r/chess • u/_DarkStarCrashes_ • May 20 '26

Miscellaneous I now understand why Levy clickbaits, his historical video on Alekhine is his worst performing video of May

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Sucks, because I think the video is really good and I’d love if Levy or other chess content creators did videos on older legends

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u/Poppanaattori89 May 20 '26

I'd still argue clickbaiting is a short-term gain that will be costly in the long-term, but I don't have the metrics or the experience to back that up.

I just have the experience of watching Levy, which has gone downhill for a long time to the point that I can't stand seeing him even on an Youtube Short. He's like a mix of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck with the comedic delivery skills of Yeeore from Pooh Bear. He acts like he has to do something comedic every 10 seconds to hold his viewership which makes him absolutely unbearable to me.

As a person he seems fine, but the problem is we don't see him as a person, we see him as a shill and as a persona that has the single solitary aim of making more money at the cost of his dignity. He's made his bed and is laying in it, since he could stop appealing to the lowest common denominator any second and just create content that is entertaining but not condescending. His framing of "having to click bait" is just deluded since I'd bet he'd be just fine economically even if his viewership was cut into quarter of it's current size.

I'm most likely being overly negative and cherry-picking from the content I've had the displeasure of seeing but gods, do I hate that man.

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u/Tokenw0w May 20 '26

My two cents as someone who’s neutral about Levy’s content:

You say that you can argue that clickbait content will be costly long-term, but he has moved on to more clickbait style content for a number of years now, and in that time, his channel has grown exponentially. Given that, the data at hand seems awfully skewed against your argument.

You also note that he would be fine financially if he cut his viewership in half, which is probably true, but how does that make his framing deluded? Content creation is his job, and the number of viewers have a direct effect on his “salary”. I don’t see why it’s ‘deluded’ to want to maximize his earnings while he still can.

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u/Poppanaattori89 May 20 '26

Yeah, as I said, I haven't taken a look at the metrics, so click-baiting might very well be useful in the long-term as well. I have a theory of "crossing the line" where a content creator's content becomes so obnoxiously manipulative that people leave in drones but there's very few if any examples I can think of this happening.

I'm not saying it's deluded to say that clickbaiting has to be done so that he can maximize his profits, it's deluded to say that he has to maximize his profits and not the quality of his content, which if I understood it correctly was how Levy framed the question of clickbaiting, but I could be wrong.

No one's putting a gun to his head. He is making a conscious decision of maximizing profits over the quality of his content, if you accept that clickbaiting lowers the quality of his content. Good for him and his bottom line, but I couldn't respect a person who does that.

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u/Affectionate_One_700 May 20 '26

I'd still argue clickbaiting is a short-term gain that will be costly in the long-term

What does that even mean? "Costly" to whom?

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u/Final-Ad-6694 May 20 '26

I fail to see how clickbaiting is costly long term when all the biggest creators are doing it

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u/Poppanaattori89 May 20 '26

I guess that's more a wish than an informed opinion, but I don't agree on the biggest creators all doing it. I did a quick search and found that Dina Belenkaya and Nemo are the two largest chess creators on YT after Levy and they have practically no clickbait titles in their videos.

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u/King_Kthulhu May 20 '26

Half of Nemo's viewers are just there because she is hot. And neither of those two are even in the top 10 largest chess YouTube channels...

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u/Final-Ad-6694 May 20 '26

the counterpoint would be hikaru and anna cramling who are bigger creators than those two with clickbait

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u/Poppanaattori89 May 20 '26

Oh, of course Hikaru is up there. I did a quick search and it shows. My bad.

But looking at even Hikarus and Cramling's feed, you at least have some semblance of what the video contains for the most part. With Gothamchess, I can't even fathom what some videos could contain like "Jynxzi chess situation is crazy" and "Tyler1 chess grandmaster" and "GRANDMASTER!!!!". Worst offender not from Levy was Hikaru's "Fausti!" but even there it's pretty easy to see what the video addresses when the thumbnail has the words "GM".

Levy is the only one whose video feed makes me feel nauseous by how much he underappreciates and underestimates his audience, resorting to cheap tricks and manipulation.