Is anyone OK with the new thumbnails and titles?

[Techicolors]

7 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

I feel the thumbnails gotten better after they reached the bottom with that laptop SSD video a while back.

that video was probably the worst LTT video i've seen. extremely misleading, both the thumbnail and the content itself. 

[LinusTech]

38 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

How about making good content? Oh wait, you were asking for things you are doing...

 

Don't you think the problem is that you now have 20 (is that right?) people and you're... Making Youtube videos?

The fixed costs for LMG must be through the roof, at least compared to other youtube channels.

 

How many videos do you make a week again? Like 10? If that's the case, you pay about an average of 80 hours worth of salary to make each video (assuming those 20 people are employed 40 hours a week). For the type of content you put out, that is mind boggling high.

(And yes, I do know that not all 20 people are working on videos directly, which is why I said "hours worth of salary").

 

I get that "we have no options left" is an easy excuse because you now have to pay all these people, but you were the one who decided to expand and employ these people to begin with. If you really are so strapped for cash as it seems (because whenever someone brings up you compromising on quality for higher income people go "He has to feed his kids and pay his employees! They have no other options left!") then why keep employing more people?

 

There is no shortage of examples of channels which makes far better content, with much fewer people.

 

To an outsider like me, it just seems like you are trapped in an endless spiral where your "solution" to your problem is actually the cause. You need more money to pay for all the fixed expenses, so you employ more people to help with videos and other operational things, which in turn makes the fixed expenses even higher and so on...

I would not be surprised if, in a couple of years, you will have employed more people and still be in the same situation where "we need more money!" is your excuse for compromising on the quality of your content.

 

You might think that's what Linus wants, but it's not.

Fans that don't speak out when they think someone is heading in the wrong direction is the worst type of fans. It's like letting your friend drive home even though they are drunk as hell. A good friend will say "hey, I know you want to drive right now but that is a bad idea. You should take a taxi instead.".

 

If everyone did like you then the channel might have been dead already. Everyone might just have stopped watching without ever giving Linus a hint of why people were not watching anymore, or what he should have changed to improve his content.

It's easy to analyze as an outsider what we're doing wrong and how we have too much overhead or whatever, but you're doing it without an inkling of the goal I'm trying to achieve here.

 

I'm creating a recognizable brand and a media company, not YouTube videos. And, by the way, it's going very very well.

 

Archiving our content, upgrading to 8K cameras, building out a filming facility, hiring ample staff, building a sales team, building a writing team.. all of that crap would be totally unnecessary if all I wanted to do was make YouTube videos - and I'd be able to keep a lot more money for myself.

 

It requires a lot more overhead and a lot more time to do things properly, but in the long run, I believe it will be much more sustainable. 

 

Sure, Luke and I could just "yolo it" and stay up til 5am to hit every deadline, but I'm growing up and my life is changing. If it seems like I'm not "some dude making videos about tech in his spare time" it's because I'm NOT. I have three kids now. I'm not gonna be the dad who can't make it to the big recital because NVIDIA was a bunch of jackasses and gave me 3 days to finish a GPU review before the embargo lifts.

 

And the guys who followed me on this crazy adventure are growing up too. They need a health plan. They need a living wage. They need vacation time. They need to know that two weeks from now Linus Media Group will still exist so they can make their mortgage payments. And there's only one way to achieve that - building processes and systems that are bigger than any individual. Because even if I'm the most upstanding guy and I'd never pack up with all the cash and retire to the Bahamas, I could get hit by a bus, and all those people still need to be able to continue.

 

Someday you might understand all of this.

 

But it will require opening up both your eyes and your mind a little wider.

[beanhubbleday]

12 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

It's easy to analyze as an outsider what we're doing wrong and how we have too much overhead or whatever, but you're doing it without an inkling of the goal I'm trying to achieve here.

 

I'm creating a recognizable brand and a media company, not YouTube videos. And, by the way, it's going very very well.

 

Archiving our content, upgrading to 8K cameras, building out a filming facility, hiring ample staff, building a sales team, building a writing team.. all of that crap would be totally unnecessary if all I wanted to do was make YouTube videos - and I'd be able to keep a lot more money for myself.

 

It requires a lot more overhead and a lot more time to do things properly, but in the long run, I believe it will be much more sustainable. 

 

Sure, Luke and I could just "yolo it" and stay up til 5am to hit every deadline, but I'm growing up and my life is changing. If it seems like I'm not "some dude making videos about tech in his spare time" it's because I'm NOT. I have three kids now. I'm not gonna be the dad who can't make it to the big recital because NVIDIA was a bunch of jackasses and gave me 3 days to finish a GPU review before the embargo lifts.

 

And the guys who followed me on this crazy adventure are growing up too. They need a health plan. They need a living wage. They need vacation time. They need to know that two weeks from now Linus Media Group will still exist so they can make their mortgage payments. And there's only one way to achieve that - building processes and systems that are bigger than any individual. Because even if I'm the most upstanding guy and I'd never pack up with all the cash and retire to the Bahamas, I could get hit by a bus, and all those people still need to be able to continue.

 

Someday you might understand all of this.

 

But it will require opening up both your eyes and your mind a little wider.

Well Fu#!%ng said

[Morgan MLGman]

13 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

It's easy to analyze as an outsider what we're doing wrong and how we have too much overhead or whatever, but you're doing it without an inkling of the goal I'm trying to achieve here.

 

I'm creating a recognizable brand and a media company, not YouTube videos. And, by the way, it's going very very well.

 

Archiving our content, upgrading to 8K cameras, building out a filming facility, hiring ample staff, building a sales team, building a writing team.. all of that crap would be totally unnecessary if all I wanted to do was make YouTube videos - and I'd be able to keep a lot more money for myself.

 

It requires a lot more overhead and a lot more time to do things properly, but in the long run, I believe it will be much more sustainable. 

 

Sure, Luke and I could just "yolo it" and stay up til 5am to hit every deadline, but I'm growing up and my life is changing. If it seems like I'm not "some dude making videos about tech in his spare time" it's because I'm NOT. I have three kids now. I'm not gonna be the dad who can't make it to the big recital because NVIDIA was a bunch of jackasses and gave me 3 days to finish a GPU review before the embargo lifts.

 

And the guys who followed me on this crazy adventure are growing up too. They need a health plan. They need a living wage. They need vacation time. They need to know that two weeks from now Linus Media Group will still exist so they can make their mortgage payments. And there's only one way to achieve that - building processes and systems that are bigger than any individual. Because even if I'm the most upstanding guy and I'd never pack up with all the cash and retire to the Bahamas, I could get hit by a bus, and all those people still need to be able to continue.

 

Someday you might understand all of this.

 

But it will require opening up both your eyes and your mind a little wider.

While I agree with everything you said, fully, I'd like to make a tiny suggestion:

If you could try to make those thumbnails seem a tiny bit less colourful, I was at a training course for Unitrends Enterprise Backup and when I was browsing through your channel for recent videos, someone literally asked me if I'm browsing some kids channel videos ;-; While I personally don't mind and never looked at thumbnails, for some people this might look weird... Just a FYI feedback from a random person at the training

[LAwLz]

35 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Someday you might understand all of this.

I do understand it. It's just that compromising on quality and having a very heavy focus on quantity, just go to "we have no choice" when your viewers are having a very negative reaction to your decisions is not exactly a satisfying answer.

 

You do have a choice. It's just that you have chosen to deal with things in a different way which has another set of benefits and drawbacks.

 

Personally I think the content has suffered greatly in terms of quality (not just the titles and thumbnails, but the content too). I don't know what is going on behind the scenes and why, but I don't think I am alone in thinking that the content has/is going downhill.

 

It's good that you want a stable and future-proof plan for you and your employees. But I won't tell Ubisoft that shipping a broken game is acceptable just because the people working there wanted to take a vacation or whatever, and neither will I tell you that compromising on the quality of the content is acceptable. It is their responsibility to make sure things like that don't affect the end consumers and product, and for quite a long time now it has felt to me (and judging by the posts on the forum, I am not alone) like it most certainly has affected things.

 

If you want to build a company then you can't build it on the assumption that your customers will be OK with whatever you "sell" them just out of pity for you. It might work for YouTube videos where your fanbase is quite young and relatively small, but if you want to move beyond YouTube videos which it seems like you want then that won't work.

 

 

Edit: Or maybe the drastic decline in quality of the channel is not caused by poor management, but rather from a shift in focus. Away from whatever you wanted to call LTT before, and more towards catering to children/tweens with "lol randum xD" "haha he broke expensive hardware".

In that case I guess you're doing fine on the quality front too, and the people like me who think your channel is going downhill are just feeling that way because you are moving away from what made your channel into what it is today to begin with.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

You might think that's what Linus wants, but it's not.

Fans that don't speak out when they think someone is heading in the wrong direction is the worst type of fans. It's like letting your friend drive home even though they are drunk as hell. A good friend will say "hey, I know you want to drive right now but that is a bad idea. You should take a taxi instead.".

 

If everyone did like you then the channel might have been dead already. Everyone might just have stopped watching without ever giving Linus a hint of why people were not watching anymore, or what he should have changed to improve his content.

Not trying to sound too much like a dick here, but I don't care what Linus wants.  He's not my friend.  If a restaurant starts serving a dish I dislike, do I complain to the owners?  No, I just don't order it.  If enough people don't order it then they will have to start making something else.  That's pretty much how things work.  Oh, nobody's watching these videos we need to change direction.  I wouldn't go to him for advice on how to do my job.

[Tancio]

I really wasn't bothered by the last one with the card in the vise, but what about this one? there was no "conspiracy revealed", no "secret operating systems" there, and I'd have liked it being presented accordingly. I can stand your guffy faces, but this goes beyond being "funny". It's childish, misleading and clickbaity. It contributes to build an internet I don't quite enjoy.

 

I'm not trying to bring hate on you, guys, I'm asking for possible solutions. If there are none, I'd rather forget this topic and move on. 

[LAwLz]

39 minutes ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Not trying to sound too much like a dick here, but I don't care what Linus wants.  He's not my friend.  If a restaurant starts serving a dish I dislike, do I complain to the owners?  No, I just don't order it.  If enough people don't order it then they will have to start making something else.  That's pretty much how things work.  Oh, nobody's watching these videos we need to change direction.  I wouldn't go to him for advice on how to do my job.

Well, you have to remember that most restaurants don't have their own forum and rating system where you can easily give feedback on what you like/dislike about them.

If you have the option to make your complaints heard then why not do it? At worst you wasted a bit of time, and at best things will improve thanks to your contribution.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

Well, you have to remember that most restaurants don't have their own forum and rating system where you can easily give feedback on what you like/dislike about them.

If you have the option to make your complaints heard then why not do it? At worst you wasted a bit of time, and at best things will improve thanks to your contribution.

Yelp, Eater, Zagat, I think restaurants are pretty well covered.  I'm not trying to insinuate that you can't or shouldn't give your opinion.  Only telling you why I don't bother.  Linus doesn't make videos for me, he makes them for his audience.  If they stop appealing to me then I will go somewhere else for entertainment. If a thousand people, hell ten thousand people came to this page to complain about a video it still wouldn't matter.  Millions are still watching.  You're insignificant.  Even if those millions all came to this forum to leave their opinions it would be impossible for anyone to parse the data. That's what analytics are for.  Who's watching what?  That's what matters.  And apparently the numbers say Linus has to have insipid thumbnails and click bait titles.  He's not making you watch them. 

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

...That's what analytics are for.....numbers say Linus has to have insipid thumbnails and click bait titles...

 

He's not making you watch them. 

[[[technically click bait and thumb nails makes us watch them :^) ]]] (i'm agreeing with you topic wise, just pointing out the irony in the truth)

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Not trying to sound too much like a dick here, but I don't care what Linus wants.  He's not my friend.  If a restaurant starts serving a dish I dislike, do I complain to the owners?  No, I just don't order it.  If enough people don't order it then they will have to start making something else.  That's pretty much how things work.  Oh, nobody's watching these videos we need to change direction.  I wouldn't go to him for advice on how to do my job.

I would posit that your analogy is inaccurate.

 

A more accurate analogy would be that a restaurant has served a dish you really liked, for a long time. The dish was very tasty, and it looked great on the plate.

 

One day they decide to change the recipe, and now the dish you used to like, you find tastes mediocre, and the presentation on the plate is just a bright, colourful pile of glob that looks really bad.

 

Would you complain, or just quietly eat your glob and then never come back? How would the owners know that it was the glob that made you never come back, instead of something else?

 

Feedback is important. Sure, views are important too, but lost views without feedback means they are guessing at what caused the lost viewership. By simply not watching, you're not helping them "fix" whatever you perceived as the problem.

 

Do you understand that now?

 

As for not wanting someone to "give advice" on how you do your job - nobody likes it when that happens. But sometimes, someone can come up and give you useful information on how you could do something better or different. Sure, you have to filter out the crap, but that's just a part of life and being an adult anyway.

 

It's important for those of us who don't like the changes (to whatever degree) to voice our opinions and why we have them. Linus then takes all that feedback, and decides himself whether our piece of feedback matches the overall picture, or if we're just outliers.

 

Personally, I get the impression that I'm simply not the target demographic anymore. In some cases, the video changes are simply aimed at a younger demographic. In those cases, while I don't agree, I cannot say he's doing it "wrong". Though there are definite examples of straight up bad content (Laptop Revival Video was absolutely abysmally bad, for example).

[Corrupt_Liberty]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I would posit that your analogy is inaccurate.

 

A more accurate analogy would be that a restaurant has served a dish you really liked, for a long time. The dish was very tasty, and it looked great on the plate.

 

One day they decide to change the recipe, and now the dish you used to like, you find tastes mediocre, and the presentation on the plate is just a bright, colourful pile of glob that looks really bad.

 

Would you complain, or just quietly eat your glob and then never come back? How would the owners know that it was the glob that made you never come back, instead of something else?

 

Feedback is important. Sure, views are important too, but lost views without feedback means they are guessing at what caused the lost viewership. By simply not watching, you're not helping them "fix" whatever you perceived as the problem.

 

Do you understand that now?

 

As for not wanting someone to "give advice" on how you do your job - nobody likes it when that happens. But sometimes, someone can come up and give you useful information on how you could do something better or different. Sure, you have to filter out the crap, but that's just a part of life and being an adult anyway.

 

It's important for those of us who don't like the changes (to whatever degree) to voice our opinions and why we have them. Linus then takes all that feedback, and decides himself whether our piece of feedback matches the overall picture, or if we're just outliers.

 

Personally, I get the impression that I'm simply not the target demographic anymore. In some cases, the video changes are simply aimed at a younger demographic. In those cases, while I don't agree, I cannot say he's doing it "wrong". Though there are definite examples of straight up bad content (Laptop Revival Video was absolutely abysmally bad, for example).

Well stated.  I still think most of the "feedback" on this forum is just whining over things that don't matter.  Let's stick to the restaurant analogy, it's working for us so far.  So you go to this restaurant for years and you enjoy all the meals you order.  Then one day you go in and they've changed the menus.  The pictures are gaudy and the names for platters are annoying and over the top.  But when you do get your food it's mostly the same delicious meal you used to enjoy.  Mostly.  Would you bother complaining about the menu?

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Well stated.  I still think most of the "feedback" on this forum is just whining over things that don't matter.  Let's stick to the restaurant analogy, it's working for us so far.  So you go to this restaurant for years and you enjoy all the meals you order.  Then one day you go in and they've changed the menus.  The pictures are gaudy and the names for platters are annoying and over the top.  But when you do get your food it's mostly the same delicious meal you used to enjoy.  Mostly.  Would you bother complaining about the menu?

I would, yes. It also depends on what "mostly" means. Because, in this analogy, LTT content is, in my opinion, less than "mostly" still the same. Sure there's the odd episode where the content is fucking great - good quality, well written, etc - but I find many of the videos now to be overly simplified, or with flawed methodologies for things like testing and benchmarking, etc. Overly simplified works for FAP - that's the whole point of that channel - but on LTT, that can be very misleading.

 

The Windows 9 video was fairly well done, content wise, and kept things brief enough to not be an hour long video, while having a blogpost to reference for all the nitty gritty details.

 

But the thumb was pretty bad - like, I'm somehow on an Aliens control congress who invented the pyramids conspiracy website.

 

With that in mind, there are "varying levels" of complaints.

 

I could go up to the owner and say "fuck you, your shitty menu pictures cause cancer and the dish names kill puppies!" - that would be inappropriate.

 

But I could say "Hey, the food is still pretty good - a little worse than before, but still fairly good - but the menu itself leaves a lot to be desired. I would suggest taking some better images, and working on presentation for the food, so it looks more delicious. Furthermore, the item names are way over the top - keep the menu names simple and easy to recognize!" - This would be a very useful complaint to a restaurant owner.

[Minty269]

13 minutes ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Would you bother complaining about the menu?

I don't think I would on my own. If it bothered the person next to me a great deal I might chime in with my two cents but for the most part wouldn't bother me if the food was the same delicious food. Where it would bother me is if the new menu made me think something was tasty and it really wasn't Or I ordered beef and I got chicken. The first few times it happened I wouldn't care because most of the time I eat there the food is exactly as presented. After a while I would find somewhere that wasn't a guessing game with my food.

[Minty269]

Also I really just hate the Windows 9 video.

[VicBar]

Are the same thumbnails on the vids in Floatplane club? It seems to me that could be some of the added value that Floatplane club offers!

@LinusTech I would seriously consider joining if that were one of the upgrades.. No more cringe. (At least in thumbnails :P)

[Corrupt_Liberty]

44 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I would, yes. It also depends on what "mostly" means. Because, in this analogy, LTT content is, in my opinion, less than "mostly" still the same. Sure there's the odd episode where the content is fucking great - good quality, well written, etc - but I find many of the videos now to be overly simplified, or with flawed methodologies for things like testing and benchmarking, etc. Overly simplified works for FAP - that's the whole point of that channel - but on LTT, that can be very misleading.

 

The Windows 9 video was fairly well done, content wise, and kept things brief enough to not be an hour long video, while having a blogpost to reference for all the nitty gritty details.

 

But the thumb was pretty bad - like, I'm somehow on an Aliens control congress who invented the pyramids conspiracy website.

 

With that in mind, there are "varying levels" of complaints.

 

I could go up to the owner and say "fuck you, your shitty menu pictures cause cancer and the dish names kill puppies!" - that would be inappropriate.

 

But I could say "Hey, the food is still pretty good - a little worse than before, but still fairly good - but the menu itself leaves a lot to be desired. I would suggest taking some better images, and working on presentation for the food, so it looks more delicious. Furthermore, the item names are way over the top - keep the menu names simple and easy to recognize!" - This would be a very useful complaint to a restaurant owner.

And you have every right to complain about it.  I happen to agree that the Windows 9 video thumbnail was a bunch of BS click bait.  I commented in FPC on the video explaining why there was no Windows 9 and it certainly isn't a huge conspiracy nor is it even news worthy.  It still doesn't matter.  Look at the Dell Inpiron Video, or the Bulk thermal compound video.  No click bait titles, the thumbnails aren't too over the top. They each have about 700k views.  The Windows 9 video? Over a million. That's what matters.  For the channel to grow he needs more subscribers.  To get more subscribers you have to grab their attention in a cesspool of loud thumbnails and click bait titles. I don't have to like it but those are the facts.  The most popular channel on Youtube is nothing but over the top click bait crap (PewDiePie).  I don't rant about how horrible they are or smash the dislike button.  I just don't watch them.

26 minutes ago, Minty269 said:

Also I really just hate the Windows 9 video.

I thought the video was really well done and informative.  I'd love to have Windows 7 back with some of the features of 10.  I'm not happy with some of the compromises though.  I'm sure someone will find it useful.  

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

I still think most of the "feedback" on this forum is just whining over things that don't matter. 

You have to have both eyes shut and your monitor turned off not to notice that. The demographic is changing by a fast pace and i'd put an arm in fire it's the reason why. 

[AxelRantila]

9 hours ago, LinusTech said:

It's easy to analyze as an outsider what we're doing wrong and how we have too much overhead or whatever, but you're doing it without an inkling of the goal I'm trying to achieve here.

 

I'm creating a recognizable brand and a media company, not YouTube videos. And, by the way, it's going very very well.

 

Archiving our content, upgrading to 8K cameras, building out a filming facility, hiring ample staff, building a sales team, building a writing team.. all of that crap would be totally unnecessary if all I wanted to do was make YouTube videos - and I'd be able to keep a lot more money for myself.

 

It requires a lot more overhead and a lot more time to do things properly, but in the long run, I believe it will be much more sustainable. 

 

Sure, Luke and I could just "yolo it" and stay up til 5am to hit every deadline, but I'm growing up and my life is changing. If it seems like I'm not "some dude making videos about tech in his spare time" it's because I'm NOT. I have three kids now. I'm not gonna be the dad who can't make it to the big recital because NVIDIA was a bunch of jackasses and gave me 3 days to finish a GPU review before the embargo lifts.

 

And the guys who followed me on this crazy adventure are growing up too. They need a health plan. They need a living wage. They need vacation time. They need to know that two weeks from now Linus Media Group will still exist so they can make their mortgage payments. And there's only one way to achieve that - building processes and systems that are bigger than any individual. Because even if I'm the most upstanding guy and I'd never pack up with all the cash and retire to the Bahamas, I could get hit by a bus, and all those people still need to be able to continue.

 

Someday you might understand all of this.

 

But it will require opening up both your eyes and your mind a little wider.

Sure. But I really do wish you could see the issue from your viewers perspective as well.

 

But I want you to know this: One of the reason I even subscribe to you in the first place was because you had reasonable thumbnails that wasn't misleading (Don't lie here, you've had some really misleading thumbnails since the change). It wasn't another YOU WONT BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED clickbait channel, it was a channel that actually had reasonable content. But apparently there is wrong reason to subscribe to a channel....

 

I was excited about the move to the new office initially. However, recently I missed the content that was made at the old office (and note, we are not talking about individual videos here).. The content there felt (in lack of a better terms) more genuine and done out of passion.

 

Also, regardless of what you think off my view, I do wish that the issues was adress from your side much earlier than they were.

[Unhelpful]

22 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Do any of you even remember the uproar over the name of the WAN Show when it was renamed from "Livestream"?...

I'm still bitching about that. WANG show sucks  It'll always be theLinustechtips Livesteam / Liveshow / Whatever you felt like calling that week to me.

[Taja]

I understand what Linus is doing, and I think its good in the long run. 

As long as the content is good and brings information to people, more views will always be better.

Sometimes you have to do something you dont like to achieve something that is more important, I can make a paralel with my country's politics: 

If you want to be elected, you have two choices - either you become corrupt/ally to bad people OR you make a "goofy/funny" campaign and get elected because people will vote you because you are acting like an idiot. If I wanted to enter politics and do a serious work to make my country better for the people, I would rather act like a fool in my campaign than being dishonest.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

If you're subscribed, chances are you're going to watch the video no matter what the thumbnails are. And it's not like the other channels you're subscribed to aren't doing the same.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

If you're subscribed, chances are you're going to watch the video no matter what the thumbnails are. And it's not like the other channels you're subscribed to aren't doing the same.

Quite a few of the ones I watch are NOT doing this.

 

I have no problem with an animated or edited thumb (Eg: On a let's play series, a cartoon-style thumb imitating in-game visuals), as long as it's relevant, clean, and not over the top. And occasionally, if the thumb is obnoxious enough, (especially if paired with a crappy title), I will straight up skip it.

 

And while the thumbs are annoying, the titles are the worse offenders. Having titles that are confusing, misleading, or straight up false are not okay - even if they get more views.

 

Take, the Laptop Revival video for example. Simple title? Wrong - it was misleading. But I'll concede that the Laptop Revival video was an extra special case, because that entire video was terrible in every way - not their normal stuff.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Quite a few of the ones I watch are NOT doing this.

 

I have no problem with an animated or edited thumb (Eg: On a let's play series, a cartoon-style thumb imitating in-game visuals), as long as it's relevant, clean, and not over the top. And occasionally, if the thumb is obnoxious enough, (especially if paired with a crappy title), I will straight up skip it.

 

And while the thumbs are annoying, the titles are the worse offenders. Having titles that are confusing, misleading, or straight up false are not okay - even if they get more views.

 

Take, the Laptop Revival video for example. Simple title? Wrong - it was misleading. But I'll concede that the Laptop Revival video was an extra special case, because that entire video was terrible in every way - not their normal stuff.

Maybe it doesn't apply to the more mature audience. But for the "kids" who subscribe to FazeClan or whatever those douchebags are, they should be used to it.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Maybe it doesn't apply to the more mature audience. But for the "kids" who subscribe to FazeClan or whatever those douchebags are, they should be used to it.

The younger demographic is clearly what is driving this trend of crazy over the top thumbnails and clickbait titles. They love that kind of stuff in general. So of course, younger ones are going to have more of it.

 

This is one of the reasons why I don't believe I'm part of the target LTT demographic anymore. Their target demographic has seemingly shifted from say 16-30 to say 8-14.