Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann
Reardon and in this episode we're going
to be debunking something which i have
been
fooled by so many, many times and I did
not even realize it was
fake! Now that I've seen it now that I've
figured it out I'm like
of course it's fake, why didn't I pick
this up sooner? And once
I've told you about it it is going to
change everything you're going to be
mind-blown and go
oh my goodness why did no one notice
this before?
But before I get to that first of all
let me take you on the journey of
how I discovered this ... well lots of you
had been sending me messages saying
could you please look into the channel
Mr Cakes.
Now if you haven't seen any of their
videos recommended
then basically they are just another
channel that is making lots and lots and
lots of fast-forwarded sped up content
of making cakes and chocolate things to
music
and they've got quite good production
value, their
things at least make sense they're not
like they don't need debunking in terms
of their recipes actually do follow
logical steps and they actually do
seem to make sense you would do those
steps to get to the end product.
Now they're not giving you recipe
quantities so you can't actually follow
their recipes so they're just
pretty to look at ... nothing dangerous
there, nothing out of the ordinary.
What is extraordinary though is their
views.
The views on their videos are huge. Let
me show you ... if we sort their videos by
most popular, this one from seven months
ago
is on 77 million views!
One month ago 41 million, 39 million.
Crazy right!? Like that's huge view counts
and if we sort their videos by
oldest to newest so we can see how old
the channel is,
it says their oldest video was uploaded
only 11 months ago
and it's currently getting 222 million
views a month. You heard that right
222 million that's like two thirds of
the U.S. population
in their view count last month. That's
crazy huge.
So who is Mr Cakes? They are this
phenomenally successful
channel on YouTube, who are they? Well the
youtube channel says that they're
located in the USA
and then if we follow the link to their
Facebook page and then to their website
this website says under the about us
section that they're a bakery making
things from scratch. Their team
is Richard Smith, he has a true passion
for baking and that's why he has been
our founder and head baker since day one.
Susan Anderson who bakes cakes decorates
and heads up marketing
and Steve Ruffalo a lead cake designer.
Now I did a quick reverse image search
on the photos they had of each of these
chefs
and let me just show you here we have
Susan
from a stock photo site there she is and
allow me to introduce you to Richard
from Shutterstock and Steve, the lead
cake designer, is also on a free image
site.
So then I wondered well if the photos
are faked up,
which other websites do that as well
sometimes they just
put a model in there rather than their
actual person,
but it made me wonder are the words real
or are the words faked up too. So then
I put the quote in from their website he
has designed beautiful cakes
for various occasions including weddings
parties showers anniversaries and more
and i searched for that quote and lo and
behold
it's from a website design template page.
So you're supposed to take that template
and put in your own words and your own
photos but if we look at it,
it looks very familiar ... it's a bakery
that makes fresh goods from scratch
and here's the team Susan, Steve and
Richard.
They did however change some things on
the website not much
but if you scroll up they've changed
what we offer
to what we offers. They obviously thought
there was an error there
so that was an interesting dead end.
Then I went on and managed to find if
you look on YouTube it says that all of
their videos are created by
YumUp limited, so I looked up YumUp and
found their website
and if we go there now we can tell we're
in the right place
because it's the exact same website
template as we had for the other one,
they even have what we offers there
instead of what we offer
but they have customized a few more
things so by comparing from the template
to what they've actually written
we then know what I guess they think is
important to tell us.
What it says is they have 245 million
subscribers
more than 100 channels on youtube,
500 million video views and more than 50
Facebook pages. Well sounds like we have
another content farm either that or a
hugely successful production company, you
can make a decision on that and let me
know
in the comments as we go along. Now I did
send them an email via their contact
email
asking if they could send me a list of
their channels but they didn't reply
so I just hunted for them instead. These
are the channels that I have found on
youtube that belong to YumUp.co
there is delicious cakes, my cupcake
notice the name similarity to existing
channels there like my cupcake addiction
she was an individual creator who's no
longer creating 😔
Yummy Plus, everything is very chocolate
themed here,
Tasty choice this one also looks very
similar to the last channel,
Chocolate Plus it's really hard to tell
these apart from their videos
Easy Cake Decorating Ideas this looks
very very similar,
I'm leaning towards content farm rather
than production company
Top yummy, Mr Chef
and of course there's Mr Cakes that's
what started this whole journey.
There's also a whole heap more channels
I'm not going to show you the individual
channel they're all very similar I'll
just run you through the names
so you know. There is easy plus hair
inspiration pretty hair so tasty easy
chocolate lux beauty beyond tasty cake
junkie tasty plus cake lovers top
hairstyles yummy cookies amazing cookies
top tasty cookies inspiration how to
cake not how to cake
it top yummy japan voguish hairstyles
master cake delicious superior craft
ideas, which is not craft it is cake,
tiny cakes so girly yum up extreme cakes
... you get the picture,
there's a lot! And I only found 28 of
them
they say they have a hundred channels
that was only 28 and of those 28 just
looking at them
guess how many video views they had in
the last year?
Take a guess ...I would say write it in the
comments but you're just going to listen
and then write that in the comments, it
was 2.5 billion
video views! 2.5 billion video views and
most of their audiences in the USA, they
are doing a great job of this they are
winning!
The sheer number of youtube channels
that they have would really help them to
be able to cross promote it's a bit like
when a youtuber does a collaboration
with another youtuber but in this case
they don't have to even
bother they've got a hundred channels
that they can just cross collaborate
between.
I did notice on some of their channels
that the top commenters
were in fact other YumUp channels so
they're not individual people, they're
they're employees commenting
so it makes you wonder do they also
share it? Do they also
do all those things it makes the
algorithm go wow this is a really good
channel, really good video we should show
it to more people.
Now when i looked into it a bit more
their website actually did give us an
address,
so if we follow that and put that into
Google Maps
it takes us here to a building in
Vietnam,
where as well as making lots of videos
they do unboxings ...
of YouTube play buttons! YouTube's own
website
says that they don't just send out play
buttons to everyone who reaches the
milestones. The milestones if you don't
know is you get a silver play button at
100,000 subscribers, a gold play button
at a million subscribers and a
diamond one at
10 million subscribers. Now youtube says
they don't just send them to everyone
who reaches the milestones they only
send it to recognize
creators that are 'playing by the rules'
and if we have a look here it says:
channels are subject to review before
rewards are given and only creators that
keep their accounts in good standing
will get them. Now YumUp's website says
that they have become
a very popular branding with more than
100 golden buttons on the youtube
platform!
As I said you get a gold button for one
million subscribers. I have
nothing against people in Vietnam
creating successful channels and doing
amazingly well
but i do think that the repetition of
content across a hundred different
channels
is just negative for the platform and I
am surprised that it keeps getting
rewarded with views and that it's
allowed to work.
Now youtube does have a policy if you
look here about
spam and deceptive practices and under
an example of video spam
it says posting the same content
repeatedly across one or more channels
is not okay
but as you know we have raised this with
youtube on behalf of other channels and
they have said as long as it's your own
content
and not someone else's content it
doesn't count as repetitious content.
I would think it would be a good thing
to update that policy but
they haven't so they're obviously happy
with the amount of money that
these content firms are making youtube
is also making money.
You might also have noticed something
that caught my attention and I'd be
interested to know, so let me know in the
comments if you noticed this,
and that was the same thumbnail again
and again and again. Let me go back to Mr
Cakes for you so you can see.
So if we focus just for example sake on
the heart with a knife about to cut into
it ...
it's there and there's another one
and another again and again
oh and there it is again and there's two
there again
and this one we're up to 10 ... 11 ...
12 ... 13. you get the picture!
It's the same thing again and again but
what blew me away
was when I actually watched one of the
videos which was called 'perfect
chocolate heart cake decorating ideas'
and it had that picture on the thumbnail ...
well let me show you and fast-forward
and you can see for yourself.
Here's the thumbnail for your reference,
we have a cake
and another cake, a round cake,
a slice, another cake,
a cookie cake, a dessert,
fruit kebabs, macarons,
some weird thing in a cup they didn't
even tell us what that whipped stuff was
some bit confused what that was
yet another cake and finally a meringue
cloud with my invention of a sugar
balloon bowl sitting on top,
that just doesn't look good together but
anyway let's not get distracted...
the point is there was no chocolate
heart in that video.
There was nowhere that a knife was
cutting through a chocolate heart and
neither was the other dessert on the
thumbnail,
they're not in the video! There's a
knowledge gap there's something you see
and you go I want to know that so you
see the heart with the knife on it you
go I want to know what's inside that
heart, what happens when they cut into it
and then that releases a dopamine thing
which is a hormone in your brain
which then makes you want to take an
action in this case the action is click
on the video to watch it so then you can
see
what happens with that heart and usually
then if you then see it you get
some level of satisfaction but if you're
not seeing it,
there's then that seeking is still there
it's like a dopamine loop there was no
satisfaction so you want to click
again. It's like having an itch that needs
to be scratched
but you don't actually get to scratch it
and then the next time you
see that thumbnail you still don't know
and you go huh
I wonder what is inside that heart and you
click again
on the same thing and of all the videos
that were on mr cakes with that
thumbnail I couldn't find
them cutting into the heart anywhere in
any of the videos that had that on their
thumbnail. Now
they have a hundred channels, that's what
they tell us, and so it's quite possible
it is in one of their videos
somewhere a chocolate heart with a knife
cutting through it but it's not in the
videos here that i can see
where it's on the thumbnail. So the
thumbnails are fake!
They're not even real of what's in the
video at all
which is really interesting. That made me
look into
clickbait a little bit more and there
was this fascinating thing by
Nathalie Nahali she's the author of the
book Webs of Influence
and she said there's a formula to the
titles which when you hear this you are
going to laugh and go oh I've seen those
before...
but she says you use a number or a
trigger word followed by
an adjective followed by a keyword
followed by
a promise. So for example let's look at
Five-Minute Crafts because they follow
this formula a lot.
A number say 28, an adjective
'simple', keywords 'hacks' and then the
promise:
'that will change your life' and now you
read every one of their
titles you're going to go oh they're all
following the clickbait formula.
That together with the thumbnail makes
you want to click on it and find out
what that hack is for and another one ...
we've got a number 11 an adjective cool
a keyword life tips and promise
that will save you a fortune. Now if you
have a clickbait title like that
combined with a clickbait
thumbnail in this case the thumbnail is
of a broken phone
it's completely cracked and shattered
and they're putting toothpaste on it to
fix it,
that creates the dopamine hit because
who of us haven't had a broken phone in
your household
and you've gone and got a quote for
getting it fixed and it is going to cost
you a fortune.
So you would like to know you probably
if you're like me thinking toothpaste
isn't going to work but i'd like to see
them try
you'd like to know if there is a way of
fixing your phone. So
you and millions of other people 21
million
other people in fact, might click on that
video to find out.
Now if we watch that video together and
i'll put it in fast forward of course ...
they make a cushion for their dog a
collar for another dog
a box for a cat, a cat scratching pole, a
pillowcase a bath mat
cutting up a tank top mittens for
couples,
a work belt or i guess you could have
just worn the jeans instead of cutting
up the jeans?
Polishing boots using oil and leather
conditioner mixed together,
sewing yourself a travel holder for
toiletries that's not waterproof so if
it spills it's going to go all through
your luggage,
cleaning the bottom of a saucepan ... have
you ever cleaned the bottom of your
saucepan?
I don't tend to do that. Cleaning your
extraction fan filters
they can go in the dishwasher by the way.
Cleaning jewelry,
wasn't this supposed to be 11 hacks?
we've had 14 already clearly the number
can just be a random number when you're
doing clickbait it doesn't have to
relate to the video at
all and using a Pringles tube to make a
light with a torch
and a light with string lights and
there's a money tin
to save money in so that I can save a
fortune.
Now did you notice there was no iPhone
and there was no toothpaste
in that whole video.
I was just amazed when i saw that you
get so distracted by the incredibly
boring
hacks that aren't useful and won't save
you a fortune that you forget why you
actually clicked
so you don't even notice that it was a
fake thumbnail,
that it's not even in the video and that
thumbnail was so powerful that
if we look up how to fix a cracked
iPhone with toothpaste ... look at that there are so so
so many videos saying can you fix it
with toothpaste and it was just the
thumbnail it wasn't even in that video.
Now of all the videos that have got many
many million views on that thumbnail
the one that was the most honest was Mr
Beasts. He at least
smashes a phone: "Disclamer the microphone on
my camera didn't work while I was
recording so I'm gonna have to make
all the sound effects manually with my
mouth...
now we just rub it on the phone and it
should fix the cracks I mean it worked
for this YouTuber and
this one and this one and this one, I
mean it's gotta work
and now we just rub a dub dub dub dub
it off..." I'm not actually gonna show you
what happens when he wipes off the
toothpaste you're gonna have to go and
watch the video on his channel for that
because he's a genuine creator and I
want you to watch some of his videos
because he
really needs some more views ... no
seriously he does he gives away so much
money he probably does need some more
views so that he can pay for it.
Have a look at this other one that I
showed you before: the 28 simple hacks
that will change your life.
Wear wet socks to bed it says on the
thumbnail. Now I've cut this up here for
you so that you can see all the hacks
quickly...
in this video there are not 28 hacks
there are 66
and not one of them is about wearing
socks to bed.
In fact, there is not one video hack
in there about bed or about socks and
definitely not
wet socks ... so the thumbnail which is
completely
fake got you to click ... well not
necessarily you,
you may not have been fooled but lots
and lots and i'm talking millions of
other people have been fooled by this. So
the combination of the clickbait title
with a clickbait fake thumbnail that
isn't even in the video
gets millions of people to click and is
working for these content farms. Now
amazingly this happens again and again
on the channel. This video
does not have anyone putting an iPhone
anywhere near a watermelon ...
even in simple things like 28 summer
desserts for your family,
it doesn't have the dessert that's on
the thumbnail in the video anywhere.
Now I found this interesting because
I've been saying to youtube for years
since they changed the artificial
intelligence algorithm
it really favors clickbait and
compilation and now years later
this is what we're seeing clickbait and
compilations! That's
all we're seeing, that's all that the
algorithm is pushing in front of
everyone
but they do actually have a policy
ruling against fake thumbnails. You're
not allowed to do the bait and switch
but obviously nobody's noticed it
because youtube's been reviewing these
channels and they've said they're
playing by the rules.
I'm a bit unsure what rules you're
supposed to be playing by here but
remember they also do have a policy
against dangerous content and they don't
think
encouraging people to put strawberries
in bleach to make them white or pouring
boiling
hot molten sugar on beaters so it flicks
around
is dangerous so there may be a reason
why this
isn't fake thumbnails and this is okay
for them too
because money's involved. But anyway you
let me know if you think maybe I'm just
looking at the wrong place for the rules
that we're supposed to be playing by
as youtube creators let me know in the
comments if I've got that wrong.
I want to say thank you so much to my
patrons for allowing me to keep doing
this channel,
seriously without the people supporting
me on Patreon I would have stopped
uploading videos
a year and a half ago. You guys are what
kept the channel going so I want to say
thank you so much for allowing me to do
that I really appreciate it. You can
watch some more of my debunking videos
here, click on the merch link 
and some more non-clickbaity titled
normal creative videos here obviously
i've been doing it all wrong 🤣
Make it a great week and I'll see you on
Friday.
