A video titled “congrats, you’ve ruined your face” from creator Stephanie Lange has been viewed on YouTube more than 1.1 million times. Meanwhile, influencers like TheWizardLiz and simonesquared have built their brands by taking digs at viewers, teaching them “How to stop being lazy and pathetic” and bluntly declaring “You are a clown.” All across the social media platform, lifestyle creators have adopted a new strategy to attract viewers: title negging.
The frames of these videos are simple yet effective, targeting viewers’ innermost insecurities, urging them to a click. The video titles alone confront viewers with the notion that they are lazy or insecure or hung up on a guy who doesn’t care about them.
Creator Zoe Unlimited, who keeps her last name private online, has amassed more than 3.1 million subscribers for her lifestyle and beauty content, which offers insights into “why you think you’re ugly” and how “kpop is destroying your brain.” She tells Fast Company that she chooses her titles based on the way they jump out to the reader.
“I love throwing humor and sarcasm to get the eyeball and that quick, attention-grabbing aspect,” she says. “I like to play around with things that might be a little controversial so that when you see the title, immediately it sparks more contemplation or curiosity to intrigue the viewer into wanting to find out more, as it’s already prompting questions in their heads.”
Though this kind of content might shock some with its blunt language, its rise within the social media landscape shouldn’t come as a shock. The average Gen Z user in the U.S. spent more than 1,500 minutes watching content on YouTube every month in 2022, according to Statista. Little wonder, then, that creators are turning to new (and sometimes jarring) techniques to grab viewers’ attention.
“If anything, people are finding new and exciting ways to iterate on already-existing content, if not outright creating new things all the time,” says brand strategist Firouz Saghri.
It’s not just about fueling viewers’ insecurities; creators are also mindful to add a sheen of informality to their videos. Zoe Unlimited says she uses lowercase rather than uppercase in her titles for a more personal feeling, as if she’s texting with her viewers.
“I try to put myself in my viewers’ shoes when I title things,” she says. “I know a title like that would strike me immediately into a place deeper down, where I know it’s partially true. It hits me at a certain point, in that I think beauty standards influence how we see ourselves in so many aspects, and it’s painful to be manipulated by different corporations and marketing.”
Most of title negging exists largely within a lifestyle creation genre that’s been known to prey on body dissatisfaction. Yet, contrary to the titles, the content often aims to empower and uplift the viewer, like a reverse bait-and-switch marketing tactic that ends with the viewer feeling better than when they started.
The videos’ comments sections are littered with anecdotes from women experiencing that turnaround. Under Lange’s video titled “so you got a fat face huh,” one user wrote, “I clicked on this video because I thought it was going to show me how to fix my ‘fat face.’ instead I got a 10 minute pep talk on why I am beautiful and I am quite literally sitting here crying because it was exactly what I needed to hear.” Another viewer commented under one of Zoe’s videos: “This almost made me cry. i’ve called myself ugly multiple times and called myself selfish for this feeling but watching this made me feel . . . okay, loved, and normal!”
Tabloids and advertisements alike have long preyed on women’s insecurities to maintain attention for their product marketing. At the dawn of the creator economy, clickbait—the curiosity-gap-exploiting “you’ll never believe what happened next” style of text that became popular among content creators and digital publishers in the 2010s—was the de facto style of maintaining interest. However, as younger populations who have grown up online show heightened awareness of digital marketing tactics, the strategies to maintain their attention must shift.
“I’m really passionate about challenging conventional standards, so to pique my community’s interest, I see my titles as posing a questionable statement that makes them wonder, to what extent is this true? How does this apply to us?” Zoe Unlimited says. “The tone is harsh, for sure. No one comes up to you in person and says, ‘[Here’s] why you think you’re ugly.’ But I think the tone of the video is more loving, and guiding my community on a journey from ‘Hey, she’s right, I do think I’m ugly’ to ‘Here’s all the potential new ways I can see myself.’ The title is just a starting point.”
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