Based on a rudimentary knowledge of how the YouTube algorithm works and an idea of what content creators do in order to rank highly so that their videos are viewed and, more importantly, shared on sites outside YouTube.com, the thumbnail screams “not worth clicking”.
This content creator used “THE TRUTH” in order to get people to want to click it. One doesn’t have to click the link to know that the content should not be expected to be the truth, because the real truth is boring and wouldn’t amount to a video worthy of the effort to record, edit and share. However, using “THE TRUTH” and then including subjects in the video that are decidedly NOT true does two important things:
1. People who watch the video and see it’s not the truth will comment on the video (engagement is KING on YouTube, whether positive or negative).
2. Because the content is so… questionable… people will post it elsewhere asking folks “What do you think”, which will cause some folks to follow the link and leave THEIR comments.
That’s some folks can tell from thumbnail if this content would be valuable for them to view or if viewing it would only be beneficial to the content creator. This is one that screams, “I don’t care what you think about my video but thanks for watching and sharing!”