I still watch his main videos (when they actually happen…), but with a much higher degree of scepticism than I used to. And I stopped listening to his podcast (singular…).
My disillusionment with him started with a few issues with his videos. The blatantly ridiculous “royal family is good actually” video. The less obvious but no less egregious touting of Guns, Germs, and Steel. The AI techbroism of his automation video. Then he just killed off the podcast with no explanation, leaving his cohost Brady to put out a note saying “yeah we’re just on hiatus for now”. Over 4 years ago that was. There was the fact that he sided very vocally with Kurzgesagt in the CoffeeBreak drama, despite CB obviously being in the wrong at every step of the way.
Then the final straw where I was no longer willing to say I was a fan of his was when he did a video about some missile silo in America, in which he used the name of a submarine-based missile instead of a land-based missile at some point. Shortly afterwards he put out a massive mea culpa video saying it was a “catastrophic” error that he could not live with himself for, and that he holds himself to too high a standard to let that stand. All while still not acknowledging the problems with those earlier videos. So one nitpicky detail gets a massive hullabaloo and a retraction, but fundamental flaws in the underlying thesis of the video gets nothing? Give me a break.
Oh whoops! My mistake! I’ll edit the above comment to fix that. It was Kurzgesagt who was in the wrong.
The drama was (to copy/paste an earlier comment, because it’s rather lengthy):
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
Thanks for the great breakdown, it sounds vaguely familiar. I remember K’s retraction bit and I follow Philip DeFranco. Disappointed he landed on the wrong side.
For what it’s worth, Philly D is someone I could have answered the original question with too. Not for any spectacular reason like the above—I had already stopped watching him before that occurred. For me it was just finding his focus was too much on sensationalist pop culture news rather than news reporting that interested me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, it just wasn’t right for me.
Yeah he definitely can veer too much into that stuff for a time. I strongly dislike his thumbnails and titles but I feel he has to do that to compete but I do like his content, some days just less than others.
I didn’t like his take, “solving” traffic nescitates the use of self-driving cars. Can’t have traffic without cars, it’s as simple as that. We need public transport, not more shit to spend our increasingly scarce money on.
Him and Kurzgesagt were helping to build an organization for YouTubers with the current CEO. The first talent signed on was Wendover and Real Engineering.
Grey and Kurzgesagt were rather inactive partners when they should have been more active and were trying to build a much more exploitative company instead of what Nebula became. It is vague on how they left, but they left and the company became better for it.
I found his video on FPTP Binary political systems video to be logically flawed and I think it ultimately caused more harm than good. It’s irritating to see people reference it in political discussions today. That eventually convinced me to stop giving him views.
Yeah, it’s weird, CGPGrey videos used to be the most must-watch of all YouTube for me and I subscribed to his Patreon at one point. I listened to Hello Internet loyally and I was even unhurt about how it ended. I still think he’s an interesting guy and would follow his stuff again but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything of interest to me any more.
CGPGrey. I even listened to his podcasts.
For someone who tried to sell productivity tools at one point, he was very unproductive.
Also, given what happened with Standard and Nebula, I got to say I side with Nebula over him.
I still watch his main videos (when they actually happen…), but with a much higher degree of scepticism than I used to. And I stopped listening to his podcast (singular…).
My disillusionment with him started with a few issues with his videos. The blatantly ridiculous “royal family is good actually” video. The less obvious but no less egregious touting of Guns, Germs, and Steel. The AI techbroism of his automation video. Then he just killed off the podcast with no explanation, leaving his cohost Brady to put out a note saying “yeah we’re just on hiatus for now”. Over 4 years ago that was. There was the fact that he sided very vocally with Kurzgesagt in the CoffeeBreak drama, despite CB obviously being in the wrong at every step of the way.
Then the final straw where I was no longer willing to say I was a fan of his was when he did a video about some missile silo in America, in which he used the name of a submarine-based missile instead of a land-based missile at some point. Shortly afterwards he put out a massive mea culpa video saying it was a “catastrophic” error that he could not live with himself for, and that he holds himself to too high a standard to let that stand. All while still not acknowledging the problems with those earlier videos. So one nitpicky detail gets a massive hullabaloo and a retraction, but fundamental flaws in the underlying thesis of the video gets nothing? Give me a break.
I only ever saw that Royal Family video of his, and it was enough for me never to seek out any more.
Have you seen this response video to Grey’s Royal Family one?
i love Shaun’s videos, but this is one of my favorites. the way he “negotiates” with the royal family is just chef’s kiss.
I haven’t, but I will definitely watch that, thanks! 👍
What drama, and if sided with Kurzgesagt when they were in the right as you say, what is the issue?
Oh whoops! My mistake! I’ll edit the above comment to fix that. It was Kurzgesagt who was in the wrong.
The drama was (to copy/paste an earlier comment, because it’s rather lengthy):
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
Incidentally, here’s the video that CB was working on at the time. Hari, the scientist discussed in the video whom K worked with on his video discussed earlier, communicated very well with CB on it.
Thanks for the great breakdown, it sounds vaguely familiar. I remember K’s retraction bit and I follow Philip DeFranco. Disappointed he landed on the wrong side.
For what it’s worth, Philly D is someone I could have answered the original question with too. Not for any spectacular reason like the above—I had already stopped watching him before that occurred. For me it was just finding his focus was too much on sensationalist pop culture news rather than news reporting that interested me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, it just wasn’t right for me.
Yeah he definitely can veer too much into that stuff for a time. I strongly dislike his thumbnails and titles but I feel he has to do that to compete but I do like his content, some days just less than others.
I didn’t like his take, “solving” traffic nescitates the use of self-driving cars. Can’t have traffic without cars, it’s as simple as that. We need public transport, not more shit to spend our increasingly scarce money on.
What happened? I’ve never heard of it
Him and Kurzgesagt were helping to build an organization for YouTubers with the current CEO. The first talent signed on was Wendover and Real Engineering.
Grey and Kurzgesagt were rather inactive partners when they should have been more active and were trying to build a much more exploitative company instead of what Nebula became. It is vague on how they left, but they left and the company became better for it.
Sorry, do you mean the current CEO of Nebula or of YouTube?
Nebula
So Nebula got rid of him (which would seem to coincide with his drop in output)?, Kurzgesagt seems to be doing just fine in comparison.
I found his video on FPTP Binary political systems video to be logically flawed and I think it ultimately caused more harm than good. It’s irritating to see people reference it in political discussions today. That eventually convinced me to stop giving him views.
Yeah, it’s weird, CGPGrey videos used to be the most must-watch of all YouTube for me and I subscribed to his Patreon at one point. I listened to Hello Internet loyally and I was even unhurt about how it ended. I still think he’s an interesting guy and would follow his stuff again but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything of interest to me any more.
What happened with Standard/Nebula?
I responded to someone else, but there is a reason why Grey isn’t a part of Nebula.
his videos started getting sparse/boring