5 ms·

This reminds me of a saying I've heard from Dean Graziosi (sales type guy). "Sell them what they want, give them what they need". I also dislike this whole ga

This reminds me of a saying I've heard from Dean Graziosi (sales type guy). "Sell them what they want, give them what they need". I also dislike this whole game where you have to essentially mould yourself into this "mainstream click-baity character", but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. One way to think of it is - you owe it to your audience to save them from worse educational experiences, and the only way to save them is to try to rank higher than these other more click-baity low-value videos.

klabb3 4y ago
> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back at teachers and teaching that I really liked, they aren't always the best salesmen, but they're always very good communicators, and good at speaking. I don't think that the content promoted by today's engagement machines are optimizing for that.
- tsumnia 4y ago
  Just to add, most of us AREN'T trying to become big YouTube viral influencers. My channel has 2.5k viewers and all my videos were done because I want my in-class students to have a resource to review at home. I got my doctorate and a career as teaching faculty to teach students, not become another Computerphile. I love the channel and link it regularly, but again my passion is in helping people learn in the classroom. The "Thanks!" comments and $100 a year I get from YouTube are just nice bonuses to that end.
  - j45 4y ago
    Creating better explanations on how to use and apply knowledge is so huge. I’d be curious to learn if there’s any pain points or things you wish you could do faster in your process. Happy to chat offline :)
    - tsumnia 4y ago
      Honestly the biggest hurdles are the mythical free time and being comfortable enough with my understanding of the material to allocate said free time. I love the Khan Academy-style super casual, not overly produced, just "here's me writing out the concept and providing a worked example". Take a look at the link in my profile, you'll see its mostly that and talking head over code/slides recorded on OBS. I like that style because it requires minimal overhead work on my behalf. Students' attention is low (not an insult, just what my analytics show). They are mostly searching for a fix to their immediate problem when coding. So my videos are split into 3-10 minute chunks covering that single thing. Recordings for a single concept take roughly 1ish hour, mostly a combination of setup, being human and flubbing words, and something in my examples going awry and taking too much time on it rather than demonstrating the example. I mostly record on Sundays (again, free day) or at night if I know I'm going to be away. As faculty, you're not paid extra to do this, so its very much intrinsic altruistic volunteering your time to do it. And like I said, the second part is being comfortable enough with the material to record it. I'm teaching Intro to AI for the 3rd time this semester and while I'm confident in my ability to teach it, I still have some kinks in my examples. Typos, what gets covered when, etc. type things. I feel ready to record it during my next iteration, but then we fall back to making time to do it.
- insightcheck 4y ago
  > "The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want?" Regardless of what we as a society want, and even if YouTube never existed, it's the reality that salesmanship is always important to some extent. Persuasive communication is important even outside of business: it's key for academia to get grants, it's important for non-profits to get funding and volunteers, and it's important for individuals who want to improve their lives (even in relationships). I know several people who are technically brilliant, but have abrasive personalities and/or fail to get their point across to key stakeholders, so they don't achieve what they want. There is a difference between honest salesmanship and sales pitches that include lies or fraud. It's necessary to sell, but you can play the game with some ethics instead of not playing at all and losing out.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    Sales and politics are not avoidable, I agree with that. While a scientist might have to dreadfully deal with salesmanship now and then, it shouldn't be affecting the day to day. We have procedures to isolate these things from core business, so we can focus without the hyper-selfawareness of salesmen. If you have to be constantly getting the most eyeballs, attention, upvotes, in everything you're doing, it will change you and your work. Look at the conversational tricks that people use to get ahead at your (least) favorite social media, and see which type of personality is promoted there. What I'm trying to say is, while the medium doesn't change core mechanics of human behavior, it distorts and accentuates – there is, for instance, a difference between tiktok and a novel. And we do have power of mediums, we can choose to engage in different types, and we can lobby for digital mediums to change. So pitting youtubers against the algorithm (just pimp your quantum physics lecture with an O-face thumbnail) isn't the only way forward. There's also "here's how YouTube could be better" or "we need a better alternative for this type of content". Unfortunately, we have almost 0 visibility and control over the algorithm so there's very little behavioral analysis that can be done.
    - insightcheck 4y ago
      > "What I'm trying to say is, while the medium doesn't change core mechanics of human behavior, it distorts and accentuates – there is, for instance, a difference between tiktok and a novel. And we do have power of mediums, we can choose to engage in different types, and we can lobby for digital mediums to change." You've made a good insight with an interesting solution. You might already be aware of this, but for an academic perspective, Canadian academic Marshall McLuhan framed this with the famous assertion "the medium is the message," [0] in other words the method of delivering a message strongly influences how that message is drafted. The reasons align with what you've written: the incentives caused by YouTube algorithms do pressure creators to create more clickbait content. Perhaps human curation can be an initial way to get more viewership for quality channels that don't try as much to game the algorithms. Recommendations on HN and other forums have led to the discoveries of such interesting channels, though this would have limited impact versus change on YouTube's end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
- threatofrain 4y ago
  I think the problem is not precisely in the salesman but in that in a free world, the only way to get people to listen is to be appealing and what appeals to us is often not that healthy. Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy, but the problem begins with the audience. If everyone wanted to watch math content all the time then we'd have math celebrities over YouTube.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    > Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy I stand by this term for various reasons. I think it's accurate and summarizes the current day social media status quo. > but the problem begins with the audience Yes, but humans are non-linear. Porn, for instance, is extremely powerful for attracting clicks, and we've figured out that we need to keep it separate. Even if people want some amount of porn, they want other things too and the best way is to not mix. Now say hate, or cheap entertainment, is not porn but not super far off. Similarly, that type of content tends to win the attention-game against math lectures, if presented side-by-side to the average amygdala. If we mix it all together, it's hard to focus. So.. I'm pretty skeptical to leave education to Youtube. Not only do they have all the cheap content, they're incentived to bombard you with it.
- BrainVirus 4y ago
  >The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? That's what the world's biggest marketing company wants. Otherwise, I think it's pretty obvious that the idea of rating artists, journalists, engineers and educators primarily on their salesmanship skills is a disaster in the making.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Most classroom teachers in the U.S. don’t need to sell because they are either employed at public schools (attendance is compulsory), or at private schools (selling is handled by the school administration). In the long run, online learning will probably become dominated by the equivalent of private schools: companies that hire great teachers and, separately, great marketers to build audiences. Or look it at this way: Nonprofit authors don’t generally design their own book covers. They work with a publisher who does that. Why should teachers try to design their own YouTube thumbnails? (On the flip side, if you highly value your independence as a sole proprietor, then yeah, expect that you’ll have to put on the marketing hat sometimes).
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  Also a good chunk of folks (i know) that are good at what they do, will not be salesy. Call it misplaced pride or whatever, but they usually feel doing/saying something purely because it helps selling comes across "not pure" or "not in good faith" or not "why I do this". Eventually they end up justifying with something along the lines of "good product (or person) just sells itself" or end up bitter comparing themselves with someone who sold worse stuff, but sold more to stay long enough in business. good advertising/sales/marketing (i know they are not the same) strategies have a large upfront cost, which most if not all good-but-failed products/services cannot sustainably pay for. My hope for the internet was to lower the bar by being accessible to everyone and allowing more indie sellers to prosper. And it did deliver. what i did not see coming was this industry for gaming the system which in turn drowns the true indie voice.
- JTBooth 4y ago
  My first serious number theory course was called "number theory and cryptography." The professor told us on the first day that modern crypto is basically a trivial application of the major proof from the second half of the course, and that the title was basically click bait. Awesome class, a couple students got NSA interviewers later. Click bait is ok sometimes?
swatcoder 4y ago
> if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing Or you bet against fads and hope that your consistent brand will develop an increasingly loyal and appreciative following over the long term. You could lose that bet, but sometimes cashing in on today’s hot trends means washing out and being forgotten when they change. You’re making bets every where you look.
cillian64 4y ago
The justification some youtubers (LTT comes to mind) use for clickbait video titles/thumbnails is that they feel that so long as the content itself is good then it doesn’t matter what techniques they use to get people to watch it. Their logic is that there’s nothing wrong with lying to get someone to watch your video so long as they enjoy it once they do. To me it the race to the bottom of clickbait video titles/thumbnails feels dishonest and harmful but it’s hard to see what to do about it other than manual curation and/or alternative platforms which don’t use recommendations to exponentially amplify click rates.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  “Crazy HACKER reveals YouTube ENDLESS views trick” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32785822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32785822
- foerbert 4y ago
  It's a hard line to walk. And I'm sure not everybody draws the same line. The part I think LTT and many other folks with a similar philosophy ignore is that even engaging with their title/thumbnail isn't free. Clickbait forcefully grabs attention which requires every potential viewer to spend time and energy evaluating that option. A less forceful title/thumbnail makes it much easier to quickly and easily find the things you actually want to spend your time and energy on. To make matters worse, most/all clickbait does it's damnedest to make it as hard as possible to decide a video isn't worth the time. Even when you know it's not worth it, the clickbait can make it extremely hard to actually skip. So yeah, it has a real cost, even when the video itself is good. It's not equally good for everybody, and figuring that out has a cost too. (And LTT in particular really pushes the boundaries, far more than most that actually try to not be dicks. LTT will sometimes draw the line at 'merely' technically not saying a lie, and blame you for hearing one anyway.)
oska 4y ago
> One way to think of it is - you owe it to your audience to save them from worse educational experiences, and the only way to save them is to try to rank higher than these other more click-baity low-value videos. This is clear self-deception and a way for a person to start the slide down the slippery slope to abandoning their standards. You don't owe it to your audience to 'save them' (a weird, evangelical way of putting it). You might like to put better content out there and hope that people find it and value it (and take reasonable steps to promote it, in a non-scammy way) but no, you don't need to rank higher than lower quality content. Because 9 times out of 10 the highest ranking content is junk and trying to rank higher will cause your own content to descend into being junk as well.
karolist 4y ago
Are there any books on sales that would be suited for a typical SWE HN reader, i.e. sans fluff, modern and practical?
capybara_2020 4y ago
From what I have seen this idea of is the problem with a lot of online courses. The courses that sell seem to be made by great sales men and women. But then the actual course itself is bad. A lot of courses/content is created by a single person. The chances of them being great sales people and educators at the same time is pretty rare I would imagine. This goes back to what the original commenter is feeling, the algo is going to work to the benefit of the great sales people. Which in turn leaves the good educators and the learner at a disadvantage. We need a better way to find great courses/learning content. Social media(including Youtube in this) is not a great way to discover good content.
noduerme 4y ago
If that were a viable model for maintaining an audience, McDonald's would've found a way to sell food that doesn't kill people.

klabb3 4y ago

> but part of me recognises that if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing. The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? Is there a way for YouTube to compensate for clickbaity titles and thumbnails? Are they incentivized to do so? Thinking back at teachers and teaching that I really liked, they aren't always the best salesmen, but they're always very good communicators, and good at speaking. I don't think that the content promoted by today's engagement machines are optimizing for that.

tsumnia 4y ago
Just to add, most of us AREN'T trying to become big YouTube viral influencers. My channel has 2.5k viewers and all my videos were done because I want my in-class students to have a resource to review at home. I got my doctorate and a career as teaching faculty to teach students, not become another Computerphile. I love the channel and link it regularly, but again my passion is in helping people learn in the classroom. The "Thanks!" comments and $100 a year I get from YouTube are just nice bonuses to that end.
- j45 4y ago
  Creating better explanations on how to use and apply knowledge is so huge. I’d be curious to learn if there’s any pain points or things you wish you could do faster in your process. Happy to chat offline :)
  - tsumnia 4y ago
    Honestly the biggest hurdles are the mythical free time and being comfortable enough with my understanding of the material to allocate said free time. I love the Khan Academy-style super casual, not overly produced, just "here's me writing out the concept and providing a worked example". Take a look at the link in my profile, you'll see its mostly that and talking head over code/slides recorded on OBS. I like that style because it requires minimal overhead work on my behalf. Students' attention is low (not an insult, just what my analytics show). They are mostly searching for a fix to their immediate problem when coding. So my videos are split into 3-10 minute chunks covering that single thing. Recordings for a single concept take roughly 1ish hour, mostly a combination of setup, being human and flubbing words, and something in my examples going awry and taking too much time on it rather than demonstrating the example. I mostly record on Sundays (again, free day) or at night if I know I'm going to be away. As faculty, you're not paid extra to do this, so its very much intrinsic altruistic volunteering your time to do it. And like I said, the second part is being comfortable enough with the material to record it. I'm teaching Intro to AI for the 3rd time this semester and while I'm confident in my ability to teach it, I still have some kinks in my examples. Typos, what gets covered when, etc. type things. I feel ready to record it during my next iteration, but then we fall back to making time to do it.
insightcheck 4y ago
> "The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want?" Regardless of what we as a society want, and even if YouTube never existed, it's the reality that salesmanship is always important to some extent. Persuasive communication is important even outside of business: it's key for academia to get grants, it's important for non-profits to get funding and volunteers, and it's important for individuals who want to improve their lives (even in relationships). I know several people who are technically brilliant, but have abrasive personalities and/or fail to get their point across to key stakeholders, so they don't achieve what they want. There is a difference between honest salesmanship and sales pitches that include lies or fraud. It's necessary to sell, but you can play the game with some ethics instead of not playing at all and losing out.
- klabb3 4y ago
  Sales and politics are not avoidable, I agree with that. While a scientist might have to dreadfully deal with salesmanship now and then, it shouldn't be affecting the day to day. We have procedures to isolate these things from core business, so we can focus without the hyper-selfawareness of salesmen. If you have to be constantly getting the most eyeballs, attention, upvotes, in everything you're doing, it will change you and your work. Look at the conversational tricks that people use to get ahead at your (least) favorite social media, and see which type of personality is promoted there. What I'm trying to say is, while the medium doesn't change core mechanics of human behavior, it distorts and accentuates – there is, for instance, a difference between tiktok and a novel. And we do have power of mediums, we can choose to engage in different types, and we can lobby for digital mediums to change. So pitting youtubers against the algorithm (just pimp your quantum physics lecture with an O-face thumbnail) isn't the only way forward. There's also "here's how YouTube could be better" or "we need a better alternative for this type of content". Unfortunately, we have almost 0 visibility and control over the algorithm so there's very little behavioral analysis that can be done.
  - insightcheck 4y ago
    > "What I'm trying to say is, while the medium doesn't change core mechanics of human behavior, it distorts and accentuates – there is, for instance, a difference between tiktok and a novel. And we do have power of mediums, we can choose to engage in different types, and we can lobby for digital mediums to change." You've made a good insight with an interesting solution. You might already be aware of this, but for an academic perspective, Canadian academic Marshall McLuhan framed this with the famous assertion "the medium is the message," [0] in other words the method of delivering a message strongly influences how that message is drafted. The reasons align with what you've written: the incentives caused by YouTube algorithms do pressure creators to create more clickbait content. Perhaps human curation can be an initial way to get more viewership for quality channels that don't try as much to game the algorithms. Recommendations on HN and other forums have led to the discoveries of such interesting channels, though this would have limited impact versus change on YouTube's end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
threatofrain 4y ago
I think the problem is not precisely in the salesman but in that in a free world, the only way to get people to listen is to be appealing and what appeals to us is often not that healthy. Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy, but the problem begins with the audience. If everyone wanted to watch math content all the time then we'd have math celebrities over YouTube.
- klabb3 4y ago
  > Terms like "engagement machine" makes it sound like it's the algorithms which are unhealthy I stand by this term for various reasons. I think it's accurate and summarizes the current day social media status quo. > but the problem begins with the audience Yes, but humans are non-linear. Porn, for instance, is extremely powerful for attracting clicks, and we've figured out that we need to keep it separate. Even if people want some amount of porn, they want other things too and the best way is to not mix. Now say hate, or cheap entertainment, is not porn but not super far off. Similarly, that type of content tends to win the attention-game against math lectures, if presented side-by-side to the average amygdala. If we mix it all together, it's hard to focus. So.. I'm pretty skeptical to leave education to Youtube. Not only do they have all the cheap content, they're incentived to bombard you with it.
BrainVirus 4y ago
>The issue is, I think, exactly that everyone must be at least partially a salesman to get ahead. Is this what we want? That's what the world's biggest marketing company wants. Otherwise, I think it's pretty obvious that the idea of rating artists, journalists, engineers and educators primarily on their salesmanship skills is a disaster in the making.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Most classroom teachers in the U.S. don’t need to sell because they are either employed at public schools (attendance is compulsory), or at private schools (selling is handled by the school administration). In the long run, online learning will probably become dominated by the equivalent of private schools: companies that hire great teachers and, separately, great marketers to build audiences. Or look it at this way: Nonprofit authors don’t generally design their own book covers. They work with a publisher who does that. Why should teachers try to design their own YouTube thumbnails? (On the flip side, if you highly value your independence as a sole proprietor, then yeah, expect that you’ll have to put on the marketing hat sometimes).
gofreddygo 4y ago
Also a good chunk of folks (i know) that are good at what they do, will not be salesy. Call it misplaced pride or whatever, but they usually feel doing/saying something purely because it helps selling comes across "not pure" or "not in good faith" or not "why I do this". Eventually they end up justifying with something along the lines of "good product (or person) just sells itself" or end up bitter comparing themselves with someone who sold worse stuff, but sold more to stay long enough in business. good advertising/sales/marketing (i know they are not the same) strategies have a large upfront cost, which most if not all good-but-failed products/services cannot sustainably pay for. My hope for the internet was to lower the bar by being accessible to everyone and allowing more indie sellers to prosper. And it did deliver. what i did not see coming was this industry for gaming the system which in turn drowns the true indie voice.
JTBooth 4y ago
My first serious number theory course was called "number theory and cryptography." The professor told us on the first day that modern crypto is basically a trivial application of the major proof from the second half of the course, and that the title was basically click bait. Awesome class, a couple students got NSA interviewers later. Click bait is ok sometimes?

swatcoder 4y ago

> if your goal is to sell, then you'd be wise to spend time on presenting your content in a way that is at least initially attention grabbing Or you bet against fads and hope that your consistent brand will develop an increasingly loyal and appreciative following over the long term. You could lose that bet, but sometimes cashing in on today’s hot trends means washing out and being forgotten when they change. You’re making bets every where you look.

cillian64 4y ago

The justification some youtubers (LTT comes to mind) use for clickbait video titles/thumbnails is that they feel that so long as the content itself is good then it doesn’t matter what techniques they use to get people to watch it. Their logic is that there’s nothing wrong with lying to get someone to watch your video so long as they enjoy it once they do. To me it the race to the bottom of clickbait video titles/thumbnails feels dishonest and harmful but it’s hard to see what to do about it other than manual curation and/or alternative platforms which don’t use recommendations to exponentially amplify click rates.

devoutsalsa 4y ago
“Crazy HACKER reveals YouTube ENDLESS views trick” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32785822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32785822
foerbert 4y ago
It's a hard line to walk. And I'm sure not everybody draws the same line. The part I think LTT and many other folks with a similar philosophy ignore is that even engaging with their title/thumbnail isn't free. Clickbait forcefully grabs attention which requires every potential viewer to spend time and energy evaluating that option. A less forceful title/thumbnail makes it much easier to quickly and easily find the things you actually want to spend your time and energy on. To make matters worse, most/all clickbait does it's damnedest to make it as hard as possible to decide a video isn't worth the time. Even when you know it's not worth it, the clickbait can make it extremely hard to actually skip. So yeah, it has a real cost, even when the video itself is good. It's not equally good for everybody, and figuring that out has a cost too. (And LTT in particular really pushes the boundaries, far more than most that actually try to not be dicks. LTT will sometimes draw the line at 'merely' technically not saying a lie, and blame you for hearing one anyway.)

oska 4y ago

> One way to think of it is - you owe it to your audience to save them from worse educational experiences, and the only way to save them is to try to rank higher than these other more click-baity low-value videos. This is clear self-deception and a way for a person to start the slide down the slippery slope to abandoning their standards. You don't owe it to your audience to 'save them' (a weird, evangelical way of putting it). You might like to put better content out there and hope that people find it and value it (and take reasonable steps to promote it, in a non-scammy way) but no, you don't need to rank higher than lower quality content. Because 9 times out of 10 the highest ranking content is junk and trying to rank higher will cause your own content to descend into being junk as well.

karolist 4y ago

Are there any books on sales that would be suited for a typical SWE HN reader, i.e. sans fluff, modern and practical?

capybara_2020 4y ago

From what I have seen this idea of is the problem with a lot of online courses. The courses that sell seem to be made by great sales men and women. But then the actual course itself is bad. A lot of courses/content is created by a single person. The chances of them being great sales people and educators at the same time is pretty rare I would imagine. This goes back to what the original commenter is feeling, the algo is going to work to the benefit of the great sales people. Which in turn leaves the good educators and the learner at a disadvantage. We need a better way to find great courses/learning content. Social media(including Youtube in this) is not a great way to discover good content.

noduerme 4y ago

If that were a viable model for maintaining an audience, McDonald's would've found a way to sell food that doesn't kill people.