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.
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TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 months agoI 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 prolific 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 they 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, etc., including a face in a thumbnail is just about the least troublesome avenue. A face in a thumbnail is completely and utterly harmless.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
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.
sploosh@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Fair enough. Doesn’t really change what I said though. You’re very much in the minority with that take.
sploosh@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yes, I agree that if you ask a loaded question like that, you probably would get your desired answer.