Why your content isn't going "viral"

and how to fix it

Author

Johnathon Eva
June 30, 2025

Virality is a formula - Not luck

The Futur Podcast w/ Brendan Kane

07:35 is the timestamp if you want to jump straight to the part about formats

Social Media expert Brendan Kane talks about how to go viral - and, I think he brings something up worth mentioning.

Formats. You’ve seen them, we tend to call them “styles” and sometimes they get confused with "niche.

From “man on the street” to “talking head” it’s how your video is formatted - and I’ve got a really good one for Gamers at the bottom of this newsletter

Thumbnail Review

A.) The first thing that sticks out is the replication - the words in the thumbnail match the words in the title almost exactly the same. That breaks some curiosity so people are less likely to click

B.) Look at all this empty space. The left side of the thumbnail is where people’s eyes are drawn to first, so leaving this blank can cause people to scroll right past.

C.) This one is nitpicky but notice how there's a white line at the bottom for no apparent reason. It could be cleaned up a bit

D.) 1 hour of Black Panther Masterclass. That doesn’t give me any curiosity nothing to make me NEED to click on this.

Creator - Fantasma

Want me to critique your thumbnail? Just reply to the email. It’s free. So there’s no reason not to… unless you’re scared?

Key: Know your audience, look at competitors and see what the average time of their videos are, and maybe adjust

28k views - 41x outlier

A.) Red Arrow contrast is always a great go- to if you’re looking for ways to draw attention to something

B.) There’s something to be said about content/audience fit - 9:29 is a much more palatable video than an hour - especially for fans of games that are pretty recent or contain a younger audience

C.) Look at that background, it’s not just taking up space anymore, it’s adding to the image instead of detracting.

D.) Yeah exactly - what is the Loser’s queue? Is it rigged? Now I need to click on this video.

If you have questions - email me. I don’t bite… hard.

Creator’s Killing it.

You’re a skeptic. You want more proof that people are succeeding NOW in gaming on YouTube. Alright, twist my arm. Here ya go.

Bandy - 8k subs, 11 videos - Started Jul 2024

49k views

9.5x outlier

782k views

>100x outlier

496k views

95x outlier

Key Takeaways

Time: If you’re thinking, John, that would take me FOREVER to do, you’d be right. It would take you forever to do. That’s why people would watch it. That’s why people watched a video of Mr. Beast when he started his channel of slicing through a table with plastic knives.

Laziness: Some people think if they put the effort in, in the video, they can relax on the thumbnail. This is clear evidence to the contrary. LOOK AT THOSE THUMBNAILS
The one on the right is my personal favorite, but they’re all pretty amazing. Clear- concise, storytelling within a thumbnail is incredibly difficult but with a little Photoshop I believe in you.

Different Games: A LOT of gamers, when I talk to them say they don’t want to be stuck playing one game the rest of their life. Great news. You don’t have to- but it has to be SOMETHING. There has to be a theme throughout your channel, or there’s no reason to watch you over someone completely different.

Creator Opportunity

Bleep Bloop - A Content Format

Revival:

Let me take you back to 2013 - I’m a college student, and I love this site called College Humor (now called DropoutTV) over the years they had a bunch of formats that would work for a season, and then not work. Jake and Amir, Prank wars, etc. One of the victims of his time passage was the show Bleep Bloop.

It was basically a gaming podcast before podcasts really took off in the gaming space, and it would showcase comedians presenting what they found funny about these games.

Now the year is 2025. The arrival of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram, has brought a new virality older formats. From MTV alone we have “Next” now done by “David Alvareezy” with things like “Blind Dating Reality TV stars” the show from DropoutTV called Game Changers is a combination of something like “Hollywood squares, and Whose Line?”, Hoarders, man on the street, talking to a version of oneself - all viral video formats. Stolen, reused, recycled, and people love it.

I think it could be time for a recycling of Bleep Bloop, and ya’ll can just have that idea for free. I don’t have the time otherwise I would.

But beyond that what are the steps you can take this week - to level up your gaming channel?

1) Search YouTube and find 3 video formats that you think you could pull off - Don’t stick with things that are working right now, look back at MTV, old New grounds videos, YouTube that worked 15 years ago.

2) Of those three formats, brainstorm about 10 ideas for each that you could do THIS WEEK - the key is to find something that would allow you to pump out a video consistently

3) Do it. Test it out. Test out the format that you picked, and if you didn’t like it, fine try another one, but if you did like it, and it didn’t perform, find out why - compare it to the formats of your source material and see what looks different.

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Would you do me a favor? If you know a gamer, or someone who likes to game, and is a bit lost on YouTube would you send them this? Thanks in advance!