"Retention Editing" Isn't What You Think
YouTube Confidential: A Decade Under the Influence
As always, I’m Taylor Gunn.
A Writer/Editor/Producer and all-around “YouTube guy” with over 7+ billion views, who's worked with hundreds of YouTube’s top Creators (like MrBeast) over the course of thousands of videos over a decade long, albeit checkered career doing every job imaginable to keep the content machine well fed. In some ways, I’m a professional ghost, not to be seen or heard… until now.
And this… is YouTube Confidential.
The Unholy Price of Optimization
Let me paint you a picture. It’s 2:43 a.m., your retinas are cooked medium-rare from twelve hours of staring into the void of your monitor. Your timeline looks like a fever dream of jump cuts, scale punches, zoom whooshes, stacked transitions, so on and so forth.
Your project file has all the accoutrements of a job well done, and you think to yourself, “This shit slaps.”
No. It doesn’t. It slaps the viewer. Over and over. Because you’ve made this singular most universal and amateur mistake a YouTube editor can make… you’ve mistaken fatigue for finesse.
No matter where you turn on YouTube, there’s some “guru” preaching the good word of optimization, audience behavior, viewer metrics, and blah-fucking-blah.
Look, I get that I’m a bit of an idealist… perhaps even, dare I say, an artist. And I don’t think that riding the coattails of metrics, vanity or otherwise, doth make a worthwhile venture in the world of video.
Unfortunately, optimizing your content works, especially at scale. A fact that I’m reminded of daily, because if over-analyzing things like tone, pacing, color, flow, and sound didn’t make a lick of difference, I’d be out of job.
But here’s the problem… We’ve optimized ourselves into oblivion.
The cult of "retention editing" preaches the hollow gospel of cut faster, move quicker, add more crap and has become the go-to doctrine for anyone hoping to cling to that precious 75% viewer retention graph like it’s a goddamn lifeboat in a sea of cracked out attention spans.
But here’s the truth: good editing isn’t about motion. It’s about motive. It’s not about stimulus, it’s about story.
"Every cut should be motivated. Every single one." — Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye
There’s very few editors from Traditional Filmmaking that I would take advice from, but Murch knows exactly what the fuck he’s talking about and if you haven’t read his book, you should.
→ BOOK LINK HERE ←
A cut is a choice. A cut is a statement. Every time you transition from one shot to the next, you're making a promise to the viewer that what comes next matters. So why the hell are we littering timelines with effect spam and jump zooms like we’re trying to keep a toddler entertained on a sugar high? You’re not editing Cocomelon dude… and if you are, I beg you to quit immediately and save your soul.
I think it all comes down to fear honestly. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with younger/newer editors and I’m sorry to say, all their stuff looks the same. AND THAT’S OKAY! That’s what SHOULD happen your first few years in the industry. You’re emulating your influences… but eventually, you’re going to need a voice that’s all your own.
In order to cause emotion, you’re going to need to feel emotion while editing… and to do that, you’re going to need to stop being afraid to be vulnerable on a timeline.
The greatest editors, writers, musicians and artists are moved by their own work. And if you want to demand a higher price point, you’re going to need a different value proposition then the leagues of editors out their chomping at the bit to show off how closely they can emulate the latest Iman Gadzhi video.
I know that probably hits home for some of you, and I’m sorry, but goddammit… you could be one of the greats. You can be financially free. You can make enough money doing this shit to buy a house, raise a family, save money to retire and have bullshit hobby or two… I know because I’ve done it, so I know what the fuck I’m talking about when I say you have to start showing courage in your cuts.
Even if that’s not what the client wants. Even if you think it doesn’t match the brand… take the swing. I know I have.
I have CHANGED the channels I work with… I’ve inspired them to experiment and try different things because quite frankly, the shit I put in front of them is so weird, that it kinda works…
case and point… I’m the guy that caused MrBeast to start using licensed music from famous artists in his videos. Till this day, I STILL get people who tell me that the endings of my teams videos are some of the best on the channel.
You can always tell which MrBeast video me and my team edited, because those are the ones that made you tear up with a lump in your fucking throat and made you feel something… and you know why? because WE felt something while editing it, and we brought it to the surface the best we could, with every cut we made.
I get it…
We as creatives are terrified our story won’t be good enough, or more accurately, our “lens” won’t be good enough, which for some reason feels infinitely more personal and terrifying.
Humans have preferences, but artists have sensibilities. If we pour our heart into something and someone shits on it, but guess what… that’s the game we play. We have to keep getting up, dusting off our keyboards and keep looking for love in all the wrong places.
There’s SO much that early editors are mortified of and for good reason. If the audience clicks off, we’ll miss the algorithm's window of opportunity and we’ll be labeled boring or “low effort” or even worse, “playing it safe.”
So we mask our insecurity with stimulus. We grab the viewer by the face and scream, “Please don’t look away!” — because at the end of the day, we know the truth, underneath the razzle dazzle of our edit, there’s nothing there.
Which is a good instinct to have and a hard truth to learn, but learn it we must: If your story sucks, no amount of flame overlays, anime punch sounds, or digital zooms are going to save it.
That’s not editing. That’s panic dressed as production.
Let me tell you what retention editing really is…
Retention editing is storytelling on a diet. No carbs. No filler. Just lean protein and essential fat. It’s stripping a narrative down to its bones, then layering back just enough muscle to make it move.
Retention isn’t about speed. It’s about rhythm. It’s about flow. It’s about immersion. It’s about wonder. It’s about feeling.
It’s knowing when to slow down, when to let something breathe, when to make the viewer lean in instead of yanking their eyes out with a grappling hook of effects packs.
You want to learn real editing? Try holding a shot for two seconds longer than feels comfortable, try using silence or ambient noise floors instead of music to suck the air out of the room to give a moment weight, try sequencing your edits into mini-stories a clearly starts with a unique vibe, has an engaging middle, and resolves to a satisfying end… do that over and over and watch what it does to tension, or dare I say, re-tension.
The fact of the matter is this: A hard cut to silence will ALWAYS smack harder than a thousand risers.
You must try telling a story with restraint. That’s the editor's job — Not to hide the flaws, but to emphasize the truth.
“Trying to manufacture interesting shit out of nothing is like seasoning shit with sugar. It might be sweeter, but it's still shit.”
And you know what, that’s unironically exactly what SO MANY YouTube editors are doing right now. Turning shit into sundaes, and adding nifty cherry on top. (the cherry on top is the “bruh” sound effect)
Stop optimizing bad content to make it tolerable instead of cutting it down to make it good. It’s easier to hide behind an After Effects template than to admit your cut has no legs. If the story sucks, it sucks. Fuck the client, cut what you think is best, and then argue until your red in the face over it because you believe in the cut.
That’s the ONLY way you’re going to become ACTUALLY good at storytelling in this beautiful, complicated medium of film. You are standing on the shoulders of giants, GREAT editors, directors and artists, so act accordingly and ask yourself the most important question…
Does this thing I’m making make me feel anything? Or am I jerking myself off in After Effects?
Unfortunately, Retention editing has become a buzzword akin to “three-card monte”
Shuffle enough visuals and maybe the audience won’t notice you’ve got nothing to say.
The greatest seller’s of this bullshit information have neither edited banger videos, nor written stories… they are gloried bean counters with absolutely zero creativity and their only talent seems to be duping people into thinking that they alone know a think or two about what goes on behind the iron-curtain of YouTube… Can you tell how much I hate them?
All of these consultants, and gurus, and professional uncreative shitheads are the bane of my existence. But, they are damn good at marketing their surface-level propaganda to sell themselves and courses to unsuspecting and often desperate would-be creators.
The result? Dopamine dealers plugging into the algorithm's slot machine where your average video is now appropriately classified as “brainrot”
And that’s the most damning thing of all. Because once you see the cut as a metric, not a tool — once you start editing for the graph instead of from the gut — you’re not telling stories anymore. You’re building traps, and honestly… that sucks. That’s not what I want to see happen to this platform that I love so much.
"You either die a storyteller, or live long enough to see yourself become a retention analyst." - Taylor Gunn
But here’s the thing… there’s a way back. It starts with owning your cuts. With understanding that every transition is a conversation with your audience. Do you respect them enough to let them listen? Or are you too busy trying to impress them for your own ego?
Here's my advice to every editor who wants to make something worth remembering:
Turn off the plug-ins. Step away from the transitions pack. Grab a simple timeline and ask yourself: what am I really trying to say?
Stop trying to or hide the long-dead and cold body of a story that never had a pulse in the first place.
Try like hell to find a story within your edit that ACTUALLY matters, and bring it out with everything you have… even if that means chopping everything up, sprinkling it around, and seeing what happens.
Now, let’s get our hands dirty.
You know what real storytelling looks like? It looks like contrast. Stillness before chaos. Calm before the storm. A breath. A pause. A moment of hesitation before the plunge. Then, a BIG impact, a crescendo, a peak, and then… another valley, a resolution, a moment to put the pieces together in our own minds of what it all meant.
In our current ecosystem, with CTR, AVD, and CPM’s… that can easily spell death. A second of silence is an invitation to click away. So we fill it. With anything. With everything. And we convince ourselves we’re doing the job right.
We’re not.
The truth is, this kind of editing isn’t scalable. Not for editors, not for audiences. The fatigue is real. The burnout is terminal. You can’t keep making four-minute firecracker edits for three years straight and expect your brain to still function like a human being. Your nervous system isn’t a fucking editing bay.
Storytelling is tension. Good editing respects tension. Great editing builds it.
At the end of the day, that’s what this whole thing is about. Not metrics. Not trends. Not CTR or AVD or any other bloodless acronym. It’s about connection. It’s about meaning. It’s about sitting across from another human being and saying, “Here’s something I need to tell you.”
And if that means holding a shot for just one more beat? Then for the love of storytelling, hold it.
Insert “Stop it. Get some help.” Meme here…
It’s the same reason TikTok is a digital meth pipe. It’s the reason thumbnails now look like pop art nightmares and titles read like clickbait headlines. Optimization killed the auteur and raised a committee of click-through consultants in its place.
If the work doesn’t make you feel something, it’s just noise with a budget.
And the worst part? I KNOW Editors know this. They know when a timeline is bloated. They know when they have a great idea they don’t have time for. They know when the job isn’t paying enough. They know that should just hand in whatever they THINK the client wants to get more work…
Because right now, the system doesn’t reward integrity. It rewards addiction. A sad fact to say the least and one I hope to change.
So the cuts get faster. The overlays louder. The story thinner. Until all that’s left is a Frankenstein video stitched together from the carcasses of better ideas.
When this algorithmic house of cards collapses, and it will, what’s going to survive? Not the videos that tricked you into watching. Not the ones that gamified your attention. The ones that moved you. The ones that stuck. The ones that didn’t just pass the watch time test, but punched you in the gut and left a mark and do you know why?
Because the future of YouTube IS the past of YouTube. When A.I. fucks this thing up, and it will, audiences will clamor for real individuals doing real shit. VLOGS 2.0. Elevated, Cinematic.
If I’m placing my bet, that’s where my money is.
WHAT IS YOUTUBE CONFIDENTIAL?
IN MANY WAYS, YouTube Confidential is a love letter to YouTube, the industry that gave a wretch like me more than I ever deserved or thought possible. In other ways, it’s a road map of scars, burnt bridges, and ego-deaths outlining my checkered career – that at times, is far more honest then I’d ever wished to put down on paper.
My justification for said honesty is that I truly believe that in doing so, I’ll help others avoid my mistakes and avoid years of wastrel and wayward behavior and get to where they want to be faster. That means more money, less bullshit, and doing meaningful, fulfilling creative work without all the drama and stress that is all too common in our industry.
For the common reader, I hope "YouTube Confidential" is good for a few laughs while exposing the creative malpractice that takes place daily in the industry’s labor ecosystem.
The editors, strategists, and thumbnail artists I work with and talk to on a daily basis are the lifeblood of this industry, and I hope to shine a spotlight on those dark, damp and downright abused corners in this place we all call home.
SOCIALS:
When I say "Retention Editing" is Lean Storytelling, does that make sense to you?