Kind of a trend, the amount of youtubers who i had loved but their content became generic after gaining popularity is quite a bit, most drastic one being mrwhosetheboss, his uniqueness went down faster than MH27 MH17
Cinema Sins. Used to be 5 minute videos pointing out continuity errors or over-use of something (Iron Man 2 Bird Bonus Round) but then bloated into 20 minutes of nit picky bull crap.
Reject Cinema Sins, embrace Cinema Wins.
I used to watch iilluminaughtii several years ago, probably because I’ve been grabbing popcorn and enjoying watching someone dunking on multi-level marketing since, uh, 90s at least. Then I watched some video that was about some topic that I was kind of in middle of a deep dive, too (I can’t remember which exactly. Elan School, probably?). And the video was bland as hell. And then I was like “yeah, most of these other videos are kind of forgettable shallow pap too”.
…and this year we found out about the whole landlordy corporate town fancier backstabby financial abuser helicopter-CEO situation. And the content mill situation. And the plagiarism thing. Can’t forget the plagiarism thing. …I was like, “oh this all just makes sense now.”
Illuminaughtii was getting pushed into my feed so hard right before everything went down that I’ve started to cast side-eye on anyone that the algorithm starts to push hard.
On the plus side, I found Cruel World Happy Mind because of all the awful stuff Illuminaughtii did to her.
Marques Brownlee (a.k.a. MKBHD).
A few weeks ago he posted a new episode of his podcast with him and a few others. They talked about Nothing Chats and Sunbird, the iPhone getting RCS and the usual OpenAI drama. At some point Marques mentions the fact that iMessage with RCS will still be “unencrypted”. Following that they ponder over why RCS wouldn’t have this fabled encryption, such a weird thing that RCS doesn’t support encryption from the get-go, and after brainstorming for a bit someone adds the information that it indeed will be encrypted in-transit, but not end-to-end encrypted. And what comes next boggled my mind: Silence ensues. No-one says anything. You only see the faces of four grown-ass tech influencers that are stunlocked and completely unable to process what this neverheard difference between encryption methods might mean. It all just ends with “I’ve been trying so hard to figure out what that means. I can’t.” And then…then they simply move on, not even addressing for a second this knowledge gap and solving it right there on the spot. You can watch it if you want. What hurts the most is that Marques’ co-star, David, the guy that looks the most confused, made a 1+ hour history-lesson type video a few months ago about the history of the internet and the importance of HTTPS encryption.
Now, if we’re talking about visual quality and overall visual production quality, his videos were insanely enjoyable to watch. I also don’t want to shame anyone for not knowing something and I understand that this is in part the consequence of an ever growing company at this point. The channel is still growing and has reached 18 millions subs. Him (and his team) also cover a constantly growing tech sphere, from phones to laptops, from e-vehicles to supercars, from tech politics to tech blunders. But coming from a guy that has been a “tech influencer” on YouTube for 14 years, a guy that over the years had the chance to interview Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai and surely had the chance to surround himself with experts on all sorts of topics, a guy that dedicated entire videos to Nothing Chats, the role of Quantum Computing in encryption or the dangers and potentials of the Metaverse, this kind of shocked me. I just couldn’t take him seriously anymore and I hate myself for it. But it’s like my grandma not knowing the difference between a normal call and a WhatsApp call, expect that he’s been talking about tech for more than a decade.
He never struck me as being actually knowledgable about tech. He knows the consumer level stuff, just enough to review things. But anything deeper than that he never touches.
he’s a apple shill mkbhd
Mark Rober.
He got louder, flashier, less techy and more talky and is doing a gazillion reruns of the same general idea over and over. Can’t really enjoy it anymore.
I like what he do, no problem on that, but his voice is neither loud nor quiet. It has the tone of a loud speak but the audio come out soft, it hurt my ear when my brain trying to adjust to whatever that volume is.
Also yes another glitter bomb and animal puzzle maze.
No one gives me Fellow Kids vibes more than Mark Rober.
Linus Tech Tips.
They were pretty good in the beginning but the drive to create more and more output diminished the quality of the individual vids. Hence, the latest controversy.
To be fair, they dragged their feet on addressing it, sure, but then took massive steps to address it when they did. Top-to-bottom company-wide analysis and restructuring, limiting Linus’ role and voice, a complete moratorium on releasing videos while they made plans to slow the release output, and refocusing on quality-control with additional community input. Totally get if you still don’t like their videos, but I think they did everything possible to address everyone’s concerns.
I actually like the WAN Show podcast more than their videos. I think you get a sense for their genuineness and passion as they discuss current tech news…
Still waiting on the internal investigation results.
Yeah, willing to give them a second chance, but very much want this to be addressed first.
Did Linus ever really apologize for the “we didn’t sell the prototype we auctioned it” comment. I only saw him make excuses about miscommunication (blaming the company that lent the prototype). Or apologize to Gamers Nexus for saying they didn’t do “real” testing?
I only saw a long corporate speak “we will do better” video.
Hard to cite sources at the moment, I’m on mobile. From what I remember, both of those things ended up being a little bit overblown.
Prototype company had initially said that they could keep it. There was still a goof, as LTT said they would send it back, but it makes the logistics mix up a little more understandable.
The kinds of testing that the two different channels do are very different. I do think it was disingenuous to say Tech Jesus didn’t do real testing. But also, if they were as close as they said they were before this whole thing, he could also have called up Linus and called them on their slapdash bullshit on the phone.
And nothing has been released about that internal investigation. But that wouldn’t be the first time they promised to do something and didn’t. In this case, it’s highly possible investigation is still going on. Once it’s finished, they may even be legally barred from making the results public (IANAL). Either way, if it is truly being conducted by an important 3rd party, they’re doing the right thing.
Prototype company had initially said that they could keep it.
That was the lie that Linus told that got me to stop watching LTT. The company sent Gamers Nexus the email chain where they clearly had been asking for it back and got the run around until it was auctioned. Then Linus had the gall to say, “We didn’t sell it, it was auctioned.”
LTT is a big company. Mistakes were made. But instead of saying, we screwed up they tried to blame the prototype company when it wasn’t their fault at all.
I only saw a long corporate speak “we will do better” video.
Linus didn’t have a direct apology to the prototype company. He blamed them for his auctioning off their prototype. Saying, [sic] “Sorry, you made a mistake and we didn’t follow through correctly.” isn’t a real apology.
The company responded by sending the email chain to Gamers Nexus to prove their side of the story.
So you didn’t watch the video, or pay attention to the part I linked to.
Finally I want to apologise to Billet Labs for auctioning off their monoblock at LTX 2023.
Literally verbatim from that video, followed by some further explanation about what happened.
Is it a sufficient apology? Maybe not. But to say they didn’t apologise is completely false.
GN August 14th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc&t=108s breaks story
Linus claims Billet said we could keep it and we didn’t sell it we auctioned it.
Linus defends his “we didn’t sell it we auctioned it” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY&t=948s by saying its important to get all the details.
However the details, as Linus already knew, was that Billet asked for it back 2 weeks earlier, they lost track of it and sold it.
Linus response August 14th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY&t=948s claims they offered to pay for it before they were under any pressure
GN August 15th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso&t3m54s Billet labs shows email chain they didn’t receive a response until after GN video was released and LTT was under pressure.
Billets email chain shows that they asked for it back long before it was sold. Linus claims they offered to pay for it before being pressured. Billet labs email chain shows they didn’t receive an offer until after GN’s videos hit the news.
Which didnt negate the fact that Linus apologized.
Not that it matters, it was a shit thing to do.
Joshua Weissman. He started out super chill, most of his recipes were pretty approachable, the editing wasn’t over the top, the b-roll stuff at the end was tasteful.
Now it’s like he’s catering to a whole different crowd. The editing is over the top and jammed with memes, he’s more idk, psychotic isn’t quite the right word, but it’s way less chill, he’s constantly saying stuff like “if you don’t use XYZ ingredient then what are you even making this recipe for?”, his recipes are more over the top, and he has a much more elitist opinion of himself and his food. The change happened so quickly too, it was kind of shocking.
For actual cooking stuff, I prefer Adam Ragusea. He dives more into the history and molecular gastronomy side of things, to explain how a dish came to be and why it works. Not quite as sciencey as Alton Brown, but I definitely see the influences. And for actual historical food stuff, you may want to check out Tasting History. He’s a creator who does deep dives into historical dishes, then tries to recreate them.
Both interesting in their own ways, but Adam’s stuff has helped be become a better cook simply by understanding the why, rather than the how. Because if you know why something works, (rather than simply knowing how to do it) you’ll be able to translate that to other situations where it will work, and be able to avoid/work around situations where it won’t. It took me from “following recipes” to “making my own recipes” if that makes sense.
Already subbed to both of those channels lol. I also like J. Kenji Lopez Alt and Brian Lagerstrom for similar reasons - their videos are more about how to cook than just following a particular recipe.
not a youtuber, but I genuinely enjoyed babylon bee and the daily bonnet for parody news about christian and mennonite culture. the humor was always inward. now its all propaganda
AvE. Was cool until pandemic happened, then got extra “conservative”. Couldn’t watch anymore.
Never would have called him a favorite of mine exactly, but a channel I used to watch was Shadiversity. Had some interesting videos on medieval life and castles. These days he seemingly only does “let’s test this wacky weapon” videos and has a terrible second channel where he whines about “woke culture”.
Tangential fun fact: the guy from “Shadiversity” and the guy from “Drawing with Jazza” are brothers. This is incredibly odd to me because I don’t think that they look or act alike at all.
I find that connection hilarious cus Jazza is way more popular and talented with true artistic ability, where shad is an anti-woke dipshit who gets mad at the mario movie and plays with swords.
has a terrible second channel where he whines about “woke culture”
That’s disappointing. I’ve watched a lot of his videos over the years and didn’t even know about a second channel or his beliefs.
Isn’t that kind of a good thing?
Some people don’t want to financially support creators who on record have said things like homosexuality is wrong and should not be encouraged. Watching youtube videos is financial support.
I understand that, but I also respect creators that keep their main channel focused on its core.
I lost interest after he sang the praises of the Goblin Slayer rape scene. BuT tHe GoBLiNs nEeD tO bE sCaRy! You can “make monsters monstrous” without adding explicit rape scenes to your mid-tier manga.
Penguinz0. His content was garbage when I discovered him so I just avoided him but one day I got recommended his old commercial parodies and it was pure gold. His videos about Kate cooking were also great too. Nowadays, he’s a drama youtuber. He scroll Twitter, read about a random scandal, do the bare minimum research to not sound like a fool and then make a video about it.
I’m on the same boat. But my “what the actual fuck?” moment came when (for those unfamiliar with it) YouTuber Idubbbz came out with a sincere apology for many of his videos that used extremely racist or ableist terms. While aware that his apologies did not automatically translated into being forgiven by the memebers of the groups he insulted, Idubbbz still felt it was important for him to apologize.
And in this situation, Penguinz0 just said that “Idubbbz shouldn’t have apologized and it felt like he was exaggerating the whole thing”. Way to inject yourself in something that did not involve him at all. Also, that really told me the kind of person Penguinz0 is: someone who dismisses others suffering when it’s not his place to do so and someone who just goes off his own gut feelings alone.
The level of self awareness in the idubbz apology blew my mind. I was an edgy teen and grew out of him, and while it took him a bit longer than me, he came around too. Was a weird and cool moment.
I have the opposite problem where Youtubers who I watch because I enjoy their unedited, off-the-cuff content keep deciding to put more effort into their channel and start producing videos that are scripted and edited well, which I find way less interesting and watchable than their stream-of-consciousness rambling was. WolfeyVGC is a big one. He theoretically has a second channel for low effort content but he rarely posts to it.
You might like Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t if you like that style of video. It’s a crass low brow approach to botany and ecology presented by a Chicago Italian. Been going for years now and has improved his quality but it’s still off the cuff rambling.
Not exactly the question, but there’s no way I can enjoy Internet Historian now that we know he’s a Nazi.
Oh shit. He’s a Nazi? Fuuuuck. I thought he was just a plagiarizer.
Unfortunately not:
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18dotzf/internet_historian_is_a_nazi/
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but yeah. Sorry for the reddit link but that’s where a lot of the info is aggregated.
Wow. Someone over there is defending him being a fan of the Proud Boys guy because he claims the Proud Boys aren’t a terrorist group (despite having been declared as such).
He says they’re “very extreme right at worst”, as if there’s some sort of sliding scale on the right wing that eventually gets to “extreme right”, “very extreme right”, “terrorist organization” just naturally…and he isn’t aware they crossed the line years ago.
Pretty much every car repair channel starts off good, then quickly changes to fixing exotic cars that nobody can afford.
Check out Garbage Time. It’s a channel about an Aussie and his mechanic buddy repairing old, shitty cars. Many of the cars are Australian specific too.
Scotty has the most clickbait titles. “If you have a car you will REGRET this ONE SIMPLE TRICK and DESTROY YOUR ENGINE” (video is about winter octane stabilizers or something completely mundane)
Aging Wheels, Rainman Ray’s Garage, and Garbage Time are all fantastic channels you should look into.
Jimmy Dore. Started watching in 2015. He was consistently about progressivism and brought awareness to causes such as Medicare for All. As the channel grew, he slowly became more deranged. COVID came and he found a larger audience spouting anti-vax dog whistles. The channel is now tabloid anti-vax, pro-putin, hot garbage.
You should check out The Majority Report.
VSauce. They used to be THE shit years and years ago. Their content now has been… Rather sparce and uninteresting.
I don’t mind content that takes a long time. Ahoy and Lemmino are great. But VSauce just became… Feeling like a waste of time.
I think Vsauce is a lot more grifty than he looks. If you look at the really early videos they were very different and he changed his content wildly in order to find something that makes the most money with the least work. The science education happened to be profitable but as the Meta started favouring more than 10+ min and science vids became mini documentaries he just dropped off and started reviewing science toys and do compilation videos. Right now he is doing a lot of shorts because they are being pushed by the algorithm.
I started watching VSauce well over 10 years ago, so I’ve experienced how his content changed first-hand. I feel VSauce dropped off when Michael became an internet meme, when VSauce made it “big”. They got their own studio, their own merch box, and I thought this was going to be an upgrade to the content between VSauce 1, 2 and 3. But then Michael made that YouTube Red series and that was basically a brick wall.
Only Jake Roper still made some good videos for some time, but that stopped eventually too. Mindblow stopped, Build It, Draw It, Play It stopped. Instead of seeing anything that would justify having a studio and a team to work with we basically got, like you said, Michael reviewing toys from their merch box, and Kevin doing some math philosophy once in a while.
Mindblow is technically back but… it lacks any energy or soul that the original Mindblow had. It’s sad…
Seems like they never recovered after the whole YouTube Red exclusive stuff they did. I was glad they came back, but you’re right, it just doesn’t hit the same.
