this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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This is a very good test, and the car should have past. That said though, I hate the click bait format where they show a stupidly obvious cartoonish wall, when the real wall is way more convincing.
The Video:
That sort of clickbait is 100% sure to get a "do not recommend channel" from me, I'm so sick of it. And it's sad when the video has such a good point.
The Clickbait
I can see it's kind of funny, but it's misleading.
YouTubers - especially large channels like this - constantly A/B test with different thumbnails and stick with whatever one drives the most traffic (no pun intended) to the video.
You might not like it, but it’s unfortunately the reality of operating a content creation business on an algorithm-driven platform.
There are plenty of channels I follow that make fantastic videos, but sometimes you have to tolerate the shitty thumbnails because that’s just the reality of the system they’re operating within.
Yeah, that is just how youtube works. You as an individual can say you don't like annoying thumbnails and titles, but they 100% work. And channels that don't use them are just not getting as many viewers.
And what is this "algorithm" based on? Actual user behavior. So the way to correct an algorithm is to change actual user behavior, no?
Lemme know when they release an OTA for our parietal lobes.
You realize Mark Robers target audience is like 8 years old, right? He also references looney tunes and wile e coyote a couple dozen times, including in this thumbnail you're losing your mind over. The thumbnail fits the theme very well if you ask me.
This video isn't a rigorous scientific test. This is a children's video designed to get them interested in the scientific method. Get over yourself.
IMO it doesn't need to be a rigorous scientific test, it's not trying to prove something works as it should under all conditions. It's showing the exact opposite, it does not work under this one condition, which is more than enough to disprove the safety of the car.
More than one test failed.
The Tesla failed the heavy rain and the heavy fog tests.
There's zero excuse to fail either of those tests. But the Tesla killed the kid both times.
The wall test was just to show that the Tesla cannot put together optical clues.
Have you heard of DeArrow? https://dearrow.ajay.app/
It's a browser extension that replaces clickbait thumbnails with good community sourced ones
I don’t see a problem with thumbnails that accurately portray the contents of the video, since only a small number of characters can fit in the title and a screenshot of one frame from the video doesn’t say much, so it can be difficult to get a sense for the video at a glance otherwise. I do get really annoyed with thumbnails that are deceptive in any way. If the thumbnail seems like it might be deceptive, I’ll usually read the comments before watching the video, or quickly scroll through it to see if it’s BS or not. Sometimes, the thumbnail advertises something that happens at the end of a 20 minute video that could’ve been 30s, in which case, I’ll scroll usually through to the end instead of watching the whole thing. If it weren’t for the thumbnail, though, I might not have watched it all.
Still astounded people use anything other than the subscription section on YouTube.
History turned off, subscriptions only for me.
We are in a tiny, tiny minority.
Well if your thumbnail is not good enough and catchy people will not watch it. Which wont make the channel profitable. Which will cause it to not exist.
I hope you know that usually youtubers will not even start making the video if they don’t have a killer thumbnail to it. Thats the platform.
You shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
That's more a product if the yt algorithm. For every one like you that is annoyed by the clickbait, there are a million others instantly clicking with no further thought. So if you don't do that, you're losing money.
passed
I agree with everything you said.
At this point everyone should know that YouTube thumbnails have no requirement for accuracy. It's more like an album cover.