$h!tty Thumbnails on Linus Tech Tips - Honest Answers Ep. 5
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,138 words · ~10 min read
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to say we've generated some complaints
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with our recent change to the style of our video titles and thumbnails would be
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a gross understatement and I want to get
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right into a discussion about that after
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this
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ad browse privately and securely with
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TunnelBear the simple VPN app try tunnel
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bear for free at the link in the video
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description honestly it's kind of hard to know where to start with something
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like this trolling you guys by playing up the greedy corporate shill perception
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that some of you have of me probably wasn't the right approach but joking
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about things is usually how I break the ice when I'm about to have an awkward
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conversation and this is going to be a
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little awkward I screw up the video title of
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our recent ryzen 3 and ryzen 5
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performance preview which was initially
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called AMD ryzen 5 and 3 tested and then
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AMD ryzen 5 and 3 previewed we shouldn't have said we
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tested them because we were actually using a different CPU to simulate their
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performance and even preview upon
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further reflection wasn't quite right since well what we were previewing was
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the performance that we expected from the chips rather than the chips
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themselves so I could spin that as an
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experiment to see where the threshold was for audience tolerance for our new
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thumbnails and titles there would be some truth to that we are constantly
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making small tweaks but this this is
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honest answers and these videos wouldn't have much value if I didn't uh shoot
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straight so here it is in this case I
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didn't think it was a big deal to draw viewers in with an admittedly misleading
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title because I was so confident in our
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testing methodology and I was so
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confident that the viewers who I would draw in with such a title would turn out
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to be amped to see the benchmarks that we worked so hard on to say that
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backfired would be putting it pretty mildly and the damage is actually deeper
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than it appears on the outside one positive takeaway here is that I did get
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absolute confirmation of my theory that there's been a major shift in the way
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that YouTube handles dislikes or more
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accurately the way that YouTube handles the like to dislike ratio so my previous
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understanding was that both of them were weighted about equally and there are
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examples of viral hugely successful videos in the past that seem to have
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backed up this belief but we got to watch in this case
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in real time as YouTube buried this
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video about 10 minutes after it went live and the effect of YouTube doing
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something like that lasts for days on a
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channel so then I guess at this point some of you are expecting that what
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comes next is an on my knees apology and a a solemn promise to never again make a
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silly face or press the Forbidden key
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again and to go back to the good old days of working out of the garage hey
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guys can you guys tell me how the audio is and thumbnails with white text on a
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screen capture of b-roll from the video but while there are aspects of that
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approach that I prefer both as a consumer and a creator of content it's
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not going to happen and there are a lot of reasons why
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some of it is that Nostalgia glasses
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don't actually work very well Blades of Steel is fun but is it really a good
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game by today's standards and our old unboxing videos are similarly fun but
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they contain very little actual
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information change has been a very good
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thing for the density of information that we're able to present I mean is it
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possible if you don't like it anymore more that the tech industry changed or
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maybe you as an individual have changed
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in the last8 Years just as much as we have but a much bigger factor is this
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using so-called cancerous thumbnails
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allows our videos to stand out better in
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a search result or suggested video pain
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gaining us new viewers which is very
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beneficial for obvious reasons the old
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hard truth is that if everyone is doing
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this there's probably a reason it
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works and while I've seen every argument
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Under the Sun I read almost all the comments on our videos for why it's bad
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the cold hard truth is that none of them really hold any water number one you're
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big enough you don't need more views what think about what it would
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mean if we stopped growing YouTube as a
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platform is growing PC gaming in particular is growing I mean us being
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happy with stagnant viewership in a growing world would be kind of like your
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grandpa being happy with the same $3 an hour he made back in 1950 unacceptable
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number two people hate it you'll drive away your core audience well there is no
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doubt that some people hate it but most of the empirical evidence we've seen
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suggests that this is a very vocal
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minority to be clear unsubscribes do
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happen they're common we've lost more
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subscribers on LT than most YouTube
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channels will ever have but this is a
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natural thing people's interests change maybe maybe they even
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die but the massive waves of unsubscribes as a reaction to a
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particular piece of content are much
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rarer than the comment section would have you believe three you're pandering
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to kids by making these faces okay there are two fundamental
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problems with this one number one who cares adult enthusiasts you know
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grown-ups should be able to see a silly face without it ruining their day and
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should be pleased as punch that someone is out there creating content that gets
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younger people excited and passionate about technology and two it's nonsense
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our demographics skew older today than
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they ever have so consider that one
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debunked and honestly I could go on and on but the bottom line is this video
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production is really expensive when you
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believe that your staff should be comfortable happy and well-compensated
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then you put that money where your mouth is so with the significant investment
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all already made into making every piece of content we do another 20 minutes on a
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thumbnail that can boost viewership by no kidding up to
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20% is a no-brainer and in response to what I'm
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sure is coming next you yes you the one writing an essay about how being a
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YouTuber isn't a real job we shouldn't have all this overhead we should just do
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it out of passion like we used to one a
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job is anything you can get paid to do and we're doing okay some of us even
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wear decent clothes two to jog your
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memory I used to work at a computer store in fact every single person in
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this video has been paid to make Linus
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Tech tips videos since the moment they started making Linus Tech tips videos so
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that hasn't changed leading us to number three of course we're passionate our are
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you kidding there are a lot of things that I
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would rather not stress about like commercial property leases Insurance
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equipment breakage taxes scheduling
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dealing with staff vacation times but I
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do all of this crap that I don't enjoy
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because I am passionate about making the best videos we can and about running a
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real business that has allowed us to make seven Gamers or ultimate desk PC
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scrapyard Wars projects that wouldn't
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have been possible if I was still hand camming unboxings in a parking lot with
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Luke you can criticize me for plenty of
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stuff but slam me for lacking passion I
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mean you're probably the same people asking why I built my own server room
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instead of hiring someone to do it properly because I love playing with
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this stuff why do you think i' do it if I wasn't personally passionate about
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making Tech videos there would be no reason for me to make an embarrassing
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face in a thumbnail to try and grow this company you think I want to explain to
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my kids why I'm always looking like
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this honestly do I really even seem like
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the kind of person who needs a lot of material things to be happy do you think
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this is about the money I live in the same house house I drive the same car
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and I wear the same abominable cheap
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Footwear that I always did the only
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fancy stuff in my life is my tech
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gadgets just like before I ever set foot
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in front of a camera do you know what a lack of passion would actually look
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like plotting away day after day at the
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same kinds of videos in the same format
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with the same presentation do you have any idea how easily I can rattle off a
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power supply unboxing do you have any idea how much faster it is to generate
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our old thumbnails which coming back then to the
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beginning of our little chat doesn't mean that we haven't ever taken it too
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far so here is my proposal to help us
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communicate with each other better unfortunately I need to keep
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going like this and titling our videos
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in a way that allows us to adapt to how viewers are discovering new content but
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I won't mislead you if I say you won't
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believe this bizarre keyboard you won't believe it and what I'm asking for in
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return is this one try to understand our
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position we can't ignore the changes in
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the way that viewers are browsing content on YouTube
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if the title is representative of the content world's ugliest keyboard it
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isn't even if it shares some stylistic
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aspects with clickbait it isn't by the very definition
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clickbait it's awful and I'd appreciate
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if you could look past a little bit of edginess and avoid painting us with the
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same brush as folks putting boobs in
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their thumbnails of videos about cars
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and not cars with boobs just regular cars and number two if you want to
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communicate with us do it in a way that's meaningful honestly I couldn't
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tell if this thumbnail thing was a serious problem or just more background
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noise from haters like whatever the hell
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prompted 500 people to dislike this this
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really cool piece of content where we took the time to Benchmark 10 years of
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video cards there was a lot of time or the like like the truckload of poorly
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researched comments informing me that my server room is
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flammable try this if there's something
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that you liked about the video help us
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then help us drown out the peanut gallery with a like and an on topic
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comment we really do read those and these things boost search rankings and
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suggested video placements behavioral conditioning 101 guys
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positive feedback is more powerful than negative and negative loses its impact
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if you aren't also remembering to let us know when we've done something right and
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now another ad Fiverr is a huge digital marketplace
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so you're paired with a talented professional freelancer who can help you
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reach your goals and produce a highquality product for your brand we've
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actually contracted a few individuals to create some clickbait thumbnails for us
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so the first 300 viewers who see those thumbnails and go I would love to have a
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thumbnail like that and you use code Linus will get 20% off their Fiverr
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services so Jo # IND doers we trust and
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start getting done today so thanks for watching guys if you
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disliked this video as always hit the dislike button but please make sure
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there's a reason for it if you liked it hit the like button though get
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subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured which I guess wasn't really anything at the
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link in the video description and also check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one in our community
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Forum which you should totally join