'What If Geography' 2022 year in review 🥳

It's been a big year and here are the highlights

It’s the beginning of 2023 and since everyone else is doing wrap-ups, I figured I might as well do one too. As I get older (and I’m older than many think I am), each year passes by just a little bit quicker, but 2022 was definitely different. To give just a little bit of backstory, I didn’t start out 2022 necessarily with an idea of achieving any sort of success on YouTube. And while I certainly won’t say that my YouTube channel is one of the top or one of the best channels out there, I’m still surprised at the level I’ve been able to grow it.

I think to sum it up best, 2022 has been the year I’ve been able to reconnect with the world of geography. I’ve been working as a city planner (and indeed have my master’s degree in urban planning) in some form over the last decade. And while city planning is a form of geography, it’s not really the same thing as being able to work as a geographer. Launching a channel on YouTube was an attempt to just reconnect with that side of me a little bit and I would say it’s been a huge success in that regard.

Okay, with that, let’s get to the year in review:

YouTube

Most of my viewers probably don’t know this, but my YouTube channel did not start out as “What If Geography.” It actually started out named “Atlas Explains The World.” My first four episodes (which are pretty rough) came out under this name and performed mostly as any new YouTube channel would perform: poorly. It wasn’t until March that I rebranded as “What If Geography” after I decided that it was the best way to frame different geographic topics. Today, I’ve obviously rebranded a second time, though What If Geography continues to live on as a podcast. Anyway, let’s look at some stats:

Viewership

Incredible growth followed by real life struggles

As I mentioned above, my first few videos (which were all published in January and February) all fell flat. This likely has more to do with being a new YouTube channel than anything else, but also my first few videos weren’t super great in my opinion. I’ve definitely gotten better in terms of both consistency of style and more concise story telling over the last 12 months.

But as we approached summer, things really started to take off. In some ways, it was very exciting and in others it was terrifying. As it turns out, there are a lot of crazy people on YouTube. And so, even though I was starting to earn income on YouTube, and my videos were making waves, I also got really intimidated by some commenters who didn’t appreciate my content. It’s for this reason that I largely, to this day, don’t read very many comments. It’s just overwhelming, especially on my larger videos.

Aside from that, summer was really fun. I actually started thinking that I might be able to do this full time, which would be a dream for me. I got my first million-view video: What If The American Southwest Runs Out Of Water? Other recently published videos were also performing very well. All in all, it was high times.

But then came fall and an incredibly stressful work-life balance. As such, my videos took a hit and I simply wasn’t able to focus on creating content as much as I’d have liked, and the videos I did create, typically fell flat with lower views overall. In December, I was able to start getting back into the groove, but it’s been a tough slog getting back to those heady summer days.

My top 5 favorite videos of 2022

I don’t think it’s any surprise, but I’m a huge transportation nerd. I work in transportation for my day job, and I really love to see how people and things move around. With that, it’s likely not going to be a surprise that my favorite videos I got to create are heavily based around that idea. Anyway, here are my top 5 videos of 2022:

1. What If The Big Earthquake Hits The Pacific Northwest Tomorrow? This was a super fun video to make. Not only does it hit close to home for me, but it’s also just a fascinating subject that we didn’t know all that much about prior to a few years ago. I ended up getting a lot of complaints in the comments about not including Canada enough in the conversation, which is understandable. But otherwise, my favorite video of 2022.

2. What If The United States Never Built The Interstate Highway System? One of my first videos after my first rebranding, I love tackling what if questions that truly have monumental impacts. I don’t think many Americans realize just how much the Interstate Highway System has changed the landscape of the country, particularly the cities.

3. What If The United States Had A National High Speed Rail Network? I love high seed rail. I really just love traveling by trains in general, but high speed rail brings a lot of benefits that the United States has never fully realized. This was a really fun video to explore sort of the ramifications of what that network might look like if the U.S. had dived into rail as an actual method of transportation.

4. What If Washington D.C. Was Made Into A Full State? Again, lots of ramifications here, but overall just a very fun video to create. Hunter and I also recently dived way deeper into this subject on the What If Geography podcast. Interesting side note: this video was performing very, very well for the first couple days and then it basically died. It’s was kind of weird. It was like the YouTube algorithm turned off the tap for viewers. I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial video.

5. What If The United States Was Vegan? This was not a popular video, but I really enjoyed making it. I think many people saw the title and I assumed I was advocating for a vegan country, but really it was just a thought experiment to showcase just how impactful meat is on our country, land, and environment at large. It was also one of my more “out there” ideas and I was glad I got to see it realized, even though it’s only sitting at a whopping 4,200 views today.

If you haven’t watched any of these videos, I encourage you to do so! I think they’re pretty fun. 😄

Podcast

I don’t have too much to add here as the podcast is still fairly new. But beginning in August of 2022, I started to plan for a podcast series based on the exact same concept of exploring geography through what if scenarios. And to do this right, I wanted to bring on someone who was just so incredibly knowledgeable about geography at large. So I tapped my friend and colleague: Professor Hunter Shobe to help me bring it to life.

The entire goal behind the podcast was two fold:

1. I wanted to dive deeper into the same subjects that I’ve been covering on YouTube. I do a lot of research prior to each episode publishing and most of it ends up getting cut for time. With a podcast, we’re not really limited in the same way.

2. I wanted more of my own personality to show. I don’t think I’m really able to do that with the YouTube videos and, sometimes, I just want to nerd out a little bit about geography or some high concept geography topic. I can do that on a podcast!

Our first episode premiered in mid October with little fan fair. But that’s fine. Growing a podcast is different that growing a YouTube channel. There’s not really an “algorithm” that will just push your content to people based on what they like, which is what YouTube does. Instead you have a single service that then pushed your content to a dozen different apps and podcast streaming services such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

So listens have been fairly low for the first couple months of podcasting, even with an established audience on YouTube. But we continue to make new episodes and it’s growing ever so slightly with each video. So hopefully 2023 will prove to be a big year for that venture as well.

Today, we have 11 episodes published (#12 coming tomorrow!) and we have content planned for well into the future. If you’re interested in checking out the podcast, I encourage you to listen. You can find all relevant links to the different podcasting services here: https://www.spreaker.com/show/what-if-geography

To 2023 and beyond

2023 is going to be an interesting year for me personally. I’ll share more about what that means over the next couple months, but suffice it to say, I’m really excited and a little terrified for my next steps. I think, just to sum it all up: 2023 will be a make it or break it kind of year for me.

I’ll continue to update this Substack with random geographic stories I want to write about, updates on the YouTube channel and podcast, as well as random geographic data visualizations I create. So, if that’s what you want, please continue to be subscribed (or read on the Substack app).