By far, the worst comments I have had on my videos were on that one. Thankfully, comments like that don't affect me too much and the positive ones always outweigh the negative ones. But it still really sucks to receive. That video has also received the most dislikes, miles ahead of any other video. And some lovely person who uses a Chrome extension to see the number of dislikes on videos had to comment on that video to make sure that I knew just how many dislikes I had. 🤨 Why are people? 

Second is my frustration with reaction mashup channels who steal minutes out of our reaction videos to string them together into a compilation and upload it to their channel, often receiving WAY more views than the original videos of the creators they featured. There are many of these channels out there. Before I express my annoyance about this, let me be clear that some channels do handle this correctly. There are a handful out there that actually transform the content (passing Fair Use) by adding in their own commentary and face, or they edit the mashup creatively so that you can tell that they repurposed it and didn't just steal and re-upload. However, most channels don't do this.

I have to thank Mary Cherry for speaking out about this on her Twitter because she expressed annoyance at these channels and had processed takedown requests for copyright herself. Before seeing this, I felt kind of indifferent about these reaction mashups and had noticed myself appearing in a handful of them. I figured that maybe it would end up getting me some new viewers. And I know that MANY other creators feel this way as well, so they don't bother with filing copyright requests.

Mary changed my opinion on this as I realized that what was actually happening was my hard work editing something and making sure it passed Fair Use was being RIPPED and re-uploaded, and getting views that would not end up on my own channel. We work hard to pass Fair Use for the films/TV shows we're using in our videos, but these mashup channels are not doing the same for OUR videos, which are owned by us and therefore we have the copyright on it.

So this month, I ended up requesting five copyright requests on channels where my reactions were featured without any editing or transformation work done to make it unique and qualify under Fair Use guidelines. One of those videos had an entire FOUR minute section of one of my reactions in it. 💀 All five of these requests were approved and the videos were removed by YouTube.

One of those reactors was VERY upset with me for filing a request on his video and we had an incredible back and forth conversation both on his channel and mine. He also attempted to message me on Instagram. I did tweet about it with a bit of the conversation that transpired before he went and deleted everything. 😂

A lot of these mashup channels think they're in the clear to use our reactions for their own videos because they don't make any money on their channels, and many have set up Patreon pages like we do. But Fair Use does not care if you make money or not. 

I had another channel creator who had used my reaction footage reach out to me by email to inquire why I had their video taken down. When I explained my stance, they issued an apology to me and expressed that they had just made the video for fun and hadn't thought about what they were actually doing. He thanked me for explaining and was okay with the video staying down. It was a great interaction that I'm glad happened!

If you are someone who enjoys reaction compilations/mashups that feature a number of creators reacting to a particular scene, that's okay to feel. I've watched some myself. I would just strongly urge that you then click on every single reactor who was featured and go give them a view and a like on their video that was stolen.

July on YouTube

This month, I will be reacting to Rain Man (1988) and Batman (1989). These were in second place on the two polls that I had you all vote on here on Patreon. Since both of them received a LOT of votes, I figured that I'll just go ahead and watch them both! I'm very excited about these two movies.

As always, uncut reactions and early access to the edited versions will be published here on Patreon ahead of the YouTube premieres.

I am not sure if I'll be able to squeeze anything else in this month, but I'm hoping to! Perhaps my Season 3 Clone Wars review video, when I finish watching it!

I still owe my YouTube community my first livestream for hitting 5,000 subscribers, and my Star Wars Overall Thoughts & Final Ranking video. I haven't forgotten about either of these. The livestream probably won't happen until August. The Star Wars video will be done as soon as I finish rewatching the movies, which I am in the middle of.

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Patreon Reminders

• Declined Payments: There were a lot of them this month and I will be sending out a DM to folks on that list tomorrow. Declined payments are super common here on Patreon for a variety of reasons, but you DO lose access to my content a few days after Patreon tries to request your payment. I don't want you to lose access, so make sure to get this cleared up.
• Annual Memberships: At any time, you are able to switch your membership from monthly to annually. I do offer a permanent 10% discount on annual memberships, so if paying up front for a whole year is up your alley for budgeting purposes, you can do this any time in your Membership settings.
• Exclusive Reactions: There are still spots left in the Snack Break discounted tier. If you're interested, you can switch to this tier any time in your Membership settings. Feel free to switch for a month to try it out!
• Discord Server: Many of you have joined my Discord server which makes me so happy. It's a great way to say hi to me every day and for us to chat in a more instant setting than here on Patreon. If you're interested, you can sync your Discord account in your Patreon settings and you'll be auto-joined to my server.

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Other Things and Life Stuff

Clone Wars Review Video

Yesterday, my Clone Wars review and ranking video went live on YouTube and I am honestly blown away by the reception on that video - both from some of you here on Patreon and on the video itself. I'm really happy to see this, since I was NERVOUS about posting it. Since the reception has been so good, and it was really fun to make, it's very likely that I will create that style of video to accompany everything I watch here on Patreon exclusively, even the stuff that isn't Star Wars.

To me, it feels like a strong win-win to do this. The first win is that not everyone has the ability to join us here in this little private community, but since many folks are curious about what I think about these shows, these videos are good for them to get that insight. The second win is that these review videos provide a bit of a "trailer" / "sneak peek" / "tease" into my exclusive reactions. People also get to see my thoughts about the episodes before watching the reactions to them, which is rare in the reactor world. As in, I don't think any reaction channel edits their reaction video to discuss what they thought of something before they show the reaction to it. But as a viewer, it's nice knowing that the reaction you're about to watch was well-liked by the person watching it, right? 

Anyway, this is something that I think is a unique way to set me apart a little bit from some of the other creators in the reaction space on YouTube and Patreon. 😊 

Update on Miss Ella

For those of you who like updates on Ella, my senior pitbull, she's doing really well. She's fully recovered now from her dental work that happened a few weeks ago and she's also looking really good from her stomach surgery back in April. Her hair is all grown back now and her incision on her belly healed beautifully. Her mouth is also looking really good, despite having fewer teeth. 😂 I'm so relieved we are finally past her medical rollercoaster that we have been on for a while. *knocks on wood*

Please enjoy these photos of her passed out on the couch in her position that I like to call "Dino Ella" (cause her arms look like a T-rex to me) and a nice portrait of her beautiful face.

On a Personal Level...

Aside from my upcoming vacation and the whole "can't find my passport" situation, everything is going pretty decent over here. Not that I'm going to dive into what I talk to my therapist about, but I am continuing to work through some things that have been impacting me for a while. I fell a bit off the wagon with my daily walks that I need to get back into. It would help if it stopped raining. I also need to eat better. And probably sleep better. You know, the usual. But the important thing is that I am doing okay and there are a lot of happy moments in my life.

I'll end this post by reminding you all that BetterHelp sponsored my Clone Wars video and are offering 10% off your first month of therapy when you sign up using my link: betterhelp.com/kaiielle. For FULL TRANSPARENCY, I do not earn money on signups, so please don't feel pressured to do so as a way to support me. I was paid by BetterHelp directly for this sponsorship and the link and discount benefits YOU, not me. This is the arrangement I wanted anyway.

So please only use this link if therapy is something you've been considering starting and you feel ready to give it a try. 💛 I am not sure how long this link will last. I have asked BetterHelp if our partnership can be ongoing and not just a one-time thing, just haven't heard back yet.

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Phew, that was a lot! If you are still reading this, thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed what I had to say!

Thank you for being a part of this community. Thank you for choosing to support my content and what I create. Thank you for all of your likes, comments, and other interactions! Thank you for being AWESOME. 💜

✦ KL