This is a Crypto Phone. Don’t Buy It. - MKBHD

64 comments

I’m glad Mkbhd is against/cautious of crypto.
- I miss the days when crypto meant cryptography
  
  A few years ago, I used crypto-as-in-cryptography in conversation with another engineer and they seemingly derailed into talking about Bitcoin and Ethereum. We were both really confused and annoyed with each other.
  It had a nostalgic feeling of what does "hacker" mean with some added irritation.
  
  Yes!!! Complete change in general usage of the word.
  
  I still use the term crypto when I talk about taclanes
  
  We can make that happen again! Persistence.... Lol
  
  It still does to us...
- Nah he's not really - near the end of the video he says "it's cool to have these (crypto) features built in"
  
  I think the implication is if you're into crypto that it's nice to have them, but I still think the beginning he said he was personally wary of crypto.
  edit: typo fixed, thanks!
  
  You forgot "extremely niche" in that sentence.
  Throughout the video he has been emphasizing that this feature is only probably going to appeal to only a handful of people who wants it. He also mentions that the crypto value the phone carries has been tanking for a while, and tells the majority of people to buy other 600 dollar phones rather than this.

Have this guy's video thumbnails always been this bad?
- he knows what the algorithm wants
- If they avoid the thumbnails out of principle, they lose a significant chunk of revenue.
  It's a small annoyance for a small number of viewers, and there are browser extensions you can get which fix clickbaity thumbnails. The clear choice is to do the thumbnails
  
  I guess. I only heard about him a year or so ago and it seemed like his thumbnails were more "normal"just that recently.
  Click-baityness aside, it just reeks of vapid, shallow, content. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but if I see Fabio on the cover of a book, I know I'm in the wrong section so there's some merit to it.
  I'm not going to get my tech insight from someone who makes their content look like this.
- It's not the worst. I don't have a problem with mkbhd's thumbnails.
- I have a genuine curiosity for what you think thumbnails should be? If not this, then what?
  The thumbnail shows the product, shows the general reactions.
  What else do you want?
  
  Personally I avoid videos with variations of the open mouth, confused face, and disappointed look these days. It's just the area of YouTube I've gotten tired of, and those videos usually tend to be pretty shilly playing to the algorithm and tend to be from bigger channels. I understand why its done, but it doesn't shield from criticism. Anyways good for them, but it has manifested in a way where because the algorithm is what dictates the product it feels like AI in a way where the presentation style gets tiring.
  
  Do we really need to have an exaggerated reaction in the thumbnail?
  
  The thumbnail should be the frame closest to the middle of the video's runtime, with no regard for context. I have an extension that does just that.
- The almighty algorithm forces it. I don't care as long as it's not outright misleading
- Honestly, when my favourite subscriptions post these thumbnails I don't watch the video. I have one that has never done anything like this but posted their latest video with someone's stupid shocked face on it. I won't watch it and if they continue I'll be unsubscribing.
  I think this is just the grumpy old man coming out of me. I realise they are just trying to get more views. It's just frustrating they got this popular without these thumbnails so why start now?
  
  That's shit, you're going to lose out on content you enjoy because the creators are trying to maximise their reach. If the content changed it'd be fair but just the marketing is no reason to do that.
- There's an extension for de-clickbaiting thumbnails
- Yeah, you don't get to his size without clickbaiting
  
  Mobile games don't become as lucrative as it is without mtx. People understand the business reason, but it doesn't mean it shields it from criticism. Doesn't need defending either, since as you said money is enough to not care. You don't really start doing that stuff if you care about perception, so I say good for them monetarily speaking. But, that's the extent of my praise.
- Humans love faces.
  Our brains are wired in a way that makes us want to see faces everywhere. It's why we experience pareidolia - seeing faces where none exist. Like on treebark, moon/mars surface pics, or the people who claim to see Jesus' face on toast.
  Thumbnail creators have found that just by putting a face on a thumbnail, people are much more likely to be interested.
  Look also at film and TV covers. Pretty much all of them depict faces too. People are drawn to faces.
  
  Having a face in the thumbnail isn't the problem though. Having a useless arrow pointing to the thing that the video is obviously about coupled with the guy holding his head in his hands like he just caught his favorite phone in bed with another YouTuber is the problem.
  I thought this guy was supposed to be well regarded.
- He's just the classic YT clickbait content. Much better out there, smaller channels are where the quality content is, not these big cash farming ones.
- Yeah I was about to say: "This is an MKBHD video. Don't click it."
  And yeah his thumbnails were always terrible. But to be fair, most were from a content perspective, too. Except the very very early ones. It's a business, I get it. But it's so weird how you can watch a 1 hour video and know nothing more than what you knew before. And that's normal. You've been shown a lot of really pretty shots of a phone that make it look very beautiful, so clearly he or someone from his team is a great photographer. But there's little else in the videos.
  
  That's been a youtube trend for a while now. Most 10-20 minute videos should not have been longer than 2-5 minutes. It caused me to massively reduce the time I spend on youtube - and for me to watch a video longer than 5 minutes from somebody I don't know it needs to be about a very interesting topic and a description hinting at it not being just filler yet again.
- Why do you guys give a shit about thumbnails? The titles and description are way more informative for me. I curse bad titles way more. And this is a good title.
- These "tech youtubers" are dumb AF. They keep feeding idiots anything if a brand pays them good money. They don't understand evolving technology and their threats. Fucker kept going on about Facebook or something once. Just after facebook was accused of genocide in Myanmar.
  
  Yet this video is very negative about the device, unless I'm missing something about your comment?

Good thing there’s an arrow pointing to the device, otherwise, I’d have no idea what he’s talking about!
/s

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=hRSMJGs0YMg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

I remember being pretty hyped for this phone before they partnered with solana.
- It is cool to see that the phone is practically stock with only 3 preloaded apps. That price tag 😬

64 comments