I watch an youtuber that makes videos about life in Japan and he mentioned recently about how this drives the direction of his videos against his will. Despite producing extremely high-quality videos, every video is accompanied by clickbait titles and the classic "=O" idiotic face thumbnail. The quality contrast between the cover and the video is immediately clear once you start watching the content.
He mentioned that he despises this with every inch of his being, but is forced to do so because YouTube's algorithm would dump the video otherwise.
I feel sorry for him, and I even think I know which channel you mean, but I've never clicked on one of his videos because I absolutely refuse to click on any video with a clickbait title or a clickbait thumbnail.
Ah, the YouTube face! It's so weird that video creators have to have a shot of themselves making a stupid face to get viewers. Are we the consumers that stupid?
It's only natural. Expressions convey a lot; they drive curiosity and makes the content seem more important to watch ("what made them make that face?").
I avoid any and all videos using the tactic because it feels crude, tho..
While we see this a lot with influencers (and I think Joe Rogan is another great example). The phenomenon isn't exactly new.
News anchors, writers, country singers, etc. have all been doing the exact same thing for decades. Doubling down on simple characteristics that resonate with their target audience.
Yeah, people seem to forget that a ton of their favorite celebs didn't start out the way they are today. Most people in the spotlight get distilled into a singular image - the weed-loving country singer, the "hated by many" frontman who most people don't even really care about, the horror writer whose adherence to Maine is a meme at this point. This type of stuff isn't necessarily bad as long as it doesn't completely overtake the character/person. Playing up a part of yourself to become more interesting is a viable marketing strat.
Rewatching early Simpsons episodes as someone who first saw Flanders post Flanderization:
He’s a less compelling satire because it’s so nuanced, complex, and narrow.
He’s not the obvious bad person that Marcy D’Arcy is, but he’s also not the aspirational zen master that Wilson from Home Improvement is either. He’s just kind of a normal-ish OK guy who’s not a compelling foil to Homer.
Take his funniest characteristic (calling reverend Lovejoy at night) and make him a broad vehicle to satirize American Protestantism, and he’s actually a compelling character.
On the other hand, Lisa’s evolution kind of sucks.
Early Simpsons did satirize Christianity a bit but didn't go full blast with it because they already had their hands full with just satirizing the idea of a "normal", wholesome American family that ironically corresponded less and less to the way people were living their lives at the time. We now see satire of American Protestantism as a desirable thing, but it wasn't as desirable as it is now in the early 90's even though people obviously wanted to see some of it.
Flanders looks like a poor foil because we no longer see Homer's family as scandalous. He is indeed a good 'straight man' (in the comedic sense) but early Homer is no longer as goofy so we fail to see it.
I would disagree. Both of the examples of other characters that I gave were coincident with the Simpsons original run, and those characters feel more relevant today than the Ned does in Dead Putters Society.
He still is shitty to Tod, so it’s not like he’s a satirically perfect dad; he lives in a roughly equally sized home to Homer, so it’s not like some inequality comment. Everything is just a little off all in. Even within the context of Bush’s America.
I wonder how this differs though from refinement. Particularly for real people such as musicians, an element of it is also surely removing cruft that just wasn't interesting.
I think the difference is that refinement is when the core aspect improves through effort and in Flanderization the core stagnates or degrades through lazyness.
There’s a YouTuber I like whose early work included a lot of genuine excitement and enthusiasm when he’d get a project working. Recently it feels like the energy is a little manufactured, for the audience. I still like his stuff, but sometimes it feels a little off.
The article starts out interesting but the author lacks courage.
> I knew there were limits to my desired independence, because, whether we like it or not, we all become like the people we surround ourselves with. So I surrounded myself with the people I wanted to be like. On Twitter I cultivated a reasonable, open-minded audience by posting reasonable, open-minded tweets
Every influencer sees their audience as reasonable & open-minded, every influencer thinks they only speak reasonable and open-minded thoughts. Meanwhile his pinned tweet is https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1545510413982474253, a smorgasbord of insight porn that's addressed to "his friends".
The article focuses on an extreme & obvious failure in weak authors and audiences; it's telling that he did not use his insight to dissect the relationship between he and his own audience.
It reminds me of the ancient concept of patronage. If you were a patron, you housed and fed your client, and in return, they were expected to act the part out. So if you had a garden hermit, they needed to act their part out, and act grateful and glad to you. If you treated them badly, say, giving them a crappy house to hermit about in, they were expected to still act grateful to your face, but damage your reputation behind your back.
Somewhere today the concept of cultural patronage is still a thing. We the audience give you clicks and attention and see the ads that make you dollars, you the influencer play the role of an entertainer that gives us enjoyment for giving you our entertainment. We've identified what parts of you entertain us, so play your part, client.
And thus the influencer is in some ways the influenced.
He mentioned that he despises this with every inch of his being, but is forced to do so because YouTube's algorithm would dump the video otherwise.