As I said, this is actually pretty reassuring and is probably why YouTube, all things considered, is the most authentic social media platform nowadays.
I hope that wasn’t too harsh, and my advice to the creator is to think more about what your unique brand is, how you can convey it in a thumbnail or video title instantly, and just generally be more authentic and original in your videos.
In there, it doesn't matter if you get inspiration from other youtubers. Not my problem. I don't care if it's original - but I care that it's well done. This is one thing you can control: "good videographer and editor", and the good news is that it's a learned skill. Good taste is not a learned skill, harder, but seeking feedback and learning from it, is.
This being said there are clearly many different kinds of YT watchers. The parent and I may or may not matter to any specific youtuber.
Moreover, every single video is about “I”. An “I” video only works if people care about who “I” is, otherwise it’s just self centered, unhuman content creation.
You should all continue to your approach and learn as much as you can, but I hope you can find continued motivation to make these sorts of videos. Most people I know make art for themselves. Your desires and your tastes, as a motivator, are tireless.
In this case they convey a subtext you can’t get as gracefully by being a slave to syntax— that the author hoped the post would be about how they did achieve success, but that didn’t happen, forcing the parenthetical qualifier. I don’t think another treatment would express that quite as well; you can almost feel the wince.
You've offered a linguistically prescriptive interpretation that ignores nuance and flexibility of language.
While it may be the case that the canonical "point" of parenthesis is what you've described, the purpose only remains for as long as we culturally accept that definition.
The usage of parenthesis as an aside to indicate a certain emotion somewhat playfully is not only acceptable, it's entered into the cultural zeitgeist. We all understand the meaning. The sentence is complete -- regardless of the rules you've cited -- because the reader doesn't eliminate the parenthesis from their context like a robot, and we have a common understanding of what the aside is trying to communicate.
Some aspects are obviously reflective of his style specifically but I resonated with his pushing of "stakes", i.e. consciously instigating a good payoff for the viewer with the title and thumbnail, and then delivering the payoff and more. I realized after watching this that I almost never watch videos without stakes. Just speaking personally, this might be the most impactful thing missing from the videos on your channel.
Your titles and premises are quite similar to Ryan Trahan's (https://www.youtube.com/@ryan/videos), but Ryan's consistently have stakes ("I tried every Airbnb Category" -- ooh, are there interesting categories I don't know about? "I Tried Every Drive-thru's Most Expensive Item" -- ooh, how expensive do they get?). In contrast, the titles here just strike me as more uninteresting ("I Let AI Control My Vacation" -- ok but I can do random things already without AI? "I Hiked a Mountain Blindfolded" -- ok but you're not actually in serious danger?) I'm not too surprised the GeoGuessr one performed well, since the stakes practically write themselves -- "ooh, can he figure out where he is? what if he gets dropped in the middle of nowhere?! how long will he have to walk?!".
Props to OP for their good-natured attitude and engagement. YT seems like such a tough business nowadays where it'll take years and a very thick skin to succeed. In contrast to some other commenters, I think some of the pieces that make a great channel are already there. Hope you accomplish your goals and I wish you well :)
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649 - How to succeed in MrBeast production (2024-09-15, 1352 comments)
I can drop a list after work
