Why Youtube Feels Boring Now

Behind me are 100 people and they range from the age one all the way [Music]. This is Mummy Pig.

YouTube feels boring now. Those were the exact words my friend said to me as we talked about the current state of the platform. I asked him why he felt so, and he said everything feels so polished, so commercialized, and it seems like all the creators are doing is chasing the algorithm. It's getting tiring.

I agreed that YouTube felt boring now, but he didn't really like what I said next. I told him that it's as much the audience's fault as it is the creators. This is what I mean.

I noticed a recurring phenomenon while scrolling through YouTube a couple of years ago. Several videos presented in my home feed were about the same thing. They all had slightly different clickbait titles and thumbnails with an image of a person reacting to the headline, and the topics were mostly generic. Often, they addressed cultural phenomena, historical events, or what's behind a meme. You might remember all the videos a couple of months ago about why men think about the Roman Empire all the time.

There's nothing wrong with being topical, but channels have become limited in what we can discuss. We're no longer free to follow our interests. This is a cycle I see relentlessly. The algorithm pushes a trending topic to my YouTube homepage, the same channels cover these topics, and the only new channels that pop up on my homepage are channels that are also covering these same topics. If you watch one of these things, YouTube will feed you more. Before you know it, you're drowning in videos about how Ticket Master was ruining your life, which reminds me that I should probably cover that at some point.

And then there's the Mr. Beast phenomenon. That's like what I just described, but in hyper mode. The basic premise of most of his videos is that he finds an extreme, entertaining way to spend money charitably. Each video tries to capitalize on something popular, like Squid Game, in order to drive clicks. The topics are extreme, and the videos are so fast-paced that there's no room for you to breathe, never mind clicking off. By doing this, he's achieved the Holy Grail of YouTube video success: a high click-through rate, which is the number of total people who click on your thumbnail, and a high watch time, which is the total number of time people spend watching your video.

Mr. Beast's incredible success has inspired an army of clones that imitate his model in the challenges in his videos. Within days of Mr. Beast posting a video, you'll see many similar videos from the imitators he spawned. Whereas many popular YouTube channels chase trends, these channels chase one creator. The result is a distinct lack of variety and originality.

So what exactly is going on here? Why are entertainment and even educational YouTube channels chasing trends at a dizzying level, and is that ultimately a problem? An incredible number of videos get uploaded to YouTube daily—almost 3.7 million. Without a filter, YouTube would just be a wall of noise. You'd have to rely solely on search to find things that interest you. People would likely abandon the platform, frustrated that it was hard to find anything, or it would only be suitable for its helpful tutorials and other types of videos that you'd routinely search out.

To prevent this from happening, YouTube created an algorithm. The YouTube algorithm is very complicated and almost impossible to fully understand, but for the sake of this video, here's what you probably need to know.

In the early days of YouTube, the algorithm was optimized for clicks and views. Any video that quickly garnered attention would be spread even further across the platform. A lot of memorable videos came from this era. Animated shorts were big and often the first videos to be shared when people gathered around a desktop computer. But this algorithm wasn't perfect. In fact, it was really easy to exploit with misleading titles and thumbnails. This is when clickbait originated. People would use the most extreme titles and thumbnails to get viewers to click, and the video would be nothing like what was promised.

Because of this, people started getting frustrated with the platform. So around 2012, YouTube changed its algorithm to put more emphasis on watch time. This gave longer-form content an enormous advantage and gave rise to what is regarded as the Golden Era of YouTube. Channels that made engaging longer videos, like vloggers, gaming videos, and video essay channels like the one you're watching, gained massive popularity.

Completion time also became a factor. Some channels gravitated to shorter videos with better completion rates or longer videos with better watch time. Conspiracy videos took off in this framework, as they tended to hook viewers for longer periods of time, and viewers would usually watch to completion. YouTube responded by adjusting the algorithm towards satisfaction, giving extra weight to metrics like shares and likes. They eventually targeted misinformation in content to reduce the impact of conspiracy videos and misinformation.

A channel's authority score helped determine whether they were a reliable source of information or tin foil hat nonsense. The score takes into account the number of subscribers, videos, views, quality, and more. These days, YouTube considers viewer satisfaction, authority score, watch time, number of views, trustworthiness of content, and the particular history of a given user in the algorithm. There's a lot more that goes on behind the wall of the algorithm that no one, not even YouTube's employees, can really understand.

To make it even more confusing, the algorithm changes constantly. And this is where the problem begins. Because the algorithm is constantly changing, creators like me are continually chasing trends without a reliable sense of how our videos might perform. The same type of video might result in millions of views one week while bringing in a few thousand the next.

One feature that should prevent this problem is the subscribe button, and at one point it did. Once you subscribe to a channel, you would be served all the videos that that channel made. But for some reason, that's not the case anymore. Now when you subscribe to a channel, you won't necessarily see many of their videos on your YouTube homepage. You're more likely to see Mr. Beast's big grinning face than the thumbnail of a channel you love, like this one.

Right before changes in the algorithm, having a lot of subscribers came with the benefit of regularly high viewership. That meant that creators didn't need to chase trends; they could just put out what they thought was good content, and their subscribers would see it. It allowed for more flexibility on what they could cover. If a topic seemed important to them but wasn't exactly popular, they could still produce a video about it. Maybe their audience would learn something important that they wouldn't have otherwise.

The problem was that newer channels struggled to gain any footing. This wasn't great for YouTube's growth or for channel diversity. As a result, we're now in a state where the content reflects what the algorithm wants.

So how is this your fault? Well, content reflects what the algorithm wants. What the algorithm wants is basically a representation of what the audience wants. And basically, audiences want something. The algorithm becomes aware of it, and the creators respond to the algorithm's awareness. There's little to no room for content to flourish outside of the immediate desires of the viewers.

But this problem goes beyond YouTube. Every social media platform is continually trying to feed you content that immediately catches your interest. The content you're more likely to click or pause on is given priority in your feed. A personal update from a close relative will be relegated to the bottom, while an acquaintance posting a controversial meme gets regular placement at the top of your feed—whatever keeps you on the platform longer.

We're increasingly less exposed to things we don't immediately want. We're not given content that isn't suited to our specific desires at the moment. Videos that may take some patience to get into aren't coming across our feed.

What does this ultimately mean for educational content? Right now, a lot of educational videos chase the algorithm, but sooner or later, the algorithm might leave them behind. They may not be gratifying enough for the audience.

In the many incarnations of state-run television, there are requirements for the content to be either educational or news-focused. For a long time, countries like Norway and Italy primarily had public television. In 1981, cable television was introduced in Norway. The content was far less educational. It was mainly entertainment, and the result was that teenagers and young adults dramatically cut back on reading. This actually impacted IQ scores, with an average two-point decline in areas of Italy with greater access to cable television. Adults had cognitive scores equal to four IQ points lower.

Plato thought art should be regulated so that it didn't corrupt the youth or weaken their character. That's an extreme, but it does point to the fact that the media we consume plays a huge role in defining our character. Why would we ever put up with anything educational if we're so used to instant gratification from a stream of algorithm-driven content? Would we discover new and exciting art if we're drip-fed what we want?

Now would you discover the music of a remote culture? Would you learn about ancient philosophy? I'm not so sure—at least not online.

And what kind of effect does algorithm chasing have on kids? A lot of YouTube is intended for children, many of whom have their own tablets. On the platform, they're fed video after video designed to hold their attention as long as possible. They don't have to put up with anything that isn't instantly stimulating.

There is some educational content for kids, but a lot of what they're shown is entertainment. They'll watch streamers play Roblox, a game that's also been created and tweaked to keep kids playing for as long as possible. They're inundated with layers of stimulating content to keep them busy. They get accustomed to instant gratification and fewer opportunities to exercise patience.

In 1969, the educational kids' show Sesame Street premiered on television. The show was intended to help kids develop emotional, numeracy, and literacy skills. Kids who watched the show showed clear signs of learning. The control group showed a five-point increase in IQ over kids from similar families who didn't watch the show. Even though Sesame Street is a TV show and not the activity of reading a book, it was still able to have a positive impact on the intelligence of the kids who watched it.

But Sesame Street didn't have to program itself for an algorithm. It didn't have to skip an episode on the letter A all the way to the letter X because other channels were thriving with X content.

There's a real impact on chasing audiences' taste so closely, and it might make us dumber, less interesting people. It may also make life for content creators some strange lucrative hell. Many individual creators have reported feeling extremely burnt out chasing the algorithm.

And it's true you, as the audience, still have some agency in all of this. With some discipline, you can resist the allure of the algorithm. You can find channels you love, subscribe to them, and check in regularly. Ignore the wall of videos designed by an uncaring algorithm. Watch videos outside your interests. Search for content about the process of building a trombone or how bats sleep.

Keep growth alive and have patience for the less immediately interesting, because overstimulation just might be ruining your life. Watch this video next to find out how and how to fix it for [Music]. Good.