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.
Pretty much any channel once they make it big. I have watched so many channels that just starts out as a person in their basement, or bedroom and make great but simple content. Then they catch on, get a lot of subs and starts making content for the algorithm instead of their existing viewers. They go full time, hire an editor, a cameraman etc. And the content moves further and further away from what made it good to begin with.
A turning point is usually when they quit their dayjob and go full time, that’s when the pressure to perform well really begins.
Some exceptions of course, like LGR and Explaining Computers, who just keep chugging along solo. And I still enjoy them because of it.
I remember way back, before people made money on YouTube, or right at the time maybe. I was watching some guy making videos in his backyard. He just talked, it was the simplest format imaginable, the most effort he ever made was wearing a different jacket to act as a second person. He was really funny and his content was relatable and he was just shooting the shit. After a while, he got a bunch of subscribers, i don’t really remember the numbers, or what counts as many back then, but he started doing green screen stuff a lot. He made his videos more like a news show, he was wearing a tie and a suit and was an angry news anchor or something. It was still good, it was still funny, but it wasn’t why i watched his videos, so i stopped. I went back a bit later and his video was basically him complaining because of dropped viewerships and the effort he makes to make better videos. It was pretty sad.
The big big exception to this for me is the guys at Red Letter Media.
Even once they got big, they’re still just shitty b-movie lovers who don’t really give a crap about an algorithm. And that’s why I love 'em.
I was never super into RLM at all, but i still appreciate that they still pretty much haven’t changed.
They pissed off a lot of culture war grifters with their review of The Acolyte that was more about the culture war grifters then the series itself. They then made a video about them buying the mold for the Star Trek Salt Vampire monster that got much bigger numbers then the grifter’s raging about RLM. It was great.
So many RLM episodes have edits that are just annoying to watch, and they do that on purpose and I love them.
Three of those come to mind immediately:
“I hope this is a children’s suicide…video.”
A guy having his head run over by a three-wheeler 20 times in a row. Twice.
A guy falling shoulder first onto a wooden crate 20 times in a row.
the biggest issue for me is that it seems impossible to find those small channels anymore, whatever you search for, it’ll just give you big ones, even if not really related to your query
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.
Yeah, his more recent videos seem to be more about the spectacle, rather than the education or interesting subject matter.
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
I cancelled him when he faked the porch pirate videos years ago.
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.
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?
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
All the if those are still pretty good, honestly.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
If he stopped SHOUTING ALL THE FUCKING TIME, his content would be just about tolerable.
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.
That hotel demolition video could have been really cool
Instead it was just… Boring and weirdly edited
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.
He’s just part of a huge machine now. And he looks tired as hell sometimes.
Basically any channel that started doing “reaction” content. Oh you’re reading the top page of Reddit today? Cool, what creative value does that have to me? Absolutely none. Goodbye. I get that it’s really popular but I have no idea why, and I get it’s cheap to make but it’s also shit, so you get what you pay for I guess.
The only exception to this is Jimmy Broadbent who occasionally does his “Sim Racing Stewards” series which is basically his take on Reddit user submitted clips of their online racing mishaps. I find it really interesting to watch because he has so much sim racing experience and, albeit less, experience of real world racing with real life stewards and racing rules. It’s entertaining and interesting and I want to know his opinion on these incidents because he has enough context to have an opinion, and doesn’t act like his opinion is gospel.
sniperwolf, doctor mike yea , i never got around to consuming his content, but he did have a few drama incidents that are not caused by him. sniperwolf herself is a problem, she doxxed and stalked someone.
The only good reaction videos are from corridor crew
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.
Is that the right wing religious anti woke weirdo? I know that there are two guys who do similar content, and even have similar names, but i haven’t seen them in years.
I think you are speaking of Shadiversity. The two used to collaborate on stuff. Then Shad fell out of favor for his conservative takes and now rambles on his own about how the woke takes over the world.
Philosophy Tube
Took a while to see this one. Even back before Abigale was Abigale, I was deeply connected with some of the truly heartfelt and profound content they produced. So it’s been sad to see a lot of her new content lean harder into performance and less into substance.
Going back to their earliest videos, set pieces and costumes were used here and there to make a point, now it’s way overblown and distracting and silly when the subject matter is also superficial examination of “meh” topics.
Yeah, that resonates with me.
Contrapoints along the same lines?
Contrapoints keeps showing her hand as a straight up liberal Zionist, so there’s that
I didn’t have any political reasons. I just grew to dislike the writing style. I became disenchanted by the style of the videos.
I’m still up for watching new Contrapoints videos.
Contrapoints/Natalie has a weird history of making her private relationships big public beefs between herself and other creators, or siding with people she’s connected with over factual information.
I dropped her on her refusal to address Palestine in such a performative, midwitted way. I was so disappointed because I had watched her for years, she was part of my furthering left and understanding gender issues in new ways so it was sad to see her obviously facing some kind of ethical dilemma about something so clearly evil and horrendous and easy to call out. Even if she didn’t want to make a whole video on it, she could have just said “Yah it’s bad, I am not sure how to tackle it, I’ll think about how” and probably saved herself from a mass exodus of fans.
Contra is fine
But if you don’t want to sour your opinion on PT even more, don’t look into the history between the two
They’re both in my shitcan. I couldn’t deal with Philosphophy Tube’s escalating her style-over-substance approach to topics, and shallow, sponsor-safe progressivism like her really uneducated take on birth rates. (I’ve only seen part one, but it IS a real problem, and she minimized it. I feel like she is just pandering to lefties who think it’s a conservative talking point only, but I was really, really hoping it would primarily be about our increasing loneliness and lack of relationships in the 2020’s, and global consequences of reduced young populations.)
Contrapoints has a history of choosing her friends over her ethics and values and making her drama weirdly puplic and that lost me a while back. Her refusal to address Israel/Gaza and both-siding it was far worse than if she just didn’t fucking say anything. I do not GET her propensity to placate her friends over her values in such a public way.
Look at how Lindsay Ellise came out of the shadows and tackled Israel/Gaza for an example of how you can produce good content on the right side of history without “covering the same ground” or whatever the fuck Natalie’s whinging was about why she wasn’t going to say anything.
I watched a few of her videos just to have something on in the background while I worked. A lot of the takes presented didn’t sit quite right with me, but I didn’t know why. Then I watched her videos on Nietzsche and realized she hasn’t read and actually understood what he wrote, despite claims to the contrary. I blocked the channel. I later found a sort-of response video from some other YouTuber that went through those videos and confirmed she didn’t understand the material by countering each point with actual receipts.
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.
MKBHD. He used to be, IMO, the best tech channel out there. The reviews were honest, well produced, and held companies’ feet to the fire. The old MKBHD poked fun at the companies’ shortcomings (I specifically remember him telling iPhone users to add a widget - then going “oh, wait…”). The new MKBHD interviews Tim Cook and doesn’t properly question any of the BS he speaks.
I don’t really agree with this take.
He still seems fair and mostly unbiased.
He’s really good at trying to mow down kids in suburbs, though
Skallagrim! I am subbed to him also.
He isn’t always has been the weird metalhead kid in high school who is really obsessed with medieval weapons and not very socially apt. I don’t mind his takes personally.
It’s off topic to the rest of the thread, but I also want to point out that LGR has been consistently good for more than a decade.
Channels that are in the process of going down the tubes would include Skeeter Jean, Jidion and Predator Poachers. which are really three flavors of the same thing but they’re all going downhill fast - although Predator Poachers (or more specifically, the guy behind him, Alex Rosen) has always been a scummy person.
I think Skal has been struggling to figure out ways to squeeze blood from the stone that is his entire channel topic. It must be challenging as fuck to draw out more video ideas on swords and weapons when you’re also struggling personally with your health and money, but he seems a genuinely nice dude with progressive values so I will continue to support him.
I used to watch him and Shadiversity but holy shit did Shad take a nose-dive, what a fucking piece of shit and I hope he chokes on his dumb fucking red gambeson as his channel flames out.
A lot of older channels I watch, but due to a combination of not liking their content style¹ anymore and changing tastes. Channels like Kub Scouts, GrayStillPlays, Bijuu Mike, etcetera.
- A combination of how their content has evolved and adapted to a platform strangling itself every new day.
Lunduke and Sabine Hossenfelter took similar paths downward towards more money in the rage economy.
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.
The why files feels very AI generated now, both visuals and story telling.
All of them.
SMG4 is one that comes to mind, having watched his channel since its early days. His older videos, while clearly lacking polish and obviously made by a teenager, were actually funny and memorable. As time went on though, his content started to slip. Sure, the production quality improved as he started Glitchy Boy and later Glitch Productions, but the humour ended up becoming secondary as he switched from self-contained episodes to various “seasons” with ongoing storylines. It meant you had to keep up with every episode to know wtf was going on (the same mistake South Park made), and his attempt at making the series more of a drama than a comedy meant that the humour was more of a distraction that made it hard to take the drama seriously. Why should I believe Mario will die this time if I’ve seen him survive being blown up, set on fire and shot dozens of times before? Some of the best characters (Bowser, Toad, etc) ended up taking a backseat to his numerous OCs as well, and the voice acting sucked compared to back when everyone spoke with various meme clips and subtitles.
SMG4 was at its best when it was a bunch of multicoloured Marios just doing random funny shit, and didn’t take itself seriously one bit. It’s pretty clear Luke’s passion is with Glitch’s other productions, hence why SMG4 finally ended.
