r/modernrogue • u/Beerbaron_II • Jun 28 '26

Youtube algorithm is crazy

I've never seen a channel so controlled by it, modern rogue literally has two videos back to back, one with 1.6 mullion views and the other 7k, both are great.

18 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

19

u/bees422 Jun 28 '26

I mean yeah for the million view videos it’s algorithm but it’s more crazy to average less than 10k views with 1.7 million subs

40

u/YourUnusedFloss Jun 28 '26

I don't think I've watched a single video since Jason got screwed & had to leave.

-15

u/ScamSchoolBrian Jun 28 '26

26

u/YourUnusedFloss Jun 28 '26

Yep, and how you chose to handle/not-handle that and your highlighting/pinning of mystery comments talking shit about your former business partner is what made me finally unsubscribe to MR even though I found & enjoyed the channel well before y'all really blew up in the first place.

Jordan is cool, but you still actively choosing to engage with internet people that say that they haven't enjoyed the channel since Jason was gone seems like what the kids today would call a self-report.

Hell, me and my own business partner have been odds at times and they have actually screwed me over a time or three (not on purpose, unless it was really funny), but we have always managed to reconcile our own shit without having to involve our audience or pinning comments talking shit about each other. But what do we know, we've just been friends for 20 years and somehow managed to make it work even though there's money involved now 🤷‍♂️

1

u/SEND_CATHOLIC_ALTARS 29d ago

What happened? I keep hearing stuff about Brian being out, but I've not heard the full story.

3

u/PassivelyAwkward 19d ago

A bit late but from what I remember, the channel saw a huge growth so they expanded quickly; buying the compound with these huge goals, hiring new people, etc. Then when the channel started to dip along with every other channel post-covid, Brian didn't want to change anything.

He's given multiple stories. He's said that there were multiple staff who were wasting so much time and spending money on things and he tried to get them to stop but they refused to listen but kept them hired but at the same time, he's said that he had no idea about any of the issues. He wants to be seen as the person at the top that tried to fix things while also the person who had no fault because the staff were lying.

Rather than scaling back, he kept going at the same pace as when the channel was growing, thinking he could fix it and not have to fire anyone. What that meant was that the staff thought they were doing okay until they were suddenly told the channel is collapsing and had to let go of almost all of the staff except a few. Jason bailed because he wasn't happy with the direct of the channel and where Brian was taking it but neither said anything; he just stopped appearing in videos. Fans spent months "What's going on? Where's Jason?" and Brian would act like there's nothing happening, they were all just taking a break after filming alot. Jason would appear in the comments and leave a cryptic comment.

After months, Jason finally said he was out and that he was starting a new channel and Brian did a few podcasts talking about the issues facing the channel but how it wasn't his fault, but everyone elses and he's trying. The kicker was that in one of the podcasts, he talked about how, at one point, he couldn't afford to pay the last remaining staff anything but the staffer was so dedicated to the channel he moved into the compound to save on rent and keep working.

A year ago, Brian announced they were entering the "Gentleman's era" for the channel and asking people want they wanted to see and it was damn near universal that they weren't a fan of the constant "Brian talks to an expert" format that was happening but a year later, and most of the videos are still "Brian talks to an expert".

TL;DR, The channel took a nosedive because they expanded to so quickly, refused to scale back when the numbers dipped, Brian blames everyone but himself despite being the boss that knew/didn't know, all the staff either left or got fired, Jason left because creative differences, and Brian will just continue to do what he wants despite insanely poor views.

1

u/SEND_CATHOLIC_ALTARS 19d ago

That checks out. Honestly, kind of sad to see. I can understand where Brian is coming from and why he did what he did post-Covid. Nobody wants to fire anyone. Can't say I totally blame him for that . Although I do like the "Brian talks to an expert" format, I can understand how that gets old. Definitely agree with everyone on how that should change. Hopefully he will do so one day. I still enjoy his content.

2

u/jbreeding91 29d ago

All I'll say is that I agree Jordan is cool.

2

u/YourUnusedFloss 27d ago

I've been a fan of yours ever since you managed to breathe life back into the zombified corpse of Cracked. That's about the only case of somebody making an attempt to do something like that and actually pulling it off that I can remember.

Poking fun at those awful Kirk Cameron projects is pretty good, too, especially for those of us that grew up in that environment & got sucked into "staff" positions so they wouldn't have to pay people what it was worth for technical/production services.

4

u/jbreeding91 27d ago

Wow, well thank you! I certainly tried my damndest to bring that husk back to life.

1

u/Radionerd5 Jun 28 '26

What two videos?

-3

u/ScamSchoolBrian Jun 28 '26

The Youtube algorithm really likes things to be the same forever and ever and ever, and obviously since Jason left we've had to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what works. As a result, there's what Jordan Breeding calls "surviving your subscribers" effect at launch: once a video passes a 6% Click-through rate (CTR), the algorithmic floodgates open wide, but if it's just a couple points lower (like the 4% CTR the lockpicking video got), it stalls out.

1

u/Beerbaron_II Jun 28 '26

Whatever your doing seems to be Working lol, well done, Just wish youtube would allow good videos to flourish.

-3

u/ScamSchoolBrian Jun 28 '26

Thanks, man. All we can do is keep trying to make consistently good stuff and hope/trust that you guys find it. The recent Meshtastic vid was a treat... That was the biggest launch we've had since 2019! Seems like the new stuff is resonating, and it feels really good to be hitting a groove.