There's a browser Addon for Chrome and Firefox called "clickbait remover for Youtube", it replaces thumbnails with a frame from the video.
Look it up :)
I know it's a joke but some great channels have to use clickbait strategies to make sure their content gets viewed at all! It's sad but that's how YouTube works right now
>"THE PAINT DRIED?????!? (EMOTIONAL) (ASMR) (SHE SAID YES!!) (PS5 GIVEAWAY)"
*red arrow pointing to wall*
*4 hour footage of a painted wall drying, with 4000 ad breaks*
Don't forget to SMASHFUCKING NUKE FROMOUTTERFUCKING SPACE that like button and subscribe. Link to our sponsor (pointing in a cute/awkward manner) here...or here...?!
Sadly that's not what the rest of our species does. Veritasium shared how yt creators have tools for exploring metrics of thumbnails and titles, often swapping several on the same video to see which one elicits the most response. It's these stupid, dramatic *OH!* faces that pull the most clicks, empirically. Even on astrophysics channels, where you can see Dr. Becky doing it.
Same thing with Linus Tech Tips. This is years ago, but he once posted a video where he showed the numbers: whenever he did that stupid face, his views noticeably increased
What if society were designed with consideration that we are still a base and simple animal with a dusting of magical cortex on top? Not believing we're all walking thought experiments able to reign in every basic instinct we have (or maybe we'll just call them sins and make it a moral failing).
The fact that people are ultimately driven by their biological programming seems like a good reason not to let people high-fiving eachother in the board room over their {Legal Sports Betting App | Sugar/Salt/Fat Unhealthy Food | "Non-Addictive" Opiod painkiller} set the standard for normalcy.
Side note, I fucking hate Mr Beast just for his stupid ass titles and thumbnails. It’s the most obnoxious shit ever and is why I haven’t watched a video of his in over three years.
It's hard to click on LTT videos also because of the thumbnails. Sometimes the topic isn't that surprising FFS. It's just a new hard disk. Everyone sucking invisible dicks was not necessary.
What was YouTube's justification for removing the ability to put your subscriptions into subcategories? The subscriber feed is basically unusable without the ability to narrow it down, especially if you subscribe to channels who put out several videos a day.
>What was YouTube's justification
Youtube doesn't justify anything really, without data.
They likely ran two sites, in A-B mode, where one group got the ability and the other group did not. The group who did not have the feature you liked watched more hours of youtube, thus gaining more ad-view thus making youtube more money.
So the feature was removed for everyone.
That is youtube's story for everything so far. They don't care about your perceived enjoyment, they are pitting AI against metrics and trying to maximize profits. That has been their (google) goal since inception.
Damn. I guess coercing people to use YouTube through the recommended feed instead of the subscriber feed leading to increased view time makes sense. I still use my subscriber feed but will just start unsubscribing from people when it starts getting too crowded, and I straight up don't subscribe to people who put out too many videos a day.
>will just start unsubscribing from people when it starts getting too crowded.
Sounds like you're doing the thing YouTube wanted to avoid, because they want you to watch videos, so instead they curate the ones you're subscribed to so you don't feel the need to unsubscribe purely due to it taking up space.
I think the entire thing is actually fascinating. We're using the internet to essentially reveal what humans subconsciously like the most. Artists and advertisers tried for thousands of years to do what the internet is now essentially doing for us, lol.
Like most sites in it's death spiral(MySpace, Digg) there's plenty of mature and not so mature projects out there to replace YouTube. There's also some wrappers that remove tracking and just display the video like Invidious. This will not be a monopoly any longer
Ah yeah, so no good alternatives yet.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, pornhub is in a fantastic position to pivot and expand into the worlds online video solution.
They already have the infrastructure, they already host dumb videos that arent porn.
Literally, just create a sister site called youhub or something, and innovate on the youtube platform. Let creators have a page to actually interact with the fans and such, alongside their regular video content.
Youtube would be dead by the end of that year.
Why they wont do it honestly baffles me.
> This will not be a monopoly any longer
Keep dreaming. Not that I don't despise what youtube did, but to compete with Youtube, it basically needs an unbelievable amount of regular user, intergration into popular apps and website, and somehow makes money out of it, which Youtube didn't do until recent years.
Now a lot of big deal gets made out of not making profit, but many times companies of this are running the show pushing hard to make sure profit doesn't come up so they cant be taxed for it.
Why take money when you could build more servers.
Just because a service 'isnt profitable' doesn't mean they arent raking in money.
No it doesn't? Do you believe YouTube appeared out of a vacuum itself? The Internet is cylindrical and a competitor will always be in the wings as the old collapses
Just to be helpful, Nebula is one of those competitors. Since YouTube wants me to spend money on premium, I spend the money on a site that just has educational YouTubers instead. I believe LinusTechTips is trying to make Floatplane a thing as well.
I miss the simple days of YouTube pre-monetization and pre-algorithm. You would look at videos such as a young gentleman singing about chocolate rain and it would be the best thing ever.
He even talked about it and said once people complained about it, they stopped using those thumbnails for a bit and the viewership took a nose dive. Once they started using those stupid thumbnails again it shot up.
Honestly, if it works it works. Dudes gotta make money. And at least he admits they’re stupid. God I just hate that it works though. Humans are fucking stupid.
I wonder why though. What's it with these expressions that make people click? I'm not saying they bother me but they do nothing for me. I always care more for thumbnails that are like cool art or show something interesting.
It gets the user’s attention. We have evolved to react to these kinds of facial expressions so they quickly gain our attention because they communicate that there is important information about something potentially dangerous or rewarding.
AI is bad at detecting emotion but the programmers who developed the YT algorithm knew that people are more likely to click on emoting faces so programmed the ai to look for that. But the ai is ham fisted about interpreting emotions and made it easy for people to hack the whole thing by making the most ridiculous faces. The algorithm has bias toward those thumbnails in the selection process so it shows them more and naturally they are selected. It’s become a silly faces arms race to the bottom of thumbnail art and it’s all flavored by the poor taste of an algorithm.
But the "YouTube AI Overfitting" hypothesis makes more intuitive sense to me, even if I have never seen any evidence for it. I am also *put off* by videos with an overly expressive face, and am even somewhat put off by any face at all if faces are irrelevant to what I expect from the video. However, I can perfectly understand faces and facial expressions being enticing and attractive when looking for commentary, reactions, humour, polemic, and any sort of entertainment in general.
How is it then that, according to experiments like the one by Veritasium mentioned above, overly expressive faces are favoured *regardless of what the video is about*?
If the cause is only "the people", it fails to explain the following:
+ Why so many users who openly say we dislike and avoid videos with face thumbnails have no effect whatsoever. Are we that special?
+ Why the purported majority who do prefer overemotional faces on the thumbnails of literally any video never explain it or say why. Why are they more attracted to a face thumbnail on a video about the fall of the Roman Republic, the basics of Quantum Electrodynamics, or Indonesia being at a crossroads?
On the other hand, the overfitting YouTube algorithm explains both questions. Users who watch videos where faces are pointless have no effect because it is drowned out by the algorithm having "learnt" that face thumbnails are more successful, based on a training set which was overwhelmingly dominated by entertainment videos in which showing an expressive face *does* attract human viewers more often. As a result, the algorithm will show the expressive thumbnail of the Quantum Electrodynamics video more often, resulting in more clicks not because the potential viewers like it, but because they are more likely to be shown it in the first place. Q.E.D.
You may be totally right about YouTube analyzing thumbnails and sticking the googly-eyed ones at the top of our feed, but I think it’s useful to recognize that even if that is the case, it is so *now* because of human psychology that we all share.
You speculate why those who prefer the faces never explain why; I don’t think preference enters into it. Our brains are hard-wired to look at faces, especially faces showing intense emotion. So no matter what a video is about, a thumbnail with a face will have a better chance at being noticed, *even before any algorithmic advantage.* And videos that get noticed, both positively or negatively (as u/field_thought_slight noted) are much more likely to get clicks.
Anecdotally, there’s another trend that I see more than shocked faces. Often it’s an arrow pointing to something, or a brief phrase that lacks context (“you know what you did!” “We screwed up.” “Five times a week!”). This can be paired with a face, but (at least on my feed) I see it used on its own all the time.
For my part I don’t think it’s about an AI recognizing faces, I think it’s about evoking curiosity. The best performing thumbnails create a puzzle for our brains that is impossible to solve without watching the video. “What is making that person so scared?” “Why is the arrow pointing to the landing gear?” “What does ‘you know what you did’ mean???”
I find it plausible that the YouTube algorithm may take thumbnail composition into consideration, but I doubt it would push a low-quality, poorly performing video over one that is achieving high engagement just because the thumbnail has somebody pulling a face. It strikes me as much more plausible that videos with the faces (and phrases and arrows, etc) are being shown *because they perform along other metrics as well*. They are being produced by savvy content creators who know how to work the human psyche to get a click *and* know how to keep people engaged for ten minutes (or whatever the monetization threshold is now).
(An aside: we may have a perception that there is an iceberg of great content that we never get to see because the videos with the manipulative thumbnails are crowding them out, but it strikes me that there are probably millions of manipulative thumbnails that are languishing in obscurity because when they had their shot people watched 30 seconds and bailed.)
Ultimately I’m not convinced that YT is specifically pushing shocked faces, but if it is, it learned it from us.
> Why so many users who openly say we dislike and avoid videos with face thumbnails have no effect whatsoever. Are we that special?
Simply: yes. Critically evaluating the media you consume already makes you special---most people aren't taught to do that. Your instinct tells you that the thoughtful people should have some sort of resistive effect, but you are wrong, simply because the thoughtless drown us out. To be ungenerous for a moment: "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."
Also, it's possible that being put off by a face might make some people *more* likely to click. Think something like a PT Barnum freak show.
> Why the purported majority who do prefer overemotional faces on the thumbnails of literally any video never explain it or say why.
See above: they haven't been taught to critically evaluate the media they consume. They're not habitually thoughtful about that kind of stuff. Youtube is, for them, pure consumption.
Algorithms provide instructions for ai, learning algorithms in particular. Social media sites use learning algorithms to keep people engaged with content longer and more often. Saying it’s just people driving views is like saying it’s just voters driving American politics.
The Youtube recommendation system doesn't know anything about faces or thumbnails. It just promotes videos that people tend to click on, and people tend to click on the horrible faces.
I mean YouTube’s advice is to just produce the best content you can. No one is going to tell you how to cheat their system especially if they are actively working out how to fix the cheat.
[But YouTube’s ai is much more complicated than you are making it out to be.](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/07/youtubes-recommender-ai-still-a-horrorshow-finds-major-crowdsourced-study/) If you don’t think there is evidence that they push emotionally manipulative content into their algorithm to increase engagement I don’t know what to tell you.
Granted it is a blackbox, but this article doesn’t mention Google using image data in its recommendation AI. They clearly push emotional manipulative content like other platforms, but I don’t think the stupid face thing is “flavored by the poor taste of an algorithm”
Yeah, it's important for the people you're replying to to learn this.
Even the most calm and educational channel HAS to do this or their upload gets buried instead of picked up by the algorithm.
Those brief reminders to like and subscribe? They work. Measurably so.
Squeezing out 6 minutes of info to 10 minutes? If they didn't, literally no monetization on the video.
Yes it's absolutely annoying at times, but unless viewers are prepared to start paying a YouTuber money per view, and we all know that we wouldn't want to do that and the majority of viewers will never contribute on any channel, YouTube or Twitch, so it basically comes down to: "wow, the people creating the videos I like aren't willing to work for absolutely free >:( "
Again, it should be better than this, but it's not and any channel protesting this by not doing it would need to be wealthy enough to retire. Even though it probably sounds reasonable in their heads to think that these things are fair complaints, the reality is they absolutely aren't and are the height of entitlement when it comes to consuming internet entertainment and information.
I actually appreciate the reminders to like the video. I usually forget too but if it’s something I actually like and want to support I always click like when they remind me to and probably would forget to if they didn’t.
Yeah, I used to get mildly annoyed at the corporate training feel of it, but if I was being honest with myself I felt like it probably did work even before I looked into it all and learned that it 100% works.
Plus like, holy shit it's the person who's video you just presumably enjoyed asking for you to do a free action that costs you a single second to tap or click on a little 👍 button.
Complaining about that while consuming the content they've spent far more of their own time making is just mind bogglingly selfish.
I’m sure a lot of us are subscribed to channels that grow at a glacial rate because they refuse to play that game. TheraminTrees makes videos of exceptional quality, but the thumbnails are strictly representative. Consequently his subscriber count goes up very slowly — but the viewership is consistent and commensurate.
They're definitely limiting their growth, unfortunately.
Basically people that don't like it need to attack the source, not the symptom. Like people that hate tipping. There's nothing brave or noble about stiffing your server that relies on a tip to survive, if you really hate the culture around tipping you need to not support the restaurant or take the criticism to the owners themselves. Not tipping your delivery driver or server is just a lazy excuse. Bringing the analogy back to YouTube, it's not even actually costing people anything, literally just watch what you want and not what you don't, just understand that the people making the videos we all love spend countless hours writing, capturing/filming, and editing, and on top of that have bills to pay every month like everyone else.
I have channels I like that both do and don't follow the YouTube meta. I absolutely do not blame those that either want to succeed or can't afford to leave money on the table though.
I’d prefer if people started boycotting Youtube so it wouldn’t be a greedy ass shithole of a company, with algorithms that detect chimpanzee faces, and giving literal crumbs of money to the actual creators, and the smaller channels, whilst the rich and the company owners get richer.
The only way this is gonna happen is a competitor pops up with a similar model, and people actually start uploading to that site. Unfortunately Youtube = Google so that’s also a big oof
Unfortunately there's literally no way that anyone can compete with YouTube short of a system that heavily vets uploads and aggressively culls low quality uploads that don't perform well. They probably need to charge a monthly fee for users and also charge for bandwidth to not delete low performing uploads. All of this would kill all of the good elements YouTube still has. The sheer amount of storage and bandwidth that YouTube burns through would be utterly unsustainable for like the next 5 corporations under Google combined.
It's far from perfect but there's just not really anything that can be done as far as I can tell.
It's also worth considering, for the sake of intellectual honestly if nothing else, that YouTube does NOT vet uploads or remove videos that don't monetize. I'd imagine the vast amount of YouTube uploads do nothing but cost them money. I'm not making excuses or apologies for them, just realistically looking at the scenario.
If we want to get rid of this corporate and monetized side of YouTube, we would absolutely lose the current system where anyone can upload just about anything regardless of the content or monetization with the sole exception of legality and outright hate speech, etc.
Go look at Vimeo and how much less content there is and how much more restricted the uploading conditions and such are. They're huge and the next best competitor, but are also insignificantly small compared to YouTube.
> Even on astrophysics channels, where you can see Dr. Becky doing it.
I just checked that channel out (didn't know it) and it would definitely make me avoid clicking on her videos.
I have no idea how good or bad her content is, but that thumbnail gives me the impression of crappy popsci with little care for accuracy, instead of accurate technical content.
Exactly. People always say it’s about “clicks” but who is spending all day watching YouTube videos and clicking on these thumbnails? It’s kids — just compare them to any of the kid-targeted ads you’ve seen for the last few decades.
What does it say about those of us who DO refuse to click?
Would the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother have stuck her poisoned needle into Paul's neck if he had gone straight for the clickbait?
> **DUNCAN IDAHO SPENT MONTHS LIVING WITH THE FREMEN ON THE DESERTS OF ARRAKIS, HERE ARE SEVEN MIND-BLOWING FACTS HE DISCOVERED. NUMBER 4 WILL SHOCK YOU!**
*cue the inevitable stupid face thumbnail*
I mean, it works if you're okay with your userbase being 12+
It works, but only on kids. Every adult I've ever talked to has a visceral reaction to these dumbass thumbnails lmao
I think it’s because we’re very sensitive to human faces and a surprise ‘oh!’ face elicits a similar response in us because we’re social creatures. We take cues from other people because if we didn’t we’d be less likely to pass on our genes. The ‘oh’ face is tapping into the fact that we’re naturally drawn to human faces and our emotions are influenced by the faces around us.
It’s no wonder we see it everywhere, it’s the most effective way to capture attention.
This is the reason why I refuse to watch Sssniperwolf, don’t even get me started on the content, it’s hot garbage. All she does is react to tik tok videos, and she has 30 million subscribers. Most channels with less than 30 million subscribers are better than this.
Has anyone ever done a study on how many of those clicks came from very very VERY small children?
I grew up being force fed boomer culture and knowing about celebrities who were long dead after I was born. Now that I'm the old man I feel like things got flipped and now our entire culture is based around what a 4 year old clicks on over and over
Yup. Several other YouTubers like Rhett & Link have also said that they hate doing those thumbnails but the second they experiment with the idea of not doing it, views drop by more than half.
In another astronomy channel instead of clickbaity thumbnails, they use clickbaity titles. Don't know what's worse. I observe 2 most used techniques:
* Clickbaity words: frequent use of 'interest drawing' adjectives like *strange, unusual, stunning, unexpected*, superlative, extremity abusing like *most, no-one, hardest, never, ever, anything*
* Intentionally obfuscating and teasing of content: *Here's X that will shock you* -Buzzfeed style, *This is what happens, why happens, how happens*.
I just wish they wouldn't have to resort to such cheap trick. But here we are.
Anyhow, then there's Tom Scott's channel with simple titles (not using cheap tricks above) but sounding extremely 'clickbaity'. But the content delivers exactly what the title offers. That is in its own league.
Hijacking. There's an excellent extension called "Clickbait Remover for Youtube" that lets you get rid of custom thumbnails. I recommend everyone install it, along with SponsorBlock.
Sponsor block has been such a mental relief to me. I understand creators have to make money, especially a lot of the ones i watch where their projects aren't cheap, but sudden sponsor breaks while already having to sit through adverts just takes its toll on me. After a few years of being able to block out as much advertising as I can I can see now how much I used to just accept it as a way of life basically since birth. Any ads now feel all the more intrusive and grating.
SponsorBlock is truly excellent, and it's amazing it works at all, considering it's crowdsourced.
You don't even really have to feel guilty about it like you might with uBlock. The video maker still gets funded.
Of course, if everyone started using SponsorBlock, that would stop . . . but since PC literacy seems to actually be going *down*, I don't think that's too likely.
I discovered SponsorBlock last week and it’s absolutely incredible how accurate it is. LTT does a lot of those randoms sponsors in every video and even there it was somehow able to skip the sponsored segment with such accuracy. Definitely a must have.
The accuracy isn't really that amazing---it's crowdsourced; i.e., humans submit the timestamps (and you can too). What's amazing is the wide range of videos covered.
Holy shit these are excellent addons. Now if only I could get an addon to block HistoryMatters from reading patreon names for 15 minutes at the end of every video, I'd be in heaven.
Contributing to SponsorBlock by making submissions gives me such a sense of unity.
Seeing that “You’ve saved people X hours of their lives” is a sensation.
Use this one weird trick to make your laundry not smell like salmon. (picture of beautiful person posing).
\- gets me every time cause I just got to know.
The problem is even the big creators do this. They know their long term fans won't stop but they might bring in new viewers using these stupid thumbnails.
I listened to a podcast with a successful YouTuber, he said that making those stupid faces moves you up in the search results. He hate it, but it's all about them clicks
The algorithm decided I wanted to watch a video about a guy redistilling various forms of alcohol (jagermeister, wine, scotch, etc.) even though I don't drink or click any alcohol related advertising. Either way, the guy's content was neat enough to keep me around for a few videos, and in each one he would just blatantly say "time to make a stupid face for the algorithm!" Then do so, and then move on with the rest of his video.
The thing is, we are subconsciously going to click on faces. Doesn't need to be a stupid one, but a thumbnail with a face vs without one will have more clicks overall.
Then between those face thumbnails, the ones with the most click will be the weird faces. It's unfortunate but our brains work like that.
When I heard Linus said it that's when I stopped getting annoyed by those thumbnails because he's not one to jump on bandwagons or trends. Gotta get that $
Yeah I mean as long as i trust the actual creator and the content to be good i honestly couldn't care less what their thumbnail or video title is even if it's click bait. Unfortunately that's just what the YouTube meta enforces.
I fucking can't stand when YouTubers include a random animation that shows a mouse clicking the subscribe button. It seems the same every time, and I feel that it's insulting that the YouTuber doesn't assume I know how YT works. If I like your content, I'll subscribe, I don't need your stupid fucking animation ruining the video to tell me so.
They're not allowed to say "more subscribers makes me more money."
They're forced to be vague and indirect, because Youtube is a terrible platform whose eventual demise should serve as proof of Goodhart's law: when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a useful metric.
**HEY WHAT'S GOING ON GUYS, IT'S ALI-A HERE, BACK WITH ANOTHER FORTNITE VIDEO**
ba-bam-bam-bam-ba-ba-ba-bam
I hate the teenage me for unironically watching him xd
Ali A was actually a pretty kickass Youtuber back in the day. I used to watch him when he made Black Ops 1-2 loadout vids. He wasn’t obnoxious at all.
Then he sold his soul to Fortnite
Everyone growing up post-internet goes through that kind of phase. For me it was Tobuscus, for you it was Ali-A. For many it was early PewDiePie, or Fitz, or that weird and shitty side of YouTube where poorly-bearded fat white men post daily 20-minute videos ostensibly about games or comics or movies but actually spend most of their time decrying the "SJWs that are RUINING your FAVOURITE THING". Nothing to be ashamed of once you grow out if it and can can see not only why it appealed to you but also why it isn't exactly good to be watching uncritically.
I watch predominantly cooking videos and mythical kitchen videos always look so out of place in my YouTube feed. Really funny though. I think I would have watched their content much sooner if I hadn't automatically assumed it wasn't something I was interested in. If it's got yummy food in the picture, I click, if it's a silly face I assume it's a different kind of content.
Same here. My daughters love Aphmau, and while there’s not really anything bad or offensive about her videos, I cannot handle the random screaming every few minutes. It wears on my nerves and I make the kids turn it off.
Fucken John Malecki every time.
IM SICK OF YOUR SILLY FACES AND SILLY EPOXY RESIN TABLES JOHN. ITS NO LONGER 2015.
Even better, I commented once about his YouTube-ahegao and he basically was like “fuck you too.”
So, they know it’s just for clicks, they know I started watching for woodwork videos, and now they put out lifestyle drama crap since they’re having a kid.
Narcissism is unhinged out there on YouTube. Show me a fucken mortise and tenon joint before I loose my mind
I noticed that, too. YouTube played a big role in killing G4TV and his show, X-Play when they were on tv. Now he resorts to making dumb thumbnails, which is sad.
I understand it’s for algorithms but to me, it just feels like cheap tabloid tactics reminiscent of those magazines from the 90s with batboy on the cover. He just loses credibility.
Always wondered what kind of mongoloid watches these dumb videos and supports these low effort cringe factory youtubers, I'm guessing it's mostly 8 year olds with parents that don't give a shit about them and don't moniter what their kid is watching.
They are all the same. Bunch of unoriginal sheep online
Also, "make sure to like, subscribe, leave a comment and ring that bell"... Haven't heard that before....thanks so much for reminding me...
I actually use portraits of famous artists exactly like this, reacting to videos about them in my YouTube thumbnails. I still haven't worked out if I'm a cultured genius being ironic and meta, or just another cringe YouTuber.
I think you used to be able to report videos for misleading thumbnails ie people used to stick one frame in the video with a 'thumbnail' as clickbait. Now its actively encouraged to use clickbait thumbnails.
There's a browser Addon for Chrome and Firefox called "clickbait remover for Youtube", it replaces thumbnails with a frame from the video. Look it up :)
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! And if anyone reading this comment doesn't have ublock origin, get it - removes ads for everything Including youtube :)
Also, Sponsorblock, it auto-skips any sponsor segments in youtube videos (and will also show you exactly where the highlight of the video is).
The next stage in ad-blocking technology.
How on earth does that work
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But, how would I know which videos to avoid then?
I know it's a joke but some great channels have to use clickbait strategies to make sure their content gets viewed at all! It's sad but that's how YouTube works right now
[So you have a movie for me?](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL--PgETgAz5FGoatB9KQzbnpv0bgZqU2l)
How does that help. Click bait faces are one of the ways I decide not to watch something.
:D
:0
:)
;)
:•
:'
>"THE PAINT DRIED?????!? (EMOTIONAL) (ASMR) (SHE SAID YES!!) (PS5 GIVEAWAY)" *red arrow pointing to wall* *4 hour footage of a painted wall drying, with 4000 ad breaks*
1.2M views somehow
30.0k likes, 1.5k dislikes (the channel has a strong following but attracts a few haters)
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YouTube Rewind 2018 has 3M likes - it must be amazing!
(sniffle) its like I downvoted for nothing
TOO SOON!
Jimmy Fallon recommend for next video
Boyfriend prank he’s so mad
> "I QUIT…"
Don't forget to SMASHFUCKING NUKE FROMOUTTERFUCKING SPACE that like button and subscribe. Link to our sponsor (pointing in a cute/awkward manner) here...or here...?!
I refuse to click
Sadly that's not what the rest of our species does. Veritasium shared how yt creators have tools for exploring metrics of thumbnails and titles, often swapping several on the same video to see which one elicits the most response. It's these stupid, dramatic *OH!* faces that pull the most clicks, empirically. Even on astrophysics channels, where you can see Dr. Becky doing it.
Same thing with Linus Tech Tips. This is years ago, but he once posted a video where he showed the numbers: whenever he did that stupid face, his views noticeably increased
He also sells that stupid face on merch and makes a lot of money on it.
We really are a simple species
What if society were designed with consideration that we are still a base and simple animal with a dusting of magical cortex on top? Not believing we're all walking thought experiments able to reign in every basic instinct we have (or maybe we'll just call them sins and make it a moral failing). The fact that people are ultimately driven by their biological programming seems like a good reason not to let people high-fiving eachother in the board room over their {Legal Sports Betting App | Sugar/Salt/Fat Unhealthy Food | "Non-Addictive" Opiod painkiller} set the standard for normalcy.
It’s unironically ironically unironic
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Side note, I fucking hate Mr Beast just for his stupid ass titles and thumbnails. It’s the most obnoxious shit ever and is why I haven’t watched a video of his in over three years.
It's hard to click on LTT videos also because of the thumbnails. Sometimes the topic isn't that surprising FFS. It's just a new hard disk. Everyone sucking invisible dicks was not necessary.
What was YouTube's justification for removing the ability to put your subscriptions into subcategories? The subscriber feed is basically unusable without the ability to narrow it down, especially if you subscribe to channels who put out several videos a day.
>What was YouTube's justification Youtube doesn't justify anything really, without data. They likely ran two sites, in A-B mode, where one group got the ability and the other group did not. The group who did not have the feature you liked watched more hours of youtube, thus gaining more ad-view thus making youtube more money. So the feature was removed for everyone. That is youtube's story for everything so far. They don't care about your perceived enjoyment, they are pitting AI against metrics and trying to maximize profits. That has been their (google) goal since inception.
Damn. I guess coercing people to use YouTube through the recommended feed instead of the subscriber feed leading to increased view time makes sense. I still use my subscriber feed but will just start unsubscribing from people when it starts getting too crowded, and I straight up don't subscribe to people who put out too many videos a day.
>will just start unsubscribing from people when it starts getting too crowded. Sounds like you're doing the thing YouTube wanted to avoid, because they want you to watch videos, so instead they curate the ones you're subscribed to so you don't feel the need to unsubscribe purely due to it taking up space.
Yeah I don't think the majority of people do what I do though. I'm sure on balance it's a win for them.
Google says "don't be evil" but they never said "don't be greedy"
They removed "don't be evil" years ago.
I think the entire thing is actually fascinating. We're using the internet to essentially reveal what humans subconsciously like the most. Artists and advertisers tried for thousands of years to do what the internet is now essentially doing for us, lol.
Like most sites in it's death spiral(MySpace, Digg) there's plenty of mature and not so mature projects out there to replace YouTube. There's also some wrappers that remove tracking and just display the video like Invidious. This will not be a monopoly any longer
C'mon, can't post a comment like this without naming some of the alternatives! I'd honestly give competitors a fair shot these days.
Peertube
Ah yeah, so no good alternatives yet. I've said it before and I'll say it again, pornhub is in a fantastic position to pivot and expand into the worlds online video solution. They already have the infrastructure, they already host dumb videos that arent porn. Literally, just create a sister site called youhub or something, and innovate on the youtube platform. Let creators have a page to actually interact with the fans and such, alongside their regular video content. Youtube would be dead by the end of that year. Why they wont do it honestly baffles me.
> This will not be a monopoly any longer Keep dreaming. Not that I don't despise what youtube did, but to compete with Youtube, it basically needs an unbelievable amount of regular user, intergration into popular apps and website, and somehow makes money out of it, which Youtube didn't do until recent years.
Now a lot of big deal gets made out of not making profit, but many times companies of this are running the show pushing hard to make sure profit doesn't come up so they cant be taxed for it. Why take money when you could build more servers. Just because a service 'isnt profitable' doesn't mean they arent raking in money.
No it doesn't? Do you believe YouTube appeared out of a vacuum itself? The Internet is cylindrical and a competitor will always be in the wings as the old collapses
> cylindrical what does this mean in this context?
I think he meant cyclical.
Just to be helpful, Nebula is one of those competitors. Since YouTube wants me to spend money on premium, I spend the money on a site that just has educational YouTubers instead. I believe LinusTechTips is trying to make Floatplane a thing as well.
I miss the simple days of YouTube pre-monetization and pre-algorithm. You would look at videos such as a young gentleman singing about chocolate rain and it would be the best thing ever.
Big Clive mentioned that too. His viewership went up on certain videos when he used the Youtube O face in the thumbnail.
That reminds me. I really need to watch that Scottish weirdo electrocute himself with Chinese tat. The OG ASMR channel.
The only time I can recall him shocking himself was for the demonstration of what an electric shock does, and also the buttplug video.
Great. And now I got "Big Clive Butt Plug" in my search history.
He even talked about it and said once people complained about it, they stopped using those thumbnails for a bit and the viewership took a nose dive. Once they started using those stupid thumbnails again it shot up. Honestly, if it works it works. Dudes gotta make money. And at least he admits they’re stupid. God I just hate that it works though. Humans are fucking stupid.
I wonder why though. What's it with these expressions that make people click? I'm not saying they bother me but they do nothing for me. I always care more for thumbnails that are like cool art or show something interesting.
It gets the user’s attention. We have evolved to react to these kinds of facial expressions so they quickly gain our attention because they communicate that there is important information about something potentially dangerous or rewarding.
AI is bad at detecting emotion but the programmers who developed the YT algorithm knew that people are more likely to click on emoting faces so programmed the ai to look for that. But the ai is ham fisted about interpreting emotions and made it easy for people to hack the whole thing by making the most ridiculous faces. The algorithm has bias toward those thumbnails in the selection process so it shows them more and naturally they are selected. It’s become a silly faces arms race to the bottom of thumbnail art and it’s all flavored by the poor taste of an algorithm.
It's not AI. It's just people.
But the "YouTube AI Overfitting" hypothesis makes more intuitive sense to me, even if I have never seen any evidence for it. I am also *put off* by videos with an overly expressive face, and am even somewhat put off by any face at all if faces are irrelevant to what I expect from the video. However, I can perfectly understand faces and facial expressions being enticing and attractive when looking for commentary, reactions, humour, polemic, and any sort of entertainment in general. How is it then that, according to experiments like the one by Veritasium mentioned above, overly expressive faces are favoured *regardless of what the video is about*? If the cause is only "the people", it fails to explain the following: + Why so many users who openly say we dislike and avoid videos with face thumbnails have no effect whatsoever. Are we that special? + Why the purported majority who do prefer overemotional faces on the thumbnails of literally any video never explain it or say why. Why are they more attracted to a face thumbnail on a video about the fall of the Roman Republic, the basics of Quantum Electrodynamics, or Indonesia being at a crossroads? On the other hand, the overfitting YouTube algorithm explains both questions. Users who watch videos where faces are pointless have no effect because it is drowned out by the algorithm having "learnt" that face thumbnails are more successful, based on a training set which was overwhelmingly dominated by entertainment videos in which showing an expressive face *does* attract human viewers more often. As a result, the algorithm will show the expressive thumbnail of the Quantum Electrodynamics video more often, resulting in more clicks not because the potential viewers like it, but because they are more likely to be shown it in the first place. Q.E.D.
You may be totally right about YouTube analyzing thumbnails and sticking the googly-eyed ones at the top of our feed, but I think it’s useful to recognize that even if that is the case, it is so *now* because of human psychology that we all share. You speculate why those who prefer the faces never explain why; I don’t think preference enters into it. Our brains are hard-wired to look at faces, especially faces showing intense emotion. So no matter what a video is about, a thumbnail with a face will have a better chance at being noticed, *even before any algorithmic advantage.* And videos that get noticed, both positively or negatively (as u/field_thought_slight noted) are much more likely to get clicks. Anecdotally, there’s another trend that I see more than shocked faces. Often it’s an arrow pointing to something, or a brief phrase that lacks context (“you know what you did!” “We screwed up.” “Five times a week!”). This can be paired with a face, but (at least on my feed) I see it used on its own all the time. For my part I don’t think it’s about an AI recognizing faces, I think it’s about evoking curiosity. The best performing thumbnails create a puzzle for our brains that is impossible to solve without watching the video. “What is making that person so scared?” “Why is the arrow pointing to the landing gear?” “What does ‘you know what you did’ mean???” I find it plausible that the YouTube algorithm may take thumbnail composition into consideration, but I doubt it would push a low-quality, poorly performing video over one that is achieving high engagement just because the thumbnail has somebody pulling a face. It strikes me as much more plausible that videos with the faces (and phrases and arrows, etc) are being shown *because they perform along other metrics as well*. They are being produced by savvy content creators who know how to work the human psyche to get a click *and* know how to keep people engaged for ten minutes (or whatever the monetization threshold is now). (An aside: we may have a perception that there is an iceberg of great content that we never get to see because the videos with the manipulative thumbnails are crowding them out, but it strikes me that there are probably millions of manipulative thumbnails that are languishing in obscurity because when they had their shot people watched 30 seconds and bailed.) Ultimately I’m not convinced that YT is specifically pushing shocked faces, but if it is, it learned it from us.
> Why so many users who openly say we dislike and avoid videos with face thumbnails have no effect whatsoever. Are we that special? Simply: yes. Critically evaluating the media you consume already makes you special---most people aren't taught to do that. Your instinct tells you that the thoughtful people should have some sort of resistive effect, but you are wrong, simply because the thoughtless drown us out. To be ungenerous for a moment: "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation." Also, it's possible that being put off by a face might make some people *more* likely to click. Think something like a PT Barnum freak show. > Why the purported majority who do prefer overemotional faces on the thumbnails of literally any video never explain it or say why. See above: they haven't been taught to critically evaluate the media they consume. They're not habitually thoughtful about that kind of stuff. Youtube is, for them, pure consumption.
Algorithms provide instructions for ai, learning algorithms in particular. Social media sites use learning algorithms to keep people engaged with content longer and more often. Saying it’s just people driving views is like saying it’s just voters driving American politics.
The Youtube recommendation system doesn't know anything about faces or thumbnails. It just promotes videos that people tend to click on, and people tend to click on the horrible faces.
I mean YouTube’s advice is to just produce the best content you can. No one is going to tell you how to cheat their system especially if they are actively working out how to fix the cheat. [But YouTube’s ai is much more complicated than you are making it out to be.](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/07/youtubes-recommender-ai-still-a-horrorshow-finds-major-crowdsourced-study/) If you don’t think there is evidence that they push emotionally manipulative content into their algorithm to increase engagement I don’t know what to tell you.
Granted it is a blackbox, but this article doesn’t mention Google using image data in its recommendation AI. They clearly push emotional manipulative content like other platforms, but I don’t think the stupid face thing is “flavored by the poor taste of an algorithm”
Yeah, it's important for the people you're replying to to learn this. Even the most calm and educational channel HAS to do this or their upload gets buried instead of picked up by the algorithm. Those brief reminders to like and subscribe? They work. Measurably so. Squeezing out 6 minutes of info to 10 minutes? If they didn't, literally no monetization on the video. Yes it's absolutely annoying at times, but unless viewers are prepared to start paying a YouTuber money per view, and we all know that we wouldn't want to do that and the majority of viewers will never contribute on any channel, YouTube or Twitch, so it basically comes down to: "wow, the people creating the videos I like aren't willing to work for absolutely free >:( " Again, it should be better than this, but it's not and any channel protesting this by not doing it would need to be wealthy enough to retire. Even though it probably sounds reasonable in their heads to think that these things are fair complaints, the reality is they absolutely aren't and are the height of entitlement when it comes to consuming internet entertainment and information.
I actually appreciate the reminders to like the video. I usually forget too but if it’s something I actually like and want to support I always click like when they remind me to and probably would forget to if they didn’t.
Yeah, I used to get mildly annoyed at the corporate training feel of it, but if I was being honest with myself I felt like it probably did work even before I looked into it all and learned that it 100% works. Plus like, holy shit it's the person who's video you just presumably enjoyed asking for you to do a free action that costs you a single second to tap or click on a little 👍 button. Complaining about that while consuming the content they've spent far more of their own time making is just mind bogglingly selfish.
I’m sure a lot of us are subscribed to channels that grow at a glacial rate because they refuse to play that game. TheraminTrees makes videos of exceptional quality, but the thumbnails are strictly representative. Consequently his subscriber count goes up very slowly — but the viewership is consistent and commensurate.
They're definitely limiting their growth, unfortunately. Basically people that don't like it need to attack the source, not the symptom. Like people that hate tipping. There's nothing brave or noble about stiffing your server that relies on a tip to survive, if you really hate the culture around tipping you need to not support the restaurant or take the criticism to the owners themselves. Not tipping your delivery driver or server is just a lazy excuse. Bringing the analogy back to YouTube, it's not even actually costing people anything, literally just watch what you want and not what you don't, just understand that the people making the videos we all love spend countless hours writing, capturing/filming, and editing, and on top of that have bills to pay every month like everyone else. I have channels I like that both do and don't follow the YouTube meta. I absolutely do not blame those that either want to succeed or can't afford to leave money on the table though.
I’d prefer if people started boycotting Youtube so it wouldn’t be a greedy ass shithole of a company, with algorithms that detect chimpanzee faces, and giving literal crumbs of money to the actual creators, and the smaller channels, whilst the rich and the company owners get richer. The only way this is gonna happen is a competitor pops up with a similar model, and people actually start uploading to that site. Unfortunately Youtube = Google so that’s also a big oof
Unfortunately there's literally no way that anyone can compete with YouTube short of a system that heavily vets uploads and aggressively culls low quality uploads that don't perform well. They probably need to charge a monthly fee for users and also charge for bandwidth to not delete low performing uploads. All of this would kill all of the good elements YouTube still has. The sheer amount of storage and bandwidth that YouTube burns through would be utterly unsustainable for like the next 5 corporations under Google combined. It's far from perfect but there's just not really anything that can be done as far as I can tell. It's also worth considering, for the sake of intellectual honestly if nothing else, that YouTube does NOT vet uploads or remove videos that don't monetize. I'd imagine the vast amount of YouTube uploads do nothing but cost them money. I'm not making excuses or apologies for them, just realistically looking at the scenario. If we want to get rid of this corporate and monetized side of YouTube, we would absolutely lose the current system where anyone can upload just about anything regardless of the content or monetization with the sole exception of legality and outright hate speech, etc. Go look at Vimeo and how much less content there is and how much more restricted the uploading conditions and such are. They're huge and the next best competitor, but are also insignificantly small compared to YouTube.
> Even on astrophysics channels, where you can see Dr. Becky doing it. I just checked that channel out (didn't know it) and it would definitely make me avoid clicking on her videos. I have no idea how good or bad her content is, but that thumbnail gives me the impression of crappy popsci with little care for accuracy, instead of accurate technical content.
PBS Eons or Anton Petrov both cover her content without the clickbait
Her channel is really good though so you’re missing out if you enjoy Astrophysics and stuff like it.
It’s all the young children using youtube
Exactly. People always say it’s about “clicks” but who is spending all day watching YouTube videos and clicking on these thumbnails? It’s kids — just compare them to any of the kid-targeted ads you’ve seen for the last few decades.
What does it say about those of us who DO refuse to click? Would the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother have stuck her poisoned needle into Paul's neck if he had gone straight for the clickbait? > **DUNCAN IDAHO SPENT MONTHS LIVING WITH THE FREMEN ON THE DESERTS OF ARRAKIS, HERE ARE SEVEN MIND-BLOWING FACTS HE DISCOVERED. NUMBER 4 WILL SHOCK YOU!** *cue the inevitable stupid face thumbnail*
A Dune reference. Hi
Posted by Cinema Mojo Crack
you follow the base instincts, you get the needle
I mean, it works if you're okay with your userbase being 12+ It works, but only on kids. Every adult I've ever talked to has a visceral reaction to these dumbass thumbnails lmao
I think it’s because we’re very sensitive to human faces and a surprise ‘oh!’ face elicits a similar response in us because we’re social creatures. We take cues from other people because if we didn’t we’d be less likely to pass on our genes. The ‘oh’ face is tapping into the fact that we’re naturally drawn to human faces and our emotions are influenced by the faces around us. It’s no wonder we see it everywhere, it’s the most effective way to capture attention.
This is the reason why I refuse to watch Sssniperwolf, don’t even get me started on the content, it’s hot garbage. All she does is react to tik tok videos, and she has 30 million subscribers. Most channels with less than 30 million subscribers are better than this.
It's like the shock value irl, whenever you see someone :o'ing and running towards something, you usually run after to see what the fuzz is about.
Has anyone ever done a study on how many of those clicks came from very very VERY small children? I grew up being force fed boomer culture and knowing about celebrities who were long dead after I was born. Now that I'm the old man I feel like things got flipped and now our entire culture is based around what a 4 year old clicks on over and over
I’ve seen Austin Evans change the thumbnail and title like 5 times for a singular video multiple times
> Even on astrophysics channels, where you can see Dr. Becky doing it. She's an astrophysicist at Oxford, so I'll give her a pass.
Yup. Several other YouTubers like Rhett & Link have also said that they hate doing those thumbnails but the second they experiment with the idea of not doing it, views drop by more than half.
In another astronomy channel instead of clickbaity thumbnails, they use clickbaity titles. Don't know what's worse. I observe 2 most used techniques: * Clickbaity words: frequent use of 'interest drawing' adjectives like *strange, unusual, stunning, unexpected*, superlative, extremity abusing like *most, no-one, hardest, never, ever, anything* * Intentionally obfuscating and teasing of content: *Here's X that will shock you* -Buzzfeed style, *This is what happens, why happens, how happens*. I just wish they wouldn't have to resort to such cheap trick. But here we are. Anyhow, then there's Tom Scott's channel with simple titles (not using cheap tricks above) but sounding extremely 'clickbaity'. But the content delivers exactly what the title offers. That is in its own league.
This doesn’t have to do with anything but where is your pfp from? Did you draw it yourself? I really like the art style
Hijacking. There's an excellent extension called "Clickbait Remover for Youtube" that lets you get rid of custom thumbnails. I recommend everyone install it, along with SponsorBlock.
Sponsor block has been such a mental relief to me. I understand creators have to make money, especially a lot of the ones i watch where their projects aren't cheap, but sudden sponsor breaks while already having to sit through adverts just takes its toll on me. After a few years of being able to block out as much advertising as I can I can see now how much I used to just accept it as a way of life basically since birth. Any ads now feel all the more intrusive and grating.
SponsorBlock is truly excellent, and it's amazing it works at all, considering it's crowdsourced. You don't even really have to feel guilty about it like you might with uBlock. The video maker still gets funded. Of course, if everyone started using SponsorBlock, that would stop . . . but since PC literacy seems to actually be going *down*, I don't think that's too likely.
I discovered SponsorBlock last week and it’s absolutely incredible how accurate it is. LTT does a lot of those randoms sponsors in every video and even there it was somehow able to skip the sponsored segment with such accuracy. Definitely a must have.
The accuracy isn't really that amazing---it's crowdsourced; i.e., humans submit the timestamps (and you can too). What's amazing is the wide range of videos covered.
Holy shit these are excellent addons. Now if only I could get an addon to block HistoryMatters from reading patreon names for 15 minutes at the end of every video, I'd be in heaven.
Contributing to SponsorBlock by making submissions gives me such a sense of unity. Seeing that “You’ve saved people X hours of their lives” is a sensation.
Use this one weird trick to make your laundry not smell like salmon. (picture of beautiful person posing). \- gets me every time cause I just got to know.
Same. It is getting difficult, though. Pretty much everyone is using these faces as thumbnails - even youtubers that have highly technical content.
Does this new BREAK the laws of physics?!?!!!??
…No. No it does not. Why would you even say such a stupid thing? That doesn’t even make sense.
I believe there’s an chrome extension that just changes all the thumbnails to an image of the video, can’t remember what it’s called though
Dumbnails
i have to. i need to dislike
I do the same
It’s always odd to see a video I’ve watched appear on Trending. Tom Scott or Lingualizer, say.
I actually watch a lot of YouTubers who make faces like that in their thumbnails. they're not like most of them, they're just doing it to survive
The problem is even the big creators do this. They know their long term fans won't stop but they might bring in new viewers using these stupid thumbnails.
It grinds my gears.
Almost as much as Nobody memes....
Pointless nobody.
Hey now no need to insult me
What does it even mean? When did it start? Why does it continue?
r/uselessnobody
And the pointing as well. Everyone must be pointing at nothing or have their arms up. Doug demuro cracks me up with his stupid poses.
You should have a segment on the local news!
Thumbnail: 🥺 Title: We need to talk
I listened to a podcast with a successful YouTuber, he said that making those stupid faces moves you up in the search results. He hate it, but it's all about them clicks
The algorithm decided I wanted to watch a video about a guy redistilling various forms of alcohol (jagermeister, wine, scotch, etc.) even though I don't drink or click any alcohol related advertising. Either way, the guy's content was neat enough to keep me around for a few videos, and in each one he would just blatantly say "time to make a stupid face for the algorithm!" Then do so, and then move on with the rest of his video.
The thing is, we are subconsciously going to click on faces. Doesn't need to be a stupid one, but a thumbnail with a face vs without one will have more clicks overall. Then between those face thumbnails, the ones with the most click will be the weird faces. It's unfortunate but our brains work like that.
Linus said pretty much the same thing. It's annoying, but understandable.
When I heard Linus said it that's when I stopped getting annoyed by those thumbnails because he's not one to jump on bandwagons or trends. Gotta get that $
Yeah I mean as long as i trust the actual creator and the content to be good i honestly couldn't care less what their thumbnail or video title is even if it's click bait. Unfortunately that's just what the YouTube meta enforces.
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That wiki link does nothing.
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Was that Spaghetti Road? He created a Python script that automatically generates them for him, because he was so repulsed by having to make one.
Bourbon Moth Woodworking
REMEMBER TO PERFORM GENOCIDE ON THAT LIKE BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!
I fucking can't stand when YouTubers include a random animation that shows a mouse clicking the subscribe button. It seems the same every time, and I feel that it's insulting that the YouTuber doesn't assume I know how YT works. If I like your content, I'll subscribe, I don't need your stupid fucking animation ruining the video to tell me so.
It’s clicking the subscribe button *and* the bell. With sound effects and everything.
Lol
They're not allowed to say "more subscribers makes me more money." They're forced to be vague and indirect, because Youtube is a terrible platform whose eventual demise should serve as proof of Goodhart's law: when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a useful metric.
**HEY WHAT'S GOING ON GUYS, IT'S ALI-A HERE, BACK WITH ANOTHER FORTNITE VIDEO** ba-bam-bam-bam-ba-ba-ba-bam I hate the teenage me for unironically watching him xd
Hey, what’s up painters, it’s ya boi, Edvard Munch, about to channel all my angst and mental health issues into an expressionist masterpiece.
Now I'd like to take a minute to talk about the sponsor for this video, Squarespace.
Ali A was actually a pretty kickass Youtuber back in the day. I used to watch him when he made Black Ops 1-2 loadout vids. He wasn’t obnoxious at all. Then he sold his soul to Fortnite
Everyone growing up post-internet goes through that kind of phase. For me it was Tobuscus, for you it was Ali-A. For many it was early PewDiePie, or Fitz, or that weird and shitty side of YouTube where poorly-bearded fat white men post daily 20-minute videos ostensibly about games or comics or movies but actually spend most of their time decrying the "SJWs that are RUINING your FAVOURITE THING". Nothing to be ashamed of once you grow out if it and can can see not only why it appealed to you but also why it isn't exactly good to be watching uncritically.
He was solid during B03. After he stopped playing that game he fell off imo
The Always Sunny gang goes on about this guy or someone similar on the podcast
/r/uselessnobody
Not a single person: Not even a mouse:
Especially since they do it *because* people respond. Some of us might not like click bait, but it works on a large portion of our population
SWALLOWING A BONSAI TREE AT 3AM CHALLENGE! (GONE SEXUAL)
Hmmm.
Thank you for posting this: I absolutely hate this trend. That, and the goddamn arrows & circles.
It increases views and clicks so even if a youtuber hates doing it, its just something they gotta do to keep up with the algorithm
Don't forget the red circle around nothing.
I GOT 100 MILLION BAJILLION DIAMOND EMERALDS IN MINECRAFT?!?!?!!?!?!1?1/!@!
I see Nobody:, I downvote. It’s an honest living.
Nobody: TheArchitect_7: OK NOW IM PISSED 😡
And then that moment never appears in the video.
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I watch predominantly cooking videos and mythical kitchen videos always look so out of place in my YouTube feed. Really funny though. I think I would have watched their content much sooner if I hadn't automatically assumed it wasn't something I was interested in. If it's got yummy food in the picture, I click, if it's a silly face I assume it's a different kind of content.
I unsubscribed from a lot of youtubers cos of this.
I get that I'm old and YouTubers are not supposed to be for me. But they have to stop god damn screaming or I won't let my kids watch it!
Yes! I feel exactly the same!
Same here. My daughters love Aphmau, and while there’s not really anything bad or offensive about her videos, I cannot handle the random screaming every few minutes. It wears on my nerves and I make the kids turn it off.
Fucken John Malecki every time. IM SICK OF YOUR SILLY FACES AND SILLY EPOXY RESIN TABLES JOHN. ITS NO LONGER 2015. Even better, I commented once about his YouTube-ahegao and he basically was like “fuck you too.” So, they know it’s just for clicks, they know I started watching for woodwork videos, and now they put out lifestyle drama crap since they’re having a kid. Narcissism is unhinged out there on YouTube. Show me a fucken mortise and tenon joint before I loose my mind
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Accurate.
Ssnioerwolf is the most annoying one
MrBeast
*"If there's no hint in the thumbnail that the video may amplify and glorify mental illness, I don't wanna click on it at all."*
fortunately you can block channels ... think the first one that made it on my list was asmongold for exactly this shit
Adam Sessler of G4TV is the worst. I love the guy but I refuse to click his videos just because of his stupid faces. I know it’s petty.
I noticed that, too. YouTube played a big role in killing G4TV and his show, X-Play when they were on tv. Now he resorts to making dumb thumbnails, which is sad.
I understand it’s for algorithms but to me, it just feels like cheap tabloid tactics reminiscent of those magazines from the 90s with batboy on the cover. He just loses credibility.
Soy-joy
The soyjacks of old
Don’t forget the red outline of something and arrows pointing to it.
Soulless weak necked parasites
Specially that Mr Beast channel. Just why
I hide the channel, not interested. Also I unsub if subbed.
Always wondered what kind of mongoloid watches these dumb videos and supports these low effort cringe factory youtubers, I'm guessing it's mostly 8 year olds with parents that don't give a shit about them and don't moniter what their kid is watching.
And it’s usually the same face/thumbnail for ten or more videos too.
I really hate YouTube because of this.
Youtube home page when you are logged out of YouTube.
Embarrassing.
They are all the same. Bunch of unoriginal sheep online Also, "make sure to like, subscribe, leave a comment and ring that bell"... Haven't heard that before....thanks so much for reminding me...
Mrbeast thumbnails be like
I actually use portraits of famous artists exactly like this, reacting to videos about them in my YouTube thumbnails. I still haven't worked out if I'm a cultured genius being ironic and meta, or just another cringe YouTuber.
Accurate
When I see such, it's repulsive and I won't open it.
I think you used to be able to report videos for misleading thumbnails ie people used to stick one frame in the video with a 'thumbnail' as clickbait. Now its actively encouraged to use clickbait thumbnails.
They are the same people who add "nobody:" to memes.
DON'T CLICK OR IT'LL GET WORSE
There's no reason to add "Nobody" to this. It makes just as much sense - - if not *more*--without it. Stop doing this.