Game Theory: Why YouTube Feels Boring

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Does YouTube feel boring right now? Does a lot of the content you’re seeing across the platform feel repetitive? “I Went To EVERY Restaurant”, “I Bought EVERY Item”, “I Ate EVERY Burger”. Notice a pattern? Where did this trend of “every” video come from and more importantly, how is it impacting you, the viewer? You’re gonna wanna tune in to this one friends because we’re gonna talk about EVERYthing wrong with these kinds of videos.
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#YouTube #MrBeast #GMM #Excess #YouTubeTheory #Theory #GameTheory #Matpat

I’ve done it. I’ve created the ultimate online video. I watched every YouTube video But because I thought that Mr. Beast would do that very thing. I decided to do him one better. I watched every YouTube video and counted every pixel on every frame of every video and guess what?

I still thought that Jimmy might do that. So I decided to do him one better I did it all in 24 hours and I’ll give away a hundred thousand dollars to every viewer of that video

I’ve done it. I’ve done it. It’s unbreakable. It’s unbeatable. No one can ever outdo me. I’ve out beasted the beast Hello Internet Welcome to Game Theory, the superlative channel for overthinking all your favorite things on the internet. Today on MatPat talks about topics

I’m thinking about instead of a game theory. We’re gonna be talking about phases. We all go through phases, right? We wear different stuff. We watch different things and on YouTube we make different content. For the last three years YouTube has been going through what I’m calling the Era of

Excess and I probably don’t have to explain to you exactly what I mean by that You pretty much know it when you see it. The title has the word every in it every time “I tried every food from every state”

“I tried every impossible sport”, Mythical has a format called “we tried every” where they try every flavor of a thing. The Try Guys have Keith Eats The Menu where he tries every item on a restaurant menu.

Airrack tries every drive-thru, Eddy Burback goes to every Margaritaville, Matthew Beam goes to every Disneyland where Alpharad rides every ride Drew Binsky visited all hundred ninety-seven countries. While Markiplier just tries every flavor of Taki

I mean he actually just licked every flavor of Takis. It’s a bit disturbing there Mark, even more disturbing than your trailer for Iron Lung Anyway, you see where I’m going with this. It’s every trend that you see everywhere on the platform not to be overlooked though

This phase also includes what I call the Nice Round Number Syndrome Which contains a big old number with the dollar sign in front and the numbers just keep getting bigger While Mr. Beast has certainly been the one mainstreaming this recently, nice round numbers,

They’ve been making titles and thumbnails more clickable since 2012 when top tens and top five lists dominated the entire YouTube ecosystem and wouldn’t you know it but clickable numbers become even more clickable once they’re associated with money.

Leading to all your favorite giveaway and comparison videos. The numbers evolved from top tens to top hundreds to $100 and then we started adding zeros from there many, many zeros. Now we have $1 steak versus $1,000 steak $1 versus $100,000 computers, $1 houses versus $100,000,000 houses

And of course the all-time classic “I gave a random person on the street $100,000” for the clout I mean, obviously there’s some vague reason but we all know what the underpinning of it is, right? It’s the clout. We’ve seen

$10,000 ice cream the world’s biggest pizza and we’ve watched Casey Neistat recline his way through every expensive Emirati flight on the planet It’s great. Clearly, we all love it and watch it otherwise the algorithm wouldn’t serve it up to you on a silver platter

But I’m here to tell you that there’s a hidden cost to these videos and no amount of dollar signs and zeros is ever gonna do it justice. The interesting thing about excess videos is that they’re not just about the superlative of something or trying something nicer than average

They’re a constant unwinnable game of escalation. We already ate the biggest burger at one restaurant So, you know then we had to escalate we had to eat the biggest burger at every restaurant But once you do that, where else do you go?

Well, then you have to eat at every restaurant that ever serves a burger, you get the idea I’m sure if I asked you why we like this sort of content so much there are some easy answers that come to mind

It’s satisfying you get to see things that are too expensive to buy for yourself Maybe it’s funny to see people try crazy stuff All of that is very true, but there’s also a lot more boiling under the surface of our excess addiction on YouTube

Understanding the psychology of why you’re watching these videos might make you think twice about when to click on them and when to keep scrolling Today we’re talking about where this era of excess comes from, where it’s going, and why you should know for your own mental health

It’s probably no surprise to you that watching content on the internet, any content even this sort of content, is doing all sorts of things to your brain. In a nutshell consuming content online when you’re scrolling on YouTube Shorts, Tik-Tok, or Instagram activates neuronal pathways

In your brain that are commonly known as reward pathways; you scroll and ooh a new thing to see, scroll again and ooh another new thing to see forever and ever

Endlessly to the end of time and each time your brain gets a little happy response to seeing something novel, something funny, something beautiful or interesting All the things that we try to make our content look like online these happy feelings come from your brains dopamine reward pathway

And they’re the same ones that get activated when someone hands you an ice cream sundae or the feeling that you get when you beat a level in a video game. Years ago we actually did a video on this channel all about the addictive qualities of games like Candy Crush

Which is just as relevant today for social media as it was back then for mobile gaming addiction in case you haven’t seen it I’m gonna summarize it quickly when it comes to consuming content Unfortunately, we’re going in with the deck stacked against us starting with the literal brain inside our own heads

Biologically our brains have been wired from the beginning to find rewarding Experiences in life and then double down on those rewards because a few thousand ancestors ago that was what was able to keep us alive. Now that reward-seeking behavior

We all have baked into our neurons gets translated to a key weakness that can be exploited by everyone from game developers to marketing companies and especially by social video platforms. Watching funny Tik-Toks, satisfying aesthetic videos on Instagram, and clever YouTube shorts

They’re all micro dosing dopamine into your brain all day long until you’re suddenly feeling compelled to keep scrolling just to try and feel okay. There’s been a lot of research done in this area and even if literally none of us are following the advice of limit your screen time

We at least know yeah, we probably should be doing that. But no really Yeah We probably should be doing that. The TLDR of all this is that the For You Page is giving your brain exactly what it wants, which isn’t always a good thing. The thing is friendos,

Well it’s easy for all of us to collectively point to short form video as the thing that’s getting us hooked on all these platforms, the things that are shamelessly riding those dopamine waves,

They’re not the only ones that are giving us that little boost of happy. The Era of Excess on YouTube has given us the exact same action on these same reward pathways even with long-form videos.

It’s doing this in two main ways, first the structure of the video usually sets you up for lots of little micro-doses of dopamine rewards all the way throughout the video starting with the opening seconds. Let’s just take a classic example from Good Mythical Morning

“I tried every flavor of Lay’s chips” where they have the setup of these videos down to a science, probably why it’s a whole series over on GMM. They start right off the bat by teasing what’s in the video this hooks you in the first few seconds in the exact same way

That a Tik-Tok does This is the exact same tactic that Mr. Beast uses in every one of his $1 versus $1,000,000 videos or I guess now It’s $100,000,000 videos. And this isn’t me trying to single out any creators or point fingers

It’s just a tactic used by everyone who’s successful on the platform right now. Josh Weissman Airrack HopeScope MrWhoseTheBoss Basically every major creator on the platform is zeroed in on this strategy as a psychological tactic to get your attention on YouTube.

But that’s not enough, after those catchy opening seconds you break the video up into manageable chunks that are oh I don’t know, somewhere around 60 to 90 seconds each about the exact same as a Tik-Tok

So people feel like they’re getting a new reward for every minute that they stay tuned into the video Take a look at that same GMM video to see what I mean

45 seconds to 1 minute and 15 seconds goes by, they switch to a new flavor of chip giving you just long enough for a satisfying crunch, some color commentary, a couple of jokes BAM onto the next before you got bored. In HopeScopes tour through the history

Of Barbie Dream Houses, a video that I personally loved by the way, she switches between Dream Houses less than every two minutes. Airrack is way more intense when ranking all the fast-food restaurants, going through them at a pace of 10 to 30 seconds each.

Mr. Beast’s favorite way to do this is by completely switching up challenges every three minutes or so. His classic I gave away an island to my 100,000,000 subscriber video switches challenges every 1 minute and 30 seconds to 2 minutes and 45

Seconds, while in his somewhat controversial “curing people’s blindness” video the longest any individual patient gets in front of the camera is 50 seconds. I could go on and on and on with hundreds of examples of these videos across the platform each with tens

Sometimes hundreds of millions of views but it all boils down to this one thing: YouTube videos my friends, have become high polished compilations kinda like Tik-Tok compilations or Vine compilations before them, whether or not you or even the people making them realize it. And it works

It works real well, but wait a minute, I hear you saying, telling me I’m throwing all my fellow creators under the bus. How could I do that to all my friends? I’m just a YouTube turncoat and hey, wait a minute didn’t this video start out using these exact same tactics?

Well let me be clear, creators, including little old Theorists over here, work to make the best content possible for viewers and fans based on the rules of the platform they’re working on. You would never see a Tik-Tok start with long slow classical music and a black screen,

Right? Why? Well because the platform doesn’t serve that sort of content, people don’t respond to slow Tik-Toks with no visuals. That would be insane! By the same token, YouTube creators have to live within the extremely rigid boundaries of the platform and the content

That’s getting recommended here. Yeah, big creators have videos that work very well and also it’s not really their fault. Creators aren’t implementing Tik-Tok tactics like this because they’re trying to trick you,

They’re doing it because this content is what YouTube systems have told them is working and in case it’s still a secret friends YouTube has one goal and one goal only here in 2023: to look and feel a lot like Tik-Tok.

It’s no coincidence that the excess phase of YouTube has happened at the same time as the rise of Tik-Tok and the same time as YouTube launching its own Tik-Tok killer in Shorts. A lot of large creators understand that they’re not competing with each other

They’re competing with the product that YouTube really needs to win, Shorts. So at this point this is the real picture of what making content on YouTube looks like, creators have to make videos that are as

Exciting as a Tik-Tok but long enough to feed YouTube’s recommendation system lots and lots of tasty watch minutes. And in case you’re not aware of what’s going on behind the curtain, these episodes take weeks or even months

To create, often costing tens if not even hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce all while still needing to be brand-safe, young skewing but not too young skewing, new and original while still feeling familiar enough for you to click on and they might just make it

Onto someone’s home page. Then again YouTube might just give that space to Shorts instead. So what’s left after all that? Well a lot of escalation. How do you get people’s attention on YouTube now? Do something bigger, more expensive, more flashy, more dangerous

For as long as you possibly can and in as many short discreet chunks as you can. At the end of the day this isn’t about the creators that you’re watching It’s about the platform that you’re watching those creators on. But there’s more to this fun little escalation

Circus, with more complicated and over-the-top production comes the need for more help, a lot more help. While videos on the platform are becoming more pigeonholed into this escalation and excess genre, they also need a lot more manpower to pull them off.

Rhett and Link employ nearly a hundred full-time employees. Smosh is over 30. MrBeast is at least a hundred and individual creators who look like they film alone now have full-time teams of at least 10 to 15

People hunting the corners of the earth to find every impossible sport, Pop-Tarts flavor, and MacBook. The cost of these enormous teams lay on even more pressure for every episode to be an “every” episode because it has to be a banger. Instead of stories,

Characters, or in-depth narratives that feel risky excess videos can be executed by any team who can build a bigger set, visit more Olive Gardens, or buy more weird shoes for you to try on without running into a lot of creative risks right now.

This is one of the only ways to effectively thread the needle It’s hard to blame people for leaning into the content that’s successful, but you gotta admit all of it feels a bit limited There’s not a lot of feeling under the surface there other than “whoa,

Amazing!” with that little Vine boom animation to make it seem like something more exciting happened on screen overall. It just makes the platform as a whole feel stagnant when everything carries the same tone and whose fault is that? The platform With that in mind though, so far

We’ve only talked about the ways that the Era of Excess is hijacking our brain and the programming schedule of your favorite creator But what about you as a normal viewer turns out that the Era of Excess may be having a number of other

Unintended consequences for fans of YouTube and these consequences aren’t so easy to detox from. First let’s just talk about what’s so appealing about excess content when we watch it. It’s fun

It’s neat to see people take things to the extreme and for a lot of us the Era of Excess is a form of escapism Now there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, people have been using books, TV, movies, theater, video games, all kinds of media forever

To escape their humdrum lives or in our case a world that often feels like it’s about to burn down around us. A lot of time escapism media portrays a life that’s better, more magical, or often more wealthy than our own. It idealizes tiny problems, fancy clothes, fancy cars,

Extravagant vacations or enormous houses. Any of those topics sound familiar? They should, they’re literally everywhere in the Era of Excess here on YouTube. Visit the craziest hotels, eat the thousand-dollar steak, try on the 20 new outfits that you can never afford and do it in every video across YouTube

There’s actually a name for this kind of viewership, and if it sounds gross well it is. It’s called wealth pron And it’s been around just as long as wealth itself has, if you’re a boomer your generation had

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, one of the most influential reality shows of all time before reality TV was even a thing. As the creator of the show described it, it allowed everyone to feel like someday they too could live a fancy lifestyle Moving into the 90s and 2000s

We had shows like MTV Cribs, Real Housewives And then the ultimate in wealth pron, Keeping up With The Kardashians with each of those shows on their own escalating journey to show off more wealth, more extravagance, and more aspirational living than the last but where wealth pron used to be confined to

Just a couple of shows that aired a few times a week, now It’s literally everywhere every time you log on to YouTube. There It is, a brand new video or three or seven all ready for you to consume to get that hit of dopamine.

Except that’s not truly what happens when you’re surrounded by wealth pron all the time, instead of feeling inspired by the beautiful lifestyles showcased online viewers report feeling more discouraged about their own lifestyle because everywhere you look, it feels like there’s someone who has it better than you.

Someone who could afford to explore exotic islands or buy 30 pairs of sneakers all the while inflation continues to rise out here in the real world. Everything is getting more expensive, and you’re just out here wondering if you’re gonna be able to afford next month’s rent

But if every video you see online is an “every” video It can be hard to remember that fact and it starts to normalize the idea that we should all be living in this excessive way and so when we can’t we start to become disappointed and dissatisfied

Because dopamine is now tied to our viewing addiction, It leads us to watch another video to try and get that hit to try and feel normal again to try and see what this One is gonna be like you just wind up repeating the cycle again and again and again

Ultimately making us feel worse off mentally. This is especially true for younger viewers where studies have shown that those who spend more time on social media including YouTube reported higher levels of comparison and lower self-esteem as a result.

It’s especially dangerous when you consider that 25% of young people reported going to platforms like Tik-Tok to get financial advice Which can then lead them to not only feeling worse But actually spending more on things they don’t need to try and achieve that lifestyle that they’re constantly being shown

They should have. So what then do we do? Well, half the battle is just knowing what we’re watching in the first place. When we see a videos cold open shouting at your face that you’re about to see “every” of something

You need to recognize that that video is designed to trick your brain into thinking it’s getting a prize, spoiler alert… it’s not. It’s actually a tik-tok compilation designed to give you a hit of dopamine every two minutes or less and seeing a bigger dollar amount in the title,

That’s not gonna lead you to feel better about yourself or the state of your bank account. Also, it’s important to recognize that even though YouTubers seem to be all footloose and fancy-free with their expensive stuff and far-flung vacations,

What you’re seeing isn’t real. Behind those big videos are big expense checks and all the brand deal and ad revenue that pours in is getting poured right back out to the massive teams that are making these videos happen. Behind the fun is a lot of paperwork, production calendars, and more

Coordination than your typical Hollywood shoot. No one is truly living the way that you see in these videos and whatever you see on screen was meticulously curated by a team that’s bigger than however big you imagine them to be. Now,

I can speculate about where the platform goes from here, the future of Shorts, how far you can escalate before you hit a ceiling, what YouTube should be doing as a platform, but that’s all episodes for another day. For now,

Knowledge is power. So consider yourself armed and ready to take on the next video that you watch. Just make sure that you’re playing it and it’s not playing you But hey, that’s just a theory a matpat talks about topics that I’m thinking about instead of a game theory Thanks for watching