I didn't watch the whole thing but is the ladder ever explained? I didn't understand why he's doing the video on a ladder. Is that part of the clickbait? You have to have a crazy face and be on a ladder, and that's how you make Youtube's algorithm happy?

At this point it seems like a vicious spiral. Someone clicks on a guy on a ladder and all of a sudden you're being recommended guys on ladders, so now everyone needs to get on a ladder to get on the front page.

Youtube runs the thumbnails through a sentiment analysis AI and promotes videos more when they rate with a high likelihood of the bucket of emotions that have been found to correlate with ad impressions.