What happened to the "No Clickbait" promise?

[BloodViolet]

I thought LTT wanted to get away from clickbaity titles such as:

• Faster Mobile Internet for FREE - No… Seriously

• Are 8K TV manufacturers LYING??

• "Artificial Humans"

And my personal favorite:

• The CRAZY laptop manufacturer you've never heard of...

[BloodViolet]

The reason I even made this post is because I like their content. The problem is its clickbait. How does ltt know I never head of clevo and if I did know about them isnt it clickbait.

 

What algorithm changes are you speaking about. Do some minor tweaks to the youtube algorithm negate a promise made to the community?

 

[Fasauceome]

none of the examples you've listed are any major departure from the nature of their titles for the last like 2 or 3 years, and they're pretty reasonable titles all things considered since they're entirely relevant to the topics of the video. Even with techlinked, the videos open with the title-relevant topic so you immediately get your "clickbait curiosity" satisfied.

[LogicalDrm]

To be fair, some of those titles were on FP too. So I guess its company evolving into bunch of teens from serious unboxing and overviews channel they were even few years ago.

[cesh me inside b0z]

Once you gain $$$$ effort and quality take a dive.

[Bombastinator]

29 minutes ago, CircleTech said:

what's the difference between clickbait and marketing?

 

Marketing doesn't lie.

 

Clickbait does. 

 

LMG isn't lying in their titles. There is a good chance there is someone out there who has never heard or that laptop manufacturer.

 

Clickbait would be if LTT made a video title like "the craziest laptop you've never heard of" and the video had nothing to do with laptops. It's not clickbait because it's still a review of a laptop.

 

Also, due to the youtube algorithem changes, LMG has to do this to stay ahead of the curve. This is purely a business decision on their part. 

 

If you don't like their content anyway, you can simply stop watching.

Marketing didn’t USED to lie.  They’d always get as close as they could though. There was a law.  It was created in the 1950’s because of Saturday morning cartoons designed to sell products.  The example that comes to mind is “red Ryder” from the “Christmas story” movie. It was removed.  Now there is Pokémon and YegheO. Or however it’s spelled.  Food styling was mostly about getting as close to the edge of that law as physically possible without breaking it.   Used to be there was this really famous cheer commercial about how it could wash in cold water.  To get around the lying bit so they could wash in hot water and claim it was cold they had a studio with the temperature well over 100f so the hot water they were using wouldn’t produce steam.  The ice cubes they threw in the water were real ice cubes but they didn’t melt instantly and acted as a washboard because they were still solid.  That kind of wild stuff doesn’t have to be done anymore.  Now they can just make your plastic toy horse get up and move with CGI.

[lewdicrous]

They promised that they'll adopt this naming scheme: "clickbait title" - "what the video is about"

While they do use it sometimes, they're not really consistent. Makes you wonder if they genuinely meant what they were promising or if they said it to please people.

[atxcyclist]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Marketing didn’t USED to lie.  They’d always get as close as they could though. There was a law.  It was created in the 1950’s because of Saturday morning cartoons designed to sell products.  The example that comes to mind is “red Ryder” from the “Christmas story” movie. It was removed.  Now there is Pokémon and YegheO. Or however it’s spelled.  Food styling was mostly about getting as close to the edge of that law as physically possible without breaking it.   Used to be there was this really famous cheer commercial about how it could wash in cold water.  To get around the lying bit so they could wash in hot water and claim it was cold they had a studio with the temperature well over 100f so the hot water they were using wouldn’t produce steam.  The ice cubes they threw in the water were real ice cubes but they didn’t melt instantly and acted as a washboard because they were still solid.  That kind of wild stuff doesn’t have to be done anymore.  Now they can just make your plastic toy horse get up and move with CGI.

Imma let you finish, but traveling salesman used to sell pond water in vials and call it ‘Health Potion’ in the 1800’s. There’s been deception in advertisement since there has been advertisement. 

 

The titles of LTT videos are not deceptive, so there’s really not an issue. Making a boring title like “A laptop review” would be dumb and no one would click on that; It’s all about marketing.

[Tristerin]

I thought LTT was doing the titles but adding a dash and product descript (because not only the clickbait was bad, but you couldn't actually find videos about specific reviews cause...the clickbait was the only title) are we sure there isn't a dash and a product on that title.

Are we sure it wasn't Tech Linked video (which I cant stand)?

[lewdicrous]

7 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Are we sure it wasn't Tech Linked video

Not sure about the other 3, but the first title is for a video on the main channel. 

[Tristerin]

Just now, lewdicrous said:

Not sure about the other 3, but the first time is for a video on the main channel. 

Shame, because when they said they were doing the dash I started watching again.  To me that met all criteria - they get to keep their titles to stay relevant, we get to use a Search Function to find their specific videos.  Oh well, guess Ill go on another "not watching till you stop this" stance if this is coming back.  I know people have short term memory (hello US election cycle lol) but come on LTT, you should expect better from us (memory)

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Imma let you finish, but traveling salesman used to sell pond water in vials and call it ‘Health Potion’ in the 1800’s. There’s been deception in advertisement since there has been advertisement. 

 

The titles of LTT videos are not deceptive, so there’s really not an issue. Making a boring title like “A laptop review” would be dumb and no one would click on that; It’s all about marketing.

I was replying to a post that claimed marketing was by definition true.  I was merely saying that it was only ever true in a very narrow sense.  I have no opinion personally as to how clickbaity or non clickbaity the titles are.

[lewdicrous]

8 hours ago, Tristerin said:

Shame, because when they said they were doing the dash I started watching again.  To me that met all criteria - they get to keep their titles to stay relevant, we get to use a Search Function to find their specific videos.  Oh well, guess Ill go on another "not watching till you stop this" stance if this is coming back.  I know people have short term memory (hello US election cycle lol) but come on LTT, you should expect better from us (memory)

From what I remember of the stream that they made about it, Linus tried to defend some of their titles by pointing at their thumbnails and saying something along the lines of, "the thumbnails show what we're talking about, so I don't see a problem with the title that we chose", but that's a shitty excuse when their thumbnails are also clickbaity bs with zero context from the title; do you really expect us to recognize what you're holding when the title is "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!" or some other shit like that..

 

Edit:

A good example of this was already provided by Linus in the stream that they made:

The original title was only "Fool me once...", while not mentioning whatever the fuck he's holding, not even in the description, and he somehow expects us to figure out what they're referring to or the context behind it from the thumbnail? You can't be serious..

[Mooshi]

2 hours ago, CircleTech said:

Marketing doesn't lie.

It only shuffles around staring at the floor instead of telling you anything up front.

[lewdicrous]

Maybe LTT should take a look at what MKBHD is doing and learn from them; they constantly get millions of views (excluding their YouTube originals) without the use of awful thumbnails/titles.

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, CircleTech said:

Correct. But that is just the world we live in today. Your job is to be an educated consumer and see through the BS. This is just the way things have worked for the past 50 years.

“Caveat emptor” past 2000 more like.  There was a period in US history where consumer protection started to become a thing.  Caveat emptor was always still a requirement.  It’s already eroding away though.  Been going downhill since 1980.

[JZStudios]

8 hours ago, BloodViolet said:

I thought LTT wanted to get away from clickbaity titles

When did they promise they don't or won't? Honestly the titles and the thumbnails of their videos are the sole reason I refuse to watch them.

 

8 hours ago, CircleTech said:

what's the difference between clickbait and marketing?

Marketing doesn't lie.

Clickbait does. 

LMG isn't lying in their titles. There is a good chance there is someone out there who has never heard or that laptop manufacturer.

Who said the definition of clickbait was a lie? A "Top ten list, you'll never guess number 1" is pretty clickbaity. It instigates curiosity and baits people into clicking to discover what the mystery is.

And marketing lies non-stop.

7 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

To be fair, some of those titles were on FP too. So I guess its company evolving into bunch of teens from serious unboxing and overviews channel they were even few years ago.

Yeah, and it's annoying. I don't want my already poorly automated YT feed to be filled with clickbait shit. They can't even just have it be something like "Crazy laptop with 7 screens - some company/model name" because that would immediately tell you what the video is about and would actually determine if I'm interested or not. Hell, even Let's Players use clickbaity titles but still put the name of the damn game in the title.

[NineEyeRon]

Everybody clickbaits now, as a consumer you have to be aware of it and always read past the headline. Never conclude from a title.

 

LMG are fine, if not better than most I see day in day out.

[lewdicrous]

15 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

When did they promise they don't or won't?

 

[JZStudios]

8 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

 

Oh. An hour long videocast. Yep, haven't seen it. Will continue not to.

[lewdicrous]

3 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Oh. An hour long videocast. Yep, haven't seen it. Will continue not to.

You're not losing much by not watching tbh.

[Bombastinator]

23 minutes ago, NineEyeRon said:

Everybody clickbaits now, as a consumer you have to be aware of it and always read past the headline. Never conclude from a title.

 

LMG are fine, if not better than most I see day in day out.

There was a big jump in the 80’s.  One of Rupert Murdoch’s early innovations besides the supermarket tabloid itself was how he titled things.  There was the writer for the article and a whole team that did nothing but work on the headline.  They were paid more than the writer. It was a big problem the last time there was a spate of deregulation in the 1890’s which dovetailed with a lot of other problems.  Drug abuse, crime, etc..  it got termed “yellow journalism, and the people from the turn of the last century got just as sick of it.  It brought about modern journalistic ethics which isn’t so modern or often seen any more.

[it_dont_work]

Only clickbait I see is most forum posts asking for help. 

 

[Bombastinator]

Just now, it_dont_work said:

Only clickbait I see is most forum posts asking for help. 

 

There is a certain tendency to hope against hope that the obvious thing they did wasn’t what killed their computer because the other option is less painful.  Last one was a guy who was hoping his cheap PSU adaptor was the culprit of him using an adaptor to drastically overpower a prebuilt motherboard in order to power a big video card even though the adaptor tested fine and his motherboard had debug lights lit.

[LAwLz]

I think it's quite simple.

Linus names these videos the way he does because "if the title was boring/informative people wouldn't click on it". At least that's more or less the excuse I've seen used time and time again.

Well guess what... If providing relevant information about what the video contains makes people not want to watch it, then your videos are bad. Simple as that.

I, the viewer, should want to view the video because I think it will be fun/interesting, not because I got clickbaited (and yes it is clickbait).

 

The formula should be "oh wow, Linus made a video about X that looks really good! I want to see that".

The formula right now is "oh wow, Linus made a video that seems CRAZY but I have no idea what it's about. I have to find out what is it!".

 

The first relies on Linus making good videos, and properly informed people actually want to view it.

The second relies on trying to trick people into watching videos they might not be interested in, because it makes Linus more money.

 

 

I honestly don't understand how anyone can with a straight face defend that practice. It should be shamed and despised.

 

 

 

And before someone goes "acchually it's not clickbait", yes it is.

Clickbait is defined as:

Quote

something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest

 

Linus chooses the thumbnails and titles specifically because they believe it encourages visitors to click on their videos. Therefore, it is clickbait. LTT doesn't put what the video is about in the title because that would make some people go "I'm not interested in that", but by providing less info people have to click on it to know if they are interested or not. That's the "dubious value or interest" part comes in, but people note the "especially" part of that sentence, which means "often" and not "always". That is to say, something doesn't have to be of dubious value or interest to be clickbait.