We're Done Asking You to Subscribe

I've been thinking a lot about education lately. About what actually works and what's noise. We're about to launch our educational content at ibbe, and I wanted to share the framework we've built. This is probably going to sound extreme to some people, but I have reasons for every single choice here. Bear with me.

Let me start with the most controversial one. Zero "like share subscribe" anywhere. I mean it. In the video, in the description, on a slide, nowhere. You know why? Because the second you start chasing metrics, you stop serving students. I've watched too many creators optimize for engagement instead of learning. They'll drag out explanations, add cliffhangers, tease upcoming content, all to keep you watching or coming back. That's fine for entertainment. For education though? Poison.

When a student sits down to learn, their goal is simple: understand the material and move on with their life. My job is to help them do that as efficiently as possible, period. The moment I start asking for likes, I'm admitting that my priority has shifted. I'm saying "hey, my channel growth matters more than your time." And look, I get that creators need to grow. I get that metrics matter for visibility. But there are other ways to grow. Word of mouth. Quality. Results. If our teaching is good enough, students will tell their friends. If it's good enough, they'll come back. I'd rather grow slowly based on actual value than quickly based on manipulation.

Think about it from a student's perspective. You're stressed about exams. You're trying to understand a difficult concept. You click on a lecture hoping for clarity. And the first thing you hear is "hey guys, before we start, please like and subscribe." Immediately, your brain registers that this person wants something from you. It's transactional now. The trust is already compromised, even if slightly. I've experienced this so many times as a student myself. That tiny moment of disappointment when you realize the teacher is also a salesperson. I'm done with that dynamic.

Same logic applies to the tone and behavior during lectures. No vulgar jokes, no screaming, no jargon when simple words exist. I've seen teachers try to be "relatable" by throwing in jokes that make half the class uncomfortable. I've seen lectures where the teacher is basically performing instead of teaching. Look, I get it. Teaching is hard. Keeping attention is hard. You're standing there or sitting there talking for hours, and you can feel when energy drops. The temptation to crack a joke or raise your voice or do something dramatic to grab attention back is real.

But here's what I believe: the solution is better explanations, better structure, better visuals. The solution is respecting the student's time so much that they stay engaged because the content is genuinely valuable. If I'm explaining something clearly, building on previous concepts logically, using good examples, students will pay attention. They'll pay attention because they're actually learning, and learning feels good. It's rewarding. Screaming and crude humor are shortcuts that compromise the learning environment. They might work for thirty seconds, but they break focus. They make some students uncomfortable. They cheapen the entire experience.

And jargon, oh man. I have strong feelings about jargon. There's this tendency among teachers to use complex terminology to sound smart or authoritative. Sometimes it's subconscious. Sometimes it's deliberate. Either way, it's harmful. If I can explain something in simple words, why would I use complicated ones? The goal is understanding, clarity. Using jargon when simpler words exist is gatekeeping. It's making knowledge artificially inaccessible. Now, there are times when technical terms are necessary. When they're the precise tool for the job. Fine. But even then, explain them first. Define them. Make sure everyone's on the same page before moving forward.

Here's something that might surprise you: notes will link directly to the notes. That's it. You click, you download. I'm sick of seeing "check the link in bio" or "visit our website" or "find this on our app under resources tab." Why? Why make students jump through hoops? They're already paying attention to your lecture. They're already engaged with your content. Give them what they need when they need it. Every extra step is friction, and friction kills momentum in learning.

Think about the student journey here. They're watching a lecture. The teacher mentions notes. They want those notes. They're motivated right now, in this moment. But then they have to pause the video, go to the description, find the right link among ten other links, click it, maybe sign up for something, navigate a website, find the resources section, search for the specific lecture, and finally download. By the time they've done all that, their momentum is gone. Their focus has shifted. Maybe they forget to come back to the video. Maybe they get distracted by something else on the website. You've lost them. And for what? So you could drive traffic to your website? So you could collect emails? Those might be valid business goals, but they come at the expense of learning. I'm choosing learning.

And this extends to the video description too. Zero marketing links. Zero "join ibbe" buttons. Zero "visit our website" or "download our app" nonsense. The description will have exactly two things: the notes link and the feedback form link. That's it. Why? Because anything else is a distraction. Anything else is saying "we care about converting you into a user more than we care about you learning right now." Every marketing link in that description is competing for the student's attention against the actual educational materials. I'm removing that competition entirely.

When a student opens the description, they should find exactly what they need for that lecture. Nothing more, nothing less. The notes they need to follow along. The form to report issues or ask urgent questions. Done. Clean. Focused. If they want to know more about ibbe, they can search for us. They can find our website. But I'm keeping that separate from the learning experience. The lecture space is sacred. It's only about learning.

Teachers will have zero phones during lectures. I mean this. Put it away an hour before you go live and keep it away until you're done. This rule exists because I believe presence matters. When you're teaching, you're there. Fully there. Students can sense when you're distracted or when part of your mind is elsewhere. Teaching is already intimate in a weird way. Someone is trusting you with their time and their future. They're listening to your voice, following your logic, building understanding based on your guidance. The least you can do is show up completely.

I've been in so many lectures where the teacher checks their phone mid-explanation. Sometimes they try to be subtle about it. Sometimes they're blatant. Either way, the message is clear: something else is more important than this moment. And you know what happens? Students check out mentally. If the teacher thinks this is worth interrupting for a text message, why should students treat it as sacred time? It sets a tone. It establishes that this interaction is casual, interruptible, negotiable. I want the opposite. I want teaching to be treated as the serious, focused work that it is.

Now let's talk about lecture length. Every lecture, regardless of chapter size, stays under three hours. This is based on actual attention span research and my own experience as a student. After three hours, your brain is mush. Even if you think you're following along, your retention drops dramatically. I've sat through four-hour, five-hour marathon sessions. At some point, you're physically present but mentally gone. You're watching words happen but concepts are slipping through. And then you have to rewatch later anyway, so what was the point?

So we've designed everything to fit inside this window. If a chapter is massive, we split it across multiple sessions. This might mean more sessions total, but each one is digestible. Each one respects the limits of human attention and memory. And honestly, this constraint makes us better teachers. When you know you have limited time, you get ruthless about what matters. You cut the fluff. You focus on core concepts. You become efficient with clarity and precision.

Each session gets broken into parts with built-in active recall moments. This is huge for me. Active recall is one of the most powerful learning techniques we have, backed by tons of research. The idea is simple: instead of passively reviewing information, you actively try to retrieve it from memory. You test yourself. You answer questions. This process of retrieval strengthens the memory pathway. It shows you what you actually know versus what you only think you know.

So throughout every lecture, we're building in these moments. The teacher will pause and ask questions. These are textbook questions, previous year questions, and custom questions aligned with our education framework. They're strategic. They're timed to reinforce what was covered. They force students to engage actively instead of zoning out. And because we're using real textbook questions and past papers, students are also getting exam practice simultaneously. They're learning the material and learning how it gets tested. Two birds, one stone.

The live chat is off. This might be the most controversial decision. Everyone expects live chat in educational streams now. It's become standard. But here's what happens with live chat: spam, distractions, arguments, inappropriate comments, people asking questions that get answered five minutes later in the lecture. It's chaos. I've watched live chats during educational streams. They're rarely productive. Mostly, they're noise. Inside jokes between regular viewers. Off-topic conversations. Someone asking "when will you cover chapter 5" while the teacher is mid-explanation of chapter 3. It pulls the teacher's attention away and it distracts students who are actually trying to focus.

And there's another problem: the pressure on the teacher to monitor and respond. Now the teacher is trying to teach and simultaneously watch a scrolling chat for important questions. It splits their attention. It interrupts their flow. I've seen teachers stop mid-sentence because they caught a question in chat. Sometimes that's helpful. Often, it derails the lecture. The explanation loses momentum. Other students get confused because the tangent made sense to one person but disrupted everyone else's understanding.

Instead, we're doing something different. A team will watch every lecture in real time. There's a direct link in the description. Anonymous, instant. Student clicks, types their issue or question, hits submit. Within a split second, it appears on a screen the teacher can see. There's zero friction here. The form is anonymous. You click the link and the input modal opens immediately. You type, you submit, you're done. You go back to focusing on the lecture.

This system gives us the benefits of real-time feedback without the chaos of live chat. If there's a genuine error, audio issues, a slide that's unclear, students can report it immediately. The teacher sees it and can address it. If there's a question that many students are having, that signal comes through clearly because we're collecting structured input rather than parsing chaos. And because it's anonymous, students feel comfortable pointing out mistakes or asking questions they might feel embarrassed about in a public chat.

The team watching has a specific role. They're filtering what reaches the teacher. They're making judgment calls about what's urgent versus what can wait. They're ensuring the teacher only sees things that truly matter in the moment. This protects the teacher's focus while still keeping a feedback loop open. It's the best of both worlds.

One more thing about preparation. Teachers arrive an hour before stream time. Always. This gives time for tech checks, mental preparation, review of materials, whatever is needed. I'm serious about this. Rushing creates mistakes. Rushing creates stress. And stress transfers to students whether you realize it or do anything about it. I've watched streams where the teacher is still setting up audio five minutes after the scheduled start time. Students are waiting. The chat fills with "when are we starting?" Energy is already wrong before the lecture even begins.

Showing up early is showing respect for the process and respect for students' time. It means when the stream starts, we start. The teacher is calm, prepared, ready. The tech works. The materials are organized. There's a professionalism to it that matters. Teaching might be delivered casually, in a friendly tone, but the preparation behind it is serious. Students might see a relaxed teacher explaining concepts clearly. What they see is the result of an hour of groundwork that happened before they arrived.

I know this all sounds intense. Maybe it is. But I'm building this because I remember being a student. I remember the frustration of sitting through a lecture where the teacher spent five minutes asking people to subscribe. I remember losing focus because someone was making inappropriate jokes. I remember hunting for notes across three different platforms. I remember watching teachers check their phones mid-explanation. I remember sitting through four-hour sessions where my brain stopped working after hour two. I remember clicking on video descriptions and having to scroll past five different links to other courses, apps, social media pages, just to find the actual lecture materials.

Every single rule here exists because I experienced the opposite and it sucked. These are solutions to real problems. Problems that might seem small individually but compound into a terrible learning experience. And the thing is, nobody talks about this stuff. There's this assumption that educational content is educational content. That delivery and environment are secondary to the information itself. I think that's completely wrong. How you teach matters as much as what you teach. Maybe more.

This is my attempt to build something better. Something that puts learning first, second, and third. Everything else is secondary. Will this approach limit our growth? Maybe. Will it make some people think we're too rigid or serious? Probably. I'm okay with that. I'm building for students who want to actually learn, who are tired of the noise and performance and manipulation that's become normal in online education. If that's a smaller audience, fine. I'd rather serve them well than serve everyone poorly.