I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone who has been reading my posts for this class that I consume a lot of content on YouTube. One of the genres that I watch a lot of is product reviews. I’m always frustrated when someone does a review on a product they have clearly never used (unboxing reviews) or they simply aren’t able to communicate useful and relevant information in an effective manner.

This led me to try my own hand at product reviews just over two years ago. Since then I’ve put out nearly 90 videos and accrued nearly 600,000 total views. Even though making videos has cost me far more money than it’s brought in, it’s something I really enjoy and am passionate about. Something that has helped me with the level of success I’ve had is modeling my videos after the content producers that I look up to. One of these channels is “Mrgunsngear.”

Mrgunsngear has put out nearly 800 videos with over 25,000,000 total views and currently has around 146,000 subscribers. One of the proudest moments of my channel was when I discovered that he had subscribed to my small channel (He has since unsubscribed). Knowing that he had viewed at least one of my videos made me reassess my content to make sure it was of a quality that the people I look up to might enjoy it. This is why I thought it fitting that I try and interview him for this assignment.

I did my best to formulate questions that were not only relevant to this class, but would aid in the improvement of my channel over the coming months and years. With this goal in mind I set about asking what inspired him to start in the first place and what his inspirations have been.

The reason Mrgunsngear started his channel was to report some issues he was having with a firearm to educate others. This video ended up taking off and he decided to keep making informational videos to help people learn from his experiences. He also had similar YouTubers that influenced the content he produced.

I was also curious how his production has changed over the four years that his YouTube channel has been active. While the format of his videos has stayed remarkably consistent, he mentioned that started with a 360p point and shoot camera and no editing and now has some advanced editing software and is constantly upgrading his camera equipment. This mirrors my own experience with a camera phone velcro’d to a tripod and free editing software for my first few videos.

Something I thought would be interesting was asking when he felt like he’d “arrived” as a content creator. Mrgunsngear said that once industry folks began

responding to his requests, he started to feel validated. A big moment for him was just a few weeks ago at an event where “Hickok45,” a very prominent figure in the YouTube gun community, walked up to him and said, “I love your channel, you make excellent videos.” Mrgunsngear said that he didn’t expect Hickok45 to even know who he was.

One thing I ask anyone who has done anything I’m interested in is, if you could go back and do anything different, what would it be. I did this when joining the military, hence why I joined the Air Force, and I did this again with Mrgunsngear. He said the main thing he would have done is monetize his content from the very beginning. He missed out on a lot of opportunities because he didn’t monetize his channel for the first two years. Thankfully my channel has been monetized since day one.

Mrgunsngear also has a similar approach to moderating comments to what I’ve done and that’s been to only delete or ban people who are racist or make sexually explicit comments. Any time you make a video speaking negatively about a product, you can expect to receive a lot of negative comments from people who liked that product. I try to avoid claims of censorship by letting those people say whatever negative things about me that they want.

I wanted to get Mrgunsngear’s perspective on the future of the YouTube gun community. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has made no attempt to hide the fact that they aren’t fans of firearms. Previously YouTube has taken down the channels of the aforementioned Hickok45 (which was reinstated quickly due to the outrage it caused) and many others because of “violations” of YouTube’s guidelines. In response, a site called Full30 has been started which is dedicated to gun videos. It seems to be the alternative once Google decides they no longer want any firearms on their sites. Mrgunsngear stated that he’s not sure where YouTube’s gun channels will end up once Google closes its doors to us, but having things like Full30 is nice to be able to fall back on.

Finally, I wanted to get some general advice for other aspiring content creators, such as myself. The main things he mentioned were, working hard, constancy, and content quality. Working hard is pretty self-explanatory, but it goes along with being consistent. Consistency is something I’ve struggled with while trying to balance school, work, and a social life. I’ve sometimes gone weeks or months without uploading a video so that is something I need to work on. Content quality doesn’t mean videos looking good and being flashy. Mrgunsngear wanted to be clear that having quality content in your videos is more important that flashy editing.

Having the opportunity to ask questions of someone you look up to was great. Any time you have the chance to learn from the experience of those who have already worked their way down the path you see before you, you’re bound to learn a lot. I can personally say that this experience has been very beneficial and should positively impact the content that I produce in the future.