- [Narrator] So today I am going to use
this video's intro gag to ask you
to subscribe to the Grand Line Review
and thus receive regular One Piece content
uploaded straight into your YouTube feed.
Now, with that out of the way,
let's get to the intro gag.
Oh, wait.
I've accidentally spoiled it for you.
Huh, damn.
Disregard this, and subscribe anyway.
Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review,
your source for everything One piece.
And today we are getting super, super meta here
because I would like to talk about spoilers,
or more accurately,
the process of spoiling the series on YouTube.
As well as how we as YouTubers are capable
of inflicting far more damage
on the One Piece fan base than we realize.
And I wanted to make this video particularly
because I'm not entirely sure
this has ever been formally covered,
at least not to my knowledge,
and certainly not on my channel.
But on a daily basis, I receive comments,
generally on chapter reviews,
that thank me for not spoiling things
by including a particular image or text
in the thumbnails and titles of the videos
whereas many other YouTubers allegedly will.
And this is a big problem
because as much as there are a large contingent fans
out there who really don't care
and in fact, actively seek out spoilers,
and I used to be one of those, by the way,
there are also another significantly larger portion
of fans who do not seek out spoilers,
but find themselves confronted with them nonetheless.
And in the case of One Piece specifically,
this is essentially true of anime-only fans
who at any given time are pretty much exactly
one whole year behind the manga events.
However, I also don't want to lose sight of the manga fans
who simply just don't read the newest chapters
at the very moment they drop
and don't want to have their experience ruined.
So here's our tricky situation.
We have one group of fans who are excited
and eager to discuss manga occurrences
and another once again, much larger portion of fans,
who just want to experience One Piece at their own pace.
And both of these groups have a right
to do exactly what they want.
However, rather unfortunately,
they share the same space online.
So what does that result in?
Well, more often than not,
the eager and excited immediate mangaritas
are going to get their way and everyone else be damned.
And let's take a look at an example of this in action,
by looking at the reviews for chapter 925,
who, for those of you who aren't aware
is the chapter between acts one and two of Wano
that revealed Blackbeard's post time skip design,
as well as his bounty.
And if you're curious as to why
I've chosen this particular chapter,
which is quite far back now,
it's because this is how far back I had to travel
to make sure I'm not spoiling more current events
for people in this video,
because it would be pretty damn ironic
to be spoiling things in this video,
examining the danger of spoilers.
But really back in context,
Blackbeard's existence in this very chapter
was one of those world shaking hype moments.
Because at this point we had not properly seen him
in close to nine years of real time.
Now with this once again, world shaking information,
let's take a look at how it was covered on the YouTube.
And to be clear, I am not here to call anybody out,
throw any degree of shade or start any drama.
But with that said, I am going to be using
other One Piece YouTubers to make my point.
So firstly, here we have Tekking101's review
of chapter 925, very blatantly showcasing
both Blackbeard and Gecko Moria
in the thumbnail of his video.
Thus immediately ruining the surprise
of seeing those characters
for anybody who has not read the chapter yet.
Good stuff.
Moving down, we have Sawyer
who has elected to do exactly the same thing,
except he even goes so far as to put in his title
that Blackbeard's bounty gets revealed,
which is an extra spoiler, very nice once again.
Then we have Joy Boy with some beautiful
yet heavily spoilerific art from Revujo,
crowning his thumbnail.
King Of Lightning with what I think is
the official YouTuber face as well as Blackbeard next to it.
Chibi Reviews with Blackbeard and Moria
and worst of all this prick.
Grand Line Review, who has also chosen
to spoil the chapter by placing
both Blackbeard and Moria in his thumbnail
right next to that horrible self-designed old logo.
Man, I hate that guy.
So yeah, let's get this out of the way.
I, for one, did not always feel as strongly
about spoilers as I do today.
And I will admit that my logic at the time
was almost entirely purely selfish.
I thought that by putting a character like Blackbeard
in my thumbnail, then it would result in more clicks
because this is big, big news.
And I do think that there is a good argument
to be made that that is indeed the case.
You know, present your viewer
with a tantalizingly shocking image,
piquing their curiosity, getting them to click
and watch the video.
And I think at 100% does its job
in terms of increasing viewership
amongst the target audience of the video
who are the on the ball, instantaneous mangaritas
and or spoiler leak enthusiasts.
And from almost every comment on said video,
you'd never even suspect that something was wrong
because the people who are watching and commenting are,
once again, that video's target audience.
The issue comes with the people that you don't hear from.
So for example, in my case specifically,
the Grand Line Review is a channel that focuses
on covering the One Piece world
in an easily digestible and concise way,
which is meant to be very friendly
to newcomers to the series.
And that is epitomized in my most popular series of videos
being One Piece 101, which provides
a basic breakdown of everyone
and everything in the One Piece world.
So my audience is actually made up quite heavily
of people who are not manga diehards like myself.
And it took me an embarrassingly long time
to realize the damage I was potentially doing
by encouraging people to subscribe
to this channel with content like this,
and then throwing contents like this in their faces,
thus greatly spoiling their personal experience.
However, because they weren't clicking on the video
and engaging with the comments,
this went fairly unbeknownst to me,
apart from the odd individual here and there
who did make their displeasure known,
which in retrospect I do thank them for doing.
The crazy thing is though,
subscribers are not anywhere near the worst affected group,
Because here's an argument that might spring up now
from other YouTubers or the fans of other YouTubers
in that, look, my subscribers know
what they're getting themselves into,
so I don't have to worry about blatant spoilers
in the thumbnail or the title.
Which by and large is probably true
in regards to subscribers alone.
But that number of people is minuscule,
absolutely minuscule compared to those
who are actually seeing your video and not clicking.
And to demonstrate this,
here is a statistical breakdown
of a recent chapter I reviewed being 975.
As you can see, the overall impressions
were over 900,000 and basically an impression means
a user on YouTube being served your video,
thumbnail and title, whether that be on the homepage,
through subscriber notifications
or other methods of YouTube recommendation.
And the amount of views the video
actually secured from those impressions
was just under 40,000.
Which is a click through rate of 4.4%,
which is pretty average, and I'm quite pleased with that.
The main takeaway from this though
is that there were very potentially
somewhere around 800,000 people
who saw this thumbnail and did not click on it.
And no, that number isn't simple at all,
it's subject to a ton of other factors
like the same person being fed an impression
multiple times and stuff like that.
But the overall point is that the thumbnails
and titles that we push onto YouTube
are seen by a staggering amount of eyes
that are not our viewers, let alone our subscribers,
let alone our commenters,
with each of those numbers
being much less than the one that preceded it.
So when images like these go out into the world,
they are having a much greater impact
than one would think.
Especially with channels that are much larger than mine
and would have many more impressions.
And these videos would be fed to people
based on any number of algorithmic mechanisms.
And you know there are scenarios
where it might land on the homepage or recommendations
of a person who had no interest in One Piece whatsoever.
However, one of the most likely outcomes
would be feeding them to people
who have watched other One Piece content on YouTube.
Content that may not necessarily be
anywhere near the current manga events.
And so those people,
which number in the hundreds of thousands per video,
are going to be involuntarily subject to spoilers
because we as content creators
have decided in our eternal wisdom
that a comparatively minor increase
in views and engagement is more important
than the experience of the wider One Piece fan base.
And look, as harsh and as judgmental
as that may sound,
I'm not here to harp on those YouTubers,
which once included myself,
because from their perspective,
it makes all the sense in the world
to sell their content with spoilers,
because it does generate more engagement.
And thus continues to sustain
and grow them on this platform.
That's the ultimate game,
and YouTube makes it very hard to succeed
without playing it.
With that said, does that mean we should continue to do it?
Well a long time ago I came to the conclusion that no,
no, it was not.
So I started making these horrific, like,
ugh, hate these thumbnails.
But I started making these
as a way to prevent spoilers
and eventually transitioned
into this more current model
where I feature a character as a bit of eye candy.
Highlighting the video, but not in a spoilerish way.
Like this thumbnail here.
Chapter 976 contains massive information
about a certain character,
and that character is not Trafalgar Law.
So Law here is meant to act
as a very nice spoiler mask yet simultaneously
an appealing piece of eye candy
to grab some attention.
Hopefully anyway, that's the intention.
I think it works.
It might not work as effectively
as including the prime character
of exploration in the chapter,
but I think it works well enough.
Of course you can also go for the completely clinical route,
which you can see in some examples from Ohara
who has a very simple but undeniably effective set up
with the very standard yet aesthetically appealing
firewall thumbnail and no extraneous text whatsoever.
It's just One Piece, chapter whatever, review and recap.
And just look at those views.
That is by no means bad.
And something that I would like
to take the opportunity to say now
is that most of the bigger channels
do generally make something of an effort
not to spoil people.
To you use Tekking as an example, once again,
here is the thumbnail from his review of chapter 976,
which tells you absolutely nothing
about the chapter, nor does the title,
so that works very, very well in my opinion.
However, I will also say that not even a day later,
he posted a video that completely undid
all of that good work by blatantly spoiling
the events of chapter 976
in both the thumbnail and the title.
Which is going to be spread through the algorithm
and no doubt spoil a truly unfathomable amount of people.
To hop on the other end of this argument for a bit though,
I've spent quite a bit of time
highlighting the dangers of spoilers
and how easy it is for public figures
to spread them.
But in other important perspective to examine
is the fact that content creators
and their audiences should no doubt
have the right to discuss whatever they want
on their own personal channel,
without the need for any censorship.
And I also necessarily agree with the idea
that you should blame a particular YouTuber
for spoiling you, unless it's a truly blatant
and malicious case, which I don't think there are many of.
It's definitely not always their fault.
And in fact, it's primarily not their fault.
It's the reality of the system of YouTube
and what we do to work within it.
YouTube rewards engagement.
So we structure our videos, thumbnails,
and titles to deliver that.
And even if it didn't, it's very difficult
to make a video based on spoiler events
without including that in your thumbnail or title,
because otherwise, how are you going to convey
exactly what it is you're talking about?
And with this, I'm not referring
to chapter reviews specifically,
but more like discussionary content
that focuses on very, very modern events.
And that is difficult, like I said,
but it is certainly not impossible.
And as sad as it is, I do think
that all content creators have a responsibility
to the greater fan base and the series
that gave us exactly what we have,
be it a career or a hobby.
And here I'm also referring very much
to the smaller and newer YouTubers as well.
Because to be quite frank,
they tend to be far, far greater offenders of spoilers
than the larger entities.
Primarily because small channels
don't understand the scope of what they're doing
or the damage it has the potential to cause.
Not until they receive some kind of backlash.
Oh, and it's also because
they're just playing the game as well,
trying to make their content
as enticing as possible to click on.
I mean, if a larger channel
has a spoiler in the thumbnail
and you have a very generic thumbnail
then really there is absolutely nothing
to stop the viewer clicking on the more popular channel,
it's just natural.
And once again, I just want to emphasize
that no, I'm not calling these people out.
It's a random assortment of thumbnails
that I found during a search.
And I'm sure they all supremely lovely people
who mean no harm whatsoever.
At the same time, they all did include
not only an image of Blackbeard in the thumbnail,
but the actual panel of the manga as well,
which is, kind of like a super spoiler.
But I guess what I'm maybe saying here
is that we as a community, big or small,
need to come together and sort this out
because our current system isn't really working.
Well, I mean, it is working for the select few
of the manga diehards that is,
many of whom have read the chapter
literally days before it officially comes out, hmm.
And by the time the greater manga fan base sees it
spoilers have been plastered everywhere.
And that's not even taking into account
people who do things like wait for volumes to be released
or watch the anime only.
Because you know, as much as I crap on the anime,
they're One Piece fans as well
and I really don't want to ruin anyone's experience
of the series, no matter how they choose to digest it.
So with that said, another question is
where exactly do we draw the line with spoilers?
Talking about chapters and official releases
is very easy, but it becomes much harder
when we expand our gaze.
Because One Piece is a series
that has been going on for over two decades now,
and almost anything could be considered a spoiler,
depending on where a certain person is in the series.
Something that happened more than a decade ago,
like Ace dying is very, very old news to most of us,
but a massive spoiler to someone
who is currently slogging through One Piece
and is around Water 7 or say, Thriller Bark.
And in those cases, sadly,
all I have to say is, sorry.
There is a limit to what we can realistically achieve
to stop spoilers as well as have
a vibrant thriving community
with the freedom for discussion.
So once again, where do we draw the line?
Well, my personal line is that
if it hasn't been animated yet,
then it is spoiler territory
and should not be overtly focused upon
in thumbnails or chapter titles.
And the logic is that at least when it has been animated
then it gives the opportunity
for both manga and anime fans
to be on the same plane of existence
and thus make up a majority of knowledge.
There are still going to be people
who are far behind that, but once again,
there's only so much you can do.
And this also obviously isn't to say
that we can't discuss manga only events.
We absolutely can and should,
but it needs to be performed
with the utmost of caution.
Because our videos, even as small creators,
as I've demonstrated, have ripple effects
that go far beyond the tangible statistics
displayed at the bottom of a video
while we're watching it.
If 40,000 people have watched this video
then close to a million others may have seen it.
And that number will only go higher and higher
the larger the channel is.
So it really does kind of suck
from a freedom of speech perspective.
But for those who are lucky enough
to have a voice in this community,
I do think that we have something of a duty
to wield that responsibly, including myself,
because I know that I have certainly spoiled
a large amount of people in the past,
more than I will ever truly know,
and in the end, I think that is very counterproductive
to fostering a larger YouTube community.
By wielding blatant spoilers, we run the risk
of excluding an absolutely massive
majority of One Piece fans in this world
from our content and our own subscriber bases.
And yeah, that's my video rant about spoilers
and I'm sticking to it.
But what do you guys think?
Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below,
or even join my Discord server.
And if you'd like to see more videos like this,
then please do go and check out some of my other content
or even subscribe to the channel
for more glorious One Piece business
uploaded straight into your YouTube feeds.
But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review
and I'll see you next time.