ok i just saw this thread on bluesky where a youtuber i follow got a bunch of youtube's ai recommended thumbnails and i wanted to try it for myself with my stream vods. long post. cw: aislop
i'll go thru them in backwards chronological order
these are the ones for the most recent stream. they're kind of boring, the ai said it was trying to combine the aesthetics of wheel of fortune and tower unite and it ends up being just generic gambling imagery with playstations on it.
now THESE are something. these are part 2 of last week's re4 stream. i think it thought miyako was supposed to represent myself and put it in the thumbnails. the second one dreamed up a bunch of friends for me to have. notice how it imagined all of us as white and most of us as men. also notice how alec from technology connections is there ??? i think that's from the ytp i posted years ago ???
part 1 of last week's re4 stream. who the fuck is that. i think the ai just isn't used to the idea of someone not plastering their face all over everything and so dreamed up a white guy facecam to soyface at the game. this is john youtube, the youtube man. god, imagine unironically posing for the camera to make a face like that, imagine how fucking degrading that feels. maybe they've lost the ability to feel degraded. re4 terror !
oh lucky me, it made three for the portal / re4 stream ! god, looking at these makes me want to kill myself. it really wants to highlight the tonal contrast between the two games, and i think it still things alec technologyconnections is me. huge fan of little boy miyako in the middle, really demonstrates how much it isn't used to working with women. the one in the top left of the left one is probably also miyako, but i have no idea who the rest are. i don't hate the rendition of me as a tan male digimon protagonist. at least it got it right that one of us is black, even if it got the gender wrong and the character is being consumed by cubist miyako.
yeah, i sure am gonna be scared toknight with these images. again, it focuses really hard on the fact that i'm playing two tonally distinct games, and it still thinks alectecconnec is me. god i hope it puts doug walker in one of these.
another threefer ! the left one is just generic, but she should definitely get her high blood pressure looked at. the other two are, again, obsessed with the fact that i play multiple games on my streams. transition ? like i'm trying moving on between these two ? what the fuck ever. these would not work if i didn't have these as a format, and the cool thing is you can't get a format with these. none of these remotely look like my characters in these games. is that terraria in the middle one ? why did it put the intermission text on the last one ?
um. so. youtube says it gave me two of these but it didn't. like, here's the description it gave me:
Concept 2: Progression State
A high-action shot of an expressive character mid-motion with a massive, metallic "PART 10" text overlay anchored in the top corner. This concept emphasizes the series continuity, making it clear to your regular audience that this is the next significant chapter in your playthrough.
Why it works
The bold typography and "in media res" composition (showing a character in the middle of a crucial moment) drop the viewer directly into the story. It highlights the intensity of this specific episode, creating curiosity about the progress made in both game worlds.
but that just isn't there. it didn't generate that, it imagined that it did. what the fuck. this is completely uninteresting except for that. anyway, i think i've said this before in some capacity, but if someone in real life talked to me the way ai talks to me, i would viscerally want them dead. like i wouldn't do anything about it obviously but that level of insipid sycophantism would make every neuron in my brain go "this person needs to not exist anymore by any means possible". also, god, do youtubers really thing this way ? we need to kill all of them.
did we talk about lucky star in this stream ? well whatever. the "VS" is really funny to me, like i'm pitting these games against each other and not just trying to fill four hours. i have never used any of these pokemon in my entire life. i think it's using the remakes as a basis for its designs.
it also hallucinated that it generated two of these but only gave me one ! who the fuck is that ! what do you mean "finally" part 8 ??? these weren't streams we took a long break between ! what the fuck ! WHO IS THAT ??? why does it keep creating white guys for me to be ??
first of all that's not my team. second of all, hey, we played baionlenja in this stream ! where's that ? where's my baionlenja representation ? you hate finland ? you hate finnish people ? also that looks nothing like me but you knew that already. gritty white boy holding a gritty ds grrrr. look at how serious i am.
well, that one looks *more* like me in that it's a woman with her hair up, but they got everything else wrong. at least the second one isn't a 'versus' thing. also the designs of everything in these thumbnails is much more portal 1 than portal 2, are they stupid ?
yay, miyako ! i was wondering when we'd get her back, but that gameplay looks much more like touhou than rabbit and steel. why hasn't it made miyako into a pokemon protagonist yet ? i think the reason it keeps putting these 'vs' here is because it isn't used to people talking about two things without pitting them against each other. poor little ai, trained on so much soulless ragebait that it can't recognize when someone likes two things. i love the "featuring rabbit and steel" in the corner of the first one, as if it's a guest star.
i guess it thinking it gives you two when it really only gives you one is more common than i thought, oh well. i've noticed a particulr bias towards lucario and garchomp in these thumbnails despite the fact that i don't remember seeing those much in my playthrough. of note is that this is before oreimo fujoshi was part of the stream layout. i didn't know yuri knorozov played russian roulette.
god i fucking hate youtube so much. the fact that these are thumbnails that "perform well" makes me sick. i know this is basically just an amalgamation of the worst qualities of them, but the fact that these qualities exist at all deeply makes me want to burn this whole world down. i hope some other nuclear power blesses america with the cleansing flame of nuclear armageddon before it's too late, because i just can't fucking take it anymore.
HOLY SHIT THESE ARE BITS THAT ACTUALLY APPEARED !!! that's the apple bit ! and the "allie in a big hole" bit !!! holy fuck it's actually paying attention ! of course, that's not what allie looks like at all, but i am somehow genuinely impressed that it picked up on that. apart from that these are. surprisingly serviceable. if horribly generic and not something i'd use at all. i don't know, man, i think that if i were to make thumbnails, i would try to do more of a "standing out by not standing out" thing ? like, in a sea of noise, you notice and appreciate who's being quiet. i'd go for subtlety is what i'm saying.
oh shit, i can only post 30 images per post. i guess we need a part 2 now.
