You saying youtube is the only way to make money?

Literally in my comment that you quoted, I said there are other ways to make money. I said "making money by some other contractual means." meaning non-youtube related methods for making money.

Look, if you are watching youtube, you are supporting youtube first. That is a fact, it is inescapable.

This whole reply chain is about using non-youtube clients. Literally not supporting youtube, or the creator as a consequence. If you use a non-youtube client and pay the creator director, you bypass supporting youtube in a monetary fashion at all.

There are not alternatives, because people are still supporting youtube. There are options. People aren’t going to go to websites anymore? Ok, oh well, its dead. Sorry.

This is just a lack of understanding on the scope of the requirements for video hosting on the scale of YouTube. To let anyone upload as much as they want whenever they want entirely for free? There are soooo many reasons why there are no other real options. It is cost. Virtually no other company has the capability to do what YouTube is doing. With how successful YouTube is, if it were even remotely possible, plenty of people would be doing it. The only other company that might have the ability to compete would be Amazon, but it literally would not be profitable for a long time, and that doesn't solve anything for this conversation since Amazon is no different from Google.

The closest we get is platforms like Nebula, but that is very different. That is for established creators to be able to post either more in depth content, or exclusive content for a more reliable revenue source. Without YouTube (or a YouTube alternative), how would one become established enough to be able to join Nebula in the first place?

The worst part and you glossed over this: they have no contract. Their livelihood could be gone in a day if youtube decides to drop them, or reduce their pay, or even promote someone else. It is a bad business plan.

I didn't directly mention it, but I did say they could make money in some other contractual means. That still applies if they lose their job overnight with youtube. But also, Nebula could stop get enough subscribers to be able to afford their creators and go under, virtually losing that revenue source overnight.

What gets me is you act like other jobs are way better, when there are literally massive layoffs happening in the US right now.

"Their livelihood could be gone in a day if Amazon decides to lay them off, or reduce their pay, or even hire someone else." is also just as true.

At the end of the day: Why the hell do we care so much about passive activities like watching people?

Ignoring the conversation on the value of entertainment, Youtube is more than just entertainment. It is an incredibly large source of knowledge. Watching people is how so many things are learned. I am talking in person teaching, mentorship, training, lectures, conferences, presentations, and even videos. If you want to do something you've never done before, it would be done best by watching someone else do it first, and then attempting it yourself. When you attempted it, you may have missed some things, so you can rewatch to reinforce what you missed. This applies to videos and non-videos. It would be far less efficient to skip the watching/learning, and go straight into the doing. It would take longer to figure out and achieve a comprehensive understanding. Could it be done? Sure, eventually. But there is literally a famous quote for that:

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” ― Otto von Bismarck