I think that that reasoning for keeping those older videos up makes some sense, but FWIW I think Iâd be in favour of not having the Minecraft videos on the same channel. It looks to me kind-of confusing and/âor unprofessional. I havenât watched the videos, and making doing so would suggest theyâre more relevant than I think, but a lot of people who click on your channel for the first time wonât have watched those videos either and so would probably have a similar reaction to me.
But this is just a quick take, and I donât know if itâs a big deal.
I totally understand this take and the animator said the same thing (so upvoted for giving me another data point here).
Now let me vent my frustration:
The sad thing is that your comment has a decent chance of being correct. I think that, yes, at first glance minecraft videos may seem unprofessional. But man if you are correct that would be deeply deeply sad. Reality is: âredstone neuron in minecraft!â is utterly brilliant, even if I say so myself. It is a perceptron made with redstone. How cool is that? And probably one of the firsts, or the first, in the world. And I did that when I was 17. Itâs one of the coolest things Iâve ever done, and one of the highest forms of self-expression. But NO itâs cringe because itâs in minecraft, right? And minecraft is for kids. Nevermind that itâs turing complete.
Also, Iâm kind of horrified at the possibility that people look at a starting YouTube channel and say âhmmm this looks unprofessional Iâm going to downvoteâ. YouTube channels shouldnât necessarily look professional, they just need to be good. I could go the route of making everything as boring as possible and commit YT suicide.
End of venting.
All that said I AM updating towards âhmmm maybe I should use a less quirky aesthetic or completely remove the rationality/âEA brand (even if talking about EA/ârationality topics) if I want to take quirkier routes or maybe just do bothâ.
Hmm. I feel like I partly see where youâre coming from, but there are two other things worth noting:
Maybe âconfusingâ is more important than âunprofessionalâ here.
The channel is called âRational Animationsâ, and the first few videos look like they match that, and then suddenly thereâs a few videos that just literally arenât animated (in the same sense) and also at least look like theyâre on totally different topics. E.g., a 24 hour clock.
I like Plenny Bars and I like Apple. But if I went to the Plenny Bar website and they were trying to sell me mostly Plenny Bars but also a phone, or the Apple website and they were trying to sell me mostly phones etc. but also snacks, Iâd be confused.
Thisâd be very survivable for those companies because I already knew them
But if it was a company I was unfamiliar with, I might then reasonably click away, thinking âThese people seem unfocused, Iâm going to go to one of the hundreds of other potential suppliersâ.
It may genuinely not worth me spending 15 seconds looking into it closer and seeing if they have good reasons for their combo of focuses, when thereâs already so much competition and I didnât have much reason to think this new company was better than the competition.
Relatedly, Iâd guess that this is like one of the cases where a stereotype actually does do better than random chance for prediction.
I havenât gathered any systematic data, but would bet that if we looked at a lot of channels aiming to do something like engaging communication of useful ideas, and compared ones that seemed to have a relatively clear and consistent focus, aesthetic, etc. to ones that have a minority if videos that at first look quite disconnected and in particular look like theyâre about hobbies like gaming, the former set of channels would just actually tend to have better content than the latter.
Obviously that doesnât mean itâll be true in every case. But a viewer has an insane amount of content to choose from, and when theyâre not yet sold on you, itâs fair for them to make snap judgements and move on.
I think this isnât really about quirkiness, nor about Minecraft being intrinsically cringey or something, more about something like consistency. If you had animated videos that were using Minecraft as the central âdeviceâ, but whose titles made it clear how they were relevant to rationality, that would seem fine to me.
This is all correct, but also notice that the most recent video among those that break the pattern of animated videos is 7 years old. When weâll have accumulated a lot of animated videos those old videos will be relegated at the bottom and have approximately zero impact on how people view the channel, other than being old curiosities. Also, an interesting datapoint that contradicts your thesis (although I agree with you, I wanted to point that out): VSauce. Look at his older videos. And they are a lot more!
One thing that I could do is to simply hide the minecraft videos for a while, till the channel has more animated videos, so it can have a more consistent aesthetic early on, and then unhide them later. I donât like this option but I will consider it (in part I dislike it because public from the old videos is saying âwow you hath returneth!â)
I think that that reasoning for keeping those older videos up makes some sense, but FWIW I think Iâd be in favour of not having the Minecraft videos on the same channel. It looks to me kind-of confusing and/âor unprofessional. I havenât watched the videos, and making doing so would suggest theyâre more relevant than I think, but a lot of people who click on your channel for the first time wonât have watched those videos either and so would probably have a similar reaction to me.
But this is just a quick take, and I donât know if itâs a big deal.
I totally understand this take and the animator said the same thing (so upvoted for giving me another data point here).
Now let me vent my frustration:
The sad thing is that your comment has a decent chance of being correct. I think that, yes, at first glance minecraft videos may seem unprofessional. But man if you are correct that would be deeply deeply sad. Reality is: âredstone neuron in minecraft!â is utterly brilliant, even if I say so myself. It is a perceptron made with redstone. How cool is that? And probably one of the firsts, or the first, in the world. And I did that when I was 17. Itâs one of the coolest things Iâve ever done, and one of the highest forms of self-expression. But NO itâs cringe because itâs in minecraft, right? And minecraft is for kids. Nevermind that itâs turing complete.
Also, Iâm kind of horrified at the possibility that people look at a starting YouTube channel and say âhmmm this looks unprofessional Iâm going to downvoteâ. YouTube channels shouldnât necessarily look professional, they just need to be good. I could go the route of making everything as boring as possible and commit YT suicide.
End of venting.
All that said I AM updating towards âhmmm maybe I should use a less quirky aesthetic or completely remove the rationality/âEA brand (even if talking about EA/ârationality topics) if I want to take quirkier routes or maybe just do bothâ.
Hmm. I feel like I partly see where youâre coming from, but there are two other things worth noting:
Maybe âconfusingâ is more important than âunprofessionalâ here.
The channel is called âRational Animationsâ, and the first few videos look like they match that, and then suddenly thereâs a few videos that just literally arenât animated (in the same sense) and also at least look like theyâre on totally different topics. E.g., a 24 hour clock.
I like Plenny Bars and I like Apple. But if I went to the Plenny Bar website and they were trying to sell me mostly Plenny Bars but also a phone, or the Apple website and they were trying to sell me mostly phones etc. but also snacks, Iâd be confused.
Thisâd be very survivable for those companies because I already knew them
But if it was a company I was unfamiliar with, I might then reasonably click away, thinking âThese people seem unfocused, Iâm going to go to one of the hundreds of other potential suppliersâ.
It may genuinely not worth me spending 15 seconds looking into it closer and seeing if they have good reasons for their combo of focuses, when thereâs already so much competition and I didnât have much reason to think this new company was better than the competition.
Relatedly, Iâd guess that this is like one of the cases where a stereotype actually does do better than random chance for prediction.
I havenât gathered any systematic data, but would bet that if we looked at a lot of channels aiming to do something like engaging communication of useful ideas, and compared ones that seemed to have a relatively clear and consistent focus, aesthetic, etc. to ones that have a minority if videos that at first look quite disconnected and in particular look like theyâre about hobbies like gaming, the former set of channels would just actually tend to have better content than the latter.
Obviously that doesnât mean itâll be true in every case. But a viewer has an insane amount of content to choose from, and when theyâre not yet sold on you, itâs fair for them to make snap judgements and move on.
I think this isnât really about quirkiness, nor about Minecraft being intrinsically cringey or something, more about something like consistency. If you had animated videos that were using Minecraft as the central âdeviceâ, but whose titles made it clear how they were relevant to rationality, that would seem fine to me.
This is all correct, but also notice that the most recent video among those that break the pattern of animated videos is 7 years old. When weâll have accumulated a lot of animated videos those old videos will be relegated at the bottom and have approximately zero impact on how people view the channel, other than being old curiosities. Also, an interesting datapoint that contradicts your thesis (although I agree with you, I wanted to point that out): VSauce. Look at his older videos. And they are a lot more!
One thing that I could do is to simply hide the minecraft videos for a while, till the channel has more animated videos, so it can have a more consistent aesthetic early on, and then unhide them later. I donât like this option but I will consider it (in part I dislike it because public from the old videos is saying âwow you hath returneth!â)