This also reminds me of the many people who complain about my YouTube thumbnails from time to time.

I do have the 'open mouth' from time to time (I hate it but do it)—and the reason is not because I think that's appealing, professional, or amazing.

It's because through a lot of A/B testing over the past year, the same quality and subject matter in a given video without a dumb thumbnail gets at least 30% less impressions on YouTube.

What use is making great content if your marketing around it can't get people to read/view it?

You have to hold your nose to do any marketing (IMO), and there's a reason most of us on HN distrust salespeople and marketing people. But they exist for a purpose. I've had to dip my toes in those murky waters to be able to sustain the open source work I'm doing.

'Be the change you want to see in the world'?

Or just 'decide if you want dumb clicks or reasoned interested'.

I hate what you describe about YouTube. To me the worst offender is a chap who used to go by 'Stephen the Robot', but I think he changed the channel name, his actual content is excellent, but I have to sit holding the remote, so that I can skip all his repulsive self-reactions and crash-zooms on his face. It's such a shame, he's working on an awesome project, it's really interesting, (open source scratch built pick and place machine) but the delivery seems to be designed for 'tweenagers' on TikTok. (For context, I'm in my 20s, hardly old and grouchy. I actually might not be older than him even, unsure.)

The key is to get the dumb clicks (to pay the bills), while not going so far as to disenfranchise the core audience.