[Liquix]

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?

[pjerem]

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.

[octacat]

> In 2015, the channel received a 570,000 US dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who later became one of their key sponsors. Kurzgesagt have made videos calling for investment in novel technologies the foundation also supports, such as carbon capture and artificial meat.

There is one good way to solve climate issues: consume less. Instead, kurzg says "we could consume, but someone will solve our issues with new great tech, like carbon capture".

Still, people like it, because it "sounds good".

[sgift]

> There is one good way to solve climate issues: consume less. Instead, kurzg says "we could consume, but someone will solve our issues with new great tech, like carbon capture".

No, kurzgesagt says that given that people won't be willing to consume less to the required degree novel tech will also have to play a role. It's disingenuous to run around and say that 'consume less' is the solution knowing that people won't do it. At least not if they aren't forced to. Do you want to argue for forcing people? Then say it. Don't hide behind "oh, just consume less, it's the only thing that works".

[octacat]

Please don't assume what I wanna force or not. I don't need a new CPU for windows, but windows wants it. Similar with phones, I am forced to buy a glued brick each 3 years (2 years now, woohoo). And I don't need a "new video" each week from my favourite creator, one good video once in a while is ok for me. Carbon capture is not even working properly yet, but we already pushing it as a solution. Probably solution would be "it releases more CO2 in the end, but you are forced to buy it, and it would make great profit to people involved in it".

[Moomoomoo309]

You're not forced if you use a more open ROM of Android, like LineageOS. You can even keep using Google apps. Many phone models will keep getting updates on custom ROMs years after their stock image does.

[63stack]

Installing LineageOS involves unlocking the bootloader and/or acquiring root, which will make several applications (mostly banking, but afaik some streaming apps as well) refuse to launch, because your phone now trips SafetyNet (which is "yet another thing I don't need, but have to pay for").

[sgift]

> Please don't assume what I wanna force or not.

That's why I wrote that if you want to force people you should argue for it and not that you do want to. Please, don't accuse me of things I didn't write.

Personally, I don't think carbon capture will work very well either, but I don't see why my position should be more valid than kurzgesagts. Or why mine isn't propaganda, but theirs is.

[bitcharmer]

That's extremely disingenuous way to describe Kurtzgesagt. The channel offers high quality educational content.

[octacat]

There are channels without propaganda like ScienceClic/pbs space time. Good propoganda would not work if it would be too obvious. But once you read Kurtz story and try to reevaluate their "proposed" solutions to eco issues, you can see how it aligns. It is "technooptimism". Like similar to "invest into AI, it will solve all of our problems".

Sadly... Ok ok, so it is basically science video channel with sponsored content where they don't say it is sponsored content. Better description?

[uranusjr]

They offer educational content. From limited consumption I would not rate it as high quality. More like acceptable I guess.

[imtringued]

Veritasium is the kind of guy who makes a video explaining how his titles aren't clickbait, yet he optimizes thumbnails and video titles after the video is published to maximize views more than anyone else.

[pjerem]

Which at least is … honest.

[bitcharmer]

How do you know he does that more than anyone else?

[brandnewideas]

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]

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]

Propaganda for billionaires and the various methodologies they use to control and slowly reshape society. The following video is a good start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI

The optimism you mention in your comment is key. Conditioning the public to perceive and blindly accept the ideas and procedures commonly discussed in many of their videos as something net-positive seems to be the primary goal.

The art-style I think plays a very well-defined role in that: yes it's bland, but it's the most unlikely one to offend any one average viewer, irrespective of nationality or culture. It's just cute 2D flat birds after all.

[mlrtime]

So it is "blatant propaganda" but you can't come up with 3-4 bullets explaning your reasoning? If it were so blatent I would need to watch another video.

[Onawa]

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]

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...

[pjerem]

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.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

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]

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.

[SoftTalker]

> any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon

It probably works.