this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
348 points (95.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26980 readers
1240 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Kind of a trend, the amount of youtubers who i had loved but their content became generic after gaining popularity is quite a bit, most drastic one being mrwhosetheboss, his uniqueness went down faster than ~~MH27~~ MH17

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

The clickbait is what gets me.

The video is covering the Toughbook CF-19 but it's not mentioned in the title and the thumbnail looks like generic YouTube trash and makes me not want to watch it out of principle.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, the stupid thumbnail and clickbait title is by design. Linus has spoken about this long before the latest controversy, but unfortunately they do increase views.

I'm fact, they trial different titles and monitor which brings in more views - if you catch a video early enough, you'll probably notice the title change a few hours later as they trial different ones. So as frustrating as it is, it's a symptom of the platform and the market at large.

For all of Linus' flaws and mistakes, he's generally a good businessman and make no mistake, LMG is a business at the end of the day. Put yourself in his shoes, is he going to do the thing that will get him 1,000 views but put off 1 person, or appeal to that 1 person but lose 1,000 views? It sucks, he been vocal about how much he also hates it, but it is what it is. His goal is to grow his business, at least he's up front about it.

I'm not completely defending Linus as an individual here, he's definitely fucked up a lot (especially lately), he still thinks he's a "little YouTuber" and doesn't appreciate how much sway he has, how his words can destroy an entire business overnight - the very thing his own company was nearly hit by several times in the past when he was small - but the clickbait and thumbnails aren't something I think he should be blamed for, he's just playing the YouTube game and if I was in his position, I'd do the same.

[–] CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I get it. It's just not something I appreciate and at times it has gotten so annoyingly cringy I've unsubscribed for a bit.

The combination of the Youtuber face thumbnails and the lack of descriptive thumbnails makes me irregularly watch their videos. Probably as irregularly as if I wasn't subscribed and was finding them through the related video section.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yup I hear that. I know they use different video titles because they've talked about that on the show a few times, but having worked in a very SEO-driven business myself, I would be surprised if they don't pay attention to all of the metrics - including numbers of unsubscribers (Which you can get a breakdown of per video) and things like that.

In this line of business, there's always some amount of churn/attrition, you literally cannot please everyone when your audience is tens or even hundreds of millions of people. The best you can do is aim for the net gain/growth and when you don't hit that, learn from it.

You're doing the right thing by unsubscribing, if you're not enjoying the content or engaging with it, that'll literally tell them as much. The only issue is if that same content is engaging with more other people, there's a good chance they won't miss you as a subscriber. Which sucks, but that's just business. It's one of the reasons why so many youtube channels have gone downhill, because you end up invariably chasing the numbers and the numbers are decidedly mainstream. LTT is firmly in that camp now.

[–] kvadd@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They increase views at the cost of credibility. Not worth the cost in my opinion.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Their revenue is continuing to grow, it's really not an issue for them.

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but for how long? Ship of thessius moment is going to sink them.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why do you think that? None of this is new, they've been using clickbaity headlines and thumbnails for years and years now.

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes but the public perception flipped when the long working hours, pressure to release videos and culture became evident in the recent scandal that ended with 3? apology videos.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Did it, though? They certainly got called out, but as far as I can see his content is still growing.

[–] brb@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

DeArrow can fix those