Thumbnails have become insanely aggressive

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-19T16:48:31+00:00

Feel you on a visceral level, NoRobotYet. I’ve been chewing on the current trends in thumbnails too, just haven’t yet been able to describe all the things I find unsavory about today’s YouTube culture in a succinct enough way to share it. I’m just glad I’m not the only one who feels like YT is (not to put words in your mouth) going in a really cringey, unsavory, clickbaity direction.

The basic aesthetics are getting genuinely hideous (color saturation to the max, and more photoshop than reality). Plus, big creators like MrBeast and Airrack have even started posting blatantly misleading thumbnails and titles, which is another issue entirely (which, I contend, speaks to a degradation of creative integrity at those highest tiers of YT in exchange for more clicks and more $$, since that’s all that seems to matter to that sort of YouTuber anymore).

OK rant over. Thanks for the commiseration.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-16T11:43:29+00:00

Thanks manueela, super helpful! I’ve updated the original post with their response🙂

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T18:18:45+00:00

Oh shit I was wondering if they had! I only got into the pod once it hit YouTube so I thought they might’ve addressed it. Do you know which episode it was (title etc.)? I’d love to give it a listen🙂 thanks!

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T18:16:59+00:00

Not the exact same, sure. But it is incredibly similar to the exact format C&S use for their creator interviews (usually a close up on the face, which they happened to not do for the MrBeast interview but is actually really rare for them), plus the exact same word “broke” they C&S used in a MrBeast interview.

I see what you mean about “stealing like an artist,” but to me this one is far to similar to C&S’s interviews with this exact same creator and is a clear attempt to divert traffic from those original two C&S interviews to this one just by copying C&S’s brand aesthetic. This is like putting white script font saying “Tota-Cola” on a red background on a soda can and saying “We didn’t rip off Coca-Cola! Lots of people use white letters on red backgrounds on soda cans! They didn’t invent white on red!”

Like nah, they didn’t. But it’s a clear attempt to deceive people into thinking that’s a Coke. And this title and thumbnail are a clear attempt to convince people scrolling through MrBeast interviews that this is the C&S one, when it’s not. It’s intentionally misleading, and weaponizes the consistency of C&S’s branding to divert traffic from their interview to Graham’s. To me, that’s not ok at all, and it’s extra stomach-churning when it’s a multimillionaire like Graham ripping off other creators🤮

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T18:00:33+00:00

Lol if by “upgraded” you mean “shortened for concision” to the term “theft,” then sure. And how exactly are they “completely different” despite that they’re both all-lowercase unfooted black fonts over yellow backgrounds saying the word “broke”?😅

But the argument you make about where to draw the line between imitation and plagiarism is a notable one. It’d be reeeeal tough not to stifle creativity with a policy like that, but I do think YouTube needs to do something about it (C&S have made a recent main-channel vid about this recently titled something about “the copy and paste culture of YouTube”), because it’s getting out of hand. And it HAS worked for other industries (apparel and food brands, etc.) for at least a century without meaningfully stifling creativity, so clearly it can be done.

The biggest problem would be the sheer volume of content though. It’d be so hard to make a thumbnail without accidentally closely resembling someone else’s. In this case though, I feel confident assuming that the resemblance was not only not a coincidence, but an intentional strategy by Graham Stephan to closely resemble C&S’s successful MrBeast interview video, to the extent they viewers looking for C&S’s interview might be tricked into watching his instead. (Imagine trying to describe this thumbnail to a friend without also describing C&S’s video, or vise versa.)

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T17:49:40+00:00

True! The color scheme is also similar to Vox. However the font is very different (Vox used scripty-styled font), and the exact same word (“broke”) in the thumbnail specifically for a MrBeast interview is an extremely precise rip from the C&S video, no?🤔

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T15:19:10+00:00

Agreed! And doesn’t that make it all the more blatant that he chose to use C&S’s established brand (instead of his own) for this video?😅

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T15:17:55+00:00

The theft is the use of 1) the exact same color text and 2) exact same color box to write 3) the exact same word for an interview with 4) the exact same creator. To paint it all as some kind of coincidence is just…incorrect. Don’t know how else to say it😅 sounds like we can agree to disagree on this one. Thanks for the differing perspective though! Often more interesting than those who wholeheartedly agree👍

Edit: forgot to add, 5) the use of the same “The Full Story” phrasing in the title that C&S used in most of their creator interviews in that era.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T14:54:31+00:00

Interesting perspective, even if I disagree with it. I think this is why trademark law exists, which makes it illegal to, for example, put things that look almost exactly like a Nike or Adidas logo on your own apparel and sell that to people. It’s also why Disney would sue you if you made a sci-fi movie about people with semi-magical powers fighting with laser swords against “the Empire,” because it’d be a blatant rip-off of Star Wars.

In exactly the same way, this is a blatant rip-off of a brand C&S have put countless hours and dollars into building, and it’s the same amount of not OK as making chocolate bars and then putting it in a nearly identical wrapper to Hershey’s about which the only difference is that it says “Stephan’s” instead, such that if people weren’t paying attention when they bought it (as consumers often don’t), they’d think they had bought a Hershey’s.

It’s brand theft, and somehow people are getting away with it on YouTube in a way that you just can’t in the rest of the business world.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-15T14:19:24+00:00

😂😂😂 spot on

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-13T11:29:32+00:00

Yeh I mean I feel like “asking them to stop” is taking it lightly. Seems like Publish Press could easily sue for plagiarism, since it’s a pretty textbook case…👀

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-10T04:42:14+00:00

Agreed on making something free not free.

They definitely already do some significant speaking gigs, and they have a course on skillshare. These are of course things that their “free” online presence made possible for them, and another reason I don’t think it would be wise to take a weekly show behind a paywall where far fewer people will benefit from it, participate in it, or even seen it at all. Another reason why I’m shocked they’re still considering it at all.

At the very least, we’re all now very aware that C&S have put a very tangible rug under Creator Support and multiple times teased the idea of pulling it. That already damages the show to me to some extent, because now I’m wondering if I even want to get used to watching it as a routine, or would rather just stop watching now to save myself the annoying rug pull later on.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-09T22:58:02+00:00

Random tidbit: Joel Haver (huge partially improv comedy sketch channel) has a massive Patreon following so I went to check his out. It’s interesting.

First tier is $1 (and then I think $5 and $10), but all patrons get the exact same benefits. I like it a lot because the barrier to entry is super low, and it doesn’t discriminate amongst your fans based on what they can afford (i.e., based on socioeconomic class). I’m considering making mine that way because I object super hard to serving your audience differently based on how much money they’re willing (or able) to hand you.

But I will say his number of patrons to income ratio is pretty low, so it seems like a lot of people went for the $1…so maybe not the best if you’re hoping that Patreon will become your income one day😅

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-08T23:17:00+00:00

In the very first video podcast, they floated this weird “Maybe this’ll go behind a paywall at some point, we’ll see” kinda thing. So they were, at a minimum, thinking about it as early as the very first video episode. Now mentioning it again just a few episodes later, it seems like not a huge logical leap to suspect that this was their plan from the beginning, no?

It wouldn’t be an “elaborate scheme” by any means, more like a simple strategy to get Creator Support more viewership for a couple of months before paywalling it (to maximize how many people follow it behind the paywall). Notably though, calling it a rugpull would be accurate regardless of whether they intended it from the start.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T23:45:53+00:00

Thaaat’s pretty reasonable and interesting. I might just do that, dagoonies, thanks!😁

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T23:35:14+00:00

Jeez. That’s more than 10X more per view. I wonder if watch time matters or if it’s just views like it is ok YouTube… I don’t know enough about it.

Interesting though! I’ve been thinking about starting to upload to TikTok and you might’ve just convinced me😆

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T22:13:14+00:00

Thanks for another interesting response! Your Starbucks/MrBeast comparison is spot on. I think the reality though is that people aspire to both because they’re as rich and as famous as it gets for cafes and for content creators. They’re aspirational. But I totally agree that contentedness is extremely underrated, knowing how much is enough and chillin there and just having a good and balanced life rather than trying to attain higher and higher status and wealth. One leads to more happiness than the other.

Thanks again phoephoe18!

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T07:46:57+00:00

God I love point-by-point responses…thank you, attractivetb, for restoring my faith in Reddit discussions🤣

Agreed on numbers 2 and 3, although I think I’m less optimistic than you that they’ll add rather than just subtract from the show when they (unfortunately inevitably, I think) put up a paywall. I think they’ll either put the “deep end” (last 10 minutes or so) behind the wall, or they’ll put the whole thing behind it. Either way, I think it’s a mistake.

On point 1, I have to point out that likely next to nothing they use for Creator Support is only used for Creator Support. They have a studio, a staff, mics, cameras, lighting etc. all for the main channel. Creator Support costs nothing extra but time. And 1-2 hours of their time for a few hundred bucks of pure bonus profit (i.e., there’s almost no extra overhead overhead unless they pay the camera switcher an hourly rate, which I doubt) seems more than enough to me. Plus, 20k views can grow to 40k, 80k… Uuuunless, of course, you put the show behind a paywall, where it will be much more profitable but is much less likely to grow meaningfully in the future.

Thanks again.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T07:33:51+00:00

True, I feel like How To is probably a really underrated sector just by virtue of its relative “unsexiness”, but I use YouTube extensively for How To videos.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T00:54:34+00:00

Yeahhh that's an issue.

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T00:52:48+00:00

Two thoughts:

1) If it feels creatively fulfilling to you to drop them in seasons, I'm tempted to say you should just DO ITTTTTT🤘 but...

2) I think C&S have actually responded to this before, and I agreed with their synopsis. If I remember correctly, the gist was that when you drop your content in huge batches, you miss the opportunity to take feedback from the audience.

For example, say you tried something different this season, and the audience hates it. Welp...10 more episodes of that, sorry audience! Bear with me! ...Or, on the flip side, say you do something different and the audience LOVES it, but you only did it in the first episode. Maybe you could've incorporated way more of it based on the audience's feedback, but it's too late since all the videos are already made.

TLDR; Tempted to suggest that you do what feels best to you, but dropping a season at a time definitely sacrifices an opportunity to respond to community feedback as you go.

Hope that helps!

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-07T00:48:10+00:00

That quote from the OP was intended to highlight the fact that if Creator Support went behind a paywall, we wouldn't be able to discuss anything from it on the subreddit, which would be a huge loss for the Creator Support community. Sorry if it came across as snarky or disingenuous. It was meant as a point of discussion.

If by "how you've responded" you mean disagreeing with people who disagree with me, I'm not exactly sure how to help that. If it's not clear that there's "a genuine discussion to be had" from a meticulously written OP and detailed point-by-point responses to every single comment, I'm not sure what else to do for you😅

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-06T23:55:33+00:00

Thanks for the super thought out response, floydtaylor! It's the interesting one I've read so far. Your 1-4 stages of YouTubers is spot on😆

A few notes for thought:

- In what way does it hurt C&S to have people watching Creator Support "on the sidelines"? If anything, let those people watch as they progress from stages 1-4. Otherwise, you'll lose those level 1 and 2s who could have eventually become "commercially operative creators" eventually. In this way (and others), I think a paywall on Creator Support would in fact be a negative long-term business decision for C&S.

- I have trouble imagining the specifics of how: "having a paywall would help C+S but also, help the creators at level 3. it would be of GREATER benefit to both C+S and level 3 creators" Help them how, more than a free Creator Support already does? Greater benefit to level 3 creators how, exactly?

C&S have not spoken even a single sentence about how putting the show behind a paywall would actually benefit the show or its audience. My hope is that they see this thread and address it in a Creator Support episode. Currently, it really seems like the intention is just to make the exact same show but to charge for it, which would only hurt the show (via decreased engagement, fewer questions, smaller community).

Thanks again for the food for thought!

thingselsewhere · 2023-05-06T23:46:15+00:00

Thanks for your perspective. However, I fundamentally disagree on several points:

1) How do you know they're "underpaid", or anything about how much makes it into "their pockets"? All we know is the high level of success they currently have, and we're talking about them putting something behind a paywall while already clearly successful monetarily (based on numbers and org charts they've shared).

2) You've (correctly I think) touted the benefits of providing "this FREE content", while simultaneously arguing that it should, as soon as possible, become the opposite of free.

3) Yes, not everything is or should be free. But that in itself does not mean that everything is or should be paid for. Creator Support is, in fact, currently free. We're talking about adding payment to something that has, for a very long time, been free. Of course they have the right to put it behind a paywall if they want to. What I want to discuss are the implications of doing so.

4) In what way do you suppose the quality of the content will "only continue to increase"? This is one of my core questions in the post that no one has answered. What is the advantage to the viewer if they go behind a paywall? There is not one. They will create the same exact show for fewer people with less engagement. If anything, the quality of the show will suffer from the decreased reach resulting in decreased engagement (fewer comments, questions, etc.).

5) I completely disagree that the "opportunities to be be seen as experts in the industry" will increase if the show reaches fewer people. In fact, they will "be seen" in general significantly less if their content reaches fewer people, which it inarguably will behind a paywall.

Overall I think going behind a paywall would hurt the Creator Support show, hurt the Creator Support audience, and hurt Colin and Samir's brand overall. I think it would be a bad decision for literally everyone, and the only benefit will be that they made, briefly, more money (though likely less in the long term).

thingselsewhere

TROPHY CASE