sometimes i wonder how functionally autistic i am these days and then someone tells me youtube thumbnails have annoying screaming men's faces in them because it makes NTs more likely to click them and i feel like i've landed on a terrible alien planet
@kat it also feels like... we can maybe tell more easily when things are trying to manipulate us, and deliberately avoid them because of it? like there are a ton of youtube videos that look otherwise interesting but then they have some obvious clickbait title like "thing X does THIS when you do Y??" and have some pixellated thing in the thumbnail clearly saying "if you don't watch the whole video you don't get the answer" which just feels really rude
-F
@kat we also find it really off-putting the way you see thumbnails with incredibly over-exaggerated facial expressions like that *clearly* wasn't your actual reaction to this mildly surprising thing, you're just trying to make people click on the video and also i find that kind of overacting to be really uncomfortable
-F
@kat @Felthry at least the workshop channels I watch don't dance around it "Hit that like, it really helps the channel in The Algorithm"
they're also not >8U IMMA FIRIN MY LAZOR thumbnails or clickbaity titles, thankgod
(Except for "Will It Run?", and sometimes, the answer is actually NO. but even then, it's the process of finding out that's the goal, rather than Make it run)
@Felthry ngl i get that "it makes me violently angry when i hear someone chewing" misophonia reaction when people do the SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON MY HOMIES thing where they try to pretend driving engagement for ad revenue is an act of friendship