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YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form
- ccostes 9y agoThey really are effective, though. The conscious part of me is actually turned off by videos with these kinds of title images, but they still draw my attention and produce an impulse to click.
- peteretep 9y agoOne day, I promise I will stop clicking on thumbnails that bait me with the promise of something vaguely sexual. One day. Maybe. I hope.
- matte_black 9y agoWould you be interested in a training program?
- jerf 9y agoI've idly wondered sometimes about the effectiveness of a shock collar sort of setup for oneself that allowed the conscious mind to hit the body with something its more primal parts understand better than the mere disapproval of the conscious mind, which it doesn't seem to much care about. (I'm actually a bit concerned it might be too effective. It may be the case that anyone wise enough to properly use one has already worked out other effective mechanisms to obtain the effect with less of the danger.)
- peteretep 9y agoFriends of mine have convinced me to donate ~$2,000 to a particularly odious political cause whenever I perform certain actions, like drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes outside of their allotted times. I have found this to be remarkably effective in speaking the unconscious brain's language. Also, this thing exists: https://pavlok.com/ https://pavlok.com/
- rsmets 9y agoI've always that human form clickbait could really only be attributed to walking through Amsterdam's red light district but this guy has a point! Interesting read. Side note is he coining the term "YouTube Face"? I've never heard that before...
- imartin2k 9y agoMe neither but definitely has potential.
- tomc1985 9y agoAmsterdam's Red Light district has got nothin on Youtube. If you merged it with Shibuya or Times Square, maybe. But what I saw there a few years ago was downright demure in comparison to the clickbaity crap people try on YouTube.
- aphextron 9y agoAlternatively, it serves as a pretty good filter for content I will actively try to avoid. Playing a video and immediately hearing that "HEY GUYS" voice makes me click the back button instantly, and block the channel.
- aidenn0 9y agoCan we perhaps combine all of the clickbait memes into a single form? "One weird trick to find the 13 most extreme reaction faces to mundane topics (you won't believe how number 5 lets you make money from home!)"
- terminado 9y ago( @o@)
- gitgud 9y agoPlus COPS CALLED!! (NOT CLICKBAIT)
- marksomnian 9y ago[ALMOST DIED] GONE SEXUAL
- Deestan 9y agoDoctors would hate that.
- russdill 9y agoThat and any video thumbnail with a red circle.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gitgud 9y agoOr the more common WHAT'S up guys, today we're ... I guess there's a market for all sorts of content, but the majority of the YouTube's audience (which are kids) dictate these annoying common formats.
- forkLding 9y agoIronically, theres a call for please like and share at the bottom.
- gruez 9y agoOn a side note, do those CTAs actually work? I have a hard time believing anyone reading one and thinking "I wasn't going to like/share/comment, but I am now because of this reminder!"
- zf00002 9y agoOnly a personal anecdote; I have about 10 videos on Youtube. Most of them have under 10k views each and not many comments. Those videos do not have any form of CTA. The one video that does get comments even now 3+ years after being posted is the one where I simply asked people to leave a comment on what their experiences with the same hardware were.
- matte_black 9y agoTrump reminded people to follow him on Twitter all the time during his campaign rallies.
- devosurf 9y agohah, i'm pretty sure that's just an arch joke
- JorgeGT 9y agoIt is, none of his other articles in the site includes anything similar.
- taneq 9y agoReminds me of the 'Dreamworks Face' that you see on so many animated movie posters. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace)
- artursapek 9y agoWow, it has a name. I have noticed that stupid expression is basically the cover of every kid's animated movie for the last decade.
- jxramos 9y agoI love it when people articulate/identify a pattern and coin it with something. "Dreamworks face", works for me.
- forkLding 9y agoI guess then in a way it speaks to how commercially "successful" youtubers have become for it to adopt "best practices" that are efficient and save money -> although it can be called clickbait, most artisan things tend to become more standardized and costs fall, etc. if they are commercially successful and expansive.
- kirykl 9y agoOriginal face artwork that may have started this trend could be that orange backdrop, 40 year old virgin poster
- post_break 9y agoOne of my favorite youtube channels does this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw/vid... And it bothers me. Even Linus put up a video explaining that he's sorry for the annoying thumbnails but it drives views.
- OhSoHumble 9y agoHere is Linus's video explaining why does "Youtube Face." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA
- chillacy 9y agoI thought that was well explained, he makes a good point. As another content creator, you gotta play the game, and a 20% lift in views is nothing to scoff at. It's like the 90s where ads became increasingly intrusive to attract the user's attention (flash animations, games, showing some skin, etc). But then you had Google come along and say "text ads only", and that seems to have curtailed how bad ads can get. So whatever solution happens will have to happen from the top down.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoThe Strange Parts previews don't seem so bad compared to some of the more egregious examples. He seems to have the same facial expression in all of them. I don't think putting a big picture of your face on the preview is a bad thing, it makes it easier to visually filter videos by creator.
- pragone 9y agoSeeing that always made me think that everything would be exaggerated, and the video was likely not worth my time; I also spend very little time on YouTube, so the two are probably related (namely that I don't like video-based content)
- jackgolding 9y agoHas anyone else noticed how much this min-maxing is effecting all different areas of the world? I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops! I find this really frustrating in the arts and entertainment space - the bar for entry seems to be getting higher and higher because of these ultra competitive optimisations. I guess the difference now is that people view making video content on the internet as a career (or at least a way to make money) rather than just as a hobby.
- Nition 9y agoI feel like the unfortunate part is that the most visibility-optimised content isn't often the same thing as the best content. So if you just set out to make a Good Thing it gets lost, unless you also do other things that are seemingly unnecessary (like adding a silly face to your YouTube preview).
- killjoywashere 9y agoI feel like the unfortunate part is that my kids are far more certain that "YouTuber" is a viable career than "physicist".
- kaplun 9y agoThey are probably right. After a PhD, and 2-3 postdocs you end up being 40, out of the domain, and the most probable job available will be data analytics for a bank, when your real dream was the Nobel prize...
- PeanutNore 9y ago"Mechanical Engineer" is going to remain a viable career for any kid interested in physics for the foreseeable future.
- jackgolding 9y ago
- artursapek 9y agoI did journalism in high school and in learning the art of page layout & design was taught that putting faces on stuff is always a good idea. People like faces. Faces draw readers in. It's sort of a universal idea that was inevitably going to end up applying to mediums like YouTube. Also, I wouldn't say all of these are clickbait. The Needle Drop's videos are basically all just him making hilarious faces.
- bitwize 9y agoI find it funny that the AVGN is featured; he's been making that face since before YouTube's been monetizing. He may be the originator of the phenomenon. It used to be that in order to drive clicks you needed to have female cleavage in your thumbnail. One YouTuber (RadicalSoda) still includes an image of a cartoon woman showing generous cleavage in each of his videos, despite himself being the only person actually appearing in most of them. And then there's YouTube voice. I don't even think I can imitate it but there's a distinctive cadence and inflection that YouTubers seem to have embraced. I once saw a ten-year-old use it in a toy-company-sponsored video. Yes, ten-year-old kid paid to hawk toys on YouTube instead of just playing with them or whatever. Then again, we have stories of some Hackernews hearing their 3-year-old use "don't forget to like and subscribe!" as a farewell.
- einr 9y agoYouTube voice There's a link in the OP to an article analyzing this: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-linguistics-of-youtube-voice/418962/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-l...
- Asooka 9y ago> YouTube voice Eh, it's basically newscaster voice with added emotion. Not any weirder than any other profession where clear understandable diction is important.
- mattbierner 9y agoThis post made me want to re-read "You Are Not a Gadget." One of Lanier's points in that book is that technology can both augment expression and bound it. The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up, whereas a simple textbox would let you note whatever you want about the content (text is also harder to monetize and analyze and control). I personally have been noticing more and more how technology and algorithms seem to bounding expression online and off, particularly around content creation, but also with influencers and personal branding and so on. It feels like 90% of the shit being pumped out is super amplified to draw notice or for signaling, and while this is not a new phenomenon of course, it still feels weird to see ordinary people at restaurants taking pictures of their food, or sucking up to some corporation online for the chance to win a prize I feel this pressure too. The pressure to get noticed. To tailor content to what will rack of the most views. To post that tweet that will make me look like a smart, funny guy who has something valuable to say and oh by the way you should totally follow me. And I hate it. And I try not to care about numbers. But it still feels really shitty when something you spent a month working on and genuinely find really cool gets a total of ten views while a picture of a goat in a sweater just when viral. And what if the audience is right? There has to be something better. I hope that we can grow beyond changing ourselves to fit the algorithm, and re-focus on using technology to create new ways of sharing and expressing and relating to each other. One fun example of this that Lanier gave: creating technology that would let people communicate like cuttlefish (specifically the shifting skin colors and textures). That optimistic vision still feels as radical and fresh today as it did when I first read the book in 2010. I just hope it's not too late
- kelukelugames 9y agoI hate that face so much. I always assumed it appeals to a younger crowd but then I have friends my age who use similar profile pics on facebook.
- kwoff 9y agoThat was my assumption, too - cartoon, exaggeration, caricature, baby talk.
- doomlaser 9y agoIt's the same with App Store icons as well — https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/708605183509528576 https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/708605183509528576
- mmaunder 9y agoThe second last paragraph is a thing of beauty.
- hartator 9y agoA good solution will be to go back to have the thumbnail a pick of the actual video not an over-engineered art form.
- egypturnash 9y agoPeople will just go back to inserting a carefully produced image as the very first frame of their video.
- written 9y agoJust make the algorithm select a random frame, and it will be solved.
- buvanshak 9y agoIt is a feature. Not a bug. Youtube wants people to do this..
- exodust 9y agoThe random frame may be a poor choice of representing the content to the point of being worse than a photoshopped thumbnail. It's definitely a problem. Clickbait thumbnails blatantly misleading people into clicking. It comes down to poor link integrity, which Google was apparently against at one time, now they basically encourage it. There's great stuff on youtube, but the trash pile is bigger than ever and gets more clicks. The classic example one of the oldest custom thumbnails on youtube that I recall, is that roller-coaster in mid air. Millions of views, as people clicked to see a coaster they didn't know existed. Of course, the video has no such coaster, and as a result thousands of dislikes. But who cares about dislikes when you have 40m views and counting on a rubbish generic video with misleading thumbnail.
- CydeWeys 9y agoFunny how I recently started realizing how obnoxious this was. And now to see someone explicitly talking about it is really making it click into place. Here's the exact channel that caused me to realize: https://www.youtube.com/user/Davie504 https://www.youtube.com/user/Davie504
- m3kw9 9y agoAnd the YouTube Title. “You won’t believe what happens next”
- einr 9y agoAND EVERYTHING IN CAPS ALWAYS
- itissid 9y agoYoutube "recommended" videos, if you open it in incognito mode are very revolting to me. This is why. The quality is so atrocious. The video recommendation in my google profile are not as bad, but every now and then it will recommend me a picture of The Donald making an ugly face.
- nsxwolf 9y agoChannels that specialize in reviewing virtual reality content are especially fun. Since the head mounted display obscures the eyes, they must make up for the loss of expression with terrifyingly exaggerated gaping maws.
- paxys 9y agoMinor correction at: > YouTube, a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet, Inc. — formerly Google, Inc. YouTube isn't an Alphabet company, but still part of Google itself.
- myt6fore 9y agoWe should probably expand on this notion of Clickbait that assumes readers are merely tricked into clicking. Catering to some 'lowely' urge is way we usually think about these, but there is more. Traditionally, clickbait refers to a type of optimisation for more 'static' media outlets- those with more rigid publishing chain: writer <editor <owner. Youtube's low barrier to publishing disrupts that, so we now have viewers assuming editor + owner role with their newfound power of directing attention. So now users demand to be catered to. Sense on entitlement is at the center of this thing.
- cup-of-tea 9y agoInteresting that it's only men shown. A quick look at popular female channels show no YouTube Face, just pretty faces.
- tudorw 9y agoMaybe librarys would have been more popular if they had more cat books.
- bitrazor123 9y agoMost captcha can be fooled with dedicated efforts.
- GuB-42 9y agoI remember seeing a tutorial on making stock pictures. Doing exaggerated expressions is their number one advise. The idea is that these pictures will be in a library of thousands, and it has to stand out, regular faces don't. It is not a YouTube thing. It happens even in traditional newspapers as they battle against each other in the newsstand.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoAh yes, the soyboy grimace.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoSomeone should make a Terminator style film, actually a book would probably work better, where the robot apocalypse is hastened by a whole bunch of different people, some kind of skeezy and up to no good but most just trying to make an honest buck and not realising the impact of the out of control AI they are working for until it's too late. I mean, I know we are living through basically the same thing with climate change and large corporations in reality but a novel would be cool too.
- tokenizerrr 9y agoDaemon by Daniel Suarez is kind of like that, except it turns out the AI is arguably good and not exactly an AI. It's an excellent book, with an excellent sequel.
- CaptSpify 9y agoNot exactly what you are looking for, but in the movie Cube (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/) a giant machine is built to kill people. IIRC, there was no real purpose behind the machine, it was kind of just built by bureaucratic accident.
- tzahola 9y ago4chan calls this the 'soyface'.
- jerf 9y agoThe really interesting question to my mind is what comes next. This is a wildfire sweeping across previously unspoiled plains, and yes, it's very impressive and a bit destructive (fortunately these metaphorical plains aren't built up with too many valuable bits of infrastructure) and worth a story... but what comes after the fire sweeps through? What happens when the bulk of people have already clicked on their thousand videos advertised like this and realize there's no great need to click on 1,001? Obviously it doesn't mean a nirvana will arise in which people will suddenly seek out "real" content, but something will have to shift. These YouTube thumbnails are basically pushing all the buttons in the human brain as hard as they can without getting whacked from the site. The only harder button I can think of is nudity but that won't be permitted. (In fact, if you've never thought of it this way before, consider that it won't be permitted precisely because it hits the buttons too hard. There are reasons beyond stereotypical moralistic "prudery" to resist slathering public spaces in nudity and sexual content.) So once they burn out this button... which they will, eventually, though much like the market, people can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, so to speak... what comes next? People will eventually develop a sort of mental callous around this and on one level or another resist being yanked around so casually. What will replace it?
- alanfalcon 9y agoThe article points out the evolution and how we got from each prior step to this point; it gets worse and worse and worse (and worse and worse)
- jerf 9y agoIt can't get worse forever, because the badness is bounded by the psychology of the human brain on one side, and the YouTube-enforced standards on the other. Something will eventually have to give.
- Faark 9y agoRight. It only "got worse" while people tried to figure out the new medium. Once we have a set of options that work well, I'd expect this to become a basic meta game. People will recognize the current pattern and begin to associate it with "old". Just like fashion. Probably a bit circular, aka old trends will at some point re-emerge. This assumes YT will be around for long enough, of cause.
- microcolonel 9y agoIt's called acting. When people express things they have no real reason to feel, it's called acting. AVGN makes those faces all the way throughout his videos, because he is an actor, and he is acting out an exaggeration of his frustrations with video games. If it weren't acting, then you'd see the same level of crazy in common video game review articles.
- dmschulman 9y agoAndrew Huang immediately sprang to mind https://www.youtube.com/user/songstowearpantsto https://www.youtube.com/user/songstowearpantsto He's a musician and synthesizer enthusiast, granted electronic music and synths have taken on a pretty youthful market in recent years (thanks to cheaper products and a larger acceptance of the genre) but Andrew becoming a YouTube personality in this space was definitely met with backlash from the community. It wasn't for the content itself, I really respect the guy as both a musician and video editor, but it's the gimmicky persona, the little "signature" things he does in his videos, the all too-perfect sheen put on top of his content, the silly faces on the video thumbnails that draw people's attention, the inauthenticity of it all. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, at least in the electronic music/synthesizer communities I visit (full of people who have been working with synths and modular instruments since the 70s/80s). Now I realize it's not just his gimmick, it's everyone who hopes to ranks' gimmick!
- pmuk 9y agoI’ve been uploading more content to YouTube recently and I noticed that their AI automatically picks the video frame that has the most exaggerated facial expression and uses this as the default thumbnail. This is probably why YouTube face appears to be everywhere! You can see it on this video: https://youtu.be/qhV4xCmPy4g https://youtu.be/qhV4xCmPy4g I didn’t upload this thumbnail, YouTube picked it. If you looked through the video manually you might not even notice that such an expressive YouTube face was in there, but YouTube found it when I uploaded it and picked it as the thumbnail.
- jxramos 9y ago"""Taken cumulatively, there’s a surreal, Lynchian quality to the images. Few things could ever be exciting enough to elicit these kinds of reactions, and no one could possibly be this expressive. So what’s wrong with these people? Were their brains tenderized?""" This is a message I'm always teaching my kids "these are actors, they don't act like normal people, they exaggerate and pretend, are fictional, etc". They've seemed to pick up on the fact that these strange creatures before them are truly out of our everyday experience and are treated accordingly rather than taken as an actual subpopulation of folks they just haven't met yet.