New Highlights Video, In Which Diddy Kong Comes To My House And Smashes A Barrel Over My Head, Killing

new highlights video, in which Diddy Kong comes to my house and smashes a barrel over my head, killing me instantly

it's sunday but it's not gonna be spirit tracks just yet because i need something to warm back up after i've been out for [checks watch] a month

hey what if i finally streamed again today. would that be fucked up or what

no more playing coy: i'm back on my bullshit. more details to follow, watch this space.

In which I ease back in to streaming and talk about where I've been lately! The stadiums this time were laser focused on flying, and it either went very well or very VERY terribly...

so i tried to clickbait. here's how it went

clickbait is not a regular thing for me, because i'm not somebody who wants to "grow my channel." in all honesty, i really just want the video i invested time into making to hit something like 100 views. that, to me, is what "success" looks like – i've hit it with over half of my stream highlight reels so far, and all i want to do is maintain that same momentum. (any more views and the comment section starts to become a source of anxiety.)

unsurprisingly, my "successful" videos are about games that people actually want to watch. think like Mari0 having a niche creator community, or people who look up the true final boss in the latest Kirby game. videos that aren't as successful are about over-represented games like Splatoon, or games that are too niche or out-of-date like Frogger.

typically i have the luxury of making whatever videos i want, because i'm not trying to "grow." but the latest video i put out was a bit of a special case – i knew upfront that practically nobody would want to watch it, and i most likely wouldn't hit my usual 100 views. but i was also highly confident that this video would be fun to watch, a breezy 8 minutes of good laughs and silly commentary.

so i asked myself: how do i get people to watch a video that i'm really confident in, when that video is about Eragon for the PS2?

i really hope i never have to look at this box art again.

let's be honest – no layperson would actually sit down and watch a video about Eragon: The Movie: The Game. if i put that in the title, no matter how much i dress it up with "This Is A Bad Game Lmao," it's going to be crickets.

people who watched the stream or heard me talk it up would absolutely be interested! but that's not enough by itself to reach 100 views; previous videos have proven this, and i only have so many friends. if i want more eyes on it, i have to play the algorithm game – and i am not well-versed in the youtube meta, so i'm flying blind here.

i got to thinking. it's a video i'm confident in. it's short, snappy and sassy, exactly my style. i think people would love it, if they clicked on it. how do i get people to click on it?

…why not just be honest?

i can feel my blood pressure rising just looking at this.

it's a kind of heavy-handed title, honestly. it's a little too on the nose, a little too disrespectful of the viewer's tastes. it is also – or at least i hoped it was when i wrote it – extremely earnest about its intentions, and surprisingly compelling in an anti-invitation kind of way. "come see what is so bad that i would not dare speak its name." that kind of thing.

the thumbnail is also cute, which helps take the edge off. should've made the text bigger, but Oh Well. it's not like that's the most important part here – it's the title that carries this one.

but did it work?

it's complicated.

i mean, i hit my goal of 100 views! that's worth celebrating! it worked just enough to reach my usual metric of success. but only just.

to see exactly what i'm talking about, we need to look at watch time, rather than views.

views and watch time, respectively, for the first 24 hours of the video.

here's the stats for the first 24 hours of the video, before the algorithm picked it up. on the watch time graph (bottom) you can see a very strong stair-step pattern; each step is somebody who watched the whole video, while the tiny bumps show people who watched the first few seconds and clicked away.

now, the wild thing is… my stats are so low that i can see this at all! i can literally go and count the number of people who have watched the whole video. it has the effect of making me rather neurotic about my analytics, but that's a discussion for another day…

either way, the point is that we can see 10 or 11 people actually watched the whole thing, out of 35 views in the first day. this is a really strong proportion, and it's mostly because my friends are the first to watch the videos i put out. (i'm really glad you people like my nonsense 💙)

as mentioned, though, i don't have 100 friends. that's fine, youtube will find more eyes for my video once the algorithm picks it up.

the full set of impressions and views, respectively, with a line marking the first 24 hours.

by looking at the impressions you can see youtube's algorithm slowly kick in; it was quite the slow burn this time, and i think that's because i released the video on a weekend. regardless, we can see views tick up at the same rate as impressions, more or less, gaining almost 100 more views on top of the 35 views it got in the first 24 hours.

these views were mostly driven by the home screen:

by the way, which of you weirdos have notifications enabled for my channel? i mean, thanks! but why?

this means that people went out of their way to click on it; they were interested enough by my clickbait to say, okay fine, let's see what this nonsense is about. the clickbait more or less worked…

except that it didn't translate to watch time at all.

the full set of watch time, with a line marking the first 24 hours.

after the first 24 hours, a grand total of six people have watched the whole thing, out of the 100 more views it's gotten since! that's a lower proportion than most of my other highlights videos get on average.

we can break this down even further by looking at watch time specifically from people who found the video on their home screen, because YouTube lets you look at that:

kinda scary how granular you can get with this, honestly!

unlike the stair-step pattern mentioned earlier, the big slope in the middle of this graph is made of a bunch of people who only watched bits and pieces of the video. in other words, the slope represents all the people who clicked on it, figured out what the game was, and then stopped watching. so the clickbait did work, but it translated to very little meaningful engagement.

now, this could be for any number of reasons! folks who watched the video know that i started with a hook in the first 30 seconds, kept my introductory explanation brief, and then followed that up with all the best parts of the stream. i do think that, as a highlights reel, this is one of the strongest ones i've ever put together.

crucially, though, the title does not state that it's a stream highlights reel. and highlights reels are not everyone's cup of tea! maybe they were expecting a video essay, or some other kind of scripted video – something that was more discussion rather than reaction. maybe people got mad at the clickbait, so they clicked on it just long enough to get an answer and left out of spite! or maybe somebody gave my video a fair shake and just didn't like my style. i mean, it's whatever. people can like what they like.

like i said at the beginning, i'm not trying to Grow My Channel or make an empire out of this. all i really care about is one thing: if i put some effort into something and show it off to the world, i want a few people to see it and enjoy it. that's it! so when it comes to analytics i'm not looking at raw numbers, those don't matter to me. i'm looking for evidence that people like what i spent all that time making.

so my takeaway from this experiment is that clickbait is for people who like raw numbers. it'll get you clicks, sure, but those clicks are as vapid as clicks get. views don't mean much in the long run if viewers don't actually want to watch the video in the first place.

anyway, now that the algorithm has run its course, i've switched the video back to a standard title and thumbnail.

as you can see, eragon was an early adopter of youtuber face syndrome~

i like this way better, personally… but would anyone have clicked on it? who can say for sure.

this was a worthwhile experiment, though, and it reminded me of the whole reason i make videos in the first place – not to Build An Audience, but to preserve my memories in amber! i do this to collect and archive all the good times where i got to share joy with my friends – no matter whether that joy is because of the game, or in spite of it.

i'd say this title and thumbnail do a better job preserving those memories than some clickbait does.

honestly, ever since i was laid off, sunday afternoon has just not been a convenient time for me to stream anymore. it made more sense when i was working and it was my most available day

...so if i get this job, expect sunday afternoon streams to return in full force ✨️

no stream today because i need to rest up for my interview tomorrow morning... wish me luck!