On the Grim Reality of "YouTube Face"

How incentives and algorithms are shaping what you see online

I was recently looking up an answer to a specific medical question when tragedy struck: I stumbled across an article by a respected veterinarian with advanced training and credentials, and their embedded video thumbnail had peak…

YouTube Face

I won’t put that individual on blast by naming them or posting their cringe-worthy image, but there is no need: If you have been on YouTube in the last ten years, you know exactly what I’m talking about—huge open mouth gasp, contorted facial expression miming shock or disgust, usually embellished with hyperbolic titles in ALL CAPS with LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!1!!111!! Bonus points for garish neon background and cheesy clip-art graphics 👇

Cringe.

This trend has been going on for a while. It may have started with the YouTube star Mr. Beast, who discovered through A/B testing different thumbnail images that the ones with that dumbass expression got more views. Other content creators and influencers followed suit, and soon enough, the subtle tweaks of the platform algorithm pushed more of those videos into searches and feeds rather than less cartoonish ones. And since many creators publish their work on multiple platforms including, but not limited to, YouTube, the contagion spread over social media. This article from the AV Club sums it up:

…somebody “discovered that including a facial reaction tended to boost views further (perhaps manipulating some kind of feeling of empathy or morbid curiosity in the pain of others?).” As people got more desensitized to the facial expressions, the reactions got more extreme. Now, nearly every thumbnail features somebody looking cartoonishly shocked, disgusted, or furious at whatever is going in the video. It’s only after you click it that you realize you’re in for a 15-minute build up to a uninteresting payoff.

My first reaction to that veterinarian with a severe case of YouTube face—maybe I should turn my experience into a #ReAcTiOn ViDeO??!?!?—was an annoyed eye-roll 🙄 But then as I thought about it more, it really just bummed me out. Why would a highly educated professional feel the need to stoop to this level of debasement for clicks?

The simple answer? It’s the algorithm. Anyone who has tried to make a living as a content creator online will tell you that your financial success or failure hinges on pleasing the ever-changing machine learning algorithms that dictate what people see on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X (nee Twitter), TikTok, and other platforms. In the “olden days” of social media (roughly the period from 2005-2012 or so), the posts you saw on Facebook and other sites was almost entirely from friends you were connected with in a more or less reverse-chronological order. That was before most of these tech companies had gone public and certainly before they had viable advertising business models based on mass data collection and AI.

Fast forward a decade, if your post or photo or video doesn’t fit what the shadowy math predicts will keep a user scrolling longer (and thus seeing more ads, boosting the revenue of that company), it is heavily de-prioritized, and few, if any, people see it. You may have noticed this on your own social media feeds lately, which are stuffed with promoted content you don’t even follow yet you haven’t seen posts from most of your friends in ages.

A recent New Yorker article titled “Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore” describes this downward spiral in the online ecosystem:

That earlier generation of blogs once performed the task of aggregating news and stories from across the Internet. For a while, it seemed as though social-media feeds could fulfill that same function. Now it’s clear that the tech companies have little interest in directing users to material outside of their feeds. According to Axios, the top news and media sites have seen “organic referrals” from social media drop by more than half over the past three years. As of last week, X no longer displays the headlines for articles that users link to. The decline in referral traffic disrupts media business models, further degrading the quality of original content online. The proliferation of cheap, instant A.I.-generated content promises to make the problem worse.

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So, why am I writing about this? Is this simply the deranged ramblings of a middle-aged, semi-Luddite crank? I won’t deny that characterization, but I actually do have a point.

These changes to how we encounter content online have massive real world implications. It determines what news we see, influences our political and social views, and literally shapes our reality. (Look no further than the proliferation of conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce and Kate Middleton)

Junk articles about eating horse paste to treat covid-19 and kids in elementary schools using litter boxes to pee go viral on FaceBook. X just spreads right-wing conspiracy theories and—I guess appropriately for the new name—porn. TikTok creates and destroys trends overnight (remember the Stanley tumbler??), along with the ever-present worry that the Chinese government may be putting its’ thumb on the algorithm.

All of this is also rotting our attention spans. Ryan Broderick’s newsletter Garbage Day recently wrote about how YouTube and TikTok are reshaping online video:

The Washington Post put out a great piece last week addressing all of this, calling it the “beastification of YouTube,” which it describes as “hyper-engaging, fast-paced videos with frequent action on screen.” It’s also referred to as “retention editing” in thousands of tutorials you’ll find on YouTube. And this is, largely, a YouTube-driven trend.

[…]

But it’s not just YouTube that is tweaked for retention editing. It’s happening on TikTok, as well. Guides last year were saying you had to capture viewers in the first three seconds. I’ve read a few guides from this year that are now saying hooking a TikTok user has to happen in the first 1.5 seconds. There’s an oft-quoted “shoeshine boy” theory of markets, usually attributed to Joe Kennedy in the late 1920s, who said that when the boy shining his shoes had stock tips, he knew the market was about to collapse. Well, here’s a similar rule for digital video: If you’re trying to optimize your video in microseconds, the video pivot is probably already over.

“Hooking a TikTok user has to happen in the first 1.5 seconds” (!!!)

Man, that’s bleak. Like something out of a dystopian novel, but real life.

Google search results are widely considered to be declining in quality, in large part due to overuse and abuse of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This printer review at The Verge is a very meta piece of satire that both mocks, and employs out of necessity, the proliferation of SEO spam and AI-generated copy.

SEO is also responsible for the annoying trend of long-winded narrative stories bloating recipes on cooking blogs. Short, simple instructions are harshly penalized by the Google algorithm, so people adapt to include unnecessary anecdotes.

Not content to simply have overwhelming market share in the search engine game, when California drafted legislation that would require revenue sharing with news outlets that Google scrapes for data without linking, they literally threatened to choke off traffic to those sites who support the bill. You know, like a normal company does, and totally not a mafia protection racket. Don’t believe me? Ask Google themselves, who helpfully wrote an entire blog post about their blackmail scheme.

Finally, for interested readers who want a deeper dive on how AI and SEO are breaking business models and reshaping the Internet, I would recommend you listen to this excellent episode of the Ezra Klein Show podcast:

So, what the hell do we do about all of this?

I won’t dissuade anyone from boycotting any of these Big Tech companies, and personally, deleting all of my social media apps from my phone has made a world of difference in my stress level. I’ve also moved to smaller, private search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t bias your results and browsers like Brave that don’t track your data. But we largely don’t have that much control over these companies or the algorithms they deploy.

What we do have control over is our own actions. And I think after years of inertia and accepting the status quo, it is up to us as consumers and content creators to work towards a better information ecosystem.

In my opinion, this starts by embracing a little thing called FRICTION. During the last tech bubble, “frictionless” became the buzzword du jour. Every app and website made its’ primary pitch making things easier, be it hailing a cab, ordering food delivery, or getting your news and entertainment. The whole idea was to take thinking out of the equation to capture your eyeballs for ads and then sell you stuff.

In the name of convenience, we have arrived at a place in 2024 where we are metaphorically force-fed “low-calorie” information (often mis-information) of murky provenance. Even the name “feed” on these platforms conjures up farm animals passively consuming whatever they are served.

I would argue that while it might be annoying to take extra time and effort in our already packed lives to slow down, “chew our food” (to continue the metaphor), and even decide if we like what we’re eating before we keep gorging (scrolling), it is absolutely WORTH IT.

Take a little extra time to find trusted sources of information, rather than clicking on thinly-veiled SEO content farm garbage that goes viral.

Get back into your early 2000s habit of bookmarking your favorite websites and visiting them directly, instead of relying on search results or whatever pops up on social media or push notifications.

Read the whole article, don’t just get enraged by the headline and mindlessly re-share.

Cross-check things that seem suspicious with other sources.

Re-discover the pleasure of reading long-form articles and books! Even a trashy crime thriller novel has more linguistic “nutrition” in it for your brain than a bunch of Tweets or LinkedIn “broetry.”

Actively challenge your attention span to go for longer stretches without interruption, even when watching TV or videos online. Learn to recognize the sensation of boredom, and let it pass while you finish what you started, instead of anxiously clicking to the next video or post.

I can virtually guarantee that if you shift your media “diet” from a passive, low-quality one to a more active, engaged, and mindful intake of high-quality content, you will be a better informed citizen and less stressed to boot! Frankly, these days if you have the ability to read a book from beginning to end and retain even a little of what it says, it’s a genuine rarity and akin to having superpowers.

And this goes double for those of us who write and produce media for a living. Have a little dignity for God’s sake, don’t blindly chase the latest trends that go viral from moment to moment!

Resist the urge to write click-bait headlines. Stop being reflexively contrarian or posting deliberately provocative articles that aim to maximize engagement through anger. Don’t make over-hyped or false promises that will leave people feeling disappointed at the end of your work.

You will probably sacrifice some short-term followers and even revenue. My Substack growth has been slow, and I’m sure I could have growth-hacked my way to a larger audience and lots of money if I was willing to SEO the crap out of every post, sell ads, start a TikTok, focus on hit pieces about corporations in vetmed, or plug snake oil supplements (complete with affiliate links for revenue-sharing, of course!) But I refuse to do anything that would compromise my values. And I will never publish anything I don’t believe in for personal gain.

For all that you lose, you will build a reputation for integrity and a loyal audience that follows you for the right reasons. This is also a good long-term business strategy: Many legacy media companies that relied on Google search and social media for web traffic are struggling as the algorithm shifts and diverts users elsewhere, resulting in them going bankrupt, slashing their workforce, or being sold for parts to bigger conglomerates.

To put a modern spin on the words of Job in the Bible:

“The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm taketh away”

As social media companies continue to struggle and AI-generated slop floods search engines, the Internet as we know it is changing, even decaying. This could be a bad thing if the degeneration continues. However, this could also be the wake up call we need; most people I know aren’t pleased with the Web as it exists in 2024. Maybe this moment represents an opportunity to pivot to something better.

The choice is ours. Make it a good one.