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I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it's all optimized for the maximum number of clicks/views but if I see a

by rym_ 5y ago

I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it's all optimized for the maximum number of clicks/views but if I see a still that looks the way it does at the bottom of this page I generally just don't watch it on principle.

jonathankoren 5y ago
It’s not just the thumbnail faces. Streamers constantly overreact to even the most mundane things. My son and a friend of his were watching some pair of Minecraft streamers, and I couldn’t get follow what was happening. Both men were constantly yelling “WHAT? WHAT? OH MY GOD! AHHHHHHHHH!” As far as I could tell, they were both yelling independent things, and just walking around sheep.
- amelius 5y ago
  As someone who constantly underreacts to everything, even when I receive a nice gift, I must confess that I am somewhat jealous of the streamer generation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MichaelBurge 5y ago
I think it's because kids watch a lot of Youtube, and kids are drawn to people making exaggerated faces.
- wmanley 5y ago
  I think it's because the thumbnails are small, so if the faces aren't exaggerated you won't perceive any particular emotion at all. It's a bit like the difference between theatre and film acting.
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    But that starts from the premise that you even care about the "emotion" expressed in the video. While I'm sure that there are many genres of videos where the emotions expressed by the authors are relevant to the topic at hand, there are many topics in which an expression of emotion, let alone an exaggerated one, is completely out of place.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      I don't think that's true. I'm sure a lot of youtubers want people to enjoy their videos and get something from them, but they're also monetizing eyeballs. That means clicks on videos, which means grabbing attention in the video thumbnails. All other things being equal, people will click on a thumbnail with someone with an exaggerated facial expression more often than a neutral one. As to why that works, my theory is that we're wired to respond to more extreme emotional displays because we're socially oriented great apes and that kind of information is important for navigating the world.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    This is probably why. Similarly, stage makeup on actors is typically very heavy to accentuate the facial features at a distance, making them easier to read.
nefitty 5y ago
This is one of the best thumbnails I've seen. It's evocative of Garbage Pail Kids and seems satirical, in the spirit of your complaint.
athorax 5y ago
The youtube channel veritasium did a pretty interesting video on the phenomenon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
colechristensen 5y ago
Lowest common denominator psychological manipulation. It works, optimizing for it makes you a part of the march towards idocracy, but hey, profits!
geerlingguy 5y ago
Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube... The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Its so strange, since the presence of a face immediately makes me not want to watch a video.
  - goohle 5y ago
    Try these videos: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bikini+try+on https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bikini+try+on . They will help to overcome the fear.
- thioordc 5y ago
  That’s a crazy amount more!
- riekus 5y ago
  I can't stand that Linus PC guy with his exaggerated faces on the thumbs.
  - slig 5y ago
    He's a video explaining how well that kind of clickbaity thumbs works.
    - geerlingguy 5y ago
      Said video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA
  - MivLives 5y ago
jrockway 5y ago
I'm not convinced that it's optimized in any way. Linus claims to have A/B tested it, but changing the thumbnails disturbs the experiment too much (different time of day, Youtube knows that you changed the thumbnail and probably uses that information for something, CDN lag, who knows what else), and the sample size is too small to be statistically meaningful. I watch a ton of YouTube and exaggerated facial expressions in thumbnails are rare in the channels I watch. The channels don't seem to be suffering for it, many have subscriber counts in the millions. I even have a concrete head-to-head example. Every Saturday morning, two channels I watch (clough42 and blondihacks) both post videos. YouTube puts them at the top of recommended every Saturday without fail. clough42 uses his face in the thumbnails, blondihacks uses a picture of her project. Both get recommended. Both channels have grown dramatically over the last year. As far as I can tell, YouTube considers them equally good. On the other hand, I might not be the target demographic for "I cobbled together a bunch of computer shit" videos (which is kind of LTT's and Jeff Geerling's shtick). So maybe it's the right optimization for that kind of channel. (But if you want revenue, then your sponsors probably want me watching the video and not 13 year old kids with no money. Just saying.) I will conclude that I pretty much won't click videos like this. Seeing the inside of someone's mouth in a computing video basically says to me "look, the content isn't very good, but I know how to play the game". This is unfair (Jeff, your content is fine), but it's how I feel. It's like seeing the first Google result for "foo bar" being "Cheap Foo Bars Foo Bar Food Bar Foo Bar Compatible With Quuxgorch". I'm not going to click it. You may have won the algorithm, but you didn't win me.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  I'd believe it works in an A/B test, but the end of the day the reason it's higher is young children click on anything with that stupid looking face on it. So I bet it does result in higher views, just children viewing it. Doesn't mean you should do it though, maybe try having some dignity.
haraball 5y ago
Youtube is painful to use without certain add-ons for me. For this specific issue I'm happy using "Clickbait remover for youtube": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem... Another good one is "DF YouTube (Distraction Free)": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
- post_break 5y ago
  My favorite is sponsorblock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
dekerta 5y ago
Someone should make a browser extension that uses face recognition to replace them with pictures of kittens or something
drumttocs8 5y ago
We see a face with an (albeit fake) emotional reaction, our monkey brains say "that must be interesting!" It's very stupid, but not surprising that those videos get more engagement.
- drcongo 5y ago
  My emotional reaction to those is "this must be shit, they've had to put together this awful Clickhole picture just to try to make people watch it". I've literally never watched a single one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
yessirwhatever 5y ago
I came into the comments just to say exactly that. What’s worse is that OP is aware and admits it’s stupid, yet continues to engage in this shady, annoying, and extremely stupid tactic. I don’t click on crap videos and content like that on principle. Interesting or not.
- intpx 5y ago
  That's an awfully short hill to die on. Youtube is gamified. Jeff doesn't play the game, he doesn't get the views. If he doesn't get the views, he doesn't get the sponsorships. If he doesn't get the sponsorships, he goes back to being a just another devops engineer who doesn't make the thing no one else will ever make. I get it, the face is the worst. But until youtube fixes its algorithm (i dunno, to de-prioritize videos with 'the face') the Jeff's have to do the face to get the views to get the algorithmic advantage to get the views to get the sponsors to make the making worth the making.
  - yessirwhatever 5y ago
    I understand where you're coming from, but you're talking as if this "Jeff" is a machine and not a person. He's a real human who can think and make decisions regardless of what this "algorithm" could potentially dictate. This prioritization of the "face" is all speculation at the end of the day, and until the "Jeff"s of Youtube stop acting like machines and start acting like thinking-individuals who don't think that the end justify the means, the stupid face will take over, and this is what I and others are criticizing.
- loudmax 5y ago
  I don't know what Jeff Geerling's income is, but I'm pretty sure he's a full time Youtuber at this point. He doesn't like the stupid thumbnails either, but generating Youtube views is pretty much his job. Maybe there's some kind of long term strategy where refraining from stupid thumbnails curates a more intelligent audience, but if your livelihood depends on audience size, that's a big risk to take. In fact I hope it works out that way, but until that's a proven strategy I can't fault geerlingguy for the stupid thumbnails.
idontwantthis 5y ago
I recommend an extension called ClickBaitRemover. Changes thumbnails to be a frame from the video and regularized capitalization.
jypepin 5y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this feeling. I get that it's producing more views and you need to play the youtube game, but I miss a lot of content just because I decide NOT to click out of principle.
rasz 5y ago
Just look at the like/dislike ratio to judge if the video is a clicb... oh wait
vladsanchez 5y ago
It's your discretion whether you bite something you perceive or suspect may be "idiotic", which are the exact reasons why: 1- I've not watched it 2- Unsubscribed his channel 3- Irrelevant 4- I don't bite any "Geerling" content
mbrodersen 5y ago
YouTubers do what works. Blame the audience not the producers.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Isn't it how YouTube works now? It's not 2005 anymore; Cringe thumbnail, Click-bait headline and more cringe in the Video is the standard operating procedure for someone who wants to make a YouTube career, eventually making enough revenue to do all that in a larger scale with Michael Bay movie budget. There are very few left on YT who continue to make unedited video in the maker space[1][2] and obviously get punished by YT algorithms for that. Cringe is part and parcel of YT, If we don't like it we should be watching videos on PeerTube, LBRY etc. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/MrTeslonian/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/MrTeslonian/videos [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1xxFkEiAdCVy6foEEUIvw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1xxFkEiAdCVy6foEEUIvw/vid...
qstyk 5y ago
I'm right there, with you. Even worse, are the ones where they outline the silhouette with a solid color.

by rym_ 5y ago

jonathankoren 5y ago

It’s not just the thumbnail faces. Streamers constantly overreact to even the most mundane things. My son and a friend of his were watching some pair of Minecraft streamers, and I couldn’t get follow what was happening. Both men were constantly yelling “WHAT? WHAT? OH MY GOD! AHHHHHHHHH!” As far as I could tell, they were both yelling independent things, and just walking around sheep.

amelius 5y ago
As someone who constantly underreacts to everything, even when I receive a nice gift, I must confess that I am somewhat jealous of the streamer generation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MichaelBurge 5y ago

I think it's because kids watch a lot of Youtube, and kids are drawn to people making exaggerated faces.

wmanley 5y ago
I think it's because the thumbnails are small, so if the faces aren't exaggerated you won't perceive any particular emotion at all. It's a bit like the difference between theatre and film acting.
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  But that starts from the premise that you even care about the "emotion" expressed in the video. While I'm sure that there are many genres of videos where the emotions expressed by the authors are relevant to the topic at hand, there are many topics in which an expression of emotion, let alone an exaggerated one, is completely out of place.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    I don't think that's true. I'm sure a lot of youtubers want people to enjoy their videos and get something from them, but they're also monetizing eyeballs. That means clicks on videos, which means grabbing attention in the video thumbnails. All other things being equal, people will click on a thumbnail with someone with an exaggerated facial expression more often than a neutral one. As to why that works, my theory is that we're wired to respond to more extreme emotional displays because we're socially oriented great apes and that kind of information is important for navigating the world.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  This is probably why. Similarly, stage makeup on actors is typically very heavy to accentuate the facial features at a distance, making them easier to read.

nefitty 5y ago

This is one of the best thumbnails I've seen. It's evocative of Garbage Pail Kids and seems satirical, in the spirit of your complaint.

athorax 5y ago

The youtube channel veritasium did a pretty interesting video on the phenomenon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

colechristensen 5y ago

Lowest common denominator psychological manipulation. It works, optimizing for it makes you a part of the march towards idocracy, but hey, profits!

geerlingguy 5y ago

Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube... The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Its so strange, since the presence of a face immediately makes me not want to watch a video.
- goohle 5y ago
  Try these videos: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bikini+try+on https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bikini+try+on . They will help to overcome the fear.
thioordc 5y ago
That’s a crazy amount more!
riekus 5y ago
I can't stand that Linus PC guy with his exaggerated faces on the thumbs.
- slig 5y ago
  He's a video explaining how well that kind of clickbaity thumbs works.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Said video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA
- MivLives 5y ago

jrockway 5y ago

I'm not convinced that it's optimized in any way. Linus claims to have A/B tested it, but changing the thumbnails disturbs the experiment too much (different time of day, Youtube knows that you changed the thumbnail and probably uses that information for something, CDN lag, who knows what else), and the sample size is too small to be statistically meaningful. I watch a ton of YouTube and exaggerated facial expressions in thumbnails are rare in the channels I watch. The channels don't seem to be suffering for it, many have subscriber counts in the millions. I even have a concrete head-to-head example. Every Saturday morning, two channels I watch (clough42 and blondihacks) both post videos. YouTube puts them at the top of recommended every Saturday without fail. clough42 uses his face in the thumbnails, blondihacks uses a picture of her project. Both get recommended. Both channels have grown dramatically over the last year. As far as I can tell, YouTube considers them equally good. On the other hand, I might not be the target demographic for "I cobbled together a bunch of computer shit" videos (which is kind of LTT's and Jeff Geerling's shtick). So maybe it's the right optimization for that kind of channel. (But if you want revenue, then your sponsors probably want me watching the video and not 13 year old kids with no money. Just saying.) I will conclude that I pretty much won't click videos like this. Seeing the inside of someone's mouth in a computing video basically says to me "look, the content isn't very good, but I know how to play the game". This is unfair (Jeff, your content is fine), but it's how I feel. It's like seeing the first Google result for "foo bar" being "Cheap Foo Bars Foo Bar Food Bar Foo Bar Compatible With Quuxgorch". I'm not going to click it. You may have won the algorithm, but you didn't win me.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago
I'd believe it works in an A/B test, but the end of the day the reason it's higher is young children click on anything with that stupid looking face on it. So I bet it does result in higher views, just children viewing it. Doesn't mean you should do it though, maybe try having some dignity.

haraball 5y ago

Youtube is painful to use without certain add-ons for me. For this specific issue I'm happy using "Clickbait remover for youtube": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem... Another good one is "DF YouTube (Distraction Free)": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/

post_break 5y ago
My favorite is sponsorblock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

dekerta 5y ago

Someone should make a browser extension that uses face recognition to replace them with pictures of kittens or something

drumttocs8 5y ago

We see a face with an (albeit fake) emotional reaction, our monkey brains say "that must be interesting!" It's very stupid, but not surprising that those videos get more engagement.

drcongo 5y ago
My emotional reaction to those is "this must be shit, they've had to put together this awful Clickhole picture just to try to make people watch it". I've literally never watched a single one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

yessirwhatever 5y ago

I came into the comments just to say exactly that. What’s worse is that OP is aware and admits it’s stupid, yet continues to engage in this shady, annoying, and extremely stupid tactic. I don’t click on crap videos and content like that on principle. Interesting or not.

intpx 5y ago
That's an awfully short hill to die on. Youtube is gamified. Jeff doesn't play the game, he doesn't get the views. If he doesn't get the views, he doesn't get the sponsorships. If he doesn't get the sponsorships, he goes back to being a just another devops engineer who doesn't make the thing no one else will ever make. I get it, the face is the worst. But until youtube fixes its algorithm (i dunno, to de-prioritize videos with 'the face') the Jeff's have to do the face to get the views to get the algorithmic advantage to get the views to get the sponsors to make the making worth the making.
- yessirwhatever 5y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, but you're talking as if this "Jeff" is a machine and not a person. He's a real human who can think and make decisions regardless of what this "algorithm" could potentially dictate. This prioritization of the "face" is all speculation at the end of the day, and until the "Jeff"s of Youtube stop acting like machines and start acting like thinking-individuals who don't think that the end justify the means, the stupid face will take over, and this is what I and others are criticizing.
loudmax 5y ago
I don't know what Jeff Geerling's income is, but I'm pretty sure he's a full time Youtuber at this point. He doesn't like the stupid thumbnails either, but generating Youtube views is pretty much his job. Maybe there's some kind of long term strategy where refraining from stupid thumbnails curates a more intelligent audience, but if your livelihood depends on audience size, that's a big risk to take. In fact I hope it works out that way, but until that's a proven strategy I can't fault geerlingguy for the stupid thumbnails.

idontwantthis 5y ago

I recommend an extension called ClickBaitRemover. Changes thumbnails to be a frame from the video and regularized capitalization.

jypepin 5y ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this feeling. I get that it's producing more views and you need to play the youtube game, but I miss a lot of content just because I decide NOT to click out of principle.

rasz 5y ago

Just look at the like/dislike ratio to judge if the video is a clicb... oh wait

vladsanchez 5y ago

It's your discretion whether you bite something you perceive or suspect may be "idiotic", which are the exact reasons why: 1- I've not watched it 2- Unsubscribed his channel 3- Irrelevant 4- I don't bite any "Geerling" content

mbrodersen 5y ago

YouTubers do what works. Blame the audience not the producers.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

Isn't it how YouTube works now? It's not 2005 anymore; Cringe thumbnail, Click-bait headline and more cringe in the Video is the standard operating procedure for someone who wants to make a YouTube career, eventually making enough revenue to do all that in a larger scale with Michael Bay movie budget. There are very few left on YT who continue to make unedited video in the maker space[1][2] and obviously get punished by YT algorithms for that. Cringe is part and parcel of YT, If we don't like it we should be watching videos on PeerTube, LBRY etc. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/MrTeslonian/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/MrTeslonian/videos [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1xxFkEiAdCVy6foEEUIvw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1xxFkEiAdCVy6foEEUIvw/vid...

qstyk 5y ago

I'm right there, with you. Even worse, are the ones where they outline the silhouette with a solid color.