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I was disappointed to find out the laser-focus was on scandals related to youtube celebrities, and not on the infrastructure youtube has that creates youtube ce

I was disappointed to find out the laser-focus was on scandals related to youtube celebrities, and not on the infrastructure youtube has that creates youtube celebrities. The author mentions Game Theory (another youtube channel) which has some videos that delves into these mechanics instead. My fear with Youtube as a casual viewer is that content creators (such as the author) are too focused on scandal with other channels they themselves are friends with and not focused enough on keeping engaging content and/or keeping engaged with the fans who made them money in the first place.

otalp 10y ago
One factor that is rarely mentioned in this conversation is that Drama helps Youtubers - a lot. Videos about 'Youtube in crisis' gets a whole lot of views, much more than the usual standard-fare videos. This doesn't only apply to the YouTuber being targeted. For example, assume there is some controversy over some gamer on YouTube. YouTube Channels dedicated to talking about Internet culture, like h3h3productions or PhillipDeFranco, take the opportunity to make a video titled "YouTube is Dying" with a lot of question marks in the thumbnail. They do this because videos about meta-controversies get more views than specific things. So the video gets more views, and other YouTube channels talk about the 'controversy' in order to get views themselves. Then the gamer may make a video titled "Response to YouTube controversy" which gets way more views than his average video, because it's a meta topic that everyone's talking about. And the cycle continues. TL;DR: Controversies help content creators get more views.
jerf 10y ago
"The author mentions Game Theory (another youtube channel) which has some videos that delves into these mechanics instead." I saw one of them about YouTube reprioritizing its recommendation algorithms to prioritize channels that A: release every day and B: prefer longer videos to shorter videos, in order to drive "engagement", that is, people staying on YouTube longer rather than shorter. The problem here, to me, seems to be that basically what YouTube wants out of its channels is in excess of what one person can produce anymore. Not just "produce" in terms of producing raw minutes of video per se, but produce in terms of writing, too. Even the most interesting person in the world would have problems being "interesting" for an hour or two, every day, day after day, if only because the very activities one needs to become "interesting" are themselves inhibited by the needs of this video schedule. YouTube is basically telling individual content producers to eat their seed corn, which is the only way to maintain this for any period of time at all, so that YouTube's engagement numbers will boost. But how long will YouTube's numbers boost while it also encourages its biggest content producers to eat their seed corn? I've already unsubscribed from a couple of channels that tried to adapt to this format. (I mean, I feel for them, but it's no help to anybody for me to suffer through it.) I've got a couple of others that have gone from me watching everything they put up on a weekly basis, to seeing several weekly-esque shows being jammed on to the same channel to make YouTube think it's got engagement, where I'm still only interested in the once-a-week bit, but now my subscriptions page is clogged up. And I've seen channels go from producing relatively tight 10-15 minute things to splaying out to hour+ videos, with little-to-no increase in content. The only channels that I like that have not been negatively affected by these changes are the ones that simply ignore all this crap and just keep doing their thing. A couple I've got covered on Patreon, the others are just labors of love that now have basically 0 chance of ever having any sort of "success". Which isn't intrinsically a problem for them either, as they know this; the questions it raises to me are not about those channels, but about the future of YouTube. Not whether it has a future, but what that future is. It seems like it's becoming harder to find niche content to me.

otalp 10y ago

One factor that is rarely mentioned in this conversation is that Drama helps Youtubers - a lot. Videos about 'Youtube in crisis' gets a whole lot of views, much more than the usual standard-fare videos. This doesn't only apply to the YouTuber being targeted. For example, assume there is some controversy over some gamer on YouTube. YouTube Channels dedicated to talking about Internet culture, like h3h3productions or PhillipDeFranco, take the opportunity to make a video titled "YouTube is Dying" with a lot of question marks in the thumbnail. They do this because videos about meta-controversies get more views than specific things. So the video gets more views, and other YouTube channels talk about the 'controversy' in order to get views themselves. Then the gamer may make a video titled "Response to YouTube controversy" which gets way more views than his average video, because it's a meta topic that everyone's talking about. And the cycle continues. TL;DR: Controversies help content creators get more views.

jerf 10y ago

"The author mentions Game Theory (another youtube channel) which has some videos that delves into these mechanics instead." I saw one of them about YouTube reprioritizing its recommendation algorithms to prioritize channels that A: release every day and B: prefer longer videos to shorter videos, in order to drive "engagement", that is, people staying on YouTube longer rather than shorter. The problem here, to me, seems to be that basically what YouTube wants out of its channels is in excess of what one person can produce anymore. Not just "produce" in terms of producing raw minutes of video per se, but produce in terms of writing, too. Even the most interesting person in the world would have problems being "interesting" for an hour or two, every day, day after day, if only because the very activities one needs to become "interesting" are themselves inhibited by the needs of this video schedule. YouTube is basically telling individual content producers to eat their seed corn, which is the only way to maintain this for any period of time at all, so that YouTube's engagement numbers will boost. But how long will YouTube's numbers boost while it also encourages its biggest content producers to eat their seed corn? I've already unsubscribed from a couple of channels that tried to adapt to this format. (I mean, I feel for them, but it's no help to anybody for me to suffer through it.) I've got a couple of others that have gone from me watching everything they put up on a weekly basis, to seeing several weekly-esque shows being jammed on to the same channel to make YouTube think it's got engagement, where I'm still only interested in the once-a-week bit, but now my subscriptions page is clogged up. And I've seen channels go from producing relatively tight 10-15 minute things to splaying out to hour+ videos, with little-to-no increase in content. The only channels that I like that have not been negatively affected by these changes are the ones that simply ignore all this crap and just keep doing their thing. A couple I've got covered on Patreon, the others are just labors of love that now have basically 0 chance of ever having any sort of "success". Which isn't intrinsically a problem for them either, as they know this; the questions it raises to me are not about those channels, but about the future of YouTube. Not whether it has a future, but what that future is. It seems like it's becoming harder to find niche content to me.