Trying to make a living from YouTube is like constantly running along the edge of a knife in clogs, it is incredibly stressful, it is mentally destructive and you do a truly obscene amount of work for genuinely very little compensation relative to the hours put in.
A big one-time payout from a streaming deal from some desperate studio jackoff could be life-changing, but it does not come for fucking free. The money they are offering you is money they have ripped directly from the hands and mouths of other creatives.
If you saw someone rip food out of someone else's hands and then offer it to you, you wouldn't fucking take it, would you? If you have a shred of decency you'll tell the guy to give the fucking food back and go get fucked. And if you were the one getting food ripped out of your hands, you'd reasonably expect the people around you to have that same solidarity with you and not accept it.
The industry will try to abstract this as much as possible - they're doing it in the press right now, "oh it's just a bunch of rich, selfish Hollywood elites making a play for more money!" is EXPLICITLY an attempt to get you to see the union members as something other than your fellow workers - and they'll try to pull shit like "oh the strike has nothing to do with you, you're not a member of the union and you won't see the benefits so why should you sacrifice this opportunity for them" and so on.
They're trying to make the issue more distant and abstract, to alienate you from your fellow human beings. And in response we must make it closer and more concrete.
The money they offer to a scab is taken from the hands of a union member. They are offering you a union member's student loan payments, their rent, their food budget, their kids' college funds.
Do not take it. It is not and can never be worth it.
