For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
Plenty of good creators do this (as it works), just to keep up with their peers. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the rest of their content. Don’t blame the player, blame the game IMO
I would far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll than be subjected to in-content advertising and begging from the creators. Certainly, creators would prefer to do their thing instead of beg and scrape.
What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
> far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll
I don't think this holds true for most people. PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing, and eclipsed now by all-you-can-stream services. The feeling of continually inserting coins, or the taxi meter running, is uncomfortable to many people.
This is true, but I think fails to be a good counter-example. PPV has always been expensive and focused on single events. What we haven’t seen is AWS style small payments.
Imagine if instead of paying $100/mo for cable TV, we could pay $0.25/hr. If you watched TV 24x7, you’d pay more, but the vast majority of people would pay much less.
The main problem with smaller amount PPV and micro transactions in general is that it is hard to get the billing/accounting right. But this is something that could vendors get right. You only pay for what you use, and what you get is billed in small enough increments that it makes sense for everyone involved.
How this could be applied to online videos, I’m not sure.
Micropayment news services have existed (Blendle). Unpopular.
Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche. So is the a-la-carte gym membership. It's not that billing/accounting is difficult. It's that it plain straight up makes less money. SAAS vs one-time upgrades, etc.
The reason for that is that it's much more expensive than paying by the month. I wanted pay-as-you-go specifically because I have nearly zero need for cell service, but would prefer to be reachable even if I'm not at home.
But you can't get a pay-as-you-go plan with pay-as-you-go pricing. T-mobile's monthly plan now is "$15" (actually something like $16.60) per month. The pay-as-you-go plan would cost less than that, given usage rates, except that it also costs $1 for each day you use it to any degree. The incredibly high minimum fee overwhelms the already small advantage of not paying for service you don't use -- as soon as you use any service, you get charged for more than a full day of every service, and then you have to pay a usage rate on top of that!
Make them nonprofit foundations democratically run rather than middlemen biding their time until they can increase their margins or sell to a megacorp.
You're not wrong though. Most creators probably hate asking for stuff.
Personally I refuse to do this and my channel on youtube still grows but it is probably growing a lot slower than if I had been begging.
Since I do it for fun and not profit I couldn't give a damn though.
He is the only one I can think of that doesn't do this and it makes me personally much more inclined to watch him. He also feels "uncommercial" even after 10 years I think it's fantastic that he is able to keep it that way.
While I haven't taken time to measure this out to academic standards, it's extremely obvious in niche interest channels - eg I'm into synthesizers, and there's a whole little subsystem of review videos, technique videos, not-talking demos, jam sessions etc. The more heavily branded/self-promoting presenters tend to get vastly more views. My favorite reviewer centers the equipment under review and makes occasional appearances talking to the camera, but his maximum views tends to be near the average minimum for reviewers who center themselves, eg always being on-screen in a box, mirror, or direct-to-camera shot and always showing their face and a relevant emotional reaction to the subject of the video in the poster frame. I'm sure the same patterns play out in many other specialist topics.
To some extent this may be a product of the Infamous Algorithm, but it might also reflect cognitive preferences of viewers in that many people prefer to have information mediated by a recognizable presenter whose reactions and emphases become more meaningful with repeated views, while others like me find an overly-expressive presenter distracts from the material under discussion and gravitate towards a more subdued/restrained communication style.
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan distinguishes between 'hot' and 'cool' media which employ more or less intensity to solicit and maintain attention. 'Hot' styles with a charismatic and overtly solicitous presenter seem to be more popular in general, so even people who don't like that style may end up adopting it to gain viewership in a competitive market. There might be a market opportunity here for catering to different kinds of viewers, eg a 'CoolTube' for people who strongly prefer a more low-key presentation format.
Incidentally, I sometimes do prefer hot 'in-your-face' sort of media, especially on things like experimental music videos or the occasional guilty pleasure of a cheesy monster movie. It's just a hunch, but it seems to depend on things like a rapid tempo of editing and high levels of discontinuity/unpredictability rather than spatial maximalism.
Same here. There are some YouTube channels I really want to watch and follow as I can learn new skills from them, but the constant begging and over-dramatization is a real turnoff so I cannot watch it without feeling bad about it.
I have a similar feeling about people who takes photos of themselves all the time and their social feed is filled with the photos they take of themselves. I can't take a photo of myself without feeling vain, and I'm getting passive-vain feelings when I see friends of mine posting selfie after selfie of themselves...
I also recommend this blog post about the best way to ask for subscribers: https://reneritchie.net/how-to-get-subscribers-on-youtube-ev...
I've never done any of these things, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it, but I consider it required knowledge for anyone with any interest in leveraging online attention.
My point was simply that I find it unappealing pleasure viewing, so I don't understand wanting to watch them do it.
I am aware two things:
1.) If they earn money from youtube, they need likes and subscriptions so that youtube algoritm shows them to more people.
2.) I as a programmer earn more money with less effort then them. I also very likely have to deal with less bs (like harassments and jerks trying to insult you or take you down for lolz).
A combination makes me accept that these people are doing entertainment as work, I consume that entertainment for free and thus am absolutely fine with them trying to succeed.
There is also absolutely nothing wrong with entertainers wanting attention. That is what pays their bills, without attention they cant be successful. Attention is not dirty word to me.
Lots of educational channels I watch do it, and I fully understand why they do it.
I mean really? Do creators realize that viewers could be interested in several dozen channels and don't want to swamp out their own notifications since Youtube's prioritization gets shittier the more you subscribe to? Sorry you aren't in my top 10? Maybe a video got popular on an algorithmic whim...
I'd much rather they ask me to join a Patreon, which I am very keen to do if the content is good and continues to do so. But pulling that "peek behind the creator curtain" crap puts me very off because it's like trying to shame you into behaving differently as if you're part of the problem.
No... you decided to make Youtube your source of income. I don't owe you crap.
It’s actually a problem with all “favorites” on every platform. A browser bookmark system with notifications (a little dot) would be great, because then you can sort/categorize/describe/thimbnail/speeddial it, but platforms crave for stupidity and make it a non-configurable list instead.
I used to as well but realized platforms like YouTube effectively force the creators to do it.
I do too, but not without first hitting the dislike button. I only wish others would do the same.
People who don't say those words exist, but you won't find them very easily. There's a reason for that.
Nagging and soliciting subs and likes is fucking annoying. If you want me to like a video, make a good video and stop nagging.
If I dislike those naggers enough, maybe Google's stupid artificial non-intelligence will eventually learn to recommend only videos from non-naggers. I try, even though I don't have much faith in Google's algorithms.
And here I'm telling that maybe people should stop listening to annoying naggers and just dislike & close the tab, maybe block the channel too if it keeps coming up in recommends.