HOW CAN THE FOLKS DISCOVER ME IF I FAIL TO DISCOVER MYSELF?
Over the past three years, YouTube's Uzbek segment has grown significantly richer, with mounting quality content and a subsequent natural increase among youth. People keep asking me, “I want to open a YouTube channel. What can I talk about?”
That is the wrong question! If you posed the question that way, you are not ready to develop a YouTube project. Before launching the Subyektiv project, I asked myself: Who am I? What knowledge or opinion can I contribute to society? What topics make me wonder or bother me? What topics am I ready to talk about endlessly?
Ecology! This topic had been bothering me for many years, so we dedicated the first issue of Subyektiv to environmental issues. It worked, with thousands of comments, tens of thousands of likes, hundreds of thousands of views... This is my advice to those who want to start creating on YouTube! By asking yourself these questions, you will find the answers to who you are and what you can offer to the public. Those who make it to this industry just to make money will hardly fly high.
PEOPLE LIKED IT, BUT NOW THERE’S LITTLE ROOM FOR COMPROMISE ON THIS ISSUE
Our value is to create interesting, quality, and useful content. Interesting but at the same time not useless, useful but at the same time not of bad quality. Everything matters.
If the purpose were just hype or recognition, we would just ask a famous person awkward questions, interview them, or do a little joke show. Unfortunately, our society still consumes more of this type of content.
When we started the Subyektiv project, it was an odd question how the Uzbek-speaking audience would receive that type of content, but the actual results were far from what we had expected. The project proved that it is possible to gain the attention and recognition of the audience even with quality and useful content. Thus, people are ready to consume high-quality content, and it is possible to reproduce such content without fear.
LAMENESS IN EDUCATION IS A CENTRAL TOPIC.
IT IS A MIDWIFE OF PROBLEMS
The deplorable state of our education system led me to accidentally enter the media industry. I applied to a university, spending four years of hard work to prepare for admissions exams, and at that time, I had great expectations of higher education.
I was motivated by the thought that if it is so difficult to get into a university, then the knowledge provided there must be corresponding to it. Regretful as they are, the years I spent studying confirmed the opposite of that idea. I was completely disappointed with the higher education system and... decided to make a video about all the faults and shortcomings of the system. The video changed my life by 180 degrees and opened the way to the world of media.
Later, together with our team, we raised the issues of education, its level, and high literacy, sometimes separately, sometimes around our samples of creativity. Since, to my mind, most of the pressing issues in Uzbekistan are rooted in the lack of knowledge and education level. Had its quality been good in the past, and had it covered all the youths, would thousands of our compatriots be now sweeping the streets in Russia?! This is a question that does not require an answer.
POTENTIAL BEYOND LABOR MIGRATION
I was convinced of the fact that Uzbeks are not handymen after talking to some of our expats who have “fulfilled themselves” in different countries. To cite an example: myriads of our compatriots work for giant corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook in Silicon Valley, considered the pivot of all new technologies and innovations on earth.
The most interesting part of the story is that the Google engineers I talked to come from remote villages in Uzbekistan that almost no one has ever heard of. But they have made their way from such environs to the top company in the world. I am convinced that Uzbeks, as such, can be discovered anywhere across the globe. If enough attention is paid to our country's education quality, imagine how much this effect will increase.
WE MUST LEARN TO RESPECT OURSELVES
If we imagine a nation as a mosaic, each piece is a certain citizen. The USA, Russia, Korea – no matter where we are, every thought and impression formed about us cannot help but affect the nation's image. While preparing our show about the US-Mexico border, I felt very sorry for our compatriots. Risking their lives, spending tens of thousands of dollars, and walking a long way through swamps, mountains, and forests to ask for asylum in a foreign country is sad. We should always bear in mind one thing: every Uzbek who illegally crossed the border, every national who went with a student or tourist visa and stayed illegally, will lead to a change in attitude towards the rest of our people. Just one example: many Uzbek youths who go to the United States to study choose to stay longer than prescribed. This means that students who really want to go to study cannot get a visa because we all have ‘Uzbek’ written on our passports
POST SCRIPTUM
Every Uzbek citizen is an ambassador of Uzbekistan. I would like all our compatriots to feel this from the heart. Globally, we all share the same mission: to say “I am Uzbek," not with shame but with pride. When someone says, “I am Uzbek," everyone should think of Uzbekistan as a wonderful people.
