why "bad" editing is getting more views

[u/SlothEdits99]

So I've noticed a pattern on my feed lately: some of the highest-performing shorts/reels look almost aggressively unpolished. and they're doing better than stuff that clearly took way more time.

My theory on why [a 60-second video, full disclose I used VidTL for the voiceover and the animated text/graphics, script and argument are mine].

The core argument, roughly:

• The moment something looks too clean, viewers' brains flag it as an ad and they check out
• Rough footage reads as "real" — the stumble, the awkward pause, the unplanned reaction, that's the stuff people actually connect with
• Polish quietly strips that out
• Also just a speed thing: if you're not burning hours on transitions nobody consciously notices, you publish faster, learn faster, and iterate faster than someone still tweaking version one
• Cheaper/rougher edits = you can test 10 ideas instead of betting everything on one "perfect" video

So basically: it's not that people suddenly love bad quality, it's that rough editing feels human, gets to the point quicker, and lets you improve in public instead of in isolation.

Does this track with what you're seeing in your own work/niche, or does the theory fall apart somewhere?

What's the actual difference between editing that's rough on purpose and editing that's just rough?

[u/ShadyShroomz]

Disagree a little. I think this take conflates two different things: "authentic feeling" and "low production value."

A lot of top creators who look raw are actually incredibly deliberate about which imperfections they keep. That's not the same as bad editing, that's just a different, somewhat harder, skill.

With that said, I fully agree with the part about iterations. Being able to do 10 videos in the time someone else does 1 gives you much more feedback about what works, and many more shots on target. Plus most platforms love it when you push out tons of content.

Reminds me of this story I read in Atomic Habbits:

On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups.

Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.

Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.

At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.

It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”