YouTube’s Accidental Pyramid Scheme
I love a lot of these YouTubers. Ali taught me about Speechify which is helping improve my reading speed. Shelby taught me about Medium’s partner program — from which I have made over 1 dollar and 79 cents. Graham taught me… I guess buy index funds with money I don’t have. So why am I growing suspicious of them? Well, you read the title — let’s just jump right in
From emails imitating companies, facebook profiles imitating your friends, and “health” influences imitating medical professionals [See John Oliver’s recent] the internet is full of real schemes and real crime.
But these YouTube Life Coach style videos don’t seem to fit the bill. Right? Ali, Shelby, Graham don’t really seem to be among them. Right?
To find out, let’s rewind the clock:
In 2008 a magician, illusionist, and mentalist named Derren Brown proposed a probability system for predicting horses races with 100% accuracy
To prove that the system worked, he shared it with average every day people. He only asked that they videotape themselves and send footage with updates of when they won.
Khadisha, who joined his experiment,placed a bet for 4000 pounds on a horse in her final round. Much of this was borrowed money since her confidence in the system was so high. She had been using Derren Brown’s system and had won 4 races in a row.
Then the show does exactly what good shows do. It doesn’t tell you what happens turn keeps you on the edge of your seat. The camera crew follows her around the last day at the track and we watch more and more footage of her horse gaining and losing position.
And then the horse loses.
So, what the heck
Well, the answer is brilliant. At the start of the show, to prove the system worked to the audience, he aired pure undoctored footage of flipping a coin and getting 10 heads in a row. How did he do it?
But as they are rolling footage of the horse race, he shows the actual footage. In order to film a minute of flipping 10 heads in a row took 9 hours of continuous filming. If you play enough times, statistically, you’ll win some. Sure, there’ll be failures, but if you keep you failed attempted *off camera* no one will ever know.
So same with the horses. He didn’t have a probability he system. He was just betting on every single horse.
Khadisha’ did win times in a row but that’s because nearly 8,000 people lost OFF CAMERA
They sent in footage. Specifically, 6⁵.
Race 1: 7776 bet, evenly divided between 6 horses. Race 2: The field narrows. Race 3: The field narrows. It’s a pyramid! There aren’t real winners. Just the perceptions of winners because of the footage that is preserved and curated.
Kiiinda like the YouTube Success Vlogger
Let’s break that down.
Perception
There are two distinct similarities between the horse race scam and the YouTube Success Vlogger. The first is perception.
The life advice, financial advice, and productivity advice these YouTubers offer could be right. It could be wrong.
But if we assume that it is correct *because* they are successful youtubers we have made a bad assumption. Or if we’re being precise, that’s a straight up deduction. This YouTuber is successful therefore their advice is correct.
But that deduction ignores the nine hours of other footage.
It ignores the 6⁵, 7775 other people who also bet. But you’re just not seeing the footage because they didn’t win the algorithmic horse race.
[As a footnote: If you’re hung up on this, if you think youtubers are famous because of hard work alone, I’ll put an indie affiliate link for Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. Or you can check out the portion of my video about Mr. Rogers’s Theology and its critique of the just-world/prosperity gospel — Here]
Products
The Second Sense is products.
Ali, Shelby, Graham etc only use this as part of their revenue. They add value in other places. But there are channels that really do act exactly like pyramid schemes.
They don’t sell real value. They sell the promise of future value if only you invest now.
Channels like ThinkMedia for instance. The way that they stand out is telling other how to people stand out. I’m not gonna make any moral judgments about them as people. I don’t know what their motivations are and there’s a good chance that they see themselves as educators.
But there is a foundational conflict of interest in a YouTube channel that sells filming gear via affiliate links as a part of its business model.
Everybody wants to win the horse race. ThinkMedia wins… just by betting other people’s money on every single horse. The Affiliate Marketing strategy of a channel like this taking a cut of the camera gear that realistically only a small fraction of people will win.
And they’re not like Derren Brown. I didn’t say this, but he compensated the losers for their losses when they trusted his system and failed. There is no mechanism for this in the YouTube Success Vlogger Affiliate Marketing Pyramid Scheme.
Feedback Loop
There is a notable difference with the concept of feedback loops where the pyramid scheme youtuber analogy breaks down. But we can’t cover this in this video. You can watch the video I have on algorithmic radicalization. Of you can stay subscribed here or on YouTube because we’ll be talking about it more in future videos/posts.
Conclusion:
I guess to be super precise and clear, this is not a video that’s meant to be calling out these YouTubers. And finger wagging at them and saying they need to change their lives and think about what they’ve done.
As I stated at the opening, many of these channels offer value in other ways.
I’m making this video because I think it’s important to keep a healthy degree of skepticism, and also to keep an open mind about how the unnatural selection of the algorithmic survival of the fittest can lead us to make less than ideal judgments about the world around us.
In mild cases, you might say buy a fancy camera you really don’t need, and then you don’t realize it until too late and then you… but in less mild cases… The consequences can be severe. AI Ethics researchers refer to this as algorithmic radicalization.
I have a few videos up about it already. Safiya Noble explains it well in her book “Algorithms of Oppression” which I’d encourage you to check out.
More thoughts about the algorithm coming soon and a massive video essay dropping soon about misinformation called ‘The Real Life Screenslaver’
Talk Soon,
-CP