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MKBHDs for Everything

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Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#121
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, we should defend MKBHD. He didn’t do anything wrong. He did his job.

Defend him from what exactly? There was literally no controversy until people started defending him from the controversy. The only person who won here is Daniel Vassallo, whose low effort post went viral because people kept sharing it to show how stupid it was, thus drawing more eyeballs to his $400 "I will teach you how to be a successful entrepreneur" course on X (because of course he has one).

Really? He has a course like that? Sounds like Vassallo is selling way more Snake oil than he claims ill intentions with MKBHD.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#122
post #88
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an issue with the fact that he didn't put "AI Pin" in the title or that he called it the worst product he has reviewed? Because the "outrage" is very clearly about the latter. Heck if anything not putting the company and product name in the title actually helps them in this case.

To be clear, I have no issue with anything here, except that someone would think a title like "The worst product I've ever reviewed" is not clickbait. Clickbait does not mean bad. It does not mean I don't like it. It doesn't mean evil. It means it is bait designed to make you click. And clearly, if you look around you, it's working.

What's interesting is that that's basically the opposite of Vassallo's argument. He argues on X that it's not the video that's the problem; it's the meanness of the title that might effectively kill the product. He even says that the same video posted on X has a different title, and he has no problem with that.

So he's claiming that the title is in effect anti-clickbait. That by itself, regardless of the video content or whether or not people watch the video even, it could potentially cause harm to the product. I mean, he's not entirely wrong. It wouldn't be unsurprising if more people saw the title, and said to themselves, "Well, that sounds like a shit product, no need to even waste time watching the video," than actually watched the video.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#123
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I have no issue with anything here, except that someone would think a title like "The worst product I've ever reviewed" is not clickbait. Clickbait does not mean bad. It does not mean I don't like it. It doesn't mean evil. It means it is bait designed to make you click. And clearly, if you look around you, it's working.

That seems like a poor definition of "clickbait" in the context of YouTube, as that definition would effectively apply to every video being put on the platform these days and as such makes the label meaningless.

It would be a comment on the state of YouTube. Also Clickbait is a spectrum. On one end there are disingenuous titles (1) on the other are academic titles (0). A typical book of fiction title would be somewhere in the middle of the scale. But we do judge fiction and other artistic efforts differently.

There are Channels I subscribe to, that do not use titles like those too much. You can find examples from those channels that are clickbait from my perspective, but that is a general feeling I have.

I would also say that for complex stuff covered by a video you can't give a simple purely descriptive title and then my Clickbait detector allows some leeway. Just don't rely on terms, that almost automatically put a question in minds. Like: weird (weird, how?), the worst/best product (which product? - is it something I know of?).

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#124
post #21

I really like MKBHD's videos, but he should've picked a different title for the video. Frankly, I feel it did way more damage to him than what he did to Aipin or Fisker, which were already universally panned.

Have you found a single review that wasn't negative on the device? Every one I can find is strongly negative.

Many are negative but clickbait is rampant on youtube. There's a habit of exaggeration to get views to make money. It is a predator-prey bloodbath where the audience is prey.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#125

> Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. > First, do no harm. Brownlee's not a doctor. …He's not Spiderman, either, for the record, or at least that we know of. And "Humane, Inc." isn't his patient, or even a person.

Journalists (and I'd argue that MKBHD falls under that even) definitely have responsibility in their reporting. Apart from the hypocratic oath, there are also the 4 pillars of journalism, one of which is "minimize harm". Bringing that one up feels like a recent trend whenever people see legitimate criticism that they can't really argue with, and it's an easy one to bring up as in every truthful reporting about people…

> and it's an easy one to bring up as in every truthful reporting about people that have being lying there is at least the lier being "harmed".

Heh. "Hypocratic"… Appropriate.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#126
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy was specifically talking about the video's headline, which was written to be clickbait like everything else on YouTube because that's how MKBHD pays his bills.

It’s the opposite of clickbait. The title saves the viewer from having to watch the video at all, as it says everything someone really needs to know in that single line. It’s a bad product. I find it silly that people are pointing at MKBHD for the downfall of a company, instead of the people who ran the company and decided to launch when the experience wasn’t good and the value proposition was poor. Releasing early t…

It is clickbait. And people who think the product is shitty seem numb to that point because they're like "yeah it is shitty, just like I thought!"

The actual video is way more balanced. Why not call it "Humane AI Pin: Pretty Bad" or something? But the worst...? There are waaay shittier products he's reviewed.

MKBHD is a millionaire... why clickbait?

People are like "Honest reviews are important"... yeah, exactly and we're saying the same thing. the concern is about dishonesty for clicks.

All sides in this argument have a kernel of truth that is being exaggerated somewhat.

That being said I trust him, just think he was off on the clickbait-iness.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two different definitions of clickbait that people are operating with. One definition (maybe close to what your definition might be) is "a title written with the intent of getting people to click on it". I think the other definition that many people hold would be something like: "a *misleading* title with the intent of getting people to click on it". So, if someone thinks of clickbait as requiring s…

"A title written with the intent of getting people to click on it" describes every title ever. What professional whose livelihood is dependent on people interacting with their work would possibly ever title their work in a way that dissuades people from interacting with it? Clickbait needs to be something more than simply "an interesting title" for the term to have any meaning at all.

Clickbait describes the replacement of traditional news headlines (a summary of what happened, e.g. "Tulsa high school student defeats chess grandmaster at tournament") with mystery lead-ins designed to leave you wanting to know what thing happened (e.g. "What this high school student did will SHOCK you", or "This high school student just changed EVERYTHING about chess").

For the YouTube video in question, I guess it hinges on whether you recognize the device in the thumbnail you're looking at. If you do, then the title is giving away the lede and letting you have the takeaway if that's all you're looking for. If not, then you could argue that leaving out the product's name is clickbait-y.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#128

> Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness. > First, do no harm. Brownlee's not a doctor. …He's not Spiderman, either, for the record, or at least that we know of. And "Humane, Inc." isn't his patient, or even a person.

> First, do no harm.

Yes, do not harm corporation. People that spend money on shitty product should be on their own.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#129
post #49

This entire controversy is so stupidly overblown. MKBHD posts a fair and thorough review of a shitty product, which is exactly in line with what every other reviewer has said about it as well. One guy tweets about how he wasn't fair, and how he has a responsibility to not write bad things about companies because of the size of his viewer base (wut??) Now the entire internet feels the need to come defend MKBHD, thus a…

Thing is, we should defend MKBHD. He didn’t do anything wrong. He did his job.

Here's my $0.02

MKBHD posted an IMO unnecessarily clickbaity title to his review. I watched the review and thought that he was mostly on the ball except for the once again exaggeration that it's the worst product ever (for the views). In a way, it seems that the recent scathing review for Fisker and the views generated might have gone to his head somewhat.

Given that the Rabbit R1 is coming out soon (which he will likely review), I am curious to see if his reviews becomes a pattern of rage farming.

Re: MKBHDs for Everything

#130
post #105

People are upset at a product reviewer for reviewing a product. Classic example of why "Person On Twitter Is Angry" being considered newsworthy, or even faintly noteworthy, is one the worst things that has happened to modern discourse.

I mostly blame people who take the angry Twittersphere to share it elsewhere, making it spread. Journalists of any niche are particularly good at it, and in this case the author. I don't read Twitter, because I do not care of its drama, but the author did its best to spread it and stoke the fires thanks to their blog.

Eh. I blame Twitter. They didn't have to take something dumb that should have been left to immediate obscurity, and show it to thousands of people in the first place as if it had any authority. But clearly, they gained some reach and revenue by doing so, or else we wouldn't be talking about it.

Thanks to the character limit (no longer technical, but still cultural) and the algorithmic feeds, the "discourse" on Twitter is entirely synthetic. In real life, the equivalent would be like if somebody were to interrupt you every five seconds, then take the various sentence fragments you managed to get out in between, and stitched that together with random other sentence fragments from hundreds of strangers in a grotesque attempt to manufacture a coherent interaction. Oh, and everybody's screaming all the time, all at once, of course, and the messages you try to say about the Blottinghamville Games Club keep being sent to members of Bunny Murderers for National Unity, and vice versa… All while the giant blue bird-thing keeps trying to tell you about its sponsors.

And yet, this mutilation of human thought and conversation itself is presented as if it's just a venue for normal discussions. It's not; The "interactions" on Twitter are interrupted, chopped up, and stitched together. I think it preys, basically on our social instincts, on the desire to assume good faith and perceive an organic conversation happening because it tries really hard to make that seem like the case.

Especially given that I'm not sure there's really any comparable dynamic that's ever existed before in all of human history, I don't know how useful it is to blame individuals for falling for that. Twitter monetized a random message and amplified it as if it's important, so the author of the linked article responded, because that's what you do if you assume good faith when somebody else presents something as important… Though at this point we should probably know better.

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