For me it’s Skallagrim. This is a channel of a guy who specializes in ancient armory and weaponry, he also reviews swords and stuff that’s sold online and tests them. Pretty cool.
But then I started to not like him for some reason and it took me a while to put my finger on it. Until I saw the video where he tried criticizing weapons in video games. Then that was where I found problems with him as a channel.
His personality comes off very pretentious and one of those pseudointellectuals you know, who try sounding smarter than they really are. He even has the voice tone to back that with.
So yeah I really once loved his channel. Though whenever he goes on tirades about things that are meant for fantasy purposes which aren’t supposed to make sense when translated to reality, as well as try to poke at fictitious things that borrow from ancient history, I feel he misses the plot of his entire channel and why people like me once subscribed to it.
We didn’t subscribe to your channel for your stupid takes on - anything. We subscribed because you seem to know your melee weapons and historical backgrounds of said weaponry. Stick to those.
Not sure how many of you will know about Tom from the Geowizard channel, but I recently learned he’s a reform voter (UK’s trump-style party, Nigel Farage) and honestly I was kinda devastated. Took me completely by suprise too, considering he never talked about anything political and the nature of the content and his actions would’ve never suggested it. In hindsight there were a few small tip-offs that I brushed out as him being a bit old-school/rural and not very plugged in to internet culture and modern no-no’s. I found out by listening to an album he recently released and one of the songs is about the replacement theory conspiracy…
pretty much all of the ones that got bought out by PE. the biggest offender of that in my realm is veritasium
AvE used to be good but a while back starting saying dumb right wing political stuff. not dumb because it was right wing, to be clear. just that it was right wing and also was dumb. I still have thisoldtony though, he’s better anyways. AvE mostly just had funny quips with a bit of knowledge. ToT has funny scripts and a lot of knowledge.
Scotty Kilmer was always a character, but I stopped watching years ago because idk I guess he just started putting out crappy clickbait content? idr
most Minecraft channels simply ran out of content to produce. the best two, to me right now, are mahjongblonsky and bigbooty17
what else… there’s a ton of those informational sciency type channels that I no longer like because they’re just too big budget trying to appeal to too many people. smartereveryday lost appeal to me — though I cannot say if quality has declined. it just lost appeal to me. mark rober, similar situation. haven’t seen a video from either of them in a year, but been phasing it out for several now. I disliked when a bunch of channels did promo stuff with the US military, too.
oh, MKBHD — turned into a shill for excessive-tech-having cars. at least he made a separate channel for automotive content. I think? still, another situation of somebody speaking in your area of knowledge — I couldn’t take him seriously or hear the shitty opinions any longer. as a counter, UnderDunn made a separate channel for his automotive content, and while not my favourite stuff to watch, it’s not shill crap like MKBHD.
I tried scrolling through my YouTube subscriptions to see what other channels fit the bill, but I’ve already unsubscribed from them…
In my opinion Game theory has degraded quite a bit, partly because they grew too big and started bumping out more and more content on multiple channels which in my opinion saturated quite a bit. It doesn’t help that there exists now long form video essays that go much more indepth in certain aspects of games and other forms of entertainment. MatPat leaving did also leave huge void that they can probably never fully replace.
Jimquisition or now rebranded as ‘Stephanie Sterling’ channel has also degraded quite a bit albeit there are some highs here and there. I liked their game coverage and loved the “Squirty Plays” and “Jimpressions” where they played and made fun of numerous sloppy games but they seem to no longer make them (maybe twitch? but I don’t watch Twitch). But Jimquisition has become quite repetitive with its ramblings and I don’t really care all that much about any of the LGBTQIA+ or wrestling stuff. Still following the channel though for those better videos that do occasionally pop up.
Similarly YongYea is one of those channels I’ve started to watch less. It’s one of those channels that try really hard to please the audience by telling them what they want to hear instead of having more nuanced takes. Not only that many of his videos are overly long while providing very little substance. Nowdays I prefer Bellular News and Second wind more, and If I ever watch YongYea i’ll ususally just jump a head in the video immediately when I hear him start rambling instead of focusing on actual news.
This may be hot take but Hbomberguy has degraded not necessarily in the quality but in the quantity department. I’d much more prefer smaller more concises videos more frequently than 1-3 hour long mega essays that get realeased like every other year. While many of these can be bangers I am not sure if they’re overall worth the wait. These could at least be split to multiple smaller videos to spread out the content a bit and make them easier to digest. It’s also huge risk if the topic is not something that doesn’t interest you all that much. Similar could be said about ActionButton a.k.a Tim Rogers who took more than 2 years? to make 9 hour video about La Noire? Which I can’t be bothered to watch because it’s age restricted in youtube which would require me to log in.
Lunduke and Sabine Hossenfelter felted took similar paths downward towards more money in the rage economy.
I used to watch Destiny, and while I still like that he does tons of research and shows people why maga talking points are wrong, I started noticing more and more I hate being around people who really care about their ego. He would be having a discussion with someone and instead of saying hm that’s partially true but here’s what I think could be missing, he says NO that is WRONG! It’s such a massive waste of time to care about “winning” a debate, both people learn less and get more angry. I’ve noticed this with basically everyone who gets successful streaming, they kinda lock in at the age they were when they got successful.
All of them. All they do now is bitch about the algorithm and YouTube policies. They turn from content on a subject to a bizarre social realtionship with the viewers. Nah dude, I don’t care about you cat’s hemorrhoids, just rebuild that carburator.
VanlifePlus, or as the channel is now known, MATV. I started watching because I had an interest in Van Life. Regardless of your opinion on Van Life, it was a good channel, as he really showed what it was like to live in a van, and trying to navigate fatherhood as well as a full time job, etc. Matthew is very personable, and likeable. He explored not only places to stay in a van, but actual camping in a van as well.
He finally made enough money from YouTube to get his own place, and now he’s only part time in the van, and is trying to get a gaming channel going, as well as building out a trailer for camping. I still find him likeable, but his content just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I can see that the views on his channel are going down, so it’s just a matter of time before he either has to quit YouTube and get a full time job, or supplement his YouTube with a job on the side. The content just isn’t there anymore.
I saw Markiplier do a lets play for some indie roomba game many many years ago, he proceeded to have an almost religious experience, and I was like “fuck yeah, this guy gets it”
Fast forward and he promotes shit like No Mans Sky and TikTok, I automatically unsubscribe from anyone and everyone who promotes TikTok, and he’s got this whole survivorship bias like “ANYONE can make a successful movie or webseries. Anyone! A Heist with Markiplier was only like $30,000 dollars production value… well, okay, thats a lot of money, but still!”
He’s lost touch with reality and now he’s just another salesperson.
Another one that’s kind of downhill is Kurzegast, their recent AI video was really hollow and vacant of all the reasonable criticisms about AI and its immediate effects, some people have theorized that channels like theirs are being sponsored by a company called “Control AI” to muddy the waters and move the discussion away from things like holding companies accountable.
Everything on YouTube apart from niche special interest content creators has gone to shit because all these high viewership channels got bought out by private equity.
Almost all of them that “care” have terrible thumb nails and titles. Just so clickbaity. Channels seem to get worse over time on that front
Bellular news. It used to be focused on giving gaming news. Now they use gaming news as an introduction for long ramblings, and added click bait titles.
Lindybeige lost basically all credibility for me after the whole “Spandau” fiasco where he was trying to talk authoritatively about things he clearly didn’t understand or had any knowledge of. It really made me question whether he knew anything at all about the things that I didn’t know much about (pre-modern warfare mostly) and I ended up not watching another video of his after that.
Nearly all of them. Even if you pay for premium or use an ad blocker, the YouTubers just make their own commercials as part of the content and the more popular they become the more ads they create.
I no longer get excited about a new Veritasium video.
I also don’t get excited when the title and thumbnail change 5 times in a week.I stopped watching veritasium years ago after watching a couple videos that were basically an ad for whatever company and him being smug.
Same for me. There’s still the occasional really good video, but there’s too many that are basically ads for some big tech thing
He got bought by a private equity firm, don‘t be surprised
Kurzgesagt is pretty bad for that.
Youtube has a feature to ABC test different thumbnails to test which one will be the most popular. You might see one or all of them depending on whether you click right away. Eventually the channel will choose the most successful one.
I have a browser extension that blocks thumbnails on YouTube because I got tired of seeing people’s creepy facial expressions.
Why? I still love their stuff. The thumbnail shit is annoying though, he’s said in the past they do it to boost engagement or something.
A lot of the videos aren’t even made by him anymore.
The ones made by his producer (the blonde Nordic looking one) are really good tho
That’s true and a bit of a bummer but I think those videos are still great. I don’t care that much who makes them as long as the quality is good.
New thumbnails mean people are more likely to click thinking it’s a new video
Yesnt. Channels are A/B testing different thumbnails to see which ones work better. It can have massive effects.
It’s not a simple “thumbnail gets changed, get more clicks”
Yea he said they do basically A/B testing and their user base is so large they get to see in real time what works and what doesn’t.
I did this on one of their videos just last week. Annoyed the piss out of me. I think they changed the title too.
Wouldn’t surprise me to know they changed the title. I haven’t seen it personally as the people I follow seem to be honest. But it doesn’t surprise me given that clicks increase revenue.
Even news headlines change if they’re not seeing uptake at what they think they should be for a particular story
I enjoyed their recent video on power law distributions and why they dramatically change how you should operate in those domains.
They also did some good content a short while ago explaining why Monsanto and Dupont are problematic.
That said you are right about the thumbnails since when I looked at the channel to double check that it was veritasium I was thinking of the title and thumbnail are completely different for all of them.
Their most recent video on Dirac was also super interesting to me.
Dirac was his own person, despite having Charles Boutin’s consciousness in his brain.
That PFA video was wild. That stuff messed me up good.
Mark Rober
He’s been going harder and harder into the Mr Beast format, and it’s off-putting. I’m still subscribed for now, but I almost never watch his videos unless the topic seems interesting.
I cancelled him when he faked the porch pirate videos years ago.
I dislike Mark Rober.
Here is Mark Rober shilling for Anduril, an AI weapon company.
anduril is one of THIELs creation too, for people not aware.
The one Video I’ve seen of him was a sponsored look at an Anduril combat drone. Never bothered looking at anything else he did after.
Yeah that was uh
oh yea i saw the thumbnails, it seems to eerily like mr beast, i dont follow him. but his thumbnails are starting to resembling the “reaction channel” influencers thumbnails.
I gave up watching Rober when he proclaimed he loves his Tesla and will buy another one. This is was said well after Musk went full Nazi dirtbag. Rober has enough money to buy another electric, he doesn’t have to support that man.
Are there any good science/education channels left? Veritaism, smarter every day, Kurzgesagt all seem to have fallen off. Didn’t like Johnny Harris from the start.
3b1b, perhaps?
Depends on what exactly you’re looking for. Technology Connections, Steve Mould, ElectroBOOM, Practical Engineering, Hank Green’s various enterprises, Cody’s Lab, and the various “mad scientist” types like StyroPyro, NileRed, and the various people William Osman hangs out with.
Technology Connections is brilliant. You truly learn something when you watch his stuff.
I know it’s his brand, but it’s mostly useless stuff that you learn. His recent video about 8-tracks was fascinating, but I can’t imagine a single scenario where that info will be useful.
That said, I still recommend it to everyone.
Tech ingredients is really good too. The anti drone laser, radiant cooling, and various diy evaporative cooling projects especially. Homemade hootch too, but I tend to doze off during those.
They also got better during the pandemic, instead of worse, like AvE and some of the bigger channels. And have had some good protester related experiments like protecting from microwave and audio type police dispersal weapons.
Me getting a 1 hour long crash course on dishwasher powder (I do not use dishwasher powder) and enjoying it
I saw a great comment that he really enjoys boxes that make things hot/cold/wet/dry
A great channel that ive been really enjoying is alpha phoenix. His old videos inside his crystal growing lab are super cool. I’d recommend air tight vs vaccumn tight that was cool
so, just scrolling through my subscriptions. this isn’t a list of just science channels, lots of maker/diy stuff in here, but sometimes there’s videos from those channels that overlap with the topics the more educational-type channels might have
technology connections Chris Boden Louis rossman Steve mould good work Mike Boyd this old Tony Matthias wandel bigclivedotcom fortnine Marius hornberger essential craftsman everyday home repairs project farm mujin pask makes superfastmatt Marcin plaza notanengineer inheritance machining John heisz ibuildit Michael Reeves blondihacks Laura kamph UnderDunn
also shout-out to Hunter Direction for just making amazingly beautiful videos lately, the algorithm delivered him to me recently and holy shit does his newer stuff just tickle me in exactly the right spot
yea i follow some science channel, mostly around biology, paleontogy, not huge influencers. im not “fluent” in physics content so i barely follow those.
All of those are still pretty good, honestly.
If he stopped SHOUTING ALL THE FUCKING TIME, his content would be just about tolerable.
Yeah, his more recent videos seem to be more about the spectacle, rather than the education or interesting subject matter.
I feel exactly the same. I’ll still watch his glitter bomb videos, or if he makes another squirrel obstacle course, but his stuff has become very child oriented recently.
He’s just part of a huge machine now. And he looks tired as hell sometimes.
He creeps me out. Some uncanny valley thing, like maybe plastic surgery?
He’s definitely been working out a lot, potentially juicing.
i took a glimpse at one of his recent videos, collabing with christiano (a questionable characther thats tied to SA and panama papers) he definitely look like beefed up
Since he started that subscription box company his focus shifted from telling a cool story through a creation or robot to creating a video that can sell the most boxes for him
That hotel demolition video could have been really cool
Instead it was just… Boring and weirdly edited
