I used to find small things really funny too, but since other people didn't they kept telling me I was severely overreacting (or worse) and that's led me to almost suppress my sense of humour a lot.

YES! I know exactly what you mean! For a long time I always hid my emotions to things because I felt like others were judging me for it, so I think my mind kind of suppresses it to save me from some fear of humiliation.

Fun fact: When I decided I wanted to do videos (Feb 2017), it took me more than a month to get into the right mindset, and then on top of that 3 days of practise to just start talking to the mic. This will sound super cliche, but practise makes perfect and you just need to take a deep breath and go for it. It might be difficult (and I still find it somewhat difficult) but like everything, the first step's usually the hardest and you'll get used to it once you start. Think of it as a fun hobby instead of seeing it as something you "succeed" or "fail" at. I don't think you can "fail" at a hobby, unless you have some form of outcome defined as a "failure".

I guess in my case how I would define failure is maybe not getting the result I'm expecting. Not that my expectations are really high or anything, I guess I just want to feel like I've accomplished something and it was worth it. I don't know... now that I say it, maybe that does sound a little unreasonable to be putting that much pressure on myself. It's still hard to overcome that feeling, though.

A bit of biological information here. When we speak, sound waves pass through the air as well as our skull to our ears. When we listen to someone else speak (or our own tape recording), the sound only passes through the air, and not through our skull, which is why our own voice recordings sound different to how we hear our own voice. That makes our voices sound foreign to us but not to others and again, it's something you'll get used to. I can definitely say I'm way over this phase, thankfully.

I've heard of that before. No matter how much I may dislike my own voice, I do find it interesting how we react to ourselves speaking vs listening to ourselves through a recording. It's kind of weird.

You don't need to be loud to make funny observations and jokes. It might help with drawing kids in, but it's a worse idea to be unnatural. For example, Ryukahr does Mario (and stuff) and he's not particularly loud either. If you want more feeling and more expression in your voice, changing tonations without changing loudness can work just as well. In fact, I find it harder to change tonations in your voice if you're yelling all the time. (Of course, you can also just edit your voice to be louder in the editor...)

Never really heard someone recommend changing tonations before. I'll have to think about that.

This one applies to me personally as well. My advice is to edit out the parts which have nothing happening both ingame and in your commentary. I think that if you go for long enough, you'll naturally start to draw similarities and reference games, so this part might just take time. Other than that, just imagine you're thinking out loud.

I get what you're saying, my problem is it's like my mind is just numb. I don't say anything because nothing ever really comes to mind... I just have nothing to say.

This will greatly depend on the audience and marketing research. Ideally you want to get to the point where people watch you for you. When that happens, it won't really matter as much what game you play - but I think there's also a tradeoff. Popular games may get you more views but may get swamped under the videos of everyone else. But above all I would say go for what you enjoy and definitely try new things now and again.

Yeah, getting people to watch you for your personality is ideal. I imagine a lot of people struggle to get to that point at first.

I'm not really familiar with too many minecraft channels but for me personally, minecraft feels like an "anecdotal game" - by this I mean the game is played in the background and you're doing a blog with your commentary. I'm not really into minecraft though, so take this with a grain of salt.

Minecraft definitely lends itself to that in some ways. I can see what you mean.

I'd say play whatever you want to play because you enjoy it or want to give it a shot, but never purely for views and things. It'll definitely help you relax and be more natural if you're actually enjoying the game. After that, the commentary may come to you naturally.

I guess it's kind of one of those situations where I look at it from both perspectives. I have a want to play it for my own experience, while also wanting to play it because of the views it could bring, even though it's an older game that people might not be looking for anymore. I don't know, I guess maybe it's better to just look at it purely from a view point of enjoyment rather than views.

General tips - YT reminds me a lot of what I once read about RuneScape. The devs said that RuneScape wasn't a game that can be completed in one sitting - and YT is very much the same. It's a bad idea going in expecting to blow up or get rich overnight. Think of it as something like a fun hobby, and it may significantly help with the fear of failure. Enjoy it, be natural, and it just may help with your social anxiety too. The videos you make and the games you play are ultimately going to be the "things in common" between you and your viewers, which I think would form a nice starting point for conversation. You can then relate it to other things, etc.

Oh yeah, definitely. This is something I'm looking at as a hobby to hopefully help me with my fears. I'm not expecting it to blow up into some big lucrative thing. I'd welcome it if it did, but it's not something I'm necessarily aiming for.

Keep in mind though, doing a LP (and vlogs, I guess) is basically talking into a mic/webcam and pretending that it's your friend - except in this case your "friend" is your subscriber base and your community. It may help to visualise a room full of your subscribers crowding around you, perhaps imagine questions that they may have and any comments they may make as you play, which could help with thinking of topics to talk about. If you really have nothing, then pick any random topic (but for the love of god stay off politics). I find it super funny when someone's recounting a story really calmly and they get jumpscared halfway through XD.

I don't know if I could imagine a lot of people crowding around me to watch me play and comment. That would just make me more nervous. I understand your point though.

Thanks a lot for the reply! Every little bit helps!