Life as a Content Creator

By Tory Mayes

Tyler Christie – AKA MunchingBrotato – was a YouTube star back in the prime days of Minecraft YouTube (2013-2015), recording videos with some of the big content creators of that time. Now, Tyler has a vastly different life, but still tries to find the time to play games again on Twitch under the same username and is still just as funny as his videos were back in the day. Him and I had a lengthy conversation about what being a content creator was like for him, versus how he sees it now.

 Tyler first started uploading on YouTube when he was 16 years old, after years of being captivated by watching other YouTubers at the time. He enjoyed watching content from the moment YouTube became a thing, saying he was “straight addicted right away as a kid.” It wasn’t until he saw other people uploading gaming content that Tyler got the inspiration to start making his own gaming content. He would simply point his camera at his TV to record himself playing games, and from those humble beginnings he’s been making content on and off ever since.

When his channel started being successful, he was still very young and couldn’t quite grasp everything that was going on. People in his environment also didn’t understand it as well, including his parents who only came around to the idea of content creation when Tyler started bringing in some money from it. When setting up a bank account, the staff didn’t understand what his occupation technically was. Tax forms were difficult to fill out because the concept of this being a job was still new. And there was also additional social pressure from his peers – both online and in real life – because a lot of people would treat him with fake kindness to try to get in on whatever fame he had. “With great power comes great responsibility, and I felt like an idiot because I was in, I don’t know, grade 11?” Tyler said, explaining how absolutely nerve wracking all of these things were for him as a teenager.

A repeated topic that came up was that Tyler had moments that he felt “famous” but that when all is said and done he never felt like someone who was famous. He describes his peak as a “lightning in a bottle situation” where there was definitely a lot of luck involved, but ultimately he always felt like “some dude” and never “that guy”. Tyler also described his experience with imposter syndrome where there was a lot of self-doubt and feeling unworthy of the attention he was getting. A few examples of moments he felt famous: He attended a convention and couldn’t walk more than 2 feet without getting recognized by people who were excited to talk to him. He had a meetup at The Bean in Chicago and didn’t expect the floods of people that showed up for it, as he was signing autographs and talking to people who traveled long distances from what felt like sunrise to sunset. Mark Ruffalo even once posted a Tweet tagging Tyler’s account because his kids loved watching Tyler’s videos. Nowadays, as he tries to grow his channel on Twitch, he will frequently engage with some of his peers on the platform, and some of them will still cry tears of joy that their favorite YouTuber from their childhood was talking in their Twitch chat. “It’s been so long, HOW do people remember me?” Tyler exclaimed, followed up by: “You’re probably 10 times cooler than I am” and “It’s nice to know people still…care.”

When talking about content creation as a whole, Tyler voiced some of his struggles. Most of the people he recorded with – one of whom was described as an overseer of his content, putting a lot of pressure on him to keep up with uploading – were in LA while he was in Nova Scotia, meaning his timezone is 4 hours ahead of people he recorded with. He had some family that didn’t understand or approve of his content creation, and some family that bragged about it too much to the point of having people show up at his door and ask for autographs. Time management was the biggest struggle though, as he still was in high school and had to focus on his grades as well as making content. He still graduated high school, but trying to manage it all at the same time was a lot for him. Tyler also talked about how it’s a different ballgame nowadays with creating content. “Scrolling culture” has made it so that a lot of views doesn’t always equal success, and a lot more effort needs to be put in because of short-form content being the norm. In terms of longer content, it’s better to have one super good video a month nowadays compared to having one mediocre video a day several years ago. “It was a lake 10 years ago, it’s an ocean now.”

Tyler walked away from being a major YouTuber when he did because he needed to focus on his mental health, and since then he has gotten married to his wonderful wife Leah and is the father of 2 sons. He is trying to stream more on Twitch because there is still very much an audience who loves him, but he still goes through imposter syndrome as well, making it difficult to know whether he is good enough for it. He mentioned he doesn’t find himself as funny as other people most likely do, because when editing videos or watching clips of himself, he can only listen to the same joke that he’s made so many times in a row. It’s also sad that most of the people Tyler used to record with back in the day either got into heated controversies, had serious allegations made against them, or they simply fell off because they were jerks to most everyone they met. Tyler remains one of the few content creators from that time period who didn’t push others around out of desperation for fame. His only hope was that his content was making people laugh.

All in all, Tyler made several good points about content creation during our 2 hour long conversation, but it also revealed a lot about Tyler himself. His stories that he shared provided quite a window into what it takes to actually succeed in this industry, and not a lot of people realize just how much effort they’d need to put forward in order to make it a job of their own. If you have the opportunity though, he recommends it. “If you can, you may as well try…everything is internet based.” There were a lot of cool things he got to experience, but much like anything that becomes a job it can take a negative turn really quickly. Through all the things Tyler has been through in the height of his content, I’m proud of him for the life he has made for himself. As a person who has held Tyler on a bit of a pedestal since his 8th video, it was so wonderful to have the opportunity to talk to him about this topic. Him and I became friends after I bumped into him at an Ed Sheeran concert, and while the saying “don’t meet your heroes” is usually true – as Tyler and I have both personally experienced – I am so glad I got to meet Tyler. He is one of the few influencers of his era who still remains one of the kindest people I have ever met. And despite what his imposter syndrome tells him, Tyler is still one of the funniest people too.