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DarkViperAU-Essays

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The cases where people ARE interested in the original video and they STILL wait for the reactions are very rare. And it only ever happens if the audience of the original video and of the reaction dip into each other. In that case, people just watch their preferred creator.

'''(Back to Matt)'''

I think this presentation of the market and viewer knowledge is very misguided.

Viewers are not perfectly rational agents with all knowledge who are equally likely to do anything regardless of the barriers to entry.

In other words, people do not necessarily watch their preferred creator, they are more likely to watch whatever the algorithm presents to them.

People generally take the path of least resistance, and in this case their path is created by an algorithm that favors channels that spam out 10 videos a day.

Necrit seems to have their obsession with new videos and viewers waiting for reactions. People aren't just getting recommendations for newer videos, they're getting recommendations for older videos as well, in this case that being the insane horde of content that Asmongold has stolen over the last few years.

Viewers don't need to wait for reactions, they already exist, and the algorithm isn't putting the original video alongside all its reactions and saying "hey, pick whichever one looks best".

But even when that does happen, for anyone who is even slightly interested in the watch party experience or the opinion of the reactor, the reaction is the superior version.

Even in some magical hypothetical world where viewers always watch both the original and the reaction, you can likely still see the issue there.

50 creators each spend one week making one video each. Asmongold then re-upload all 50 videos in a week because he doesn't need to spend any of the time or effort to actually make them. The result in this magical hypothetical world, which is to some people their ideal world, is that Asmongold would have 50 times the viewership of any of those individual creators.

Asmongold is a monstrous amalgamation of hundreds of creators he always has you covered regardless of your interests, and hey, the more of him you watch, the less of anyone else who will ever be recommended to you. Which of course is Asmongold’s fucking goal.

When I found Josh Strife Hayes' channel, I loved his voice and style of video, so I binge watched effectively all of his content. Eventually, I did get to the end, I ran out of videos, and you know what I did then? I moved on. There wasn't any more content to watch, so I had no choice. I was therefore served recommendations for other creators, whose content I then developed an interest in. Sure, I will still catch some of his new videos, but because I moved on to other creators, I get recommended Josh's videos less.

We can now compare this very normal state of affairs to what happens for anyone who watches Asmongold, who never runs out of high quality videos. Never. Even if a normal person dedicated their limited free time to watching every video that Asmongold uploaded, they would just forever fall behind, as more videos would continue to be uploaded so they would never reach the end.

If you like Asmongold, you have the option of watching him until you literally get sick of him, something you don't necessarily get for actual creators on this platform. Asmongold and Josh's content is very similar. In some cases, literally exactly the same, but Josh can never inspire as much interest and take as much market share as Asmongold can.

Josh, burdened with the costs of creation, will never have sufficient output.

It isn't just him. No one can have the kind of output that Asmongold has, because it requires hundreds of the most talented creators working round the clock for free. Due to Asmongold’s back catalog being effectively infinite, I can guarantee you that I personally watch more creators every week than anyone who likes his content. Why? Because I don't watch reactors!

Consequently, not a week goes by where I'm not introduced to new creators, big and small, who I then start watching to meet my content needs. Asmongold viewers on the other hand don't have this experience, because the lion's share of what they watch is his content, so they just keep getting recommended his infinite back catalog. His viewers have commented on my videos explaining that their recommendation algorithm is completely screwed up and they just use him as their recommendation algorithm, which just digs them further into that hole.

A hardcore YouTube user like myself might watch 12 different creators in a day. Asmongold’s goal is for it to just be him. Which honestly isn't surprising, actual creators want that for themselves as well.

What is impressive about Asmongold though, is that he's convinced a horde of people that his using them to achieve this for himself is in their best interest. Insane I know, but it gets worse when you realise that the Necrits of the world seem to believe that their greater prosperity is tied to creating more Asmongold like content farms trying to do this.

In years past, it was insane to think that any creator would risk the backlash of making a content farm out of re-uploading other people's creative works. I was around 5 years ago and would listen to Asmongold defend himself when people would talk about his reactions on Twitch. He would say "Sure I do react to the occasional video on Twitch, but I don't post them to YouTube that's just fan channels that's nothing to do with me it's not me I swear."

He knew it was scummy then, he knows it's scummy now, but it's so much money, so much growth and it's so easy. How the times have changed.

Due to the efforts of Asmongold and his followers like Necrit, the tides have turned on this issue. There will come a day where every popular video is re-uploaded a thousand times and then, oh then finally will Necrit be in his paradise.

While we have somewhat gotten sidetracked, it is important to remember that Necrit's goal was to weigh in on whether reactions are beneficial or harmful. So far he's merely tried to argue that there's no harm, which is not the same thing as arguing that there's a benefit.

In fact a lot of what he has presented would actually be a justification for not expecting a significant benefit in terms of views on your video from a reaction. As we can see from the graphs he shows, there is no obvious magical view bump from when Asmongold reacted to his videos, and certainly if there was one, Necrit would have every reason to specifically point that out.

This again highlights the abysmal click-through rate from the re-upload to the original video. So without any obvious sign of benefit, Necrit decides that he just needs to invent benefits that while he can't show them to you, you should nevertheless just trust they exist.

'''Necrit:'''

Because people don't realize that reactions also have some benefits. Besides the fact that sponsored videos will be better. For example I put a manscaped sponsorship into one of my 100k videos, which got later grabbed by other creators and together they all multiplied the views six times.

So they gave the sponsors just a bunch of free value.

'''(Back to Matt)'''

Sponsors pay creators based on the return that they expect to get from their audience. They usually, at least initially, base their predictions on the views that their videos traditionally get.

As you have no way of knowing how many reactions you will guess, let alone their analytics, you can't use them to argue for some sort of higher payments. Creators need views in order to get sponsors, so obviously creators don't benefit when reactors start spamming out reactions to drive traffic to their channels instead.

Before you start, I am aware what I'm saying isn't directly addressing what Necrit said. He was after all not trying to argue that creators themselves receive benefit, but the corporations receive benefit. It is honestly wild that this was the first thing that he brought up. Reactions are great because corporations are getting free ad views that they're not paying for. On a site where the videos are funded by the billions of ads that are played each day. Corporations are getting free ad time guys, reactions are great.

Awful.

'''Necrit:'''