what the hell

it's honestly subtle enough to the point where it's debatable whether or not this is even something that was put in deliberately for retention, because it also serves such a strong narrative purpose, but for my experience watching it, it definitely did also keep my goopy goblin gamer brain engaged

... i think it's executed in a very tasteful manner here. there's no explicit call to "keep watching because you wanna get to 100%!". i think it mainly serves as a breather for the viewer while also communicating the progress of the video and the rising stakes of the discussed content

a positive example for me is this video. for each chapter divider there's a percentage that counts up, effectively showing you the progress of the video. if you wanna be cynical about it, it's kind of reminiscent of progress bars in gacha games, but ... youtu.be/UD4_CaTufIU?...

i don't mean to bash this creator because the video does have some very useful nuggets of info and it is by far his best performing video (possibly in part because of how it's paced), but you can't help but FEEL how intentional that pacing was and it's quite awkward

here's what i would consider an example of this being done poorly. there's one piece of information that i clicked on this video for, and it takes 4 1/2 minutes to finally get to it while he keeps reminding you that "i'll get to it soon, just keep watching!" www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rq1...

imo there's a balance to be struck. retention based pacing and editing is definitely a real thing and it works, hence why people are doing it and i can't fault them for it tbh. but like anything, it can be executed tastefully and also extremely poorly

separated by borders, united by lack of communication and inability to get on the same page about what both parties want

thx gng

ij'll t,,.ryy

one day imma start a video with "imagine - if you will - a bus stop." mark my words

thanks