The YouTube duo Vilebrequin announced this Thursday, December 7, the end of their YouTube channel dedicated to automobiles. In a twenty-minute video in which they explain their decision to their subscribers, Pierre Chabrier and Sylvain Lévy mention their workload and the fatigue that comes with it.
“We both agree on this: Vilebrequin must stop, for the good of our people, those around us and everything else. Technically, the term burnout could hit us a bit,” explains Pierre Chabrier in the video announcing the end of the Vilebrequin canal.
The duo, who officiated for six years on the platformHe is not the first to throw in the towel when faced with an exhausting workload. The term burnout is not foreign to French cameramen. In March 2023, YouTubers McFly and Carlito, a duo well known in the French streaming world, also declared that they were “exhausted” and closed their channel, at least temporarily.
Stress and pressure
YouTuber and influencer Lena Mahfouf, known by the pseudonym LenaSituations, revealed in July 2023 that she had been hospitalized due to an ulcer caused by “stress” and “pressure” linked to her activity. The one she publishes, in the summer, a vlog video a day, she spoke, in an Instagram post, of her deteriorating state of health. The YouTuber, who has just inaugurated her new pop-up store in Paris, did not speak, however, of exhaustion, but only of the pressure linked to her activity.
It must be said that the pace of production and publication, for YouTubers, is quite frenetic. In the case of the Vilebrequin channel, for example, one video per week has been published for six years, so most involve filming with vehicles and other activities. Most YouTubers also enrich their activity by participating in shows or organizing projects of varying magnitude. Therefore, a busy schedule.
Before, it was the most viewed YouTuber in France, Squeezie, who spoke on the subject. In December 2022, the YouTuber with 18.5 million subscribers admitted to having “threw a lot” and was worried about his level of exhaustion causing him to “lose feathers.” In February 2023, he was also concerned about having to rely solely on long video formats, as shorter formats were no longer achieving the expected success.
Formats forced to evolve
Given that the competition on YouTube is increasingly fierce, but also with the success of Twitch in recent years, the formats are increasingly demanding for their authors.
“We don’t realize it, but the video with Eric and Ramzy took three and a half weeks of editing for a 57-minute video. If all the videos I make have to be along these lines, so long, with guests and a concept “I and my teams are going to have a big exhaustion,” declared Squeezie in this regard.
Not to mention the price of success materialized by intrusions into the private lives of YouTubers, when their address is revealed against their will, forced interactions with their fans in public spaces or even cases of cyberbullying. But despite the disappointment, YouTubers (or former YouTubers) never disappear: McFly and Carlito have switched to shorter formats on social networks. For their part, the Vilebrequin duo will be at the helm of the Top Gear motor show from 2024.
Source: BFM TV
