Indianapolis Columbus Ann Arbor Hank and
I are coming to your cities on tour the
shows will be great fun hope to see you
there link to tickets in the doobly-doo
good morning Hank it's Tuesday so there
is a very weird phenomenon here on the
vlogbrothers YouTube channel and I know
it has to be coincidental but it is
nonetheless very strange for over a year
almost every time of vlogbrothers video
is uploaded in the first 24 hours there
is one like for every 10 views like
here's a video with 75 thousand seven
hundred and seventy six hundred likes
here's a video with 99 thousand views
and 99 hundred likes this is true for
both Hank and John videos and videos
that get lots of views as well as those
that get fewer views sometimes it'll
appear that the ratio is not holding as
in this video which has thirty thousand
views but 3.3 thousand likes until I go
into analytics and discover that
actually it has exactly 33 thousand
views and the view count on the watch
page just hasn't updated now eventually
the ratio does go away after the first
24 hours fewer people who watch the
video click like and so the life of the
video is decoupled from its likes but
for that first 24 hour period the ratio
has been incredibly consistent for now
over a hundred videos thank you and I
have been making YouTube videos for so
long that we well remember the days back
before likes when viewers were asked to
rate videos on a five-star scale and in
those days we would often ask people to
rate our videos 5 stars because it makes
new nerdfighters which it really did at
least in those days people who wouldn't
have otherwise found our videos
discovered them because the algorithm
really valued the average rating a video
got now I have no idea what the YouTube
algorithm values these days in fact one
of the chief joys of my professional
life is no longer having to chase the
whims of YouTube's recommendation engine
but I rather suspect it's not as simple
as every time someone likes this we show
it to 10 people although I don't know
maybe it is and I've just cracked the
code so for the last several years we've
actually made a point of not asking
people to like and subscribe to our
videos because one we feel like the
average YouTube user hears that enough
during the course of their day and also
too we don't really
want the most possible people to watch
our videos like I have seen the comments
section of trending videos and I don't
want to live there we want our videos to
reach people who will find something
useful in them or build connections that
are helpful to them and we recognize
that this super old-school YouTube style
is not for most YouTube viewers as
you've said a lot to me over the years
Hank what matters is not how many people
watch our videos but how many people
care about our videos also I think
partly because we've been around here
for so long it just feels kind of
uncomfortable or disingenuous to ask
people to like or subscribe or to try to
find the clickbait deist thumbnail like
almost every video i've made for the
last several years has featured whatever
thumbnail YouTube chose for me not
because I think that's like the right
way to do it but because I think it's
right for this particular channel and
this particular viewership in fact I
suspect the real reason there's this
astonishingly consistent ratio between
likes and views is that our audience is
really consistent whether you're new
here or you've been around for a long
time and I would be interested to know
in comments by the way thank you thank
you for sharing your attention with us
and I really don't want to do anything
to mess that up but I am also a little
curious I feel really nervous I feel
like I'm like asking someone to prom or
something could could you click that
little thumbs up button for me and then
we can break the cycle at last or
perhaps discover that the ratio is
really real probably not but please like
the video so I can disprove the theory
thanks again for being here with us Hank
I'll see you on Friday