Veritasium has really gone down hill. I honestly think it started when he did the video on “clickbait” and actually realized how much more lucrative it was to make shittier clickbaity content than make straightforward science content.
It went from “here’s why magnetism is just electric field + relativity” to “I buried myself in cement - you won’t believe what happens!”
I enjoyed the back and forth over the topic, personally, but that initial video of his felt... weak. I didn't hate it but it did make me want to unsubscribe. It felt like a technicality and like a trick more than anything, to me.
The practicalities of how two nearby parallel wires work versus one big loop wasn't the question posed, it was based on length (As I remember from watching it once). Felt like a 'gotcha' moment with no gotcha.
???? His recent videos have been nothing but great. His knot, IQ, Oppenheimer, entropy, and maze solving videos (and more) are all recent and amazing videos. What's your criticism against him?
I think the problem here is that Veritasium these days now covers popular (possibly overrated) science-y topics rather than actually interesting (but not so popular) science content to stay on the radar. It's about the covered topic, not the quality.
Knot theory, entropy and maze solving are things most people don't know about though. If this critique is pointed at the Oppenheimer video because there was a popular movie then I would say that it's ok to talk about something trending if most of his videos are relatively niche.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m fairly knowledgeable in the natural sciences, but I still used to learn a lot from watching his videos. These days, more often than not my reaction is just “well thats obvious”. It reminds me of the MythBusters episode when they shot a ball out of the back of a moving truck, and when they confirmed the ball dropped without moving, Carrie just sarcastically said “Yay we did vector addition…”
to be fair the last video, the nuclear near misses one, did seem like a bunch of things stuffed together to make... something? I guess the people who didn't know about it will find it interesting but it's easy to see the difference from the old videos, the ones about niche topics with very in depth explanations
I think you overly critical of him. His content is still good, and the video you mentioned is called "I buried myself in cement to explain how it works", and even if you dislike this one, it's one of many
I love how Dunkey had a week where he did this sarcastically -- and they still ended up being some of his most popular videos. Thankfully he's stayed himself though and not abandoned what he does best.
Ugh, I used to follow a wildlife channel. The head of their YouTube had a kid, and then every other video was her repeating "can you say jackal?" over and over and OVER. I'm here for wildlife videos, not to watch your kid ignore the camera getting shoved in their face. But everyone was super positive towards the first kid video and she thought it was encouragement. For shame.
And of course head of youtube did youtube things. "Cute kid video" costs pennies on the dollar compared to capturing and editing wild life videos. So even if they got a measly 10% of the views they probably saw it as good business.
Perun is a fantastic channel to keep up with the Ukraine war. Probably the best resource out there. Pleasant to listen to as well, guy deserves the appreciation he gets.
Only because of the Ukraine channels did I notice that he also used to put out great videos about Dominions 5, a somewhat obscure game. I wish he had enough time to do both.
I remember the transition of prank channels from pranking each other in more or less controlled settings to "pranking" (harassing) strangers in public. Not saying that pranking each other was the pinnacle of comedy, there are definitely still problems with it, but why do people like watching random unrelated people being accosted at all, let alone enough for the prank channels to catch on and start catering to that crowd?
Heck, I remember mine craft prank wars with h20delerious. They were all happy to participate, stakes were 0, but the best pranks were creative and over engineered.
Did they over react for content? Yes, of course.
Was it fun seeing creative pranks in totally harmless ways anyway? Yes. Yes it was.
Jerma985 was my most favoritest TF2 youtuber, and now look him, a big streamer with wide meme reach. I remember the first Jerma Rumbles, the pinnacle of simulated wrestling and the first inklings of his creative genius. I don't watch streams and I don't watch VODs, but I'm just happy he's shooting for the stars.
I stopped watching after I met him at a convention one time.
I tried to say that I was a fan but every time I opened my mouth he just said 'HUH? HUH?' over and over, before he grabbed my Nintendo Labo keyboard, threw it on the ground and stamped on it a bunch of times.
Idk if this comment is a joke or not but i have to say you're really missing out. Jerma's new content has really grown so well and I'd say he's one of the few who did shift but ultimately its only grown in quality.
I have yet to meet any person in real life who has spoken of Subscribing to a YouTube Channel. I have never subscribed to any YouTube channel or even smashed the Like button on any YT video. I find the social media oriented facet of YT to be completely useless and irrelevant to my purpose of finding and viewing certain videos.
This whole pretend culture around youtubers is as alien to me as it would be for a Commanche Indian from the old West to be given an electric hairdryer.
I mean most people in adult spaces aren't really discussing YouTube and who they subscribe to lol. But it's a useful feature to tell the algorithm "hey, show me when this channel uploads a new video please"
I think you're really over thinking it in regards to the 'culture' most well-adjusted adults don't think about the people they subscribe to on YouTube as anything other than cool creators whose work they want to follow.
There is a whole dumb culture around it though. Listen to the cadence of the professional tube jockeys. There is a Youtuber Voice that has become part of that dumb culture. Notice how they all pander for their button clickers with similar carnival barker catchphrases to gather their little micro-boosts to raise their Tuber Rank.
they all pander for their button clickers with similar carnival barker catchphrases to gather their little micro-boosts to raise their Tuber Rank.
People do what helps them make a living. I don't like it any more than you do, but you seem to be attributing way too much baggage to something that's no different to a street vendor hawking their wares at passerby. Times change, but people's motivation stays the same.
Or they made good edited youtube videos and then they starting chasing the streaming trend like Critikal and other youtubers I used to watch. Sorry I want to watch a single 10-30 min video once or twice a week and not hours of unscripted rambling. The only person I can watch do that is Nothernlion but even then I don't watch most of his content anyway.
i actually really enjoy long form interviews. i watch 5 hour interviews and want more, but not everyone can host them and only a certain kind of content is good long form.
I haven't watched a streamer yet that could pull it off except NL. People get into this young with no education or lived life outside of streaming and honestly it's a pain listening to them try to be relatable to talk about something for hours. Even NL starts getting tiring after the 5000th take on peloton.
Podcasters are usually better at this than streamers. There's a Canadian political podcast I follow that's great for hour-plus interviews. Really good for "politics in complete sentences" stuff.
I’m not sure what a “steamer” is. Is it video game related only?
The content that I watch is for 40+. The example that I was thinking about was of Mormon stories podcast host. He has a phd in psychology. Hearing him interview ex Mormons is really interesting. I always learn something about myself during 5 hour interviews.
Streamers usually people who play games for 4-8+ hours almost every day with a face cam and a running chat. Twitch is the main website for these people.
Video: 3 hours of rambling with five minutes of addressing interesting topic.
I could hardly stand his actual videos before but at least he experimented and showed some conventions to be useless traditions but recently it's really been garbage long form rambling.
It's at its worst now imo. He plays the algorithm so that you can't get the video concept in the preview. You have to click the vid, sit through the ads(unless adblock), and then he spends 2 minutes doing his lead up just making goofy words up to describe the topic to delay mentioning what happened.
I agree with the thumbnail garbage, that shit is annoying. But the videos themselves have just become whatever he's doing that day. It's like he's terminally online now, he'd stream from the shitter if it wasn't against the ToS. He streams, puts the big clips on his moist Charlie channel, then puts the more interesting stuff on his main channel.
I don't watch his current content but it was bittersweet seeing the transition from his original style. He mentioned at the time that he had depression during that period and it seemed like the change was a lifestyle one as well; he seemed pretty happy around that time.
I know this can be true, but a more predatory trend is Youtubers quitting because these vicious incentives are difficult to navigate compared to Twitch, Patreon, or a regular old career.
He's "funny". Except if you don't think he's funny, then you might think he's extremely unfunny. He used to not try so hard, and IMO made better videos for it. Now it's off-pitch singing, cringe catchphrases, clickbait, and general "funny stuff".
Yeah agree with amio. He used to do actually useful instructional cooking videos - his sourdough series is great. Now he's really leaned into the mega high energy persona, clickbaity concepts ($1,000 waygu in a HOTDOG?! kind of thing).
I've been watching ZFG (OoT streamer) for a while. Lately he's only been playing Tears of the Kingdom, which... I don't like or care about, much. Looks like he's actually going to do runs of it, so it might be a while.
Someone else already mentioned Joshua Weissman, "comedian" cook who refuses to realize he can't sing and the "papa" thing is... cringe. Channel was much better when he didn't try so hard to be funny. Cooking stuff itself is still fine though, he does know his stuff.
I guarantee you ZFG doesn't give a single shit about "the algorithm" - he's always played games that he wants to play, which is usually every Zelda release, Mario Kart, Smash, and Pokemon. His only two concerns are going fast and having fun.
Literally finally made an account to respond to you. I don't really watch streams much anymore, but he has a main channel (highlights and records) and a VOD channel on YouTube. I used to go to sleep watching Clint Stevens every night, and now I use the VODs a lot of the time. Anyway, the point I was actually trying to make is that there is a ton of old content available if TotK isn't doing it for you.
Maybe I started watching late but Weissman always kind of struck me as trying too hard on the comedy bits, but I don't mind because it is good knowledge nonetheless. My biggest issue is that he's a little on the pretentious side and he occasionally uses fancy/expensive/inaccessible ingredients or tools, but that's really just a personal problem for me.
That last bit is why I love the Aaron and Claire cooking channel. Dude cooks recipes with both 'original' ingredients and also just tells you it's fine to omit/substitute stuff with other more common ingredients and even cooks using both so you can see. It's still a Korean cooking channel so some ingredients light still be a bit hard to come by in certain places like rice wine vinegar but it should be mostly accessible if you live anywhere with more than one skintone walking around.
Fuck the algorithm. My favorite Youtubers still do quality videos, luckily, but now they take longer because they have to fill their channels periodically with less inspired stuff or the all-seeing algorithm will toss them out. I hate it.
YouTubers and streamers aren't your friends. They are just trying to make money.
If you could switch jobs and make double your salary, would you? What about all your coworkers you'd be letting down by suddenly quitting? Oh well. You're getting paid.
If you work in retail or fast food or something you probably don't give a shit about your coworkers, but if you've worked a production job on a small team, you know what I mean. And you still would taken double the salary for the same sort of work.
Funny you mention her because in only subscribed recently. Her science news episodes are corny but very informative while lacking hype. Her deep dives are also informative, but a bit off topic sometimes.
Contrast that Two Minute Papers idiot. Every fucking video is hype, and he gets called out for it routinely. Everything is sO aMaZiNg... HOLD ONTO YOUR PAPERS! He once expressed awe at noise in an AI generated image. 🤦♂️ That's when unsubscribed.
So compared to YouTubers like him, Sabine is a breath of fresh air. (Not that they cover the same topics, I'm just talking about tone and delivery.)
I unsubbed Veritasium when he made that video on electricity and the speed of light and didn't once mention induction. He went over the top to make it seem like magic. Fuck that guy. Unforgivable!
Sigh. This happened, sort of, to my favorite channel. It was a fun channel all about her hamsters - cute videos of their antics and informative videos of how to care properly for them. Then she got a chronic illness and switched to only posting about the illness and awareness of it. And that's her prerogative. But she took down all the cute stuff. I was devastated. They were my go-to when I needed cheering up.
That happened to some Minecraft youtubers that I was subscribed to, they switched over to fortnite to appeal to young children and I unsubscribed from them
I mean it sucks but its clear enough of the "original" audience stuck around. Growth is important and only appealing to your og audience is a sentence for death if you are trying to make being an influencer a job. There is a reason why many influencers have to diversify even when they originally were primarily making videos of a single game because once that game popularity starts to drop, their audience is all they have and people simply "age out" of content and there is nothing wrong with that. Hell this isn't only to influencers but to most products.
Look at Jon Tron (ignoring his controversial parts) and PewDiePie. They kept adapting and growing.
While people like cadi, peanut butter gamer and other og normal boots folks didn't want to grow with their audience and change, and they have just flat lined in growth.
Hah, to be fair the guy is literally producing a movie. Honestly I think his semi regular content has taken dives a few times while he works on big projects, but YMMV whether it bothers you or not.
Used to love Mutahar, but it's all been downhill ever since he stopped doing creepypastas and is now just a news roundup guy in the most boomer way possible.
Wow, I'm actually impressed that I got mostly upvotes, this is the kind of thing that would get you crucified if you set it on reddit. Sometimes I think they did me a favor by Banning me from the site.
He's just slowly morphing into a standard opinion tech bro with no light between him, moist, and like a dozen other rich dudes.
Wealthy, incredibly insulated from life, experiencing everything through a screen then discussing what they've seen into another screen. Good and bad opinions melt together into a gray mush.
It's so much like Plato's Allegory of the Cave that I don't even want to mention it, it's so fucking obvious.
It was gamegrumps for me. It started too feel to corpoare and not just 2 dudes on a couch. Censoring swearing removing numbers in episodes so you dont even know which order it is.
Probably some weird AB testing where it was found people don't like clicking on episode 107 of a long series because they don't know if it's something they need to start from the beginning of.
I hate it though when yt channels do that because they often reference previous or even spoil stuff in previous and I'm like... I had no way of knowing this was ahead of that!
Storror, a UK parkour collective. Amazingly talented, made an unbelievable documentary about doing parkour on the rooftops of Asia. I still watch every week but they've done parkour like once in the last 3 months. Everything else is
We climbed this weird building
Can we escape from this pit?
We wrapped ourselves in bubble wrap
Stuck in a hollow tree!!
Then there are "water challenges", ie fairly easy jumps but you fall in a canal if you miss. One guy already had a career ending injury doing this and is now a camera man, another hurt himself badly and you can tell he's lost patience with it.
Oof, I blame youtube. They pay jack all on videos like that, even with 15 million views. The price is anywhere $1,200 to $6,000 per million views, based on view length. A short video like that probably was on the lower side in pay, but the time investment probably was immense. The practice, the planning, the editing, the probably hours of parkour that was cut, just the travel and flights alone...
Compared to them just going up a weird tent thing that is padded with 20 minutes of them reacting, and I'm going to "bet" has some sort of ad/product placement.
The King of Random comes to mind. When Grant started to go crazy with liquid nitrogen videos it just went downhill for us curious DIYers. The new hosts didn't help at all and instead of showing creative and useful ideas and projects, it tuned into a TikTok style kiddies experiment churning machine.
As Linus (and other YouTubers for that matter) have said, awful thumbnails and clickbaity titles work.
And when YouTube is a side gig you can refuse to do it on principle, but when you need to pay 100 folks (in case of LMG) - I don't think it's much of a choice.
Let's face it, we're fricking old. The demographic of YouTube is getting younger and younger and the young 'uns engage more in cringey reaction face of thumbnails. It's not a coincidence that YouTube/Google is going hard on anything that might not be "kid friendly". They de-monitised lots of historical YouTube channels for being "age inappropriate". Unfortunately, there are no alternative to YouTube. I love Nebula, but sometimes you'd just want videos and channela where you can just turn your mind off.
Doesn't surprise me, Mr Beast recently posted that A/B testing showed that the classic open-mouth YouTuber Face thumbnails don't perform as well as the creepy dead smile does. Linus thinks Mr Beast is a YouTube Algorithm God (and should be president of the US!), so I'm sure he jumped on that.
@ericbomb I used to watch a YouTuber called Skip the Tutorial, and he would make these challenge run videos, such as Punch Out Wii without dodging. This later extended to modded Minecraft runs, and this led to the whole channel just becoming Minecraft trivia videos since these came out during a massive nostalgia boom for the game. Sometimes I look back to see if he’s made any more challenge runs, but nope.
Boo I love stupid challenge videos and feels like so many youtubers burn themselves out and so cut back to trash as a result.
Stupid algo that rewards garbage and won't reward creators who spend the time. Like they make a 30 minute video of talking and will get as much reach as a 20 minute video that took weeks of work. Like just to get their own subs to see their vids they have to play games, and the algo loves the trash.
As much as it is "the algorithm's fault", I also blame humans for being, broadly speaking, incredibly dumb and with bad taste. Whenever I happen upon the "what's popular" view, it's filled to the brim with everything void of anything thoughtful.
I mean you say that, but top movies are usually high quality big budget. Where it was thousands of professionals doing their best with state od the art tech.
Best books are generally pay off from authors who have been working tirelessly for decades.
Best comics are veterans that almost everyone agrees are funny a big part of the time.
Then we get to youtube where we have enormous content creators that are just reacting to tik toks. So I blame the algo.
I follow a channel called MightyCarMods that recently bought into a trend of cheap vs expensive parts, but it seems like it was just something they tried because they've gone back to their old format of multi part car builds
It amazes me how long MCM has been going. At least from what I remember, they definitely had a lot of "doing stuff for cheap" content, so I don't think it's too out of line that they also now have the budget to actually do it "right" with expensive parts and compare.
How about the ones that seem to have just fucking quit? Barely Sociable popped up, produced a bunch of pretty cool videos, and has just fucking disappeared. Same with Fredrick Knudsen or however you spell the name of the "Down The Rabbit Hole" guy. Apparently some noise about making a 5 hour video followed by months of radio silence. Like my dude...break that up into parts.
The way you phrase this comes off as incredibly entitled. Sometimes, a lot of times even, people make something and put it out there; then something else in their life happens that just pulls them away.
They're not beholden to continue to make anything for anyone.
Enterelysium used to be one of my favourite youtubers for playing stuff like From the Depths but he lost his way to the algorithm and now just seems to play whatevers new and trending.
his my summer car lets play was great then it went downhill very steep i looked up his channel recently and non of his videos make even the slightest bit of sense
PushingUpRoses doesn't do gaming content much anymore, practically every video she uploads is about Murder She Wrote or sometimes other old daytime TV, and I'm just not into it. If it's working for her more power to her but I guess I'm her "old audience."
Vsauce went from a kinda smarmy gaming channel to that kind of smug "look at a bunch of random smart things that ultimately don't matter" show, then stopped uploading regular episodes for awhile and instead created some long-form ready for television crap on Youtube Red or whatever that subscription-only service that failed was, and then kinda puttered out.
The Modern Rogue has done a lot to make it difficult to be a subscriber of theirs, and both the quality and quantity of uploads has gone downhill. They're apparently still at it, but I dunno man.
And a whole bunch of 'em just don't upload anymore.
They'd be a lot more tolerable if, like, they released a blooper, an outtake, a side jag, something relevant to the previous or next episode, rather than parts of episodes from years ago. Not sure why they thought that was a good idea.
I hate all of it. But most of all I hate how most of my favorite content creators who did long-form educational documentaries and in-depth discussion videos have went to the minute or less format for most of their uploads.
I see what you're saying about moving away from smarmy pop culture videos, but the claim that all the "random smart things" ultimately don't matter is weak when you're comparing them to topics that literally do not matter at all. I'm not invalidating your example, just pointing something out.
Animation is pretty hard for youtube, since you need at least 10 mins I believe, which is difficult for animation. And there's already a large overlap between vtubing and animating so I would expect some channels to switch over, but not all.
I know JaidenAnimations has a vtuber model, but I do not think she uses it too often.
Mine is "te lo resumo asi nomás" he did resume/commentary of movies but the resumes became shit he did less of them and everytime he did more and more meme commentary. He picked things I love and did shit with them then he started doing rankings and such I wasn't mad but bored as fuck mostly.
there was 1 youtuber who discussed things that i struggled with and made the information very relatable, and i was able to do them/overcome my emotional block. now all she posts are videos about tv shows :(((
Or worse, your favorite channel gets bought by someone else and they turn it into something COMPLETELY different. Always hurts a little unsubscribing at that point, but what ya gonna do!
youtube was dead to me when they introduced the custom thumbnail. fundamentally anti-user move, designed entirely to let people obscure the actual contents of their video with photoshopped soyfaced slop
It's not like people weren't already just putting a single frame in the video that they could select as the thumbnail before the fully custom thumbnail option was added.
If you'd like a VERY thorough explanation, check out QuentinReviews video on Fred. The very condensed version is that he got tired of the character and sold the channel, which immediately started producing generic throwaway content and quickly failed.
The algorithm tends to fight this kind of content. So if a trans person succeeds in the algorithm, they likely already had in mind that they wanted to educate about how they can empathize with transgender people.
Some YouTubers I know who are trans or who have come out as trans since I started watching and are still doing their own thing: GameChamp3000 (game challenge videos and recently some trivia), DaThings (YTP style videos), Shammy/Joy (game review/critique), and probably a few others that aren't coming to mind right now. I'd argue Jim (Stephanie) Sterling hasn't really changed though trans issues do come up more often. I haven't watched Philosophy Tube recently but I do believe she still does videos on general philosophical concepts.
LTT is just an apology video channel now
I didn't come to the comments to be hurt like this.
Which leads me to our sponsor Raycon. You'll be hurting if you dont use our promptional code LTTSorryNotSorry.
"What do we do now?"
"Here's the plan"
I'll pour one out for you friend.
Did they do another one for the Madison accusations? Was it on the same level as the other one?
No. They are back to their regularly scheduled programming. Their recent apology videos aren't even in their top25 most viewed
Veritasium has really gone down hill. I honestly think it started when he did the video on “clickbait” and actually realized how much more lucrative it was to make shittier clickbaity content than make straightforward science content.
It went from “here’s why magnetism is just electric field + relativity” to “I buried myself in cement - you won’t believe what happens!”
So glad I'm not the only one who noticed. Curious if I just became hyper aware of his methods, or if he changed his video style.
The whole light second long cord switching on a light with a delay was super scummy. Milked that "controversy" for months.
I enjoyed the back and forth over the topic, personally, but that initial video of his felt... weak. I didn't hate it but it did make me want to unsubscribe. It felt like a technicality and like a trick more than anything, to me.
The practicalities of how two nearby parallel wires work versus one big loop wasn't the question posed, it was based on length (As I remember from watching it once). Felt like a 'gotcha' moment with no gotcha.
???? His recent videos have been nothing but great. His knot, IQ, Oppenheimer, entropy, and maze solving videos (and more) are all recent and amazing videos. What's your criticism against him?
I think the problem here is that Veritasium these days now covers popular (possibly overrated) science-y topics rather than actually interesting (but not so popular) science content to stay on the radar. It's about the covered topic, not the quality.
Knot theory, entropy and maze solving are things most people don't know about though. If this critique is pointed at the Oppenheimer video because there was a popular movie then I would say that it's ok to talk about something trending if most of his videos are relatively niche.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m fairly knowledgeable in the natural sciences, but I still used to learn a lot from watching his videos. These days, more often than not my reaction is just “well thats obvious”. It reminds me of the MythBusters episode when they shot a ball out of the back of a moving truck, and when they confirmed the ball dropped without moving, Carrie just sarcastically said “Yay we did vector addition…”
to be fair the last video, the nuclear near misses one, did seem like a bunch of things stuffed together to make... something? I guess the people who didn't know about it will find it interesting but it's easy to see the difference from the old videos, the ones about niche topics with very in depth explanations
still, most of the other videos are great
That video is a thinly veiled listicle.
He completely watersealed his skin a few years ago.
I thought it was interesting, too, but I didn’t really learn anything from it. He just doesn’t go into the same depth he used to.
I think you overly critical of him. His content is still good, and the video you mentioned is called "I buried myself in cement to explain how it works", and even if you dislike this one, it's one of many
That's just the thumb, the content itself is still the same.
I love how Dunkey had a week where he did this sarcastically -- and they still ended up being some of his most popular videos. Thankfully he's stayed himself though and not abandoned what he does best.
Super Mario 2?
That's right, baby! GAME AH DAH YEEAAAR!
GOTY baybee
Ugh, I used to follow a wildlife channel. The head of their YouTube had a kid, and then every other video was her repeating "can you say jackal?" over and over and OVER. I'm here for wildlife videos, not to watch your kid ignore the camera getting shoved in their face. But everyone was super positive towards the first kid video and she thought it was encouragement. For shame.
And of course head of youtube did youtube things. "Cute kid video" costs pennies on the dollar compared to capturing and editing wild life videos. So even if they got a measly 10% of the views they probably saw it as good business.
Is the channel you're talking about SaveAFox?
Perun is a fantastic channel to keep up with the Ukraine war. Probably the best resource out there. Pleasant to listen to as well, guy deserves the appreciation he gets.
Only because of the Ukraine channels did I notice that he also used to put out great videos about Dominions 5, a somewhat obscure game. I wish he had enough time to do both.
He has another channel where he still plays games occasionally. https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCPYJiiMoA0yOMHI-aiB44RQ/videos
I use to get stuck watching his invictus videos for hours. Man's got a good mind.
Yeah, I know that one, but it's not filling the gaps in the dominions 5 nation guide collection.
I remember the transition of prank channels from pranking each other in more or less controlled settings to "pranking" (harassing) strangers in public. Not saying that pranking each other was the pinnacle of comedy, there are definitely still problems with it, but why do people like watching random unrelated people being accosted at all, let alone enough for the prank channels to catch on and start catering to that crowd?
I remember those!
Heck, I remember mine craft prank wars with h20delerious. They were all happy to participate, stakes were 0, but the best pranks were creative and over engineered.
Did they over react for content? Yes, of course.
Was it fun seeing creative pranks in totally harmless ways anyway? Yes. Yes it was.
Jerma985 was my most favoritest TF2 youtuber, and now look him, a big streamer with wide meme reach. I remember the first Jerma Rumbles, the pinnacle of simulated wrestling and the first inklings of his creative genius. I don't watch streams and I don't watch VODs, but I'm just happy he's shooting for the stars.
I stopped watching after I met him at a convention one time.
I tried to say that I was a fan but every time I opened my mouth he just said 'HUH? HUH?' over and over, before he grabbed my Nintendo Labo keyboard, threw it on the ground and stamped on it a bunch of times.
Said he had to stomp each key individually, to prevent electrical "infetterence." I don't even think that's a word.
Same here, I stopped watching Jerma after he stopped posting TF2 content, but I'm glad he's made it and is still doing a bunch of cool stuff.
The Jerma vs STAR videos almost gave me a hernia once upon a time.
At least Jerma is still within the same field of entertainment.
I have the opposite opinion regarding ster.
Idk if this comment is a joke or not but i have to say you're really missing out. Jerma's new content has really grown so well and I'd say he's one of the few who did shift but ultimately its only grown in quality.
At this point I suspect half the internet is bots making content for the enjoyment of other bots.
I have yet to meet any person in real life who has spoken of Subscribing to a YouTube Channel. I have never subscribed to any YouTube channel or even smashed the Like button on any YT video. I find the social media oriented facet of YT to be completely useless and irrelevant to my purpose of finding and viewing certain videos.
This whole pretend culture around youtubers is as alien to me as it would be for a Commanche Indian from the old West to be given an electric hairdryer.
I mean most people in adult spaces aren't really discussing YouTube and who they subscribe to lol. But it's a useful feature to tell the algorithm "hey, show me when this channel uploads a new video please"
I think you're really over thinking it in regards to the 'culture' most well-adjusted adults don't think about the people they subscribe to on YouTube as anything other than cool creators whose work they want to follow.
There is a whole dumb culture around it though. Listen to the cadence of the professional tube jockeys. There is a Youtuber Voice that has become part of that dumb culture. Notice how they all pander for their button clickers with similar carnival barker catchphrases to gather their little micro-boosts to raise their Tuber Rank.
It's all that junk that makes me puke
People do what helps them make a living. I don't like it any more than you do, but you seem to be attributing way too much baggage to something that's no different to a street vendor hawking their wares at passerby. Times change, but people's motivation stays the same.
I only subscribe to one channel and that's because it's a friend of mine (they make indie acoustic-electronic music)
Or they made good edited youtube videos and then they starting chasing the streaming trend like Critikal and other youtubers I used to watch. Sorry I want to watch a single 10-30 min video once or twice a week and not hours of unscripted rambling. The only person I can watch do that is Nothernlion but even then I don't watch most of his content anyway.
The only reason shit like that even succeeds is probably because people put on live streams as background noise
i actually really enjoy long form interviews. i watch 5 hour interviews and want more, but not everyone can host them and only a certain kind of content is good long form.
I haven't watched a streamer yet that could pull it off except NL. People get into this young with no education or lived life outside of streaming and honestly it's a pain listening to them try to be relatable to talk about something for hours. Even NL starts getting tiring after the 5000th take on peloton.
Podcasters are usually better at this than streamers. There's a Canadian political podcast I follow that's great for hour-plus interviews. Really good for "politics in complete sentences" stuff.
I’m not sure what a “steamer” is. Is it video game related only?
The content that I watch is for 40+. The example that I was thinking about was of Mormon stories podcast host. He has a phd in psychology. Hearing him interview ex Mormons is really interesting. I always learn something about myself during 5 hour interviews.
Streamers usually people who play games for 4-8+ hours almost every day with a face cam and a running chat. Twitch is the main website for these people.
LTT's WAN show pulls of (maybe 2/3rds the time) 3-4 hour streams with only outlines of recent news and a live-feed of merch messages as direction.
Adam Ragusea is the worst for this.
Title: interesting topic.
Video: 3 hours of rambling with five minutes of addressing interesting topic.
I could hardly stand his actual videos before but at least he experimented and showed some conventions to be useless traditions but recently it's really been garbage long form rambling.
Critikal's channel is amazing at this. It died like 3 identity deaths.
It's at its worst now imo. He plays the algorithm so that you can't get the video concept in the preview. You have to click the vid, sit through the ads(unless adblock), and then he spends 2 minutes doing his lead up just making goofy words up to describe the topic to delay mentioning what happened.
I agree with the thumbnail garbage, that shit is annoying. But the videos themselves have just become whatever he's doing that day. It's like he's terminally online now, he'd stream from the shitter if it wasn't against the ToS. He streams, puts the big clips on his moist Charlie channel, then puts the more interesting stuff on his main channel.
Yup. Unsuited a long time ago but actively blocked his main channel and clip channels now. It's gotten very bad.
I don't watch his current content but it was bittersweet seeing the transition from his original style. He mentioned at the time that he had depression during that period and it seemed like the change was a lifestyle one as well; he seemed pretty happy around that time.
Shout out to EthosLab for doing the exact same format of content for ten years with minimal changes
Oh man, I haven't watched any of his videos in forever but I'm so glad he's stuck to what he likes doing.
Occasionally he uses star wipes instead of jump cuts between scenes, but the style is incredibly consistent.
I know this can be true, but a more predatory trend is Youtubers quitting because these vicious incentives are difficult to navigate compared to Twitch, Patreon, or a regular old career.
Joshua Weissman for me... But I found Anti-Chef and he more than makes up for it! Edit: a word
I don't really watch his videos, what is he doing now? What did he do before?
He's "funny". Except if you don't think he's funny, then you might think he's extremely unfunny. He used to not try so hard, and IMO made better videos for it. Now it's off-pitch singing, cringe catchphrases, clickbait, and general "funny stuff".
So it's not getting better. I see. Thanks!
Yeah agree with amio. He used to do actually useful instructional cooking videos - his sourdough series is great. Now he's really leaned into the mega high energy persona, clickbaity concepts ($1,000 waygu in a HOTDOG?! kind of thing).
I've been watching ZFG (OoT streamer) for a while. Lately he's only been playing Tears of the Kingdom, which... I don't like or care about, much. Looks like he's actually going to do runs of it, so it might be a while.
Someone else already mentioned Joshua Weissman, "comedian" cook who refuses to realize he can't sing and the "papa" thing is... cringe. Channel was much better when he didn't try so hard to be funny. Cooking stuff itself is still fine though, he does know his stuff.
I guarantee you ZFG doesn't give a single shit about "the algorithm" - he's always played games that he wants to play, which is usually every Zelda release, Mario Kart, Smash, and Pokemon. His only two concerns are going fast and having fun.
Literally finally made an account to respond to you. I don't really watch streams much anymore, but he has a main channel (highlights and records) and a VOD channel on YouTube. I used to go to sleep watching Clint Stevens every night, and now I use the VODs a lot of the time. Anyway, the point I was actually trying to make is that there is a ton of old content available if TotK isn't doing it for you.
Maybe I started watching late but Weissman always kind of struck me as trying too hard on the comedy bits, but I don't mind because it is good knowledge nonetheless. My biggest issue is that he's a little on the pretentious side and he occasionally uses fancy/expensive/inaccessible ingredients or tools, but that's really just a personal problem for me.
That last bit is why I love the Aaron and Claire cooking channel. Dude cooks recipes with both 'original' ingredients and also just tells you it's fine to omit/substitute stuff with other more common ingredients and even cooks using both so you can see. It's still a Korean cooking channel so some ingredients light still be a bit hard to come by in certain places like rice wine vinegar but it should be mostly accessible if you live anywhere with more than one skintone walking around.
Fuck the algorithm. My favorite Youtubers still do quality videos, luckily, but now they take longer because they have to fill their channels periodically with less inspired stuff or the all-seeing algorithm will toss them out. I hate it.
YouTubers and streamers aren't your friends. They are just trying to make money.
If you could switch jobs and make double your salary, would you? What about all your coworkers you'd be letting down by suddenly quitting? Oh well. You're getting paid.
If you work in retail or fast food or something you probably don't give a shit about your coworkers, but if you've worked a production job on a small team, you know what I mean. And you still would taken double the salary for the same sort of work.
I'll subscribe to you
Sabine the science channel
She's still doing science, though.
True. The ratio is just getting worse
I recently found her channel and it's fun to watch the difference from a 4y old video to last weeks uploads. Gotta clickbait.
Funny you mention her because in only subscribed recently. Her science news episodes are corny but very informative while lacking hype. Her deep dives are also informative, but a bit off topic sometimes.
Contrast that Two Minute Papers idiot. Every fucking video is hype, and he gets called out for it routinely. Everything is sO aMaZiNg... HOLD ONTO YOUR PAPERS! He once expressed awe at noise in an AI generated image. 🤦♂️ That's when unsubscribed.
So compared to YouTubers like him, Sabine is a breath of fresh air. (Not that they cover the same topics, I'm just talking about tone and delivery.)
I unsubbed Veritasium when he made that video on electricity and the speed of light and didn't once mention induction. He went over the top to make it seem like magic. Fuck that guy. Unforgivable!
So true about two minute papers. I unsubbed from him so quick. Veratasium took a nose dive too, like you said.
Yeah that's why I'm sad about Sabine. She was so good for so long
Sigh. This happened, sort of, to my favorite channel. It was a fun channel all about her hamsters - cute videos of their antics and informative videos of how to care properly for them. Then she got a chronic illness and switched to only posting about the illness and awareness of it. And that's her prerogative. But she took down all the cute stuff. I was devastated. They were my go-to when I needed cheering up.
that's how i got into watching people make art/do creative stuff with art. that always cheers me up... also lots of options.
That happened to some Minecraft youtubers that I was subscribed to, they switched over to fortnite to appeal to young children and I unsubscribed from them
They forgot about their original audience
Edit: autocorrect caused typo
I mean it sucks but its clear enough of the "original" audience stuck around. Growth is important and only appealing to your og audience is a sentence for death if you are trying to make being an influencer a job. There is a reason why many influencers have to diversify even when they originally were primarily making videos of a single game because once that game popularity starts to drop, their audience is all they have and people simply "age out" of content and there is nothing wrong with that. Hell this isn't only to influencers but to most products.
Absolutely agree with you there.
Look at Jon Tron (ignoring his controversial parts) and PewDiePie. They kept adapting and growing.
While people like cadi, peanut butter gamer and other og normal boots folks didn't want to grow with their audience and change, and they have just flat lined in growth.
Oh no. Makrkiplier upload another smash or pass video recently.
Don't worry friend, surely the low effort high viewer ship format won't encourage him to spam his channel with it!...
sweats nervously
It's not so much the video topic, it's what recently happened in it.
Huh?
HE WAS SMASHING EVERY ONE OF THEM. INCLUDING LUCARIO.
Okay, but everyone knows that Lucario is objectively one of the most smashable
Hah, to be fair the guy is literally producing a movie. Honestly I think his semi regular content has taken dives a few times while he works on big projects, but YMMV whether it bothers you or not.
It's not the topic, it's what he smashed.
Used to love Mutahar, but it's all been downhill ever since he stopped doing creepypastas and is now just a news roundup guy in the most boomer way possible.
Wow, I'm actually impressed that I got mostly upvotes, this is the kind of thing that would get you crucified if you set it on reddit. Sometimes I think they did me a favor by Banning me from the site.
What are his horrendous bigoted views? I don't remember him saying anything that bad.
He's just slowly morphing into a standard opinion tech bro with no light between him, moist, and like a dozen other rich dudes.
Wealthy, incredibly insulated from life, experiencing everything through a screen then discussing what they've seen into another screen. Good and bad opinions melt together into a gray mush.
It's so much like Plato's Allegory of the Cave that I don't even want to mention it, it's so fucking obvious.
It was gamegrumps for me. It started too feel to corpoare and not just 2 dudes on a couch. Censoring swearing removing numbers in episodes so you dont even know which order it is.
I seriously do not understand how removing numbers was a good idea. That, more than anything, was when I practically stopped watching altogether.
Probably some weird AB testing where it was found people don't like clicking on episode 107 of a long series because they don't know if it's something they need to start from the beginning of.
I hate it though when yt channels do that because they often reference previous or even spoil stuff in previous and I'm like... I had no way of knowing this was ahead of that!
That does make sense. It is no less infuriating 😂 but it makes sense.
Storror, a UK parkour collective. Amazingly talented, made an unbelievable documentary about doing parkour on the rooftops of Asia. I still watch every week but they've done parkour like once in the last 3 months. Everything else is
Then there are "water challenges", ie fairly easy jumps but you fall in a canal if you miss. One guy already had a career ending injury doing this and is now a camera man, another hurt himself badly and you can tell he's lost patience with it.
I never heard of them and pulled up the channel... that's a lot of circles and arrows pointing at things.
Even the best soldiers can fall to click bait.
It's sad because they're capable of so much!
https://youtu.be/QHqAVaQqQWQ?si=6TqwZFvGoJLkmSsU
Oof, I blame youtube. They pay jack all on videos like that, even with 15 million views. The price is anywhere $1,200 to $6,000 per million views, based on view length. A short video like that probably was on the lower side in pay, but the time investment probably was immense. The practice, the planning, the editing, the probably hours of parkour that was cut, just the travel and flights alone...
Compared to them just going up a weird tent thing that is padded with 20 minutes of them reacting, and I'm going to "bet" has some sort of ad/product placement.
The King of Random comes to mind. When Grant started to go crazy with liquid nitrogen videos it just went downhill for us curious DIYers. The new hosts didn't help at all and instead of showing creative and useful ideas and projects, it tuned into a TikTok style kiddies experiment churning machine.
Anyone noticed recent Linus O'Tech Tips thumbnails have him giving the same rictus-like grin of the Abomination (Mr Beast)?
As Linus (and other YouTubers for that matter) have said, awful thumbnails and clickbaity titles work.
And when YouTube is a side gig you can refuse to do it on principle, but when you need to pay 100 folks (in case of LMG) - I don't think it's much of a choice.
Let's face it, we're fricking old. The demographic of YouTube is getting younger and younger and the young 'uns engage more in cringey reaction face of thumbnails. It's not a coincidence that YouTube/Google is going hard on anything that might not be "kid friendly". They de-monitised lots of historical YouTube channels for being "age inappropriate". Unfortunately, there are no alternative to YouTube. I love Nebula, but sometimes you'd just want videos and channela where you can just turn your mind off.
Pretty sure he mentioned on WAN show a while back that those thumbs do much better for them when they trialled it initially.
A bunch of channels are doing the same now lol
"The cold hard truth is that if everyone is doing this, there's probably a reason: It works." --Linus Sebastian
Doesn't surprise me, Mr Beast recently posted that A/B testing showed that the classic open-mouth YouTuber Face thumbnails don't perform as well as the creepy dead smile does. Linus thinks Mr Beast is a YouTube Algorithm God (and should be president of the US!), so I'm sure he jumped on that.
Listen, I know he does good things and helps people out but his face is just so goddamn punchable
Lol he talked about how he was gonna do that
Yes, because they change it after a few weeks when the videos have done their job
H3h3
@ericbomb I used to watch a YouTuber called Skip the Tutorial, and he would make these challenge run videos, such as Punch Out Wii without dodging. This later extended to modded Minecraft runs, and this led to the whole channel just becoming Minecraft trivia videos since these came out during a massive nostalgia boom for the game. Sometimes I look back to see if he’s made any more challenge runs, but nope.
Boo I love stupid challenge videos and feels like so many youtubers burn themselves out and so cut back to trash as a result.
Stupid algo that rewards garbage and won't reward creators who spend the time. Like they make a 30 minute video of talking and will get as much reach as a 20 minute video that took weeks of work. Like just to get their own subs to see their vids they have to play games, and the algo loves the trash.
As much as it is "the algorithm's fault", I also blame humans for being, broadly speaking, incredibly dumb and with bad taste. Whenever I happen upon the "what's popular" view, it's filled to the brim with everything void of anything thoughtful.
I mean you say that, but top movies are usually high quality big budget. Where it was thousands of professionals doing their best with state od the art tech.
Best books are generally pay off from authors who have been working tirelessly for decades.
Best comics are veterans that almost everyone agrees are funny a big part of the time.
Then we get to youtube where we have enormous content creators that are just reacting to tik toks. So I blame the algo.
I follow a channel called MightyCarMods that recently bought into a trend of cheap vs expensive parts, but it seems like it was just something they tried because they've gone back to their old format of multi part car builds
It amazes me how long MCM has been going. At least from what I remember, they definitely had a lot of "doing stuff for cheap" content, so I don't think it's too out of line that they also now have the budget to actually do it "right" with expensive parts and compare.
How about the ones that seem to have just fucking quit? Barely Sociable popped up, produced a bunch of pretty cool videos, and has just fucking disappeared. Same with Fredrick Knudsen or however you spell the name of the "Down The Rabbit Hole" guy. Apparently some noise about making a 5 hour video followed by months of radio silence. Like my dude...break that up into parts.
Better die a hero rather than live long enough as a villian.
The way you phrase this comes off as incredibly entitled. Sometimes, a lot of times even, people make something and put it out there; then something else in their life happens that just pulls them away.
They're not beholden to continue to make anything for anyone.
There was a very early YouTuber and Something Awful Goon that went by the YouTube handle Research Indicates.
Dropped the gold standard for Let's Play videoes and then never uploaded another one again.
Well there's your problem, the nursing home he's been put in probably doesn't let him upload.
Love Fredrick. That seems to be his MO for years now. A couple releases a year that are hours long. I just hope he's doing well.
Every YouTuber who starts catering to 10-15yos.
Enterelysium used to be one of my favourite youtubers for playing stuff like From the Depths but he lost his way to the algorithm and now just seems to play whatevers new and trending.
RIP Penguin0
What happened?
He's changed his style of uploads twice now and is an empty shell today. Just posting junk from his live streams to YouTube.
Charlie used to not care about YouTube as a method of making money. Would donate all of his money to charity.
tbh he probably make a good sum of money and can life an stress free live who wouldn't take that ?
I am happy for his success but sad at quality of his content.
He's ragging on AI generated YouTube channels, all the while the content he is churing out is just as bad.
I miss you, GrayStillPlays.
I miss spleens :(
his my summer car lets play was great then it went downhill very steep i looked up his channel recently and non of his videos make even the slightest bit of sense
PushingUpRoses doesn't do gaming content much anymore, practically every video she uploads is about Murder She Wrote or sometimes other old daytime TV, and I'm just not into it. If it's working for her more power to her but I guess I'm her "old audience."
Vsauce went from a kinda smarmy gaming channel to that kind of smug "look at a bunch of random smart things that ultimately don't matter" show, then stopped uploading regular episodes for awhile and instead created some long-form ready for television crap on Youtube Red or whatever that subscription-only service that failed was, and then kinda puttered out.
The Modern Rogue has done a lot to make it difficult to be a subscriber of theirs, and both the quality and quantity of uploads has gone downhill. They're apparently still at it, but I dunno man.
And a whole bunch of 'em just don't upload anymore.
I liked mind field
Yeah they lost me when they went to pretty much all shorts and the occasional video every month or so. I fucking hate shorts.
They'd be a lot more tolerable if, like, they released a blooper, an outtake, a side jag, something relevant to the previous or next episode, rather than parts of episodes from years ago. Not sure why they thought that was a good idea.
Don't you love the new section of suggested videos beside the player that has shorts now!?!?
I hate all of it. But most of all I hate how most of my favorite content creators who did long-form educational documentaries and in-depth discussion videos have went to the minute or less format for most of their uploads.
I see what you're saying about moving away from smarmy pop culture videos, but the claim that all the "random smart things" ultimately don't matter is weak when you're comparing them to topics that literally do not matter at all. I'm not invalidating your example, just pointing something out.
Damn YIAY taking over for YGS.
YIAY gone now too
Just moved to his other channel though, right?
I'm not 100% sure but I hope it does show up on his second channel.
I still resent YGS for not being called and never making the "You're Grandma Sucks" joke.
Animation channels switching to Vtubing
Animation is pretty hard for youtube, since you need at least 10 mins I believe, which is difficult for animation. And there's already a large overlap between vtubing and animating so I would expect some channels to switch over, but not all.
I know JaidenAnimations has a vtuber model, but I do not think she uses it too often.
Just wait until AI can do animation...
God no
Mine is "te lo resumo asi nomás" he did resume/commentary of movies but the resumes became shit he did less of them and everytime he did more and more meme commentary. He picked things I love and did shit with them then he started doing rankings and such I wasn't mad but bored as fuck mostly.
there was 1 youtuber who discussed things that i struggled with and made the information very relatable, and i was able to do them/overcome my emotional block. now all she posts are videos about tv shows :(((
Or worse, your favorite channel gets bought by someone else and they turn it into something COMPLETELY different. Always hurts a little unsubscribing at that point, but what ya gonna do!
LowSpecGamer
I like the new stuff, sorry
I like it too, but ther old LowSpecVideos was necessary to that commumity and now there is a void that no one has filled (yet)
Sorry pal, low spec makes solid videos. I mean there's o lying so many builds he can make before he can't anymore.
Yes ofc, but the LowSpecVideo he was making was needed for so many...
Oh no! What will I play in the background while I do the dishes???
Watching the Adam Conover AI video is like watching somebody do a wacky parody of Adam Conover.
How so?
Just compare the Adam in that video to any of his TV or podcast stuff.
youtube was dead to me when they introduced the custom thumbnail. fundamentally anti-user move, designed entirely to let people obscure the actual contents of their video with photoshopped soyfaced slop
It's not like people weren't already just putting a single frame in the video that they could select as the thumbnail before the fully custom thumbnail option was added.
There are web extensions to use a random frame instead
Well except people were making thumbnails inside their video and referencing it via timestamp, so it wasn't a huge change.
RIP SumSub
"You know the format and hosts you've come to enjoy? They're gone. Support our patreon."
Almost entire youtube these days.
Austin Evans.
French construction workers.
Anyone remember Fred? Yeah I still have yet to figure out why it suddenly changed, and why it suddenly stopped making stuff.
If you'd like a VERY thorough explanation, check out QuentinReviews video on Fred. The very condensed version is that he got tired of the character and sold the channel, which immediately started producing generic throwaway content and quickly failed.
Sad
Is it just me or does just about every YouTube channel by a trans person become a YouTube channel about trans related societal issues?
Well yeah, they’re constantly getting death threats. Being a well known trans person is in itself radicalizing because of all the shit to wade through
The algorithm tends to fight this kind of content. So if a trans person succeeds in the algorithm, they likely already had in mind that they wanted to educate about how they can empathize with transgender people.
Oh, I thought they said trains
That as well xD
As in, vlogging about trains gets you death threats?
The only thing neurodivergent people know better than the wrong side of systematic oppression is trains.
Some YouTubers I know who are trans or who have come out as trans since I started watching and are still doing their own thing: GameChamp3000 (game challenge videos and recently some trivia), DaThings (YTP style videos), Shammy/Joy (game review/critique), and probably a few others that aren't coming to mind right now. I'd argue Jim (Stephanie) Sterling hasn't really changed though trans issues do come up more often. I haven't watched Philosophy Tube recently but I do believe she still does videos on general philosophical concepts.
What's with the downvotes? If you think I said anything bad about trans people or trans issues, that's all in your head.
I know at least one that just occasionally makes videos about ttans stuff