I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then disappointing with the video content itself.
His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to me.
Here's an example of someone low-key having really valuable and informative content, with very little fluff: https://youtube.com/channel/UCGKe6VmbFOX-3C30JjEsV-g
I wonder if removing all the engaging "fluff" and just listing information reduces the impact of videos. Like, maybe the trade-off is between having a shorter, denser video so the few people who watch it can get their information in less time, versus having 10x more people watch and learn the information.
I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
Yes, including one by him, in which he specifically addresses the shortcoming of the video you are referencing and notes it's an example of what he considers a failure of him providing enough information in the video.
For the first video about the wind powered vehicle, yes i agree. It was more of a story and spectacle than any actual information. Still quite entertaining i think, but maybe disappointing if you wanted to learn something, which is usually the spirit of the channel.
It's entertainment, not a scientific lecture. As entertainment, it contained far more information that the vast majority of competing entertainment.
> and very different from the rest of his videos.
I must disagree here, I think most of his videos contain very little information as well. Less than I would like, in any case.
> It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
How is this not a good thing? It's great for people who actually want more information, and it's great for the creators who provide said information. It makes the creator community (I hate that term) healthy.
Yes. His videos are personable and pleasant to watch, but information sparse. They are more likely to leave me with the feeling of learning something than they are to impart lasting knowledge (ironically, I believe this is a problem he has discussed before, I guess that much stuck with me at least.)
His view (supported by his grad research) was that the default approach of presenting information allows viewers to gloss over how the video's information differs from their pre-existing mental models. After the video is done, they can go back to their pre-existing models without actually updating with info from the video, because as far as they're concerned, there wasn't conflict between the pre-existing model and the video's info.
His hope in showing interviews with people off the street is to get people to think about how they might answer the interview question. Get people to remember their pre-existing model. Then hit them with the contrast between their pre-existing model and the truth, so the viewer hopefully makes an attempt to incorporate the truth.
Now, this doesn't say anything about the information density of his videos. I don't think they're very information dense. This reply is just about his attempt to increase the viewer's retention of the information that is presented.
- pre-roll ads
- embedded sponsored content
- plug for your patreon/other videos
- reminder to like/subscribe/comment
- a tiny nugget of actual content SOMETIMES
- mid-roll ads
- post-roll ads
I agree that 10 minutes feels about right if you were actually trying to convey a good chunk of information in good faith, but that's just not what happens on youtube. Maybe 10 minutes was a good threshold for midroll ads for the same reason that it would have been a good threshold for quality videos.
Videos like the linked one, while technically longer, just result in more and more mid-roll ads. In fact while attempting to watch this one, I got just past his embedded sponsorship plug, when youtube ambushed me with the "Ads in 3... 2... 1..." type of ad that makes it impossible to tell just how much of the video is compromised by ads before watching it.
Part of that is making sure he can afford to do so, so we should consider holistically whether breaking from the ad roll time format is better in the end or not. if he can keep up the quantity and quality of videos, then maybe it's worth breaking with that format. If he can't, then maybe it's not.
The is a similar question as to whether scientists should break from universities and corporate labs and fund their research and experiments without ties to those institutions, which will necessarily have some impact on the science being carried out in small and sometimes large ways. Personally, I suspect that there would be a large drop in both quality and quantity if this were to become the norm.
And it's where I've ended up with my podcasts. Less than 12 or so feels like you're barely getting started and get past about 30 and, as a listener, I'm generally losing interest. It's no coincidence that longer professionally produced podcasts almost always have segments or otherwise break up the content.
I also despise YT ads. (Embedded ads are less annoying because they can be at least slightly relevant to the content.) How much time do you spend watching ads? How much is your time worth?
Some recommend valuing your personal time at $50/h. YouTube Premium family membership is $18 and gives 6 people ad-free viewing which comes to $3/person/month. At these rates you break even at 3.6 minutes of ads. That could be just 2 videos.
Six people who live in the same household, to be clear.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337668
For a deeper discussion pulling in more references and nuances, 20--60 minutes can work, but the content's got to deserve it. Excessive filler content ("Mayday: Air Disaster", The History Channel, "The Gift Shop Sketch" is of course the exemplar: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc) is absolutely maddening.
Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however the second part of the sentence says that too.
That's rather unclear and nonstandard, in my view.
While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy. To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose.
This is true across basically every business. The primary purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize, as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with the secondary purpose of health outcomes.
I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and economy works, reducing profit is always a “bad” thing. You could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe that’s true in this case, but that’s basically the whole reason clickbait exists. I’m not sure we should be that happy about it.
3 videos 10m or less
8 videos from 11m-14m
11 videos from 15m-19m
5 videos from 20m-22m
1 video at 34mI am not familiar with this phrase - is it a typo or is this just a bit of slang I have missed out on - is it a variant of this https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope
For example:
Alice: I may be ugly, but at least I’m not superficial.
Bob: Cope