I’m glad it makes you happy because this forum has been an incredible resource for me. I’ve only been using e4 since 2020 but since the new website it has taken up a lot of my free time when I’m not playing video games with friends or spending time with family.
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the articles/guides I have made here and it pushes me to continue to make them. I think the raw knowledge available here is very unique and hard/impossible to find in other places. I’ve even been contemplating starting a YouTube channel in an attempt to share some of my knowledge in new ways, and I wouldn’t have even considered it if I didn’t have the e4 community to push me to expand my Pokemon knowledge
I think he needs the time away to focus on himself. I think he’s mentioned battling with depression, so I’m sure if he’s focusing too hard on numbers dropping it’s not helping that. But still, he still gets far more views than the average Pokemon card YouTuber would get and I also feel like he should be more appreciative for the community he still garners and not the people leaving.
As for the E4 praise, I love the community here. I love seeing the niches of collectors here without judgement and not only caring about the value of said collection. Good conversation and resources too. Overall positive experiences
Making content on a content creation platform as your main thing seems like such a thankless task. It stops being the thing you can enjoy and more about how to generate hits and publicity just to keep your business going. It’s amazing/a miracle that hobbyists essentially maintain these channels by themselves, either completely independently or running it as a full on business with staff to pay and support. There are celebs out there backed by major global corporations with tons of economic muscle behind them who fall off in popularity and relevance faster.
It takes a lot of commitment to create content, especially the amount he was doing. I had a decent few thousand subscriber YouTube channel (not Pokemon) several years ago. Was only putting out videos every
other week but got completely burnt out and never picked it back up.
