this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
3082 points (99.9% liked)
Technology
59179 readers
2454 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Another point in his favour may be the clear view of the phone in the thumbnail, considering that his target audience may recognise it by appearance. However, I still think he should've just said it in the title for everyone else, and for audience members for whom his video is their first exposure to the model.
Regarding the last section, though, I see clickbait titles less as 'it doesn't cover every nuance of the video' and more 'the title is overly reductive, genuinely misleading or pointlessly vague', unless there's artistic reasons it's that way. A review title should name the reviewed product imo; it barely increases its length and lets people decide better whether the content's worth their time without wasting any of it.
I also don't think a title summarising a video's central point well makes it bad. A good video doesn't just repeat different wordings of the title for 10 minutes, it goes into specifics to argue why that is. I sometimes see nuanced, heavily researched video essays get some comment like 'saved you half an hour, guys! (the main point in one sentence!)' because the video didn't... have some massive plot twist, I guess? And I don't get why people would approach informational content that way. It feels anti-intellectual. Maybe the Silent Hill nurses are a work of art; the video would only be bad if it can't argue that well or has a lot of fluff between the points.
(Sorry for the above being sent multiple times, I had a network issue.)
You're suggesting larger changes to the title. I'm only saying 'this phone' should be replaced with 'the pixel 69' or whatever the model's name is. 'The pixel 69 is almost perfect' is short, informative (edit: by which I mean informative enough about the video's topic), more informative to anyone that hasn't seen the phone before, and draws people in: why's it almost perfect? That's worth clicking to find out, and the details aren't something you'd expect someone to cram into a general review title.
I fully agree that the title should encourage people to keep reading, but in my opinion 'basic writing' is keeping a balance between both goals of a title. The examples of clickbait I've given involve people optimising the title for attracting views while neglecting the goal of reasonably accurate description. If taken too far it could start making viewers feel patronised, and if I encounter a video with misleading clickbait I assume the rest of their videos will waste my time as well and avoid them. (Edit 3: I increasingly assume the same about vague titles from unfamiliar channels as well.)
The last part of my previous comment was about this; maybe we're miscommunicating by using 'summarise' differently, as in 'covers every point' vs 'vague overview'? I've been saying titles should do the latter because that's what this entire conversation has been about. Nobody thinks every point of a review should be included in its title, just that the title should be reasonably descriptive about the central thesis or central question being explored. Quoting myself:
TL;DR: there's a balance to be struck between making the title descriptive and drawing clicks, and talking about full summaries as titles is a bit of a strawman.
EDIT 2: Removed some italics because they made this sound unintentionally patronising. Apologies, haha.