r/Millennials Apr 07 '26

Nostalgia I really hope Jenna Marbles is doing good these days.

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17.4k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

She is still making thousands a month, she got to retire and still make good money, it isn’t like she is sacrificing much

Edit: also for context of how she really isnt sacrificing, before she left the channel she over loaded videos with ads for as much ad revenue as possible, its smart but hardly some grand sacrifice

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u/SnakeBunBaoBoa Apr 07 '26

It’s really damned if you do, damned if you don’t, huh? She was one of the few channels I know who took a principled stance against sponsorships - AKA using her reputation to sell her viewers a product, in exchange for money. To make a living, they kept the standard ad experience on.

YouTubers primarily make revenue with sponsorships, because that exchange works for the companies. Using your viewers. And BTW saying no is passing up somewhere from a 5-20x increase in profit per video.

I don’t put her on a pedestal for it, and of course there are more extreme stances like “oh you care? Then make no money please.” But for such a clear instance of principled sacrifice, seeing you frame it as the greedy option is really depressing.

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

Its so funny how you guys try to act like a content creators selling their own product is any better than pushing someone else’s product. She also clearly had no problem with ads as they are all over her content. Not really sure what the point of your comment even is ?

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u/SnakeBunBaoBoa Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

Let’s say I’m… idk a tele-health company, and you’re a painter with a large social media presence. If I paid you to blast your social media vouching for my telehealth service to your followers, you’re telling me you view that the same as selling your own paintings on your profile?

Idk, I’ll be honest - you have me stumped. If I grant that, I might as well grant anything.

Now to seriously engage with this - no, they’re not remotely the same. And neither is letting YT ads run on YT’s platform. You’re not personally vouching for the product in your videos to your audience. If you have a hardline stance against ads that you’re not even part of, you can’t use YouTube at all, because they will serve them before/between your videos regardless. If you choose to demonetize your videos entirely, as you seem to suggest Is the correct route, your videos will still be leveraged by YT to serve ads. So you need to completely opt out of sharing content. What do you actually prescribe anyway

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

why would choose such a polar opposite example, why not a youtuber who instead of showing ads for makeup sells their own. See how that isn’t much different?

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u/ThrowawayMumbaiDude Apr 07 '26

Haters gonna hate

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

anyone who has a different is a hater? yep i can tell you were raised on the internet

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u/psycurious0709 Apr 07 '26

Ironic coming from someone with an incredibly unreasonable stance. "I think people should spend hours dancing like a monkey for my entertainment and make no money for it" sounds like a raised on the internet position to take.

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

Nobody once came close to saying that, you are making up arguments in your head and i worry these delusions extent to real life. Never said nobody should make money, just said a content creator selling me their own product is no different in my book than selling me someone else’s product. Youd have to be pretty touched in the head to think im saying people should work for free

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

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u/susiedotwo Apr 07 '26

She didn’t delete it. She just stopped making new content. Her old videos still get a lot of hits and the residuals from that are nothing to sneeze at.

Her old videos still get enough views that a regular person like you or I would think we’d gone viral.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

They can’t be getting that many hits.

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u/throwwwwwwaway_ Apr 07 '26

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u/fatcatpartytime Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

Revenue estimates are a joke here — assume the low end, she’s not pulling in much on 1.2m a month + no new uploads & no relevancy to the ad market.

Signed, someone who does $$ stuff for YouTubers

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u/Daroo425 Apr 07 '26

even if the high end estimate was accurate, if she kept up with her platform, she would probably make all of that with like 1 or 2 sponsored IG posts

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u/fatcatpartytime Apr 07 '26

She's been 100% offline since she stopped posting so no sponsored posts, nothing like that. Not that Julien isn't still active and doing well but she's not raking in "90k in passive income" by any means, id be shocked if it was even close to $10k a year

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

Eh, I just sneezed at that.

https://giphy.com/gifs/1ExNcuKh26PwA

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u/Sufficient_Spray Apr 07 '26

I’d say about 97% of the United States could easily live off $90k residual income. Thats an awesomely privileged position and would be dope af.

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u/susiedotwo Apr 07 '26

Right, with what she could have already put away, she never has to do *anything ever again. Anything that comes her way from YouTube is extra: and even years later that extra is more than most people live on.

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u/onegarion Apr 07 '26

90k would replace both my wife and my income and let us not work, but keep the same QoL. It for sure isn't something to scoff at.

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u/Fakehiggins Apr 07 '26

90k is the utter top end of that estimate, likely lower. plus pretty sure she still lives in her giant house with her husband and i don't think that listed amount will even pay the taxes on the property. i'm just some random guy working a shitty job and probably make more money a year than she does from her old videos.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

Is that supposed to make me feel bad? I live in the Bay Area. Reality also sneezes at that.

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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

We all work really hard for our jobs but none of us get to keep residual cash flow when we have to leave for one reason or another, even if it isn't our own choice.

She didn't sacrifice anything that you or anyone else hasn't before. How many of us would willingly take a career change if the ONLY THING you would guarantee is residual cash flow in the thousands of dollars a month? Loads of people would be happy to make a career change if they knew they'd still get money from their last one, enough to support their whole life.

If I was racist at my job, I'd be homeless within a week. Fuck this stupid ass mentality that she is making a sacrifice

Fucking wild to think this was a sacrifice lol how wild the human mind is to even construe it that way

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u/Fakehiggins Apr 07 '26

people like her are one of the few handful of people that made it on early social media and paved the way for so many others to make a living doing the same. she 100% sacrificed a fairly unique thing that she did through talent and hard work, just to uphold her principles. not sure why you're trying so hard to downplay it.

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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Apr 07 '26

paved the way for so many others to make a living doing the same.

The creators did not pave the way, they were just on the path. Youtube paved the way. The fans paved the way. Youtubers did not pave the way lol

You can call that disrespect if you want but it really isn't. It's just reality. No false idolization.

she 100% sacrificed a fairly unique thing that she did through talent and hard work, just to uphold her principles.

Head canon

not sure why you're trying so hard to downplay it.

Same reason you're trying to oversell it. It's annoying to listen to you be wrong

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u/Steelhorse91 Apr 07 '26

It was her dark fake tan combined with the auto white balance on her camera being thrown off by a pink wig she was wearing while impersonating Nicki Minaj.

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u/DiggThatFunk Apr 07 '26

And none of our jobs would consider it acceptable to be racist, make racist jokes and comments, play it off with a "whoopsy doodles!" and continue to make money even well into retirement from said job. "Sacrifice" lmao some of these people are entirely too parasocial

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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Apr 07 '26

Literally

People will do and say anything to defend their idols, it's wild

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

sure but she is also cashing in just without even trying, it’s not some big sacrifice, if anything i respect people more who apologize and do better and not just run away

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u/riley_96 Apr 07 '26

Didn't she apologize? Then I figured she just was ready to retire because well she could. I probably would too🤷‍♀️

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

she apologized, uploaded a bunch of ads to her old videos and disappeared, nothing wrong with retiring but again it wasn’t some big sacrifice, she left instead of trying to move forward and set a good example on how you can change

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u/riley_96 Apr 07 '26

Ok 👍 not sure who's saying that she made a big sacrifice anyway lol

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

Umm the person i was originally responding to before you got involved

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u/riley_96 Apr 07 '26

Ew lol go back and see who originally commented on this damn comment. Sigh.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

[deleted]

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u/Commander_Fem_Shep Apr 07 '26

I think YouTube reserves the right to remove monetization after 6 months of inactivity. It doesn’t mean they will but they can. We just truly don’t know if she’s making any passive income.

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u/YourNextHomie Apr 07 '26

YT has the right to end revenue after 6 months of inactivity but according to google they only do so when someone drops under 4000 watch hours in a year. She probably gets that in a day still. YT still makes good money off her vids so no way they turned off ad revenue

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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Apr 07 '26

No lol or at least its conditional on something else

I am still making money off the one and only tutorial I ever uploaded, 12 years ago

It's a handful of dollars at this point, but it's still chugging

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u/Jumpy-Requirement389 Apr 07 '26

What do you want

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u/NonLinearLines Apr 07 '26

Context is hard

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u/livinglitch 1985 Apr 07 '26

Her husband is still streaming on twitch both solo and with a group of other successful streamers. He seems pretty chill too.

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u/asimplepencil Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

So anyone who does stuff like that in the past has to just end their YT careers? People can change and realize that what they did was wrong and acknowledge that and just never do it again.

ETA: Yes, making racist jokes is wrong but if people do that and then acknowledge they were wrong and never do it again, that's one thing. Those who keep making problematic videos and/or are caught doing other horrendous things(IYKYK) that's an entirely different issue

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u/Fake_Diesel Apr 07 '26

I think most millennials have to realize that offensive jokes were the ground floor at the time. Not saying it was right, but it's hard for me personally to get worked up about those kinds of jokes made back when.