[randac]

This is similar to the Rogan interview, but I figured I'd mention it here too.

MrBeast was just on Flagrant with Andrew Schulz for 4 hours, a day or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo

This was also an interesting and fun interview which I expected to skip over fairly quickly but ended up listening to in the entirety. Some discussion over how you would lose something like 3% of viewers if somebody sneezed, went to the toilet, and so on.. Other things to avoid, like any signalling that the video is winding down will lose you a huge chunk of viewers instantly.

[mattbrewsbytes]

Yeah the interview I saw a clip out of he or a staffer stated that any mention of peeing would drop viewership.

I watch woodworking youtubers and a couple of them had a behind the scenes discussion about their channels and also came to the conclusion that any wind-down loses viewers and this affects a channel. The algorithms use metrics of how long someone watches so it makes sense to end abruptly rather than have 30-60s of wind down.

Mr Beast's team must have second by second analytics on every video to know what works, what doesn't for the types of videos they produce.

[WastingMyTime89]

This is another great exemple of the YT algorithm making the experience of watching videos inferior in the name of profit and attention grabbing by the way.

The reason YT doesn’t want show to wind down is because it provides people with a nice and natural place to stop watching which is nice. The race towards shorter, easier, more catchy and relentless content is a race to the bottom making everyone dumber.

Watching TikTok for an hour is probably the most depressing experience I ever had when it comes to my general opinion of humanity. Yet I’m here commenting and I’m not convinced that it is a better use of my time than TikTok. Sometimes I wonder if what the internet has actually done to us was worth it.

[capitalsigma]

It's not the algorithm here, it's viewer behavior

[skyyler]

Viewer behavior causing the algorithm to punish the video uploader.

It's a little muddy.

[Applejinx]

On the one hand YouTube can tweak the algorithm at any time and stop rewarding sudden endings (anybody thinking of Michael Ellis? How about a sudden ending?)

On the other hand, think about what benefits the platform. Executing a sudden ending that leaves people engaged and ready to continue to watch, rather than a friendly sign-off that gives people permission to go about their day like a healthy human being?

YouTube inherently will be strongly motivated to keep people connected and watching, rather than happy or healthy. So it's got me wondering about sign-offs that might invoke this reality. I'll have other videos, the viewer is not guaranteed to go from mine to a MrBeast video. If I wanted to be cagey about it I could try to connect to another video of mine: I've seen this done by others.

It makes sense if you assume that YouTube will reward you for keeping the viewer from switching off, through and beyond the end of your video. You become complicit in an attention engine, with some known parameters: you are there to keep people watching. What you do isn't relevant. You could be helping or hurting them, whatever you like, so long as you keep people on YouTube, and whatever YouTube does for metrics or algorithms, you can be sure that keeping people tuned in is an existential need of theirs and you'll always be rewarded for directing people to more YouTube. of ANY kind. Doesn't have to be the latest MrBeast. If you can successfully direct people to any other video of your choice, yours or otherwise, that still counts.

[scruple]

That's interesting. I've observed the trend of abruptly ending videos is recently catching on and had been curious about it.