YouTube Cliches

Don't do these things

Being an Original Thinker is already rare and becoming even more rare as time goes on.

The Social Media Hivemind is consuming souls and crushing dreams as we speak. Every second you spend refreshing your feed on X or clicking on podcasts is draining you of your ability to think originally.

One consequence of the Social Media Hivemind is that cliches are becoming more common.

And marketers are far from being immune to the allure of the cliche. If anything, they’re probably more susceptible to it.

As soon as the average marketer sees someone getting results…they immediately copy them.

That’s the main reason why so many YouTube videos seem like clones of each other. Everyone is chasing the results that the guy before them got instead of trying to blaze their own trail and get their own results.

And viewers are getting sick and tired of it. Here are a few YouTube cliches you should avoid.

“Hey guys”

Click on any random video on your homepage and what do you hear?

“Hey guys.”

“Hi guys.”

“What. is. up. everybody? It’s your boy ChuckleFuck69 coming at you.”

“Heeeeey what’s goin’ on guys?”

Any variation of the above is making 100% of your viewers cringe and causing them to involuntarily move their mouse over the back button in their browser.

They aren’t even choosing to do this. It happens automatically. It’s the human body’s attempt to avoid the horrible sensation of cringe.

Maybe talking like this worked in the early days, but like anything else that works it gets used and abused to death and eventually stops working (most ‘content creators’ and wifi money bros are low in creativity so they just copy each other in a massive circlejerk).

The things you do when you’re trying to be authentic make you seem fake AF.

It’s like the “Hey [firstname]” at the beginning of emails.

It used to work, but now everyone knows it’s automated and it feels fake/insulting.

Take a look at your emails and you’ll notice the good ones aren’t doing the “Hey [firstname] thing anymore. It’s the car dealerships and other corny types of businesses who are still doing it.

Just launch into whatever you want to talk about without the fake ‘authenticity’ BS.

(applies to everything btw)

Long intro music scene

Everyone clicks on the “skip intro” button on Netflix.

There’s a reason for that.

No one wants to see your long boring creative intro with the cheesy license-free music.

Just start the video.

If you want to do an intro scene for branding purposes, make it quick (5 seconds or so) and do it AFTER you start talking for a bit (i.e. not at 0:00 in the video).

Soy face

I shouldn’t have to say this but…

Soy face is out.

It’s been out for years.

If you’re still posing with your mouth open for your thumbnails: you’re cooked.

Even Mr. Beast has swapped out all his old soy face thumbnails for neutral-face ones instead.

The reason it used to work is because it made people curious about why you were so “surprised” in your thumbnail. It made them want to click and watch.

See my comments above about why things that once worked eventually stop working, because that’s exactly what happened with soy face.

It’s played out.

Stop doing it.

Faces in thumbnails to lead to a higher CTR. Just make sure you’re making a normal facial expression that normal humans make.

Keep your damn mouth closed. It’ll convert better.

“Smash that like button”

Come up with a more creative way to get people to engage.

“Smash that like button” is one of those lazy fake-casual things that’s so easy to say that everyone just throws it out there.

The less effort you put into things, the worse your results will be. And if the effort you’re putting into something is literally zero…you can do the math.

This is similar to the trend where YouTubers would say “likecommentsubscribe” just like that with no spaces in between, almost like it’s one word.

Lazy and uninspired.

Bottom line

The one general principle you need to take away from this is:

When everyone does something, it stops working.

The value of being an original thinker is through the roof.

The bottom 99% aren’t capable of doing even the smallest task without checking social media to see what the hivemind thinks about it first.

By the time you hear about something on X or on a podcast, you’re already too late.

Be the guy everyone copies instead of joining the horde of petrified masses who just want someone else to make the decision for them to alleviate their fear of being wrong.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Nothing bad will happen to you if you’re wrong.

You’re the boss. Nothing is catastrophic. Bad decisions are just speed bumps that you won’t even remember in the long run (assuming you course correct).

Just learn from it and do things right the next time.

Do you want to win or do you want to avoid being wrong?

Those are two contradictory goals and you can never achieve both at the same time.