Comment by michaelt
4 years ago
> Why do clickbaity thumbnails matter more than the content of the video?
Take for example this recent video: "We ACTUALLY downloaded more RAM" [1] complete with grinning youtube face holding a stick of RAM marked '10TB' - and it's complete bullshit.
How can I trust the opinion of someone who publishes such embarrassing nonsense?
I like how you quoted my question and then completely ignored it. The fact that you disliked the title of a video is not in any way a meaningful criticism of its content.
But okay, let's take a closer look at that video. When I saw it in my YouTube recs, I rolled my eyes at the clickbait and skipped over it, but I didn't see how it makes LTT look bad. In fact, I just gave it a fair shot and skimmed through it for myself, and it actually looks like a pretty solid explanation of memory hierarchy and swap space for beginners, packaged in a format that will increase its reach. I don't see what's bullshit about that.
Look, say what you will about clickbait, the unfortunate truth is that it gets views, which channels like LTT need to survive and grow. Linus is on the record saying he hates it, but they've done the tests to confirm that the stupid thumbnails and titles just perform better.
And come on, let's be honest here: How many people are going to click on a video titled "What is swap space?" or "You can use Google Drive for swap space on Linux" or something similarly boring? Even the best explanation in the world isn't going to get traction with a title like that. I looked for comparable videos and it looks like "What is Linux swap?" by Average Linux User (https://youtu.be/0mgefj9ibRE) is the next most-viewed video on the same topic. That video has gotten about 90,000 views since it was posted in 2019. By comparison, the LTT video has averaged about 100,000 views per day in the 16 days since it was posted.
So it looks to me like LTT took a technical topic that most people would never think about, found an angle to make it interesting to random people browsing YouTube, and tricked potentially thousands of people into learning something. What exactly is embarrassing about that?