I see more and more long-form video on YouTube, and when I mean long, I mean long long. Like a friend said: office day long, like 8.5 hours. One of the people especially that does this is Pyrocynical. On 31 Dec 2025 he uploaded “Fear And Hunger”, a video that is 8.5 hours long. As of writing this article I haven’t watched the full length because, yo, I needed to celebrate New Year’s Eve first and can’t spend an office day watching his video first. Anyway, the length got me wondering about how this ties in with the YouTube algorithm and ecosystem. Like, YouTube allows you to upload 12-hour video in the normal way, trust me, I tried. I’ve uploaded videos of Christmas songs, fireplace, and study videos of that length. Even uploading 12 hours of black video with 1 white frame in it, I don’t even know anymore where the white frame is. But why I find this video so interesting is that any normal person would recommend probably to upload this as a video series. Even YouTube has a feature in its playlist where you can mark multiple videos as an official series: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6084043?hl=en. Anyway, never tried it and also not sure why. But from a “we do it as before” stance, yeah, make it a video series, but if you think about it, why? Like, are we doing it because we did this in the past? Or because streaming platforms do it? Or nobody does it?Listing Pyro's video you see that he has done this before with this new video being the longest. This are some of his latest video listed by length.1:00:41 - Buckshot Roulette's Hidden Meaning1:03:32 - The worst movies ever Tier List1:31:08 - The Golden Age of YouTube Is Gone1:31:52 - The Best Game You Should NOT Play1:43:28 - The Hidden Lore Of Lethal Company1:47:28 - Do Not Use This File1:53:12 - THE SERVERBLIGHT1:53:28 - The Second Best Free Game You Never Played4:00:22 - Half-Life 34:36:20 - Cruelty Squad7:41:09 - The best (and worst) show you haven't seen8:26:55 - Darkwood8:36:11 - Fear And Hunger Like in an age where we say attention spans get shorter with the rise of TikToks, Reels, and Shorts, where we complain the younger generation doesn’t have any focus left, this goes completely in the opposite direction. Like, this is a movie, well even longer than a movie. He actually mention this in the first minute of 'The best (and worst) show you haven't seen' which is 7 hours 45 min long. This video's been about 8 years in the making. I always tried to think how to cover it, but I'm worried that I'll really under-deliver..... But first, I do want to say this video is very, very long, especially to people that enjoy quick serotonin hits from famous Chinese social media. If you want something less thought-provoking and philosophical, I've started up a second channel.... But to everyone with above 300 IQ, let’s begin the video. Good luck. Just now Avatar 3: Fire and Ash got released and that movie is 3 hours 17 min. (like jeez) Which means it is not even half the length of Pyrocynical’s videos. You need all 3 movies to beat the length of this video.If you wonder, streaming services make series. Ever thought why they don’t make a 12-hour movie? Because it is one story, right, just put them after each other. The storyline mostly sticks together. Well, the biggest reason is, you guessed it, money. With series being 8 to 12 episodes per season, it spreads the series almost always (very rarely not) over 2 months. Which means you need to pay twice (most people) to stay up on the hype. Also the hype for the series gets spread more, which is better for marketing. A friend of mine also said he liked the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 releases so he gets a little present every week, something to look out for. So clear reasons why to split it up. Well for YouTube it is a bit different, as we are just getting in the realm of individual YouTubers having the financial and time capacity to make stuff that is longer than 1 hour. So the decision to split things up is not rising. Longer videos have some time to be known to have better revenue, as more time means more ads, etc. So 10 to 20 min was YouTube’s sweet spot. Also because there seems to be some attention span there that people watch their stuff during lunch or dinner, etc. (which is mostly around that length). But what if you want to make something bigger? There are some good reasons to split up the length, for example different chapters (different topics) you want to talk about. For example, Soviet Womble did a DayZ video essay and split it up: DayZ video essayPart 1: 2.2M views DayZ video essay 1 - When early access is too early Part 2: 1.6M views DayZ video essay 2 - The history of Arma and DayZPart 3: 2.4M views DayZ video essay 3 - The evolution of the DayZ mod Now there is some logic for this, but you can also see from the views as of 01/01/2025 that part 2 has about 700,000 less views than the other parts. That is interesting as you see how dependent you are on the algorithm to push the part 2 video just as much to your audience as part 1 and 3, as watching part 3 is less logical without part 2. This can be caused by a whole range of reasons: upload date, thumbnail not as good, title has bad SEO or bad words. Or YouTube just had a bad day and went weird (yeah, this happens sometimes). So this can be downsides of splitting. The upsides could be to keep feeding your audience with viewable content to stay relevant and be remembered, which is always the struggle for creators. But the interesting thing is, with the rise of the new internet there have been new ways to monetise, like support channels. For example, Soviet Womble has as of now 5149 supporters with a monthly income of 3610 euro a month or 4,235 USD. This is not only to make these essay videos but because he has other content people enjoy and he streams. https://www.patreon.com/SovietWomble But with this financial freedom he could have the creative sidesteps and make these videos. In return he can show his audience insights in the essay he makes, for example, and keeps his most loyal audience entertained while he works on longer videos. Which he later did with another essay about the game “The Forest”, and interesting enough he did put it all in 1 video. The length is 3 hours and 18 min. This could have been 3x1 hour video but he didn’t choose that. Now I don’t know why exactly, but one of the reasons could be that if you as a creator are creating a certain type of content, it can be challenging to switch to another type of video you would want to make. Now if he chose to split the video into smaller 30 min sections and released it over 10 weeks, YouTube would start recommending all those videos to his audience base. But what if the content is too different from his normal work and people don’t click on the videos? This can give bad signals to the YouTube algorithm that “the channel” doesn’t match “the audience” anymore. In defence of the algorithm, it is just trying to make sense of the situation. But now he uploaded it as one 3-hour video, and YouTube recommends that 1 video to the audience, and if nobody would have liked it, that would be less damaging (still painful because of the work). But YouTube would deem that video just not as good as the rest. If he then continues with his “normal” content, it is like less damage has been done. I think people can appreciate it more if a creator decides to for once make something completely different with lots of effort to see how it goes. I would at least. The video got 3.5M views (as of 01/01/2025), but would you imagine the watch time this baby gets. This is also one of the upsides I think this approach has. When I made 3.5 hour video the watch time was about 1 hour, which is insane. I noticed with my work that the longer the video gets, automatically the watch time goes up. Which is logical but also interesting. As in, YouTube has deemed (as of now) watch time their number one priority: more watch time, more happy consumer, more happy advertiser, more happy YouTube. Also I noticed that YouTube keeps recommending these longer videos as they see that you haven’t “completed” the whole video. So the impressions went up and YouTube keeps showing it. Combine that with a great thumbnail and you have a view cannon. YouTube sees you probably watch it in 20 min chunks. Which brings me back to my point about splitting. If you have different parts you are very dependent on YouTube recommending the second part or a related video at all, while with 1 video you clearly showed interest so it is easier for YouTube to recommend. Like, they want to succeed in showing you something you click on. So showing something that you already are watching is way safer than showing a new video they are not sure if it is part of some larger story and if you would even like it. The trend of longer videos I have seen earlier rise from people in the course space. You only have to search “full course” and you get multiple hour videos. I even found this dude called “Date with Baraa” who uploaded a SQL course of 30 hoursHonestly not even sure how he did that. I think he used the backend API of YouTube because the “normal” way only allows 12 hours when it was reduced from 24 hours a while ago. Interesting, might need to look into this, how he did this and how I can do this, because imagine the amount of watch time on this bad boy with 2.2 million views (as of 01/01/2025). Also wondering how many ads this got, need to look that up. Anybody got a nice tool and can check this for everyone? Anyway, these courses have a little bit more sense to be this long, as also their revenue comes mostly from them selling other resources in this course, etc. So coming back to Pyrocynical’s video, I think this is a new age. Like even looking at the credits because he ofcourse couldn't do it all on his own. Animations done by ExtellusLive sets done by HW StudiosVoice overs and cameos:Ghoul, Human Hydra - DerkudosPriest - CrikenEnki - FrapolloRagnvaldr - Vinesauce JoelButterfly - DolanBunnymask, GoFaH - RaivviBuckman - IGPTrotur - MartincitopantsCahara - MistaGGSeymor - WendigoonInsects - MkrazcalMiasma - Max0rBlack Witch - James LeeMerchant - DawkoPocketcat - FlazefireNosramus - Vinny VinesauceYellow Mage - SlimecicleD'arce - lozcopyEastern Spectre - PhilzaNas'hrah - Chad anything4viewsFrancois - Justin WhangIsayah - PhisnomLe'garde - CdawgYellow Lizardmage - Jack ManifoldGro'goroth - JmephValteil - DismantleNew gods - Foekoe, jchruan, Mkrazcal, DerkudosBug eyed figurine - SwaggersoulsCeleste - UnajoyJeanne, Nilvan - Evolved SleeperNameless figurine - Gillsons_mtgUlve - PineGuardian Figurine/Old Guardian - Jack Dice DerKudos (Video Editor)Ramsker (Video Editor)Mkrazcal (Video Editor)Jchruan (Video Editor)Karma (Video Editor)Dice (Video Editor)Dismantle (Writer)Chair (Writer)Pyrocynical (Writer)Kiio (Team manager) I actually don’t know how YouTube responds to these videos as it is a change in the landscape. An age where entertainment and essay YouTubers can make extreme long-form videos, allowed by the changes in financial independence and not constrained by shareholders’ demands from streaming platforms.Do we even call this a video?
