The car side of YouTube has exploded in recent years and it’s great to see. From simple wrenching videos to in-depth reviews, you could spend days going down the rabbit hole of automotive YouTubers. The downside of this explosion in popularity? Annoying tropes.
See, rather than rely on natural engagement and YouTube’s algorithm, a lot of these people think that to keep viewers watching and gain subscribers, they have to do things that catch your attention, and a lot of it is annoying. One of the worst tropes, in my opinion, are clickbait-y thumbnail images. They’re usually all the same, and whether it’s a silly shocked facial expression and outstretched arms, an arrow pointing at something that’s never even touched on in the video, or even blatantly AI-generated images, it’s all bad.
Now we ask you, Jalopnik readers. What do y’all think are some of the most annoying tropes of car YouTubers? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll round up the best answers next week.