The Voynich Ninja

Here are some thoughts why some VMS media can actually end up being successful.

Here is an example of a video about the niche topic "Kryptos" that has reached 5 million views in a pretty short amount of time:
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This Youtuber (lemmino) is famous, and the video very likely gained a lot of views because he has so many subscribers.
But that's not the whole truth. I am pretty sure that the "mystery" genre just happens to be very popular, if done right.
The Kryptos video probably popped up in peoples' feeds because the algorithm made a qualified guess that they like cryptograhy, mysteries, documentaries, etc.

Youtuber content made by creators like "lemmino" or "barely sociable" have something in common with your Voynich videos:
1. Great sound
2. Great visuals
3. It is about a mystery and interesting piece of history
4. The speaker has solid pedagogy skills and a storyteller talent
5. The voice is calm or soothing (slightly related to the whole ASMR phenomenon). Now you do have an accent, but it is not a bad voice.

Another observation is that videos don't necessarily need to be short to catch the attention of people. Several successful videos from famous creators are between 30-60 mins.
The same phenomenon can be seen with podcasts. Many episodes with discussions and debates can be 2 hours long. Yet we blame Gen Z and millennials for having a low attention span, when they are a huge part of the consumers.

In my opinion, there is no reason why the average Joe would find the VMS uninteresting. They just need someone to hold their hand and give them a proper introduction. A lot of the video content out there is just not that great, and does not fulfill enough points in the numbered list above.

(09-10-2024, 02:13 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-10-2024, 01:42 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Currently @16k  views , nice job.

Thanks! I didn't expect this honestly. When I upload a video, I never expect more than a few hundred views. Especially since the audience I had in mind was people who have studied the manuscript before (like those with a solution, forum members...). 

But from the video's analytics it appears that 79% of viewers saw it in their YouTube Home as a random recommendation (based on their previous viewing I guess?) and 14% saw it as an "Up next" recommendation after watching another video. External sources account for 5% at most.

From the comments it also appears that a lot of viewers didn't know much about the manuscript before. I will need to keep this in mind for any future video.

There is a lot of interest in the Voynich as it is an intriguing mystery, and lots of people love mysteries, so videos about it often attract interest.

Ahmet Ardic's first video about his decoding of the Voynich has at this point 2.6 million views.

There's a lot of scope for long form content with educational stuff, this was my favourite thing on the internet for many years. Sadly (according to what I could find) the guy got a lot of backlash for calling out bad/lazy productions and also the whole fun game of channel strikes from Disney and alike, so took down all his biggest videos and stopped making anything new 3 years ago, but a lot of his stuff was 30m-1hr, the most popular one left up is over an hour with 6.2m views

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I think if you have a passion for something and make the topic accessible, you'd be surprised what content can do well. (I would strongly recommend the video still up on Shrek, its amazing)

This is another channel I have watched a LOT of hours of, and is more "Voynichy", he does well for himself with really obscure longform content

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Obviously, you do you, but I'd just say if you want to try a long video and really dig into a subject, go for it! What's the worst that can happen

'Long' is of course a relative thing. We once made a video about our work, which was just under 12 minutes. Some of the team considered it should have been much shorter in order to keep the attention of the 'masses'.
In the end, it depends on the targeted audience.

In my opinion it's not only about TikTok brainrot destroying our attention span. It's also about time economics. People might be willing to watch a 90 minute video by an established channel they love. But when their free time is limited, this same 90 minutes may be a lot to ask for a small channel. 

I also find that for myself, forcing a time limit helps me to tighten the narrative. This improved the flow, with the drawback of omitting a whole parade of caveats and additional details.

(12-10-2024, 08:46 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my opinion it's not only about TikTok brainrot destroying our attention span. It's also about time economics. People might be willing to watch a 90 minute video by an established channel they love. But when their free time is limited, this same 90 minutes may be a lot to ask for a small channel. 

I also find that for myself, forcing a time limit helps me to tighten the narrative. This improved the flow, with the drawback of omitting a whole parade of caveats and additional details.

Have you ever thought to split the video in parts,ie. part 1/3, part 2/3 and part 3/3? That might help people to beat the time economics.

It is obviously not only Tiktok nurturing our attention span deficits- There are also so much interesting things to see and watch that one is forced to make choices and tradeoffs, put attention to everything and nothing. Sign of our times. Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Before Youtube introduced their Shorts my 11 old son watched the normal "long" 30-60 minutes videos of interest. Now he scrolls down the shorts list for a period and then from that he chooses a few "long" 15-30 minutes videos to watch of what is was the most interesting in the flow for a deeper dive on the selected subjects. Once he called the 15-30 minute videos short and 45-60 minutes long. Not anymore.

So mayble splitting in episodes could help to gain a wider audience, as long seems to be defined now around 10-12 minutes. 

I was thinking about this 13 thing today. You know the "code page".. er... You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
We have 17 glyphs "repeating", but actually it doesn't repeat, we have a f/p/f/p switch, so add that in, 18. There's 5 very rare/questionable glyphs within that 18, leaving 13. Not the slightest clue what that means, but just thought it was interesting.

Id just like to stress that "13" is just what I reached in a quick experiment for YouTube, but that number is by no means set in stone. All I wanted to show is that if you follow a simple substitution logic, you cannot treat all glyphs as full letters. If you expect the kind of flexibility you need in an alphabet, you have to assume positional variation, which leads to the equivalent of a small set of letters. My main purpose was to find a very concrete way to get people thinking about the system rather than obscure languages.