Ah no from like Feb? March? Deffo this year but I only saw it recently. Didn't know he jhad a girlfriend so clearly it worked
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He’s mentioned being single a lot of the time!
He’s made multiple jokes about being single and not having a girlfriend, so much so in a recent video he said if you’re serious about dating me, email me as I don’t read my DMs, I was under the impression he’d never had a girlfriend?
I'm fairly new to his channel but he seems to come from a fairly practising muslim family - in the Tesla video, his cousins (?) were praying in the background while they stopped to charge the car which I found interesting as he seems to want to keep that part of his life completely separate.
If he had a GF, I cant see him admitting it with his platform but from a lot of my muslim friends, theres a lot of pressure on them after a certain age to settle down and find a partner hence the desperation on Tinder Gold and asking people to email (even jokingly!) lol
FINALLY, a thread on him!
I'm a current medical student and it's really hard to levy any criticism his way because a lot of students see him almost like the second coming.
I genuinely liked his content a few years ago - it was a bit clickbait-y ("Day in the life of CAMBRIDGE MEDICAL STUDENT" "How a CAMBRIDGE MEDICAL STUDENT studies"), but his tips on studying were really clear and evidence-based. Now, it really just seems to be about making as much money as possible, without really putting out much original content. It always irked me that he put the hashtag #savinglives in all his instagram posts - even when the video was just him studying as medical student. Clinical medical students can do some things to help on the wards, but they really aren't SAVING ANY LIVES. Even when you've just graduated and are working as a foundation doctor for the first year, your abilities are heavily limited.
By all means, he can do what he likes to make money, but it seems like now the focus is just on 1) recycling old ideas into costly video tutorials, 2) releasing a YouTube video on how much these tutorials have earned him, 3) and then advertising the video tutorials by suggesting users can earn as much as he can. And he's not the first one to do this: I know of another YouTuber based in Europe who was making videos as a medical student about how she was going to be "saving lives soon"; after her first year as a doctor, she's left to focus on "other business ventures". These other business ventures are all opportunities she got because people were excited to work with a future doctor, Even on my course, there are LOADS of students who have started vlogging their studies in the hope to become the next Ali Abdaal and make enough money to never need to actually work as a doctor.
And don't let me get started on him putting "Cheeky" in every bloody thing!
I'm a current medical student and it's really hard to levy any criticism his way because a lot of students see him almost like the second coming.
I genuinely liked his content a few years ago - it was a bit clickbait-y ("Day in the life of CAMBRIDGE MEDICAL STUDENT" "How a CAMBRIDGE MEDICAL STUDENT studies"), but his tips on studying were really clear and evidence-based. Now, it really just seems to be about making as much money as possible, without really putting out much original content. It always irked me that he put the hashtag #savinglives in all his instagram posts - even when the video was just him studying as medical student. Clinical medical students can do some things to help on the wards, but they really aren't SAVING ANY LIVES. Even when you've just graduated and are working as a foundation doctor for the first year, your abilities are heavily limited.
By all means, he can do what he likes to make money, but it seems like now the focus is just on 1) recycling old ideas into costly video tutorials, 2) releasing a YouTube video on how much these tutorials have earned him, 3) and then advertising the video tutorials by suggesting users can earn as much as he can. And he's not the first one to do this: I know of another YouTuber based in Europe who was making videos as a medical student about how she was going to be "saving lives soon"; after her first year as a doctor, she's left to focus on "other business ventures". These other business ventures are all opportunities she got because people were excited to work with a future doctor, Even on my course, there are LOADS of students who have started vlogging their studies in the hope to become the next Ali Abdaal and make enough money to never need to actually work as a doctor.
And don't let me get started on him putting "Cheeky" in every bloody thing!
Thanks for your perspective here -- very interesting and much appreciated! I've always wondered what medical students make of him (and not just the ones I've seen on Reddit).
Just wanted to highlight your third point here which I think is what made me give Ali some serious side-eye because:
1) Ali has clearly worked hard to produce his videos, use SEO, etc. to market his channel, and his regular upload schedule and content all played into his success. However, he was also lucky. Not all YouTubers who make videos regularly get thousands of subscribers, let alone hundreds of thousands or a million like Ali has now reached. For a while he had that special something I suppose -- the content, persona, etc. that made you and I watch him and like him and perhaps spread the word, etc, and his USP of being a Cambridge medic which definitely was interesting to me. The USP + good production + timing/luck really shouldn't be discounted in his success.
2) ^ leads onto my second point, which is privilege. Ali was able to get all the equipment and tech needed to produce good quality videos thanks to other ventures. His finances have always been (I'm assuming given his company) solid. Wouldn't most students would have to save hard to afford basic equipment like a camera, tripod, etc?
3) I seriously doubt Ali lets us into all of his ~~secrets~~ to success in these videos. Good SEO, regular uploading, etc. are really pretty obvious things to highlight, though I haven't watched the tutorial so maybe I'm wrong there. At first I was intrigued and surprised he was talking openly about his success on YouTube. And the videos were very interesting! But then came all the SkillShare shite and somehow the image of a benevolent benefactor was kind of muddied when you realise how much he earned from Skillshare...
Back to the point and your final observation: that he advertises tutorials suggesting users can make as much money as he can. It seems so sleazy that the focus here is on income. Yes, income = financial security. But content creators aren't guaranteed income. And if you are successful, there's a slog during which you probably won't get a bloody penny. There's the mystical YouTube algorithm and changing trends and surely, if you want to create content, it would be because you want to share your content? Wouldn't money be a real perk, but not the reason why you started creating videos in the first instance?
It just feels bleeping disingenuous to sit there at the top and extol how great it is making content for the ££ and that it's really not that hard!!! when there will be many, many, many factors that played into Ali's success and monetary gains. He probably just sees it as helping others out, but then he's earning that ££ from these very video tutorials that probably benefit him far more than his viewers.
Sorry for the essay -- this guy just grates my bleeping cheese. Try-hard but alright-seeming lad turned hardcore shiller & influencer moron. I've said it before and I'll say it again: he's got caught up in the fame and ££ and people are starting to realise it.
TL;DR: Ali can makes all the money he likes but it's disingenuous to act like everyone can have his level of success but then again he makes coin off of it all so
Again not declaring his AD properly! I really want the ASA to fine his sorry arse! It’s sickening he makes so much money just shilling stuff and not following the declaration guidelines
I agree completely! I really don't think Ali is a bad or evil person, but probably is a lot more money driven than his viewers seem to realise. And there's nothing inherently wrong with being money driven, but the fact is people automatically think of doctors as benevolent and he can take advantage of that. He isn't sharing his income solely for transparency, he's sharing it because a) people are very curious and it will generate tons of views/adsense revenue b) he's made a lot of money and seeing this encourages people to pay for his SkillShare videos, especially after the pandemic that has forced a lot of people out of work.
Absolutely his selling point initially was being a Cambridge-educated medic and he capitalised on that really well, to the point he no longer needs to add that to video titles to bring in the views, so well done to him on that point. And he definitely is privileged in certain regards, but (at least initially) did seem to be really committed to working hard to grow his YouTube channel. I feel like, unless the people signing up to his YouTuber academy have an equally attractive selling point that makes people go "WOAH!" and click (Harvard law student, Yale-educated economist, Goldman Sachs Banker), I doubt they'll be able to generate anything like the income Ali has from Youtube/SkillsShare.
I feel like on the whole, YouTuber content has changed quite dramatically the past few years (just me?) to the point where the focus really is much more on monetising every little thing and regurgitating old content, and the productivity self-help niche is probably one of the worst culprits. It's always surprising to me when a YouTuber who makes content on working in a certain industry (i.e. real estate investing, picking stock options) ends up leaving their job because they make more money from videos on the work than the work itself.
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In all fairness to him on this, the pandemic has made being a doctor a really risky career and I think morale amongst NHS workers has never been much lower. He can choose between: working in an NHS hospital that's practically a war zone, having to move around the country every few years (or even every few months), whilst also dealing with a large proportion of the public who think doctors are complicit in some 'plandemic conspiracy', the ill-thought-out policies of an increasingly inept health secretary, the threat of GMC fitness to practice investigations and increasingly competitive, bottle-necked specialty training that requires you to take very expensive exams (£500-£1500) with quite low pass rates - all this for the lovely salary of ~45k-70k. Or... he can make 350k in one year from some SkillsShare tutorials he filmed ages ago (not even needing to leave the house and risk COVID) - what would you choose?
And I'm saying this as somebody who comes from an extremely working class background (45k is more than my combined family income has ever been and absolutely not something to sniff at in the early days of a career), so I know a doctor's salary is comfortable, especially when compared to the average salary in this country. But if I looked at it from the point of view of somebody like Ali who went to Cambridge: if he was only working as a doctor, he would probably have one of the lowest salaries amongst his graduating cohort (considering a lot of Oxbridge grads go into IB, tech, consulting and other really high-paying industries) - now he probably has the highest salary out of all of them.
Can you tell I'm getting a bit disillusioned with my course?
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i dont think its wrong to have other interests + i know of tons of medics who are vlogging lol but its honestly not fair that you get into med school, use that to get a youtube career started and then abandon the idea of being a doctor + decide to go down the youtube route
i know so many people who would do just about anything just to get into med school + to see so many getting in and going for money rather than their career really hurts
I had to jump through so many hoops to get in more than the average candidate so maybe im biased but idk i find this hard to comprehend
i much prefer kharma medic as he is so much more commited to his career
p.s im not saying its bad to have other interests but when you apply to med school in the uk you are commiting to the career + the nhs and i dont see ali doing that
I also think if he was at a job closer to home maybe he wouldn’t have quit so soon, an hour each way in a car is horrible, plus I imagine he’s tucked a lot of the money away to pay his flat off!
Great post and it’s good to hear your perspective!
I work with a lot of medics and doctors in my current role but I find that not many of them have good business acumen. I think if a lot are trying to vlog and make some money from it - they’ve missed the boat. It’s a really over saturated market and people will already be watching some of the bigger names like Kharma medic, Faye Bate, Thatmedic etc.
The thing that Ali has done that I would never do is that he has made a business centred around himself. Not only is that exhausting in that he needs to constantly live up to this persona he has created, it means that everything he chooses to do is currently centred around this productivity/tech thing. That may all be well and good now when he’s interested in it but what in 5 years time if he fell out of love with all of this stuff? Are people really going to stick around for a drastic change in content? I suppose he may just ride the money train until then and invest in other stuff. I just think when you yourself become the brand you prevent yourself from being allowed to naturally grow and change in direction because you are always having to live up to the image you have created.
Also - I think he’s disingenuous as even so far as a fairly recent video he mentioned that his plan is to do another year out, travel and then train in emergency medicine. I just don’t see him doing that!
Honestly if I were a doctor I would never admit this to my ginormous online platform? What the hell
I remember reading a while ago an article talking about how medicine and veterinary science graduates were highly academic but there was an increasing lack of social skills/good bedside manner.
Personally if Ali was my doctor I wouldn’t be able to take him seriously. I just think he’s a bit of a bellend
I think this is an interesting discussion point because if he ever goes back to being a doctor - what happens if he treats people who know him from youtube/other endeavours? How does that fit in with the GMC guidelines on professional distancing? Yes he is never unprofessional in his youtube videos but I'm thinking more along the lines of - what if him being a Youtuber does change a patient's perspective of him/the profession. That is currently against GMC guidance. Interesting to know where the line is because this is a very new issue, probably one which none of the regulators have thought about.Honestly if I were a doctor I would never admit this to my ginormous online platform? What the hell
I remember reading a while ago an article talking about how medicine and veterinary science graduates were highly academic but there was an increasing lack of social skills/good bedside manner.
Personally if Ali was my doctor I wouldn’t be able to take him seriously. I just think he’s a bit of a bellend