[charcircuit]

It's not stupid if it works. It's not like it's YouTube who is deciding these types of thumbnails perform well. It's just that users engage with those kinds of thumbnails more.

The race is about making the best possible thumbnail based of empirical data and not aesthetics.

[meheleventyone]

Right but the context to this is not fixed and is human constructed. Just because a bad system produces undesirable outcomes doesn’t mean we have to shrug our shoulders as if this is the only possible state of things.