CLICKBAIT!

Just gonna have a short rant about YouTubers and clickbait.

My own YT channel is really low quality clips and one takes cos I wouldn't have a clue how to edit or anything and I don't care cos it's just like where I put my video diary stuff. But even as an absolute nobody with just 15 subscribers I would never use clickbait titles.

By clickbait I mean titles / title cards that are irrelevant to the video. In other words LIES. 

It's one thing to title a video "I might have cancer" if you're sick and getting tests run. Although, in my mind, it's another thing entirely if you're just going for your regular pap smear and there's no reason to suspect you might get an abnormal result. Even if the testing isn't specifically FOR cancer it's not entirely unreasonable in many scenarios to FEAR having cancer...when I supposedly had IBS (but actually my symptoms were lactose intolerance) I feared it was bowel cancer due to family history. It's worse still if at no point whatsoever do you mention illness, testing, cancer in that video. THAT is what I mean by 'clickbait'.

It harms the audience who sat through your video (that was maybe about going grocery shopping or something just as irrelevant) only to realise it was bullshit; worse, it harms other YouTubers who make genuine videos and won't get the clicks because people assume they're lying too.

Today I stumbled across this video from November 2016:

"LAST DAY WITH BOOBS" by Channon Rose Vlogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxAv_HwYZb0&t=406s

A viewer commented "I thought you were getting a mastectomy or something" and another viewer replied with the single word "Clickbait". But it wasn't!

The video is a vlog made the day before she went for breast reduction surgery. That's not clickbait. Just because viewers misinterpreted the title and ASSUMED what surgery she was getting isn't her fault. Also, the fact that the video isn't entirely about her upcoming surgery doesn't make it clickbait either. In fact, she didn't actually need to mention her surgery at all because the title firmly asserts the subject matter to be about what she was doing the day before.

Then there's this video from yesterday:

"ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED ON TWITTER..." by WatersWife Vlogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS6PfWo2Lm8

It's a live-stream of over an hour and I haven't watched the whole thing yet but there's a hugely relevant bit within the first ten minutes. She'd called out another vlogging family via Twitter (hence HER video's title) for their repeated use of clickbait, especially misleading references to adoption. I am utterly baffled as to how people can defend that family - especially the mother of the baby they've falsely claimed to be adopting. I don't have a maternal instinct to my name but no way in hell is ANYONE going to use my child like that!

By the way, when Aimee says that some of her video titles are "a little clickbaity" she's just using the most eye-catching element of her video, even if it's a minor element of that video. I've watched most of her videos and I haven't seen one that was misleading, deliberately or otherwise. There's nothing wrong with trying to grab people's attention...unless you're crying wolf to do so. And we all know how that story ended up!

I am just saddened that people don't have a better sense of ethics. Either for their own behaviour or their expectations of others. One thing I really love about Aimee Waters and her channel is how genuine she seems to be. Her opinions are carefully considered, her arguments are well balanced and she has great integrity.

Of course perception comes into it. People have even accused Aimee of using her son's death for views which I believe is harshly unfair. She went through a terrible experience and chose to share it for awareness. By sharing Beckett's story she is helping people suffering similar losses.

Anyway, that's my two-cents' worth.

Just say no to clickbait.