I'm a youtuber with 30M views and 300k+ subs and I can totally see how this is happening.

Luckily, I'm a little older and have worked in entertainment with the talent side previously, so I've already had my burn out phase and have also seen and understand what fame and/or public attention does to someone, especially if they're mentally unwell.

Not tooting my own horn, but it takes incredible discipline and foresight to not get sucked into this vortex of needing to please your audience and sponsors and to do everything all at once.

We live in a time when things that are extremely hard or time-consuming are supposed to happen quickly and easily
(the magic of editing!) No more is this apparent than on youtube. The main audience on YT are in their mid-20's and younger, who basically grew up in a world where literally everything is at their fingertips, at the drop of a hat. This definitely reflects in their media consumption patterns/platforms of choice. The problem is that for someone in a business where you (or a small team) basically do everything and are pressured by fans and revenue generators/sponsors to keep putting out content at a crazy pace, it becomes all-consuming and unsustainable.

I told our team from day one that collectively, the audience doesn't care about you - they're vampires. They're voracious and fickle and only care about you so long as you keep giving them that sweet, delicious content. Yet, if you start off on the right foot, you can keep their appetites satiated without screwing yourself over.

My partner and small team and I decided early on that we'd focus on better content less often, and keep engagement on the platform with fans to a manageable amount. We knew this would impact revenue and growth, but for our literal sanity, it was necessary and we're so thankful to have started this way. We made very little money the first year of doing the business but each year has gotten bigger and better and sponsors/brands have come through citing the lack of us "whoring" ourselves out for a quick buck or views as the reason they're wanting to pay us 6 figures to work together. So while it might seem like we're giving up fame and riches, you're only partially right - definitely giving up fame, but the revenue growth has been incredible because we've stayed the course and kept our heads about us.

As a fan of other channels on the platform, especially Elle Mills and Casey Neistat, you see that mental illness is a big issue and putting someone already fragile in a position to deal with immense pressure to produce more and more that it becomes a pressure cooker and too much to handle. Elle is the perfect example of this. As a fan of Casey's I'm often struck by his lack of empathy or understanding that filming constantly, and then editing for 4-8 hours everyday, all while getting 3-4 hours of sleep with little downtime is not sustainable for 99.999% of people. I'm still unsure if he's one of the few people that need that little sleep or he maybe is a little bi-polar. As evidence of the effects of his punishing schedule, he recently started working with a filmmaker named Dan Mace. He was constantly sleeping on camera, missing small things in edits, etc that you can't help but feel for him. Casey even goaded him on a little bit and told him this is how you have to work to be successful on Youtube - he's not wrong, but he's also not understanding that success means different things to different people. He clearly loves/needs the attention, so I get why he thinks this way, but he's missing the bigger picture outside his little world. Keeping up with Casey's schedule looks punishing on it's easiest day and is the surest way to get burnt out, all in the service of something, quite frankly, so fickle.

TLDR; Audiences are like vampires and there's immense pressure on creators to constantly create/earn revenue/build audience which is not good for anyone mentally healthy and disastrous for someone not mentally fit.