One thing which I liked about Singerâs original âfamine, affluence, and moralityâ is that it included direct appeals for people to help. You start your first video off by saying that you are trying to get people to care about the developing world, which is great, but I think it would be cool if you did even more to signal âthis is not an edgelord thought experiment but something which should actually change your behavior.â One concrete thing is to include a donation button in the video (I think you have enough followers to do this).
A side benefit of this is you can more clearly measure if you are having an impact â my estimate of how useful these videos are would update pretty heavily based on information about how many viewers actually donate versus just like and move on.
I would say a similar but stronger thing about your animal testing one: my guess is that most of your viewers thought the message was âlol vegans are hypocritesâ whereas I think you actually meant âlol omnivores are hypocrites.â A frame like âIâm a vegan andâŚâ might better communicate your message. (Though this would delay the joke by ~1 second, which might be costly. Hopefully you get the thing Iâm pointing out here, even if this particular suggestion isnât good.)
As others have remarked, it seems like a lot of the possible downsides could be mitigated by not tagging (or mentioning) EA.
My guess (which you could maybe confirm with your analytics) is that whether or not someone watches is determined in the first few seconds. Your first video seems decent from this perspective (I like people who stick around because they want to see an argument for supporting the developing world) but the racism video seems worse (Iâm not excited by people who stick around because they want to hear arguments for racism).[1]
I generally like the approach of talking fast, and repurposing arguments which have proven effective in other media for TikTok. My guess (which it seems like you agree with based on your content) is that global health and development and animal welfare arguments are the best fit for this style.
I assume your theory behind the racism video is that it will attract contrarian thinkers, and contrarian thinkers are good in various ways. Iâm kind of sympathetic to that, but expect that it mostly attracts people who are contrarian in ways that Iâm not excited about, though I could be wrong.
Thanks for sharing this! A couple quick thoughts:
One thing which I liked about Singerâs original âfamine, affluence, and moralityâ is that it included direct appeals for people to help. You start your first video off by saying that you are trying to get people to care about the developing world, which is great, but I think it would be cool if you did even more to signal âthis is not an edgelord thought experiment but something which should actually change your behavior.â One concrete thing is to include a donation button in the video (I think you have enough followers to do this).
A side benefit of this is you can more clearly measure if you are having an impact â my estimate of how useful these videos are would update pretty heavily based on information about how many viewers actually donate versus just like and move on.
I would say a similar but stronger thing about your animal testing one: my guess is that most of your viewers thought the message was âlol vegans are hypocritesâ whereas I think you actually meant âlol omnivores are hypocrites.â A frame like âIâm a vegan andâŚâ might better communicate your message. (Though this would delay the joke by ~1 second, which might be costly. Hopefully you get the thing Iâm pointing out here, even if this particular suggestion isnât good.)
As others have remarked, it seems like a lot of the possible downsides could be mitigated by not tagging (or mentioning) EA.
My guess (which you could maybe confirm with your analytics) is that whether or not someone watches is determined in the first few seconds. Your first video seems decent from this perspective (I like people who stick around because they want to see an argument for supporting the developing world) but the racism video seems worse (Iâm not excited by people who stick around because they want to hear arguments for racism).[1]
I generally like the approach of talking fast, and repurposing arguments which have proven effective in other media for TikTok. My guess (which it seems like you agree with based on your content) is that global health and development and animal welfare arguments are the best fit for this style.
I liked the coffee one.
I assume your theory behind the racism video is that it will attract contrarian thinkers, and contrarian thinkers are good in various ways. Iâm kind of sympathetic to that, but expect that it mostly attracts people who are contrarian in ways that Iâm not excited about, though I could be wrong.