The internet got so stupid, I had to flee here to where there were less-stupid.

I had deals with nearly every animation studio in Hollywood and at the peak of my career, I realized I was no longer allowed to be an artist. I know, I know, that word can mean anything. Even Prince called himself The Artist. But I mean that creative part in every man that smiles at beauty and allows him to create.

My whole has been one of paint brushes, comic book pages, sketchbooks and scripts. I make little movies and built cardboard robot armor, and that's just what I had to do. It was fun. I felt like I was finally showing up to do my thing.

Born in L.A. but raised in a small farm town, I dreamed of working for Walt Disney studios. After working on tons of animated series (including my own Earthworm Jim for WB and Catscratch for Nickelodeon), I had a difficult time with being sent to Human Resources. That was just because of my mouth, but what was worse was Standards and Practices and network tastes that carved up my art until even my fans couldn't recognize my work any more.

"Why am I doing this?" I kept thinking. My network execs were some of the best in the industry. They tried to accommodate me, giving me every artistic win they could manage. At some point my creative expression wasn't just what the network wanted and I would pitch another 20 ideas around town.

The point is that I had at least five other outlets where I could make a show and get paid about the same amount of money. Along came YouTube, the name said it all! I finally had access to a free television network where I decided what to make! The last few years had me drawing on camera, then I decided to break down and articulate my faith and politics.

Youtube at first seemed to live up to its name. I gained 450k followers on my channel, mostly due to my Christian world view and conservative politics. After making a year's salary in just a few months, my Youtube videos were some of the most profitable things I'd ever created!

But Youtube didn't just have a network executive ready to pounce on my creative content, they had an army of them. At Nickelodeon and Dreamworks, I'd regularly go out for drinks with the people who worked in Human Resources, but Youtube was a corporation that dominated most video content and they were made up almost entirely of faceless Human Resource managers.

My income would wildly expand and contract for no reason. My videos got removed, shadow-banned or pushed to the top of people's feeds and I never knew why. Youtube finally wiped both of my most successful channels off the site and I had nowhere to go. There was no other network like Youtube that had the same distribution and pay.

The financial win isn't likely to happen off of Youtube. I can live with that. But I'm hoping to at least come up with an artistic win on a new platform this year. If I can create what I want and find an audience, then this could be the first time in my 30 years working in creative mass media where I can pull it off.

Doug TenNapel
In Exile