I'm boutta explain how YouTube works and how it ties into this. Get ready for wall text:
Youtube algorithm wants two things, 1.) To get videos that will interest said viewer, and 2.) To keep the viewer watching said video (both get into AC's habits, 1 causes him to make clickbait-y titles and thumbnails, 2 causes him to over exaggerate things and make drama). To get this, it will look at things, such as views, viewer tension (the length said viewer was watching the video for), the like to dislike, and what said viewer was watching before. Less obviously, there's: Closed Captioning (since YouTube can make it's own CC, if the video says a keyword a lot, such as "Dream", it will come up in searches), the first couple of sentences in the description (notice how they come up in google searches?), what other viewers have clicked after watching the video, etc etc. We don't need all of the information.
Now, most content creators put that in mind. Looking at examples popular on YouTube: Dream SmP uses story telling and suspense, Beluga uses comedy and Discord, TheOdd1sOut used comedy, story telling, interesting animation, and relatable moments. Now let's look at AntsCanada, he uses suspense, drama, and story telling. It's targeting towards kids. Actually, it's easy to see patterns, most people start watching AntsCanada, the tension and drama helps keep viewer tension while teaching people basics. From there they use more informational channels, AntsAustraila is usually the next largest mainstream channel. Honestly, I see AntsCanada as the starting tutorial, gives you the basics as you learn more later on.
A real life example is how I could tell my friends all about the wonders of, say, social parasites, "Wow the Lasius claviger queen goes-" "Did I ask?" Ie, they won't care. Let's say instead I go like, "She will go into their homes, kill off all of the children and smear their scent on her body, becoming an impostor hiding within plain sight," now I have their attention.
Everything was fine, sure others had problems with his use of drama, but that's just his style to keep tension between the viewers. There's only one real problem I have with this video. One person doing it, okay fine, it's not really civil but you do you I guess. However, this man is an influencer (technically). Now it's well known kids will literally copy behaviour patterns in people they idolize or too fit in (ever heard of trends?). As of now, he has 4.27 milllion subscribers. I'd bet the vast majority of them are children in adolescence, maybe 8 to 12. Many people who either have younger relatives or work with younger children will know, superiors have a massive influence on children. One week in of being a CIT at a camp and a lot of the younger children have copied my vocabulary. It's like a monke see monke do kind of thing. Now, let's say 75% of his subscribers are in that age range and look up to him (I'm assuming a random percentage). That's over 3 million kids who might want to replicate this, not counting the kids who still watch him but can't subscribe for parental reasons maybe.
As AntKeeper01 pointed out, there's a literal 8:1 ration of yes to no. Though that's a good point to it showing an outcome, Mmcguffi, there's still a week for children to combine their beloved colonies. Futurebird said to ignore him, which is good enough for the more intermediate-experienced group (usually 13+) because they will learn that the majority of the community agrees; AntsCanada isn't the best source. The others may or may not have access to that knowledge. Nobody really points it out on YouTube, and it's not like they've found other social's to look at ants on.
To wrap everything up, I'm going to say that YouTubers will be YouTubers, the best you can do is try to help out as many of the "misguided" as possible I guess. Time to shut up-
Edited by Chickalo, October 18 2021 - 11:12 AM.
