#sorry this was so long xjndkd ive been harboring these thoughts for so Long

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Curious for your YouTube algorithm thoughts

THANK YOU RANDOM CITIZEN OK SO this is gonna be messy asf bc im on phone but i need it out there so. im gonna talk about just like Dream specifically because yes. this is gonna be a long post you can skip past it

so like the thing is about dream blowing up so quickly is that he knew and was confident that he was in fact going to blow up and he talks about it as a matter of fact like, he even said he told Sapnap and George to come along with him like he was confident that its gonna happen and 1. we love us a cocky man and 2. i wanted to know why so i went through his channel and old videos and i cannot stress how perfectly he executed manipulating the YouTube algorithm in his favour.

Most of it wasn't really luck, but there did have to be a certain point of skills for him to gain as much attention as he did, like obviously being cracked at the game but also being charismatic, he has an easy good personality and him being at something that so many people love was such a good set up like. minecraft was the perfect base for him to gain attention because it has such a wide audience and so many people love interacting with any of its content, its practically too easy. so its not really luck, just a happy coincidence.

That's the setup, just Minecraft and then we have the first few videos on his channel which are again- perfect for people to find his channel, and i like to imagine he had sort of a set plan before he started his channel of what he's gonna do, probably long the lines of something like this:

short videos that draw people to watch them in like 4am when theyre bored - clickbait someone everyone knows (in his case pewdiepie) those will make people discover his channel and gain him a lot of views because people are going to want to figure out what seed he used and they'd be curious about that, and some people would actually look for it.

there was also the "cursed video" era, they were satirical and funny and unoriginal and glorious because people love them, and they're the type of stuff that get recommended to minecraft enjoyers.

slightly more original content but isnt new if you think about it - slightly longer videos but in a subject that people are curious about (as he's done it- "the unsolved mystery of...." and a bunch of others, those will make people actually click his channel to seek more videos of the same idea

and then its a cycle of those two for a while, keeps people engaged and grow fond of his channel

but then he throws a couple of videos that will make people stay there for him and not the content. aka the "minecraft but xray is on series" and it works, he keeps a level of engagement throughout the video and make people grow fond of him without them losing interest and draws out the video for around 20 minutes and thats when the mod videos started coming in

fully original content, with friends to keep the video from being dull (minecraft but... series)

and at that point he's practically made it, he just needed that little push to make all people flock to his content. thats where manhunt came in, in its early points at least.

i wholeheartedly believe that the speedrunning thing wasnt originally meant to be something to draw clout, if it was i reckon he wouldve made speedrunning videos before- but he started adding some speedrun videos and that helped people see just how good he was at the game.

but that's just like a very rough idea of it from what ive seen by scrolling through his channel, and he also talked about his name in anthony's interview, he said that Dream was a name he picked because everyone knew it, everyone knew how its spelled and its easy to remember, its just so well thought out and he just reached a point where he doesnt need those deliberate moves because now people use him for clickbait, hell even pewdiepie did.

it just. blows my mind no one else or not many other people really thought to do it the way Dream did or didn't manage to execute it as well because its such like, an easy thing to do sort of yk? you just need to have basic knowledge of how algorithms work. But thats just my opinion on it! feel free to add more if you want or if theres anything else you want to point out :D