This post is a criticism of Dr. K's decision to lock content behind memberships.

At 16:23 in "Virgins Are Actually The Ultimate Chads" Dr. K tells a wonderful story about a monk who got a cat to keep a rat away while he meditates, but then had to get a cow to feed the cat milk, but then had to get a farm to feed the cow, but then had to get a family to take care of the farm, and so on.

Dr. K's reason for telling this story is different but I think this perfectly illustrates how the solutions we come up with to our problems often create more problems and life becomes an endless cycle of coming up with solutions for our solutions.

Healthy Gamer's $10 monthly memberships is one such solution. As far as I understand, Dr. K's goal is to help as many people as possible as intensely as possible, but I think content locked behind paid monthly memberships goes against this goal.

The steelman for paid memberships

Revenue allows HealthyGamerGG to grow as a business, hire more people, and expand reach. Subscription-based revenue is the best kind of revenue for a variety of reasons. In order to drive subscriptions, the business should offer something exclusive that potential customers couldn't get otherwise.

Long-form, in-depth, advanced content doesn't do well on YouTube, so the exclusive content should be long-form, in-depth- and advanced.

The HealthyGamerGG community is growing quickly and Dr. K finds himself answering the same questions over and over again. (I don't think this point makes any sense but it's cited at the beginning of the announcement video)

Memberships allow those that have made some monetary investment to have exclusive access to decide on topics through polls. This is an additional incentive to subscribe (so the business can grow and reach more people) and reduces noise from people not invested in the outcome of the poll.

Membership is also an additional layer in the customer acquisition funnel, customers who subscribe can then be shepherded into coaching or in-person retreats.

The counter argument

There's a free solution to every one of Dr.K's stated problems

A second YouTube channel. This not only benefits the main channel via the algorithm (for a variety of reasons, you can look into this more deeply if you want to, but it's the reason almost every big channel has a second channel) but the second channel can host the long-form, in-depth, advanced content for free and because it's higher-investment content, the polls can be hosted here as well.

The people who need the advanced content the most often can't pay

Dr. K's stated audience is himself when he was a degenerate gamer. I, too, was a degenerate gamer but I grew up in poverty. I was able to turn my life around thanks to long-form, advanced free content from people like Dr. K and a $10 monthly subscription would have meant missing a few meals that month which isn't a trade I could make. I've found Dr. K's latest style of videos very well-researched (though I wish he would cite sources) but surface level and likely wouldn't have helped me affect actual change. On the other hand, the content that Dr. K started with which was multi-hour long interviews was completely transformative but it seems similarly long-form content will not be freely accessible with memberships

This actually caps Healthy Gamer's growth as a business

I acknowledge I could be wrong here and this is mostly punditry but: there are a million people out there selling content. What made Dr. K and HealthyGamer different was that it was a world-class psychiatrist sharing their opinions and analysis for free. It's the formula that got him meteoric success and it did so because I think everyone could see the authenticity oozing from him. I could share his videos guilt-free with anyone because there was no customer-acquisition funnel I was sending them down, just high-quality free content from a licensed doctor. Simple.

This addition of a subscription model effectively ends this and potential customers (read: people Dr. K could potentially help) will perceive the free content as being lesser and Dr. K overall as less authentic: he now comes off as a salesman for his paid content. This narrows the top of the customer acquisition funnel and hurts the business' growth.

What are we even here for?

Some will say "Dr. K did so much good, why shouldn't he secure the bag like the rest of us always dream we could?" And I'd agree: if the end goal is money, absolutely put up paid memberships. But Dr. K taught me that life is about so much more than that. So I'd like to end with a story:

There once was a psychiatrist that wanted to make the world better so he recorded himself talking to people about their feelings. He wanted more people to be able to see those recordings so he posted them to YouTube. But they could be getting more views if they were algorithm friendly so he hired an editor and a channel manager. But he had to pay those employees so he started to run ads and take sponsorships. But in order to manage the money and the sponsorships he had to start a business. In order to keep the business running he had to hire even more people. In order to pay these new people he had to more aggressively game the algorithm which meant less long-form and more shallow content. And in order to be able to make long-form and advanced content again he came up with paid memberships. I wonder what he'll do next.