Yeah, and the sad thing is – from all most can tell – YT has now deemed these kinds of thumbnails as practically necessary. Hard to say if it is that people are stupid, or just that a guy like Mr. Beast got popular with this style of dumb thumbnail, and thus the cycle began: Mr. Beast is popular, this is what his shit looks like…so look like that, or your views are going to suffer.
I mean, there are even studies showing it doesn’t matter if the circles or arrows point to ANYTHING, just that they’re there. And our dumb lizard brains like faces, so generally a face is going to up your chances over one without. It’s the same with clickbait titles – most people HATE making them, but they have their own data to back it up: for the vast majority who aren’t already big, it’s follow the template or lose views.
In this case, this guy is actually a solid content creator. At least his circles are pointing at something related to the content of the video. But until YT gets around to actually improving their platform – and given how they handle basically everything, even bots, that likelihood is zero – the snake is destined to continue eating its own goofy grinned, arrow and circle laden tail; A tail so big you WON’T BELIEVE it!
