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Comment by 3b1b | Hacker News Reader

In case you're curious, when I ran that title/thumbnail AB test, the option "This picture broke my brain" did end up winning. I was a bit disappointed, because I didn't really _want_ it to win, but I did include it out of curiosity. Ultimately, I changed it to the other title, mostly because I like it better, and the margin was small.

I was genuinely torn about how to title this, because one of my aims is that it stands to be enjoyed by people outside the usual online-math-viewing circles, especially the first 12 minutes, and leaning into the idea of a complex log risks alienating some of those.

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That makes me wonder: do you see a difference in when viewers drop off between using a more math-y title versus a more accessible one?

The "broke my brain" title originally put me off from watching. I caved after a few days; I think the video is one of your best!

That level of granularity would be interesting. For what it's worth, the metric they go by is not click-through rate; it's expected total watch time. For example, if you have two thumbnails, A and B, and for every 100 impressions of A, there are 51 total minutes of watch time, and for every 100 impressions of B, there are 49 total, then what you'd see in the dashboard is "51% A, 49% B". More total clicks with less engagement will not necessarily win out.

I generally agree that it's a pretty wild choice to just let creators put up multiple titles. That said, it's hard not to play with the shiny toy when it's sitting right there, especially if you know it may mean the lesson reaches more people. In this case, I genuinely don't know what the "right" title is, even setting engagement aside. Is it fundamentally about analyzing an Escher piece? Is it fundamentally a lesson on complex analysis, and complex logs in particular? It's both, but you don't always want to cram two stories into one title. This becomes all the more challenging when titles are, inescapably, marketing.

perhaps a bit inappropriate of me to say so here as it is off-topic, but i am going to take the opportunity anyways:

big thanks for all of your work making math both enjoyable and accessible. my kids (and i) love your videos. your positive impact extends far and wide.

You should be able to have different titles for different ages and education levels of users

As annoying as those titles are, the work that you (and few others, like Veritasium) do makes it well worth the tradeoff. Just keep reminding everyone that the annoying title gets the video into the brain of thousands of other people who aren't subscribed yet. It's a tiny price to pay for astounding value.

Everyone who watches your videos loves them and wants everyone else to watch them.

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