Comment by aucisson_masque

>Even back then people were trying to make money out of YouTube

It's a matter of degree. Early YouTube was much closer to what the parent poster describes than the YouTube of today.

When I first discovered YouTube and uploaded videos, the thought of making money (let alone making a living) was nowhere in my mind.

There were people trying to make money but that wasn't the default and the attempts at doing so weren't as repetitive.