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thanks! the thumbnail trend has gotten really, really bad. any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon? is there data they have access to which s

by Liquix 3y ago

thanks! the thumbnail trend has gotten really, really bad. any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon? is there data they have access to which suggests switching to this type of thumbnail will increase engagement?

SoftTalker 3y ago
> any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon It probably works.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Onawa 3y ago
If I remember correctly, Linus from Linus Tech Tips said begrudgingly at one point that the clickbait thumbnails increase views by 20-30%. Even he wasn't happy about having to do them, but the drop in viewership from not doing them seemed quite large and hard to disagree with.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  LTT is pretty much the most clickbaity YouTuber anyway when it comes to IT. Mediocre content, extremely high monetisation including in-stream ads. I never bother watching LTT anyway. It represents everything that's wrong with YouTube. When it comes to creators I actually respect I'd think of Dave Jones (EEVBlog), Naomi Wu, Louis Rossman...
  - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    Hard disagree, at least on some content. The engineering videos where they do crazy hacks like negative cooling computers, swimming pool water cooling etc are all insightful and inviting viewers to explore hardware hacking and engineering. I suspect techlinked troll HN for news content, but I watch that for the humour rather than news.
    - tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
      I think you can both be right. They put out a "crazy engineering" video maybe once every 6 months while putting out 5+ videos every single week. The majority of the videos being uploaded are them faking enthusiasm for version i+1 of whatever product giant tech company put out this week or them trashing some silly or sometimes misunderstood idea.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    It’s not my favorite channel, I don’t even have a subscription to it, but for such a mainstream and popular channel it’s honestly pretty good. Each time I stumbled upon a video of LTT, it ranged from "great" to "really ok". There are way better channels but LTT is far from being the worst.
pjerem 3y ago
Veritasium made a video about this : thumbnails and title so much drastically change your view count that, even if you are against it, you would be stupid to not jump into the trend, especially if your business is correlated to view counts. But I’m like you, I’m pretty sad about it because sometimes this pushes me back very hard and I avoided some otherwise very great quality channels for months or years because of that. My most remarkable example of this is KURZGESAGT : YouTube algorithm was always suggesting it and my brain was always thinking that this looked like cheap animated videos with colors everywhere to catch my eyes, probably with synthetic narration. I ignored it for months until I watched one by accident. And boy did I discovered it was in fact a brilliant channel with probably one of the most impressive animation and music on YouTube, an incredible narrator, one of the rare YouTube channels which provides links to studies for anything sentence they say and all of this full of poetry. Also a very non intrusive business model with pertinents sponsorships at the end of the videos and their own merchandise marketplace with actually nice items and artwork to buy. The even sadder thing is that their thumbnails are in fact pretty good but they mostly suffered from the fact that my brain is now programmed to avoid anything catchy.
- brandnewideas 3y ago
  Ignoring the fact that KURZGESAGT is a blatant propaganda conduit, the art-style they use in their animations is so flat and devoid of any personality at all, I'm actively repulsed by it.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    I’m open to debate but propaganda for what exactly ? There was only one of their video I felt awkward was their video about the fact we will tackle climate change, I felt like they were I little too techno optimistic. But given that they have a good history in this subject, I just felt their goal was to provide optimism. Also, I’m sorry if I’m overly paranoid but I feel strange that you created an account just to make this comment.
    - brandnewideas 3y ago

by Liquix 3y ago

SoftTalker 3y ago

> any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon It probably works.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Onawa 3y ago

If I remember correctly, Linus from Linus Tech Tips said begrudgingly at one point that the clickbait thumbnails increase views by 20-30%. Even he wasn't happy about having to do them, but the drop in viewership from not doing them seemed quite large and hard to disagree with.

wkat4242 3y ago
LTT is pretty much the most clickbaity YouTuber anyway when it comes to IT. Mediocre content, extremely high monetisation including in-stream ads. I never bother watching LTT anyway. It represents everything that's wrong with YouTube. When it comes to creators I actually respect I'd think of Dave Jones (EEVBlog), Naomi Wu, Louis Rossman...
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  Hard disagree, at least on some content. The engineering videos where they do crazy hacks like negative cooling computers, swimming pool water cooling etc are all insightful and inviting viewers to explore hardware hacking and engineering. I suspect techlinked troll HN for news content, but I watch that for the humour rather than news.
  - tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
    I think you can both be right. They put out a "crazy engineering" video maybe once every 6 months while putting out 5+ videos every single week. The majority of the videos being uploaded are them faking enthusiasm for version i+1 of whatever product giant tech company put out this week or them trashing some silly or sometimes misunderstood idea.
- pjerem 3y ago
  It’s not my favorite channel, I don’t even have a subscription to it, but for such a mainstream and popular channel it’s honestly pretty good. Each time I stumbled upon a video of LTT, it ranged from "great" to "really ok". There are way better channels but LTT is far from being the worst.

pjerem 3y ago

Veritasium made a video about this : thumbnails and title so much drastically change your view count that, even if you are against it, you would be stupid to not jump into the trend, especially if your business is correlated to view counts. But I’m like you, I’m pretty sad about it because sometimes this pushes me back very hard and I avoided some otherwise very great quality channels for months or years because of that. My most remarkable example of this is KURZGESAGT : YouTube algorithm was always suggesting it and my brain was always thinking that this looked like cheap animated videos with colors everywhere to catch my eyes, probably with synthetic narration. I ignored it for months until I watched one by accident. And boy did I discovered it was in fact a brilliant channel with probably one of the most impressive animation and music on YouTube, an incredible narrator, one of the rare YouTube channels which provides links to studies for anything sentence they say and all of this full of poetry. Also a very non intrusive business model with pertinents sponsorships at the end of the videos and their own merchandise marketplace with actually nice items and artwork to buy. The even sadder thing is that their thumbnails are in fact pretty good but they mostly suffered from the fact that my brain is now programmed to avoid anything catchy.

brandnewideas 3y ago
Ignoring the fact that KURZGESAGT is a blatant propaganda conduit, the art-style they use in their animations is so flat and devoid of any personality at all, I'm actively repulsed by it.
- pjerem 3y ago
  I’m open to debate but propaganda for what exactly ? There was only one of their video I felt awkward was their video about the fact we will tackle climate change, I felt like they were I little too techno optimistic. But given that they have a good history in this subject, I just felt their goal was to provide optimism. Also, I’m sorry if I’m overly paranoid but I feel strange that you created an account just to make this comment.
  - brandnewideas 3y ago