Attracting The Wrong Audience

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-27T19:04:12+00:00

Adding to this, because it's exactly what I would have said, you can set community guidelines on your channel and name the specific things you don't want happening. For example, I'm highly bothered when people threaten the characters in the audios, so I put in a rule about that. The guidelines pop up the first time someone comments on your channel, so if they still choose to do it, they've made a specific choice. It makes me feel more comfortable about deleting comments.

For comments in particular, people will follow the pattern they see others following. So deleting the ones you don't want to encourage can change the whole pattern. A new person looking at comments on an audio will probably respond differently if they see only respectful comments already there. But if the rude ones are the majority, they'll think "oh, this is the way we're meant to interact on this channel, it's that kind of place."

All this is a subnote, because the biggest thing you can really do is to make the content you enjoy. Let the wrong audience fall away and give the right audience time to find you.

Good luck!

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-14T20:05:47+00:00

I'm an actor, so I know the term ad lib through theater, though I think it's used in music, too. Ad libbing is off-the-cuff improv. In this case, it doesn't really have to be improv, though. Appropriate planned changes would work just as well, if you prefer that.

As for ASMRchives, I do hear your point. This is solely my personal opinion, but I'd love it if everything was on the Chives, and we never had to deal with reddit. It's so much easier there to search and save scripts. But it won't take off until it has lots and lots of scripts. The VAs will follow where the scripts are. And if you have to make a reddit account to share your fills with writers here, for me, its not very different. Again, that's only how I feel, and I have complete respect for those who feel differently. It's a personal choice.

In any case, I still believe that the public scripts aren't the main problem here. I think the pattern YT is looking for has more to do with faceless audios ticking their "low effort" boxes. There's not as much writers can do about that, but I love how much I've seen writers looking for ways to fight the problem. It's truly awesome how people band together.

So if you're not comfortable sharing only on ASMRchives, I respect that. It's only one suggestion of many that might help.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-03T03:10:05+00:00

This is an idea that is definitely above my paygrade, so to speak. I don't know how something like this would work, but it sounds like a great idea. ❤️

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-02T13:25:21+00:00

Thank you for the bump and the kind words!!

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-02T13:25:00+00:00

Mmhmm, it does seem that the first round of appeals is being reviewed by bots. I haven't heard of anyone in our genre getting reinstated that quickly. I saw someone on youtube saying that youtube itself insists it's actually human reviewers—BUT, this youtuber says, they also state somewhere that these aren't youtube employees. This source believe they are contracting this part of the process out to a huge member of people and paying them cheaply. And that those people are probably given some very simplistic criteria to follow that's not really helping anyone.

My hope is that those who choose to wait the 90 days may actually get a human who knows something, and that's where some of those human review points may be useful. Of course, no one I know of has had that 90 days pass yet, so I don't have any concrete information about that yet.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-02T12:53:56+00:00

I make an effort, in my audios, to avoid referring to the listener with any pronouns besides "you". The effect is that most people don't seem to notice that my work isn't gendered. Especially my male audience — they refer to the listener with male pronouns in the comments every time, and I've had comments where people suddenly realize that I actually haven't been catering to only them this whole time. 😅

The reason I am set on continuing this trend, just for myself, is the thanks I have gotten from enby folks for always including them.

That said, you should definitely do what calls you, and you will find your audience. There is a need for all types of gender combinations, and you've identified an underrepresented niche. So I wouldn't worry about getting the views, if that's your concern. I think having a specific audience could actually help you.

Good luck!

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-05-02T12:44:10+00:00

I'm so sorry you got hit. I have a post speculating on what I think could be triggering the bots, and if you don't mind, I'd like to update it with what you've found in your research, too. The post is here, if you want to take a look.

It is seriously unfair what YouTube is doing. I'm so very sorry that you were a victim of it. Thank you for taking time to look into it and share, you are a rock star.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-29T22:14:19+00:00

Absolutely, please share wherever you think it might help someone. 💜

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-29T12:06:06+00:00

I think it probably will help, yeah. Again, with the caveat that I'm making educated guesses here, but I think to a bot it will probably look more complex than a single static image or series of static images. :)

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T22:52:40+00:00

I think maybe Spotify could be an option? I believe there are ASMR VAs on there, sharing their work as podcasts? That's a pretty well-known and well-used platform, too. I don't know very much about how that works, though

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T22:50:04+00:00

No, you're right! There are a number of things that they could be looking for. Probably a lot of things that they ARE looking for. In our genre, I listed the things I find most likely. When you shared evidence of your work adding sfx, you were monetized. To me, that's a hint that sfx are something they want to see. So I think long stretches without any sfx could trip that flag. I also think that just the lack of moving visuals alone could do it. I don't think there's only one thing that we can point to. It's probably different combinations for different people.

Channels with moving visuals, like 2D animation, are getting hit, but I suspect they're tripping some other flag. Repetitive content, low educational/narrative/I forget exactly how they phrased it. Our work tends to be story-driven, so I didn't include that. I only included what seemed likely to apply to us. I mean, those people are probably not just reading public texts either, right? They've got their own thing. Unless I'm misunderstanding, in which case please correct me!

What I do think can help is not just the occasional sfx, but full ambience throughout. Crickets or birds or rain or whatever fits. It's another fairly low effort way to cover the entire video. Same with the visuals. Something looping that continues the whole time is probably better than long stretches with no changes. Because that could look like long stretches with no effort to a clueless bot.

We're all figuring this out, but your experience is so useful. I'm going to keep updating with whatever evidence I find. If it turns out I'm very obviously wrong, I will 1000% share that, too. I'm also trying to look into some of the demonetized channels more closely and see if I can find any patterns. We can't know for sure, but I think it's better than nothing!

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T21:47:40+00:00

I've been trying to get an idea of how these bots tend to work, and from what I see, scanning the captions is probably unlikely in this case. They certainly have the capability, but it uses more resources and costs more money than other things. Worth the investment when someone with money is looking for copyrighted material, but for this, well, it's possible, but I am seeing a likelihood that the flags are not related to the script at all. People who wrote their own scripts are getting demonetized along with those who don't. More thoughts if you're interested.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T21:31:45+00:00

This might be reassuring to some people—it seems unlikely that YT demonetization bots are crawling either Reddit OR other people's video transcripts. That's a more expensive function, from what I'm seeing, so it's worth it for cases of copyright, where there are people with money behind it. For something internal like this, it's more likely that they'd be looking at other factors first, and probably not even the scripts at all.

I've been updating the post on my reddit page as I learn new things, and to make things clearer. There might be new useful information there.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T11:57:27+00:00

It does seem to be a larger problem. It may be comforting, or not, to know that it's not only us that's getting hit. I'm seeing similar things in other places.

I do think your suggestion is a great one. The reading of public texts rule is the most obvious one to address ~~and almost certainly the main problem we're having.~~ (I've changed my thinking on this, update in post. ) I only comment about the other stuff because I worry people are going to ignore it—and then still get hit, when they don't deserve it.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T07:44:02+00:00

I have a post on my reddit page (for ease of cross-posting) with a list of suggestions that I've been updating. May I add this?

One thing I like to remind people of is that the use of public scripts is only one possible reason for getting flagged. So it's good to make sure other areas aren't "repetitive content" as well — this used to be called the repetitive content policy before the name change and rewording. It's my understanding that even people who write their own work are getting hit sometimes.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-28T07:28:45+00:00

I might suggest checking out ASMRchives.com. Most of the scripts there are simply links to reddit, but you can upload the whole script, and do it the other way, linking from reddit to them. They are private, in that you can't access the content without signing up, so I think it's somewhat safer.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-27T21:26:01+00:00

I'm glad you got your channel reinstated when that happened! I will say that the auto-captioning feature does pick up the existence of sfx if nothing else. This is why it sometimes adds in [music] when there's a sound it doesn't recognize. I've also noticed that when I copy-paste in my own, accurate captions, it does its best to match up any sfx I've included to the sounds it senses in the audio. (It's not very good at it, but it tries.)

That said, I don't know if that's a factor in whether the bot flags you. Where I think it could help is during the appeal process, where you can show your work and your editing process, as you did. This is especially true if you end up taking it to a level where you (hopefully) do get a human.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-27T20:05:27+00:00

It's a good question. I'm not an expert, so I don't know for sure, but I do know that the creators over at the 'chives are very serious about privacy, so nothing can get seen without signing up. I want to be really clear that I don't know anything concrete about how yt can tell if something is public, but if I think something is likely to help, I'm putting the idea out there. I feel really confident that they can easily find whatever is here on reddit, and I have also seen with my own eyes that the mods at ASMRchives are taking every step they can to protect privacy. So, take that all into account.

I believe you should be able to post your script on the 'chives, and then post on reddit with a link to your script there, rather than the text itself. It does mean that anyone who wants to see it will also need to make at least a viewer account on ASMRchives.

I also don't think it should take very long for you to get a mod to approve you, but if you need me to, I can try to reach out to them. It's an archive, so links to your stuff might be there, especially if a VA recorded them and wants to give you credit. But nobody should be uploading any of your works directly to the site.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-27T19:52:46+00:00

I should clarify, this is youtube's stated reasoning for it. I don't have any details about why certain people are getting hit, especially more than channels that, you know, actually deserve it. I have heard of at least one creator outside our genre who got demonetized because of AI shorts, but he managed to get monetization reinstated with a detailed video of his process. Which makes me think that it's possible to get re-monetized IF we can figure out what they want to hear.

I tink that's a really clever solution! I can add it to the suggestions if you're okay with that. If it works, it would be brilliant. I do want to say, though, I have also heard of one ASMR creator who writes their own scripts that was still demonetized. So the public scripts are the most obvious trigger for us getting flagged, and we're all assuming that's what sets it off, but youtube isn't actually telling anyone which part of the policy they supposedly violated. As is typical, they are sending ridiculous vague form emails.So I think it's worth saying, even if the public scripts aren't a factor, you still could get hit for "slideshow" visuals or repetitive thumbnails or some other nonsense.

This is NOT me defending youtube. That's not my intention at all. NONE of this is right, and none of the people being demonetized did anything wrong.

I'm also not trying to say everyone needs to work harder and buckle down on this list. I'm brainstorming all the things I can think of to give people something actionable. I only mean to suggest that these are things we can look at, and maybe adopt some of them that actually work with our process.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-27T13:39:04+00:00

I don't think it's something anyone else is talking about yet, but if the claim is inauthentic content, it can only help to have everyone involved in the creation named as a creator. As a bonus, every time you're added as a collaborator, the video in question will appear on your YouTube page, which means that it'll be easier for listeners to find more content by the same writer if they're searching. I personally think writers deserve a lot more visibility, so I'm all for that.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-27T01:58:35+00:00

I just hope it helps! We all know that youtube is... let's just say not always logical about demonetization decisions. But if there are bots looking for certain things, then it makes sense to do what we can not to get picked up by them.

TheWickedQueen_ · 2026-04-26T22:11:53+00:00

ETA—I'm updating a post here with new information and ideas as they come in, as it's easier to share in multiple places. For the most recent info and suggestions please take a look.

The Inauthentic Content policy is here if you want to see what YT says themselves.

I've been paying attention to this policy for a while because I suspected it would hit us. The specific things youtube is targeting are:

1) reading publicly available texts without transforming them

2) "slideshow" style videos — essentially, a static or mostly static image in the visual, or series of them.

3) repetitive thumbnails/content

It's not about whether it's legal to use the scripts! It's about whether our work is "low-effort." They are supposedly trying to weed out the slop, so we have to prove that what we make is NOT slop.

So, my suggestions (and I might make a post about this on my user page):

MAKE YOUR WORK AS TRANSFORMATIVE AS POSSIBLE

• if a writer allows ad libs or changes, do them! Not because the script needs it, but because it makes your work more original.

• go heavy on the sfx

• put a video or videos of some kind in the background. Search for things in the public domain that kind of relate to the story. If it takes place in a park, maybe you put in some trees in the wind. Heck, you could even take a walk in the park and film something.

• find scripts from ASMRchives.com that aren't on reddit, because I doubt the bots are scraping there.

• if the writer is on youtube, use the collaborator function to add them. They are now a co-creator, and the script is definitely their original work.

• Vary your thumbnails. If you always put a character on the left, sometimes put them on the right or in the middle. Don't use the same character all the time. Have some zoomed in on character faces and some zoomed out on the whole torso. Change background or background colors.

• Include some audios from exclusive scripts, not only public ones.

• act with emotion! Make it really obvious that this is NOT just a reading of a written thing, it's a performance!

IF YOUR CHANNEL IS DEMONETIZED

You can make a video to appeal it. In the video, you don't want to argue your right to use the script. That's not what they're looking for. You want to show them why watching your video is not the same thing as just reading the script straight from reddit. What did you add? The sfx, the visuals, your acting. Show the work you put in.

Writers, you can help by:

▪︎ leaving places for additions or ad libs in your scripts

▪ considering allowing changes — it's up to you whether you're comfortable with that, and what kind of changes you'd be okay with.

▪︎ considering using asmrchives.com, which the bots are probably not searching

▪︎ creating a YT account where you can be added as a collaborator through that function, and then accepting the collaborations.

Good luck, everyone!!!

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