The 'before and after' thumbnail that actually showed a real before and after

Was scrolling through DIY videos last month and kept seeing those split thumbnails where the left side is a dumpster fire and the right side is a magazine spread. Clicked one about fixing a cracked bathroom tile and the 'after' shot was literally the same photo with a filter slapped on it. The video itself was 20 minutes of rambling before he showed the actual repair. But here's the thing, the tile job took him 4 hours and the finish looked worse than the crack. So the clickbait was lying in both directions, the thumbnail and the outcome. Does anyone else feel like the most honest content now is the stuff that shows the mid-progress mess, not the shiny final shot?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlies379d ago

Man, I feel this in my soul. My last attempt at a 'quick fix' video had me showing the cracked baseboard and then the after shot which was just me covering it with a plant. The mid-progress mess is where the real story lives, like when I tried to patch drywall and ended up with a wall that looked like a topographical map of the Himalayas. Honestly, the most honest content I've seen is just people swearing at a stubborn pipe for ten minutes straight. I'd rather watch someone's real struggle than some fake perfect finish that they probably photoshopped anyway.

mark_green8d ago

Wait, @charlies37, you got that far? My drywall patch looked like a melted marshmallow.