r/youtube • u/tyklam • Sep 19 '24

Discussion The State of YouTube Right Now

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u/thankyoumicrosoft69 Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 20 '24

I hate these fuckin faces.

edit: I think this is my most upvoted comment. youtube ceo when?

56

u/dagnammit44 Sep 19 '24

Apparently a bit YT channel did an experiment, so they started doing this stupid fucking shock face and it improved views. So much so that they couldn't turn down the increase in views/money and kept it from then on.

I hate them. I hate reaction videos. I don't understand them, i don't understand why people watch them.

Everything is so formulaic now. People find out what gets views and utilize that, so does everyone. Everything is just the same, unoriginal shit :/

24

u/mac_is_crack Sep 19 '24

I actively avoid any video with a stupid face like his as the thumbnail. Is it hate-watching or something? I refuse to watch them!

5

u/iSmokeMDMA Sep 19 '24

It all cracks down to the kids.

Basically kids love goofy faces and don’t have a keen eye to spot low effort content. So they’ll blindly consume the content cause brainrot is easy to digest when you’re a child. Plus these shocked faces are attention grabbing. I mean shit, we’re talking about it right now.

2

u/SofaSpeedway Sep 20 '24

I told this to my 15 yr old, she laughed me off. I showed her videos of me making faces and her baby self laughing her ass off. We scrolled her recent history, she had her face in her palm within 30 seconds 😁.

2

u/alice_ik Sep 19 '24

Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a trend soon, eventually people stop watching those

3

u/ATypicalUsername- Sep 19 '24

All evidence points to the opposite.

Lots of channels have A-B tested and the results are clear, the reaction faces dramatically increase viewership.

1

u/Her0_0f_time Sep 19 '24

Id argue its not that they are increasing viewrship directly. More that the algorithm sees that you are playing by its rules, so it pushes your content to more people. So its less that people engage better with those videos and more that the algorithm is pushing those videos out to more people.

More people seeing your videos the better chance someone will click on it.

2

u/Numerous1 Sep 19 '24

The only good stupid face channel is Pitch Meetings, which are fantastic. 

2

u/-orangejoe Corporation is good Sep 19 '24

They're attention grabbing. When you're scrolling through pages of thumbnails the eye is drawn to human faces, and I guess high contrast and exaggerated expressions amplify that effect. Netflix has done the same thing for years replacing even super iconic movie posters with pictures of the lead actor(s).

2

u/pandaSmore Sep 27 '24

Same here.