to say we've generated some complaints
with our recent change to the style of our video titles and thumbnails would be
a gross understatement and I want to get
right into a discussion about that after
this
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description honestly it's kind of hard to know where to start with something
like this trolling you guys by playing up the greedy corporate shill perception
that some of you have of me probably wasn't the right approach but joking
about things is usually how I break the ice when I'm about to have an awkward
conversation and this is going to be a
little awkward I screw up the video title of
our recent ryzen 3 and ryzen 5
performance preview which was initially
called AMD ryzen 5 and 3 tested and then
AMD ryzen 5 and 3 previewed we shouldn't have said we
tested them because we were actually using a different CPU to simulate their
performance and even preview upon
further reflection wasn't quite right since well what we were previewing was
the performance that we expected from the chips rather than the chips
themselves so I could spin that as an
experiment to see where the threshold was for audience tolerance for our new
thumbnails and titles there would be some truth to that we are constantly
making small tweaks but this this is
honest answers and these videos wouldn't have much value if I didn't uh shoot
straight so here it is in this case I
didn't think it was a big deal to draw viewers in with an admittedly misleading
title because I was so confident in our
testing methodology and I was so
confident that the viewers who I would draw in with such a title would turn out
to be amped to see the benchmarks that we worked so hard on to say that
backfired would be putting it pretty mildly and the damage is actually deeper
than it appears on the outside one positive takeaway here is that I did get
absolute confirmation of my theory that there's been a major shift in the way
that YouTube handles dislikes or more
accurately the way that YouTube handles the like to dislike ratio so my previous
understanding was that both of them were weighted about equally and there are
examples of viral hugely successful videos in the past that seem to have
backed up this belief but we got to watch in this case
in real time as YouTube buried this
video about 10 minutes after it went live and the effect of YouTube doing
something like that lasts for days on a
channel so then I guess at this point some of you are expecting that what
comes next is an on my knees apology and a a solemn promise to never again make a
silly face or press the Forbidden key
again and to go back to the good old days of working out of the garage hey
guys can you guys tell me how the audio is and thumbnails with white text on a
screen capture of b-roll from the video but while there are aspects of that
approach that I prefer both as a consumer and a creator of content it's
not going to happen and there are a lot of reasons why
some of it is that Nostalgia glasses
don't actually work very well Blades of Steel is fun but is it really a good
game by today's standards and our old unboxing videos are similarly fun but
they contain very little actual
information change has been a very good
thing for the density of information that we're able to present I mean is it
possible if you don't like it anymore more that the tech industry changed or
maybe you as an individual have changed
in the last8 Years just as much as we have but a much bigger factor is this
using so-called cancerous thumbnails
allows our videos to stand out better in
a search result or suggested video pain
gaining us new viewers which is very
beneficial for obvious reasons the old
hard truth is that if everyone is doing
this there's probably a reason it
works and while I've seen every argument
Under the Sun I read almost all the comments on our videos for why it's bad
the cold hard truth is that none of them really hold any water number one you're
big enough you don't need more views what think about what it would
mean if we stopped growing YouTube as a
platform is growing PC gaming in particular is growing I mean us being
happy with stagnant viewership in a growing world would be kind of like your
grandpa being happy with the same $3 an hour he made back in 1950 unacceptable
number two people hate it you'll drive away your core audience well there is no
doubt that some people hate it but most of the empirical evidence we've seen
suggests that this is a very vocal
minority to be clear unsubscribes do
happen they're common we've lost more
subscribers on LT than most YouTube
channels will ever have but this is a
natural thing people's interests change maybe maybe they even
die but the massive waves of unsubscribes as a reaction to a
particular piece of content are much
rarer than the comment section would have you believe three you're pandering
to kids by making these faces okay there are two fundamental
problems with this one number one who cares adult enthusiasts you know
grown-ups should be able to see a silly face without it ruining their day and
should be pleased as punch that someone is out there creating content that gets
younger people excited and passionate about technology and two it's nonsense
our demographics skew older today than
they ever have so consider that one
debunked and honestly I could go on and on but the bottom line is this video
production is really expensive when you
believe that your staff should be comfortable happy and well-compensated
then you put that money where your mouth is so with the significant investment
all already made into making every piece of content we do another 20 minutes on a
thumbnail that can boost viewership by no kidding up to
20% is a no-brainer and in response to what I'm
sure is coming next you yes you the one writing an essay about how being a
YouTuber isn't a real job we shouldn't have all this overhead we should just do
it out of passion like we used to one a
job is anything you can get paid to do and we're doing okay some of us even
wear decent clothes two to jog your
memory I used to work at a computer store in fact every single person in
this video has been paid to make Linus
Tech tips videos since the moment they started making Linus Tech tips videos so
that hasn't changed leading us to number three of course we're passionate our are
you kidding there are a lot of things that I
would rather not stress about like commercial property leases Insurance
equipment breakage taxes scheduling
dealing with staff vacation times but I
do all of this crap that I don't enjoy
because I am passionate about making the best videos we can and about running a
real business that has allowed us to make seven Gamers or ultimate desk PC
scrapyard Wars projects that wouldn't
have been possible if I was still hand camming unboxings in a parking lot with
Luke you can criticize me for plenty of
stuff but slam me for lacking passion I
mean you're probably the same people asking why I built my own server room
instead of hiring someone to do it properly because I love playing with
this stuff why do you think i' do it if I wasn't personally passionate about
making Tech videos there would be no reason for me to make an embarrassing
face in a thumbnail to try and grow this company you think I want to explain to
my kids why I'm always looking like
this honestly do I really even seem like
the kind of person who needs a lot of material things to be happy do you think
this is about the money I live in the same house house I drive the same car
and I wear the same abominable cheap
Footwear that I always did the only
fancy stuff in my life is my tech
gadgets just like before I ever set foot
in front of a camera do you know what a lack of passion would actually look
like plotting away day after day at the
same kinds of videos in the same format
with the same presentation do you have any idea how easily I can rattle off a
power supply unboxing do you have any idea how much faster it is to generate
our old thumbnails which coming back then to the
beginning of our little chat doesn't mean that we haven't ever taken it too
far so here is my proposal to help us
communicate with each other better unfortunately I need to keep
going like this and titling our videos
in a way that allows us to adapt to how viewers are discovering new content but
I won't mislead you if I say you won't
believe this bizarre keyboard you won't believe it and what I'm asking for in
return is this one try to understand our
position we can't ignore the changes in
the way that viewers are browsing content on YouTube
if the title is representative of the content world's ugliest keyboard it
isn't even if it shares some stylistic
aspects with clickbait it isn't by the very definition
clickbait it's awful and I'd appreciate
if you could look past a little bit of edginess and avoid painting us with the
same brush as folks putting boobs in
their thumbnails of videos about cars
and not cars with boobs just regular cars and number two if you want to
communicate with us do it in a way that's meaningful honestly I couldn't
tell if this thumbnail thing was a serious problem or just more background
noise from haters like whatever the hell
prompted 500 people to dislike this this
really cool piece of content where we took the time to Benchmark 10 years of
video cards there was a lot of time or the like like the truckload of poorly
researched comments informing me that my server room is
flammable try this if there's something
that you liked about the video help us
then help us drown out the peanut gallery with a like and an on topic
comment we really do read those and these things boost search rankings and
suggested video placements behavioral conditioning 101 guys
positive feedback is more powerful than negative and negative loses its impact
if you aren't also remembering to let us know when we've done something right and
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start getting done today so thanks for watching guys if you
disliked this video as always hit the dislike button but please make sure
there's a reason for it if you liked it hit the like button though get
subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured which I guess wasn't really anything at the
link in the video description and also check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one in our community
Forum which you should totally join