Josh Yaks

9 years ago today I posted my first YouTube video. I think I have at least 12 more months in me, but I might be doing some serious re-evaluating a year from now. Honestly, I'm shocked and humbled by how many years some of you have been on this ride with me! Anything good that has come out of this I owe entirely to you! Meanwhile, are there any questions, comments, suggestions, concerns, effusive words of praise? Yes, you in the back?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

Josh Yaks

Hey Canadian board gamers, I'm selling off a whole bunch of games via two auctions on BoardGameGeek.com (shipping within Canada only).

One of them has games that I'm selling from my own collection as I mercilessly cull some titles that have been long-time personal favourites, and is being done in a "Dutch auction" style with prices on the items lowered daily until the games are sold or drop off the auction:
boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/383545/canadian-auction…

The other is a regular auction with games that I'm selling on behalf of a local gamer, with the two of us splitting the profits:
boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/382120/canadian-auction…

For those who bid on items, thank you for helping me have the budget to give my boys a good Christmas season this year!

1 month ago | [YT] | 3

Josh Yaks

It's taking me a while to finish editing a review of "Flowers for Algernon" (that is bound to get me some hateful comments due to my mixed feelings on the book) because I've been fairly overwhelmed with the busy-ness of the season which has included, amongst many other things, selling and shipping board games, books, and other household items in an effort to bring in some cash. The board game auction went fairly well. There were quite a few unsold games, but the ones that did sell brought in close to $1,000, so I'm quite happy about that!

If you're in the market for board games and live specifically within driving distance of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, my gaming buddy Paul is selling a bunch of his games:

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/368693/no-ship-games-au…

Several of those are games I've enjoyed a ton over the years, including Railways of the World, Hey! That's my Fish!, Lords of Xidit, Chaos in the Old World, Nexus Ops, Arboretum, and others.

Hopefully I can get back to my editing this week and not leave you waiting too much longer for the next video. Thanks for your patience!

10 months ago | [YT] | 6

Josh Yaks

Hello Canadian gaming friends! Just letting you know that my board game auction (with shipping within Canada and in-person pick up in Cambridge Ontario any time, or in Toronto on December 11, or in London on December 28), has gone live. Come by and grab yourself a deal on a great game!

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/368251/raising-money-fo…

10 months ago | [YT] | 4

Josh Yaks

Hello board game hobbyists! I submitted a clip for a video called "Friends From All Over the World Help Me Celebrate Reiner Knizia!!" on another channel. My contribution runs from 24:39 - 28:38, but the video has a lot of great board game content creators that you might want to check out. Speaking of which, while you're there, please help out another very small creator by subscribing to ‪@eVanDiesel‬ !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ_Nt...

1 year ago | [YT] | 3

Josh Yaks

I've almost finished another way-too-long review of an entire trilogy of books that nobody will watch (I need to significantly shorten my videos for the sake of my own sanity!), but meanwhile, I've been trying to learn the rules of a really cool-looking board came called "Doggerland" that I picked up used in an auction from a local-ish southern Ontario gamer. The problem is, I can't get past the first 3 words in the rule book...

1 year ago | [YT] | 4

Josh Yaks

My most recent video, called "Josh Yaks about an attempt at a new genre gone badly wrong: Spoiler-free review of The Black Dahlia", has done very well, and that has made me extremely depressed.

I've heard that for any platform that survives on public engagement (social media, news media, etc.) to have the most success, it needs to make people angry or afraid because that's when people are most likely to stay and engage with the content. That's apparently why your social media algorithms will feed you content that will most effectively make you upset.

This most recent book review video was a very negative review of a popular book, so it has received a lot of attention (in comparison to most of my other videos - not in comparison to a "successful" YouTube channel!), which I guess from a creator's point of view is supposed to be a good thing (other than all the random viewers/comments I need to ban for personally attacking me for daring to speak negatively about something they like). In fact, it's already my 5th most "popular" book review video despite being only a couple of weeks old.

And even more depressing for me, personally, is the fact that 2 of my 7 Patreon subscribers have ceased their support since the release of the video. I hope they're doing okay and I wish them well, and I really do hope they chose to quit supporting me because they were offended that I was talking about both past and current societal issues in the video, and not because they're having financial struggles.

I thought I'd dig into my video stats to see how prominent this idea of the algorithms rewarding negativity with success is. I have a YouTube plug-in that allows me to see both the number of "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" a video has, just like in the old days. What's interesting is that this number sometimes differs from the number that my YouTube Studio stats show. (For context, my average video gets about a dozen "thumbs up" and 0 "thumbs down", and I don't do very many outright negative reviews because I try not to read books that I won't enjoy!) Anyhow, I have 94 videos in the "Books" Playlist on my channel. Here are my 8 most successful book reviews, from a viewer engagement standpoint, in descending order from the most viewed video:

1) The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
-NEGATIVE review
-2,641 views
-115 comments
-51 thumbs up; 98 thumbs down (51 up and 65 down, according to YouTube Studio)



2) The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay
-POSITIVE review
-1,499 views
-17 comments
-61 thumbs up; 10 thumbs down (61 up and 12 down, according to YouTube)



3) Baudolino by Umberto Eco
-NEGATIVE review
-773 views
-5 comments
-17 thumbs up; 5 thumbs down (17 up and 5 down, according to YouTube)



4) Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stanković
-POSITIVE review
-519 views
-7 comments
-24 thumbs up; 0 thumbs down (24 up and 1 down, according to YouTube)



5) The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
-NEGATIVE review
-453 views
-10 comments
-12 thumbs up; 0 thumbs down (12 up and 2 down, according to YouTube)



6) The Licanius trilogy by James Islington (full review)
-MIXED review
-400 views
-12 comments
-12 thumbs up; 0 thumbs down (12 up and 0 down, according to YouTube)



7) Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
-NEGATIVE review
-358 views
-5 comments
-4 thumbs up; 9 thumbs down (4 up and 10 down, according to YouTube)



8) Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
-NEGATIVE review
-295 views
-5 comments
-3 thumbs up; 0 thumbs down (3 up and 0 down, according to YouTube)


Summary of my most popular book reviews:
-5 negative
-2 positive
-1 mixed

You see why I'm depressed?

But it makes me all the more grateful for my faithful viewers who have stuck with me regardless of my personal take on various books (and games and life issues, etc.), and to my 5 remaining Patreon supporters who continue to have my back and provide me with a means of purchasing new books and games! You all really do mean the world to me!! <3

The editing for my next video, about the board games I played in October, is taking a while in part due to this naturally being a busy time of year, and in part because even though I only have 6 games to discuss, 3 of them were new and 2 of those new ones turned out to be AMAZING games, so I had a lot to talk about! (Also, I may have taken a deep dive into a video game in November that has eaten up a lot of my time...) But I'll keep working at it, and will try to get it up soon.

Thanks for allowing me to get that off my chest!


-Josh

1 year ago | [YT] | 3

Josh Yaks

My kids almost never watch my videos (which is totally fine - it's not the sort of content they'd find interesting!), but for whatever reason my older son, Evan, decided to watch my most recent one (called "Josh Yaks About 7 Years on YouTube: Personal Updates & Goals for the Channel and for Life in General"), in which one of the topics I covered was my lack of success as a YouTuber (and my lack of interested in pursuing YouTube success!). Here's how part of our conversation on that topic went:
Evan: "Daddy, you know how you were talking about success on YouTube?"
Me: "Yeah."
Evan: "If making videos brings you happiness and you enjoy doing them, you're a successful YouTuber."
Me: <3

1 year ago | [YT] | 7

Josh Yaks

Greetings from the second floor of the local hospital! I came back to emerg on Friday morning, was admitted that night, and have been here since (I'm writing this on Tuesday evening). There is still an epic story to tell full of shocking twists and turns, but I think I'll wait until I'm back home to get into it. For now I'll say that, after 24 days, well over 200 bouts of diarrhea, around 20 lbs lost, 2 trips to emerg, a CT scan, an upper abdominal ultrasound, a scope up the bum, another scope (presumably a different one) down the throat, several biopsies, 13 stool sample collections, over a dozen bloodwork collections, urine tests, and many bags of Lactated Ringer's solution administered in a constant IV drip, more or less by process of elimination they've come to the conclusion that I came down with an extremely rare autoimmune disease called eosinophilic gastroenteritis.

Because of the rarity of that illness and how little is known about it, I don't know if there's even a way to get a definitive diagnoses. However that's what makes the most sense given the overall picture, and today, FINALLY, I started treatment (IV Prednisone, AKA Solu-Medrol) for this thing that has completely torn my life apart over that past month.

I think they'd like to keep me in hospital for a couple more days to give that stuff a chance to really kick in, however my boys' mother leaves on vacation for a week tomorrow morning and I'd really like to be home to take care of them. Plus, in the past day or two this thing started clearing up all on its own even before starting the Prednisone, so I think I can manage it. But I'll have to see how it goes, and stay tuned for a major lesson in self-advocating...

2 years ago | [YT] | 8

Josh Yaks

SHOCKING TWIST!! When the hospital told me that not hearing from them would mean that all stool samples were negative, they did not mention that not hearing from them could also mean that they LOST MY SAMPLES!! The full story:

It's been clear to me that, about 17 days ago, something got into my digestive system that causes any and all food that is put into it to cause severe pain and nausea in the stomach region, followed not long after by all of it being violently and repeatedly expelled from the back door. Therefore, I've been harassing both my family doctor and my gastroenterologist to take a look at the results of the stool samples I returned to the hospital 10 days ago to see what all they tested for, and to see if there's anything else we can test for with additional samples. I left messages with both offices over the past couple of days requesting this, and first my GI doctor's office called back today. The conversation went roughly like this...

Me: "Is there anything else we can look for in the stool?"
GI office: "The doctor would like to book you for a colonoscopy next month."
Me: "There won't be anything to see there. I was diagnosed with Crohn's 36 years ago, I've been through all manner of hell with it, and I can tell you that this isn't the Crohn's. It's definitely more of a stomach issue than an intestinal issue."
GI office: "I can mention this to the doctor, but he'd like to do a colonoscopy."
Me: "I'd prefer to see if there's more stool sample testing we can do."

GI office: "We don't have the results of your stool samples yet."
Me: "Huh?? You should have received the results 10 days ago."
GI office: "We haven't been able to find them, but stool samples can take a while for the lab to do all the testing."
Me: "Yes, they told me it would take 48 hours, but it's been 12 days."
GI office: "We should have those results in the next few days. Now about that colonoscopy..."
Me: "You should have gotten those results 10 days ago! This isn't the Crohn's or the diverticulitis! It feels most like the time I was hospitalized about 6 years ago with gastroenteritis! Can't we just submit some new samples?"
[Another call is coming through on my phone - my family doctor's office actually called during this conversation! I asked if I could call the GI office back to take the call.]
Me: "Hello?"
GP's office: "The doctor can't find any record of your stool sample results, even though she works part-time at the hospital. Looks like they must have lost it. Can you come in and pick up another collection kit?"
[I phone back the gastroenterologist's office.]
GI office: "I've got your colonoscopy booked!"
Me: *Sigh...

So I SHOULD have received the results 10 days ago and presumably should be just finishing a roughly 10-day course of whatever meds I need to be on and feeling nicely back to normal again. Instead, I've now lost about 12 pounds and I have to wait until early next week to get results from the sample I submitted today, and then hopefully FINALLY start on some medication!

I'm really starting to go quite insane from pain, exhaustion, hunger, dehydration, exasperation...

2 years ago | [YT] | 9