Kind: captions
Language: en
now you may have seen this thumbnail on
youtube i mean i can actually basically
guarantee that youtube has been shoving
this in your face like click click click
click it again so you might be wondering
why why did this video in particular go
viral well that is what i'm going to set
out to explain in this video
but i'm going to start with something
that seems unrelated
which is youtuber burnout now there's no
secret there have been a lot of
youtubers recently talking about burnout
people like casey neistat superwoman
ryan higa grace helbig and many many
many more
and i think when you have all of these
people with different youtube channels
different experiences they're all saying
something similar
i think it's worth understanding that
there may be sort of a common factor at
play amongst all of them so what i'm
actually going to present is a kind of
theory of everything when it comes to
youtube everything from youtuber burnout
through to videos going viral why do
videos go viral on the platform right
now
okay so you know i think as a viewer
your response to burnout might be to say
well these youtubers are just entitled
or they're soft or you know boo hoo you
have the best job in the world or your
other response might be that burnout
happens in every industry so why should
we care about this youtuber thing but i
think that youtuber burnout is a more
specific phenomenon i think there's
something particular going on here and
it all starts with the youtuber life
cycle i mean if you think about a
youtuber who's complaining about burnout
you know they've had some success on the
platform where their views are rising
and of course that's exhilarating it
feels great and you're working pretty
hard but you're seeing it pay off and
then at some point your views start to
falter so maybe you work a little bit
harder but things don't really change
and and the views you know continue to
fall i think there's a certain thing to
do with the psychology of anchoring here
you know once you have a certain number
of subscribers then you know 100 000
views which might be amazing in the
beginning feels like a horrible
disappointment
so there's a real problem between sort
of expectations and reality and to me
this is a big part of why youtuber
burnout happens
now if you look at what the youtubers
are saying about this
you find that a lot of them are taking
responsibility themselves and they're
also making some clear cause and effect
relationships
which you know
kind of seemed to make sense okay so
this idea we assume that views reflect
something about video quality we kind of
make that assumption and so when there
are you know fewer views taking place
that means the video is lower quality
this is just kind of i think instinctive
but i want to question that i also want
to question these youtubers who
essentially put the blame on themselves
and say you know they're just not making
as good videos anymore to me i think
there's something else at play and it is
the system
so from time to time i like to go over
to google trends where you can basically
search any search term and see how much
traffic there is how many people are
searching that term at any given time
and if you search for veritasium
basically since 2004 you see
well this kind of curve which might make
you ask the question where on the
youtuber life cycle do you think i am
and of course this little spike here is
from my black hole videos this over here
uh must be some harry potter fans who
are bad at spelling so this is how much
people are searching for me which i
think kind of correlates to you know how
much my videos are being shown on
youtube and how much people are watching
them and enjoying them now let's look at
a a similar channel for comparison how
about the channel
number file it's also an educational
channel but it's uh you know very
different made by very different people
and with very different schedules very
different topics that we've tackled and
yet these graphs look pretty similar
let me have a look at one more
so this is the asap science curve
so here you have veritasium numberphile
and asap science three educational
youtube channels which all follow a
fairly similar pattern
on google trends
so
my question is you know why is this why
should we follow a similar trend well
the obvious answer is
the algorithm
and the algorithm has a very important
job because in traditional media there
are not that many works produced i mean
in american theaters last year there
were about 800 films
800 films that's it on tv there were 500
scripted tv shows but when it comes to
youtube it doesn't even compare
i mean i don't even think that they
advertise the number of hundreds of
hours uploaded uh every minute the
obvious analogy is that you're really
just seeing the tip of the iceberg but
in the case of icebergs you see you know
almost 10 percent of the ice above the
surface in the case of youtube you're
seeing just the tip of the tip of the
tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg
basically statistically speaking you
were ignorant of everything on youtube
and yet
youtube claims that they have this
algorithm which you can think of like
the brain of the platform that can
connect an audience that knows almost
nothing of what's on the platform to the
particular types of content they like
and in the best case they would argue
youtube would argue that the algorithm
is basically the audience you know the
audience decides what they want to watch
and and the algorithm is just reflecting
that but of course we are not in this
ideal world and the audience itself is
always kind of shifting
and changing who they are and what they
like to watch and so the algorithm you
can think of as following the audience
the the algorithm is is chasing this
audience around and trying to reach them
now what youtube doesn't much consider
is that well the youtube creators use
their content to try to
uh chase the algorithm so these
youtubers who would love to be creating
content about you know whatever they're
most passionate about in whatever way
they also see what's popular on the site
and they try to make content that will
please the algorithm and so there's a
way in which the content is chasing the
algorithm the algorithm is chasing the
audience and if the content actually
manages to catch up with the algorithm
you get a kind of perverse situation
in which the algorithm
is the content
i mean what do i mean by that
just a crazy thought experiment if
youtube wanted more videos of snails
they could make that happen they don't
actually have to go out and make any
snail videos if they just you know
promoted videos with snail in the title
tomorrow there's going to be a whole
bunch on the front page and trending and
then creators be like oh snails are the
new thing and they're going to go make a
bunch of videos about snails
youtube would love to believe that that
creators don't care about the algorithm
but they do it's like the core aspect of
how creators decide what content to make
just as a more
down to earth example
i can show you a graph of the length of
my videos from 2011 through to today and
what you see is at the beginning
all of my videos average about two or
three minutes in length but these days
i'm fast approaching an average length
of video of 10 minutes
now youtube never came to me and said
derek you have to make longer videos all
they said was
well videos that are longer and get
longer watch time will be promoted more
on the site
so
people like myself and you know all the
other creators who wanted to be seen we
made longer videos it's just what we did
now we know that the algorithm is always
changing they're always trying to
optimize it make it work better but they
also change
what it's trying to optimize for in the
beginning it was simple just views but
they quickly figured out that of course
like a 20-minute view is worth a lot
more than a five second view so the
actual metric should be watch time and
this uh was advantageous to people like
gamers because people like to watch
people play video games for long periods
of time they also reduce the latency of
the algorithm by which i mean it updates
every 10 minutes instead of say every
day and that's beneficial for
news content and things that are really
time sensitive and to me
as a youtuber what this means is it's
impossible to be an expert on youtube if
you look at what it takes to become an
expert at anything according to the
nobel prize winning economist daniel
kahneman you need of course many many
hours of practice effortful deliberate
practice and on youtube i would argue we
get that you also need timely feedback
and again on youtube we're given plenty
of tools to be able to see how our
videos are performing but when it comes
to a reliable environment this is an
environment in which the rules of the
game aren't changing so you can think of
something like chess it's possible to be
a chess expert because in the middle of
a game of chess the rules don't suddenly
change on you now on youtube that is not
true
we are not playing by the same rules the
whole time because the algorithm is
constantly changing and so that puts us
in this position where it's kind of
impossible to be experts and instead
we're a little bit more like
caged pigeons okay go with me on this uh
there was this famous experiment where
you know pigeons were put in a cage with
a lever and uh if they pushed the lever
then they would get some food and so
they very quickly learned that they
needed to push the lever and the food
would come out so that's fine but in
another part of the experiment they
disconnected the lever from the food
output and they just supplied food into
the cage kind of at random
and what did the pigeons do
well they started to do the types of
behaviors that they were doing when the
food appeared so if one was preening
itself then it would keep preening
itself with the expectation that food
was coming and this one maybe it was
pecking the ground so the point being
they started to engage in these
superstitious behaviors um because they
had related some sort of cause and
effect but there actually wasn't a cause
and effect there and to me this partly
explains the whole youtube burnout
phenomenon because you have these
creators who are stretching themselves
to try to chase that algorithm meanwhile
the algorithm is constantly shifting and
so you never feel like an expert and
never quite know what's going on even
though you're constantly trying to
relate cause and effect now i can
understand why the algorithm has to
change i mean in the early days of
youtube it was this situation where if
you had subscribers you were golden
because the next time you uploaded some
content then youtube would show it to
all your subscribers you'd get a ton of
views youtube would say oh this is a
popular video show it to even more
people getting you even more subscribers
so the next time you launch another
video then it goes to more subscribers
more views and it was just this positive
feedback loop where you would grow and
grow and grow a channel so the rich got
richer and small channels stayed small
so obviously we needed something to
break the cycle and so youtube started
doing some experiments where they would
essentially you know
change what was recommended to your
audience so they would stop showing some
of the content from certain subscribers
and they saw what happened to views
so they started really disconnecting the
subscribers from the channel no longer
was a subscription like i want to see
every video by this person it was more
of like a suggestion that maybe
something this person creates is
something i might like to see
and what youtube found when they did
that was that the number of views on the
platform the amount of watch time all
rose dramatically so for youtube to get
growth of the site they found that
reducing the importance of subscriptions
was essential and this kind of makes
sense if you think about it i mean if
you make one great video that doesn't
necessarily mean that every video you're
gonna make is gonna be great so it makes
sense for youtube to step in and play
some role in terms of determining what
gets shown to which audience members now
as has been observed by matpat
previously
moving away from subscriptions
moves youtube back to
what it was like to sell newspapers on
the street you really had to inspire
people to buy on the spot you have to
serve up really sensational news items
this is also called yellow journalism
it was only once the newspapers built
subscription models that you know
newspapers could make sober journalism a
reality something that they focused on
because they already had your eyeballs
they didn't have to fight for that sort
of attention they didn't have to be as
sensational but youtube is going in the
opposite direction
reducing the importance of subscribers
means increasing the importance of
sensationalism and clickbaity thumbnails
and so
a few weeks ago i was out at the creator
summit in new york and i met mr beast i
showed him some of the footage from this
video i was working on about the shade
balls in l.a reservoir and mr beast took
one look at it and he said to me
that's a banger
which i think is pretty funny but i
think clearly he knew that this was
going to be a video that would take off
and uh we talked about titles and
thumbnails you might have noticed that
the thumbnail borrows a bit from say his
work with serial and orbeez in backyards
and i told him that i was thinking about
calling it something like throwing shade
balls
and he was like
no
he suggested why are there 96 million
black balls on this lake
now i changed it to reservoir because i
mean
let's be real that's what it is but it
just goes to show how important the
title and thumbnail are what i learned
talking to mr beast was that going viral
you can boil down to two
metrics you need to do two things with
your video in order for it to go viral
and i mean tens of millions of views as
his channel shows okay the first thing
maybe not surprising is watch time so
when people click on your video they
actually have to watch a significant
portion of it it's useful if that's sort
of seven or eight minutes now that is
the actual time that they watch so you
need a longer video than that say 15
minutes if you want the average watch
time to be around that seven or eight
minute mark now for me watch time is not
that exciting of a metric to know that i
have to hit because i know that most
people already watch most of my videos
so for me the big insight came with
number two if you want a viral video you
need to have a high click-through rate
so that is the total number of clicks on
your titles and thumbnails divided by
the number of times that title and
thumbnail have been shown that is your
click-through rate and mr beast showed
me this graph showing that as you
approach you know 10 20 30 click-through
rate then the number of views and the
number of impressions that video will
get just skyrockets it jumps
dramatically
now on the one hand that kind of makes
sense because you know people are
clicking a video obviously you're going
to get more views
but it is such a dramatic increase that
it really turns the site into a place
where the title and thumbnail are
everything you can have a great video
but unless you have a great hook to get
people in it's not going to go viral
and so it was amazing to hear all these
different youtubers talk about how they
optimize a thumbnail many people told me
that when they were working on a
thumbnail for a new video they would
actually photoshop it onto
a screenshot of their current youtube
home screen in various positions and
just see how eye-catching it was they're
really working hard to make these
thumbnails as clickable as possible it's
like weaponizing the thumbnail and that
arms race is only set to increase with
the introduction of real-time
click-through rate which is coming out
in a month or two so what you can bet
will happen is that creators will launch
a video and then they'll be sitting
there with all these different variants
of thumbnails and they'll be swapping
them out and looking at what that does
to click-through rate and then going
with the one that leads to the greatest
click-through rate
and you can imagine if you don't do this
you're going to be left behind because
all the other creators are are sitting
there swapping their thumbnails to get
the highest engagement that they
possibly can on their videos and if
you're not doing that then your videos
will end up getting buried
so
acknowledging that this is the reality
of youtube i want to outline to you
my plan for what i will do going forward
first and foremost
i want to keep making high quality
videos because if i don't do that i'm
not going to be happy i won't be
satisfied and neither will you but
second of all
i'm going to have to choose
topics that are more clickable because
frankly if i'm going to work
for days and weeks and months on a video
i would like that video to get say 10
million views instead of half a million
so a lot of that comes down to is this
topic
clickable
and so number three
i'm gonna have to use some click baity
titles and thumbnails
and uh i apologize for that but it just
seems like it's an existential threat
that if you don't do that uh your
channel will not be around for very long
and you'll be on that sort of downward
slide i'd love to know what you think if
you think it's a good idea a bad idea uh
i'm totally open to hearing you out i
mean casey neistat talked about how he's
gotta trust his audience you know to
come back to him the truth is the
audience only knows you're there
if they see your titles and thumbnails i
went to buy something at b h a little
while ago and
the guy was like oh hey i love your
videos
and then he said are you still making
them
and i was like yeah yeah i'm making how
do you not know and i also see comments
on my videos where people are like oh
great here's a veritasium video see you
again in six months but i'm like no i'm
making these every week every other week
like i'm making them you just gotta know
that they're here but you can only know
that they're there if they surface to
the tip of the tip of the
tip of the iceberg
which now is a click-through rate game
[Applause]
on the one hand you could be a little
bit disappointed
by the way the game is working right now
but on the other hand i challenge you to
think of a better way
because they have this limited real
estate in which to show people potential
videos they might be interested in
and of course
they want to put the videos there that
people are most likely to click and then
most likely to watch once they've
clicked it and like part of me is like
yeah i guess that's kind of fair like
would you make the argument that you
should put some videos there that people
are less likely to click
no i mean that doesn't seem to make any
sense
so i kind of feel like this is the
inevitable
rational
endpoint for any algorithm that is
trying to optimize what people are
watching we want to give you the things
that you want to watch and you indicate
your desire by clicking on them
but by doing that it also means that
things that are just less catchy less
sensational
don't rise
into this
level here and
i wonder
more broadly
how does that affect us how does that
affect the youtube platform if the
youtube platform becomes like a real
click bait site
who wants to go there what types of
audience will will come there will there
even be an audience for educational
content
i think it's all these decisions about
the system and the algorithm that
determine what
the actual media looks like what content
is created
what people come to the site what
audiences are served there
and i think this is a broader issue than
just youtube i mean
everywhere now we can be served the
things that we really want but what does
that world look like i mean you might
have thought it would be this utopia
but i would argue that it's not
because it it silences all these voices
that you would otherwise get you know in
a more curated
marketplace
if you're just going for the things that
drive the clicks
that is a very skewed view on the world
and i'm not sure it's for the best
but there is
one way on youtube at least to
short-circuit
this effect
and it is
[Applause]
to ring that bell
and you're like oh the whole point of
this video is to get to this point and
tell you to ring the bell i mean
no
if you want to ring the bell
i encourage you to do that now because i
feel like i never encourage people to
subscribe or ring the bell on this
channel because
it seems needy and i think you can do
whatever you want whenever you want it
but in this ecosystem where
click-through rate is king where
millions of black balls on a reservoir
is the thing that is going to rise to
the surface
uh the only way to get around that is to
have people who are notified every time
i make something so i want you to think
about the videos that i've made you know
in the past and so far this year and
think about do you want to know about
every single one of those
and if you do then i encourage you to
click the bell and the more people who
do that the less i will be driven to
make clickbaity titles and thumbnails
and videos because i'll know that i can
reach my audience without having to
appeal to you know the basest instincts
of people
so if you want to see more of what i'm
doing
click subscribe ring the bell
and if you don't then please you know
unsubscribe because it's good to give
youtube as clear of signals as possible
but i think there is a bit of hope for
the future because what i've described
is the way youtube appears to be working
right now but i think
that well we know that the algorithm is
always shifting and what i've heard
is that the direction youtube wants to
go
is optimizing for long-term
satisfied
watch time
that's got three pieces
you have to look at are people coming
back time after time if they watch
someone's videos do they come back time
after time for months that would be one
signal are they watching for a long
period of time that's also a sign that
people are enjoying it and finally
there's the satisfied piece are people
satisfied
by the things that they've seen this is
a new metric to add in and how do you
really gauge satisfaction
well youtube is experimenting with
surveys
surveys just like this one
and
they will hopefully
allow us to come to a different place
where the algorithm isn't just about
click-through rate and watch time but
it's also about satisfaction how much
you're driven to come back how much you
really love the content so my great hope
is if we move in this direction there
may be a time in the future where
click-through rate is no longer king i'd
love to know what you think so let me
know down in the comments and i'm going
to jump straight into end screen here
i'm going to post a few thumbnails
for videos that are not particularly uh
clickbaity um so feel free to click
these i mean you're gonna look at them
and be like i don't wanna click that but
that's exactly the point these are
apparently good videos uh that maybe
just aren't as catchy in terms of titles
and thumbnails you wanna subscribe you
can click up here
and yeah thanks for listening to the
rant that i've given many times to
whoever will listen