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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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I would say that's YouTube in general, but even that's not true. Practically all media frequently focuses on faces.
YouTube thumbnails, social media, the rise of selfies, video calling, portraits (always been one of the most common forms of art), film posters (disproportionately feature the faces of their characters), etc.
Humans love seeing faces. We are drawn to faces, it's linked to us being an intelligent social species with complex social and familial structures. It's ingrained in us to place great attention and recognition on faces, and to glean information from them.
In fact, our brains are so obsessed with facial recognition, that we often see faces where none exist (pareidolia). That's how strong this effect is.
I get that people on Lemmy/Reddit act like seeing a face in the thumbnail is the worst thing ever, but creators do it because people want to see faces. All the data points to people being more engaged when we see faces.
And honestly, compared to other forms of trying to get people interested, such as using misleading or untrue titles, ragebait, failing to mention the video is sponsored in a way that undermines the integrity of the video, etc., including a face in a thumbnail is just about the least troublesome avenue. A face in a thumbnail is completely and utterly harmless.
It's not seeing a face in a thumbnail that bothers me. It's when the expression on the face is one of absolutely fake surprise and shock that I take issue.
Fair enough. Doesn't really change what I said though. You're very much in the minority with that take.
I think that if you asked most people if they want advertising that centers around grown adults making idiot faces at the content they created themselves they would say no.
Yes, I agree that if you ask a loaded question like that, you probably would get your desired answer.
The data, however, points to people liking it. As I explained.
You said the data shows it yet showed no data. You have explained your opinion and expect the reader to mistake is as fact.
There's mountains of data on this. It's why everybody does it.
So you keep saying.
You're right. They do it for no reason, people hate it, and it costs them views, pretty much all creators just really want to put their faces on thumbnails.
Hey, look who it is, the person who keeps replying without linking the mountains of data they're referencing.
Look who it is, the person that thinks there's a global conspiracy to make less money, solely in to put faces everywhere despite people supposedly hating it.
Bruh I just want you to supply the data you claim to be citing. It's super easy and standard practice. It is not my job to research the point I think you are making.
Or, you could simply say you don't have data to back up what you said. Either works and neither is as embarrassing as coming back to this well over and over while entirely missing that I just want to see your data.
You can find it by using a search engine of your choice. But here's a snippet from one I found in like 5 seconds:
Believe it or not, YouTube thumbnails have faces because humans like faces. As I stated. It's not some global anti-capitalist cabal conspiring to earn less profit by purposely crafting thumbnails that people don't like.
People are drawn to faces. This is an established scientific fact that I laid out in my very first comment. You aren't special. It applies to you too.
Now, do you have any data on people disliking seeing faces in media?
You're so close, now just give me a link to the data that you are citing.
And then it will still be an annoying, stupid way to advertise.
Except it's not, because it works, as I have already pointed out.
Are you stupid? It gets more people watching the video, and maintains engagement throughout the video when they see faces. If you think successfully getting people to watch your videos is "stupid", then you're clearly a bit clueless.
I'd be careful asking people if they're stupid and speculating that they're clueless when you are apparently unwilling to producing a link to the data you quote.
Eh, I just ignore thumbnails in general. If I'm subscribed, it's because I like the content, so only the title matters. If I'm looking for videos to watch, I actively avoid the ones with click-bait thumbnails because I know it's going to be a bad video.
You probably think you do that. But this is the same kind of take as people who say "advertising doesn't work on me"
You're probably not the exception to human psychology.
That's a statistically reasonable assessment, but I don't think it's true, at least for me. I've looked at lists of the top YouTubers, and I've watched pretty much none of their videos. The channels I subscribe to generally have between 500k and 2M subscribers, so they're somewhat popular, but far from the top. I've unsubscribed from channels because they started doing too much of the clickbait crap, their sponsor blocks got too long, etc. I have disabled the recommendation feed (by disabling watch history), and only watch content I've subscribed to outside the few times I specifically look something up, and my experience with YouTube got at better.
I don't know that what to tell you.