Seeing the other post here about YouTuber that went downhill and seeing content creators I am familiar with makes me sad. But how about those that still makes great, high quality content?
Tom Scott
Won’t he stop doing videos in like a week?
Tom Scott. Only gotten better with time.
Amen. Shame he’s jacking it in. But he has been going non-stop for like 10 years
CAPTAIN DISILLUSION
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Definitely some of the best production value on youtube. Even his stuff from 10+ years ago holds up incredibly well aside from the resolution.
3blue1brown
Makes great visual math videos. Without him I would have never studied electronics.
Also wrote open source software to generate those fantastic visualizations. It has been forked and is maintained, and it has therefore influenced the whole genre positively.
On the topic, Brady Haran’s channels are also putting out great educational content.
Damn, I was going to post this list, you beat me to it though.
I love that whole maths group, Brady Haran, Matt Parker, Hannah Fry, James Grimes, Ben Sparks, Ayliean MacDonald… (and so many more.)
As soon as I get a notification that a new Numberphile video drops, I’m watching it ASAP.
Without him I’d have failed linear algebra
Consumer Tech: mkbhd, LTT, MrMobile, Dave2D, JerryRigEverything, UrAvgConsumer, GamersNexus
Geeky Tech: TechnoTim, ServeTheHome, Explaining Computers, Level1Techs, Jeff Geerling, , Low Spec Gamer, Modern Vintage Gamer, Wolfgangs Channel, Network Chuck, Project Farm, Tech Rules
Smart Home: Everything Smart Home, The Hook Up, Smart Home Solver, Paul Hibbert, Reed’s Smart Home, NotEnoughTech
Popular science: Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, Smarter Every Day, Hank Green
Science: Cleo Abram, Physics Girl, Nile Red/Blue, Computerphile, NumberPhile, Minutephysics, The SciShow, PeriodicVideos, Sixty Symbols, Scott Manley, The Action Lab, 3blue1brown, Kyle Hill, Steve Mould, Fermilab, PBS Space Time
Engineering: Practical Engineering, B1M, Coby Explanes, engineerguy, Technical Connections, Simone Giertz
Entertainment with some science/engineering sparkled in: Colin furze, Mark Robert, Slow Mo Guys, Johnny Harris, TheBackyardScientist
Entertainment: CGP Grey, Tom Scott, Max Fosh, Lockpicking Lawyer, Legal Eagle, Kitboga, Not Just Bikes, Cheddar
Docutainment: Cold Fusion, Wendover Productions/Half as Interesting, Anything with Simon Whistler (Megaprojects, etc)
Programming: Fireship, The Primeagen, Tech world with Nana, freCodeCamp, Ben Eater, Jake Wright, Dreams of Code, mCoding
Electronics: Andreas Spiess, GreatScott!, Tall Paul Tech, EEV
Chess: Anna Cramling, Gotham Chess, Hikaru
Cars: Carwow, Out of Spec Reviews, TeslaBjorn, Throttle House, Engineering Explained, autoTrader, Donut, Hagerty, RSEV
Travel: HONEST GUIDE (the Prague guy), Pack Hacker, SV Delos, Tim Traveller, Trek Trendy
History: the fat electrician, historigraph, history matters,
Woodworking: Shaun Boyd, Blacktail Studio, Foureyes furniture
Late Night: Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel, Daily Show, Last Week Tonight
Russia/Ukraine: LazerPig, 1420 (Daniil Orain), Perun (edited to add)
If you speak German: HausbauHelden, FelixBa, Lohnt sich das, Finanzfluss, Next Move, Autogefühl, Smarthome yourself, Jonas Winkler, Held der Steine
Ltt is debatable now tbh.
Edit: if you aren’t aware of the situation that happened, here’s a video from Gamers Nexus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
They’ve more or less addressed this issue. Their videos are like double checked now and you can kinda tell.
But that’s not the only problem. They also sold that prototype for that one company, and I don’t think that company got their prototype back.
Yea that’s gone and they admitted to fault and reimbursed them to the best of their abilities. Sometimes in life you fuck up and you just gotta own up to it and that there’s no fixing it.
As a consequence, they’ll most likely never work together again and LTT knows they lost a company. It also hurts LTTs reputation in the long run too.
I think they corrected, they don’t upload strictly one video per day anymore. I’m hope the working conditions / stress for the staff improved. They content produced is still pretty entertaining.
For factual info about a purchase I would trust GamersNexus, tho. And their content about cars sucks, Alex is a terrible car reviewer.
Perhaps, but like I just said in a precious comment, they “sold” a company’s best prototype and I don’t think that company ever got it back. I was a long term fan and sub of the LMG team, but after this whole kerfuffle, I unsubbed from them and I don’t regret it.
As far as I’m aware, they got in contact with the company and settled things.
Fair
meh. their content is at the same level it was before, they just look over the specs twice before uploading now.
Half of the channel you mention here were listed in the thread about youtubers who went to shit, which triggered this one here…
If by half you mean
4(edit: 7), I addressed those in a separate comment, and I stand by them.
It’s funny because I read through that other thread about creators going downhill and (while I don’t know most in either thread) you mention a couple of them here.
Interesting, I just checked it out, and it seemed people really idealize “the good old days” plus they go absolutely crazy the second a youtuber wants to earn some money doing what they do.
Here’s what I think of the individual channels that I saw mentioned:
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LTT had a big controversy after the Gamers Nexus video and it looks like they corrected. MKBHD was never super deep, he does reviews after a week or two of using a phone. You never get a full picture with just one review, if you are interested in spending your money watch a few, otherwise it’s just entertainment. I like LTTs server/Linus’ home series and MKBHD for the visuals.
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Mark Rober had a few bad videos a year ago and now has a product that he sells, that fits perfectly with his theme “learning engineering by building stuff”. But his videos were never always perfect, people just remember the good ones.
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The Primeagen reacting to stuff is the very reason I watch him (actually mostly listen while doing other stuff). He reads articles about programming/It stuff and comments about them. Yeah, sometimes he’s not an expert on the topic, but it’s still informative and very often he admits it from the beginning.
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The lock picking lawyer picks locks. I don’t know what people expect him to do, there’s only so much variety. The 100th video about picking locks is not going to be so thrilling as the first one you watched… And again, him trying to monetize by creating products related to his hobby and selling them doesn’t seem like a capital sin to me.
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Edit, because I forgot about Veritasium and Kurzgesagt: I completely disagree. Veritasium has gotten better with time and the last year has been awesome. The “Epic Math Duel” (somewhat older than a year, but the channel is 10 years old, so relatively recent), “Franz Haber” or “Sawing Machines” are excellent videos. Kurzgesagt is completely transparent about their funding and cite all sources, if some people feel a video about using stars as fuel for intergalactic travel or about Dyson spheres is “capitalist propaganda”, that is their right to an opinion I guess. If anything I would criticize for being a bit “too dreamy/science fiction”, but the visuals are great and it’s a great watch nonetheless.
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Sebastian lague and acerola are some other programming channels I like
I just checked Sebastian Lague. Last video is more than an hour and about chess bots, so two hobbies in one, awesome, thanks!
I will check acerola later, but seems very focused on graphics, not my biggest interest :)
Rex Krueger, Stumpy Nubs, Jonathan Katz-Moses , Bourbon Moth Woodworking for woodworking.
AlphaPhoenix, Applied Science for science.
Strange Loop Conference, and many such other for programming.
Noted, will check them out over the holidays, thanks!
No Steve Mould? Definitely up there imo.
Edit: nvm I see him up there! I overlooked it the first glance.
Steve Mould is one of the best ones, definitely. Top 10 of all, you always learn something and spend a very nice 10 minutes doing it.
i also love crinacle for the occasional review of audio gear i will never buy.
and also all of the collabs he’s doing so i can recommend decent IEMs to people.
Not really commenting beyond the fact that you have a separate category for Russia/Ukraine and have lazerpig on it? I think he did like three maybe four videos on it. Max. And you didn’t even mention Perun…
You’re right, big omission of Perun, I was going mostly from memory… Fixed now!
also in woodworking mokongtv123 has so much amazing builds , worth checking out
Something more for my “watch later” list, thanks!
Dang! Thanks for the detailed list, this had to take a while! Definitely going to look through it when I get a chance!
I took it as an opportunity to do some Christmas cleaning of my subscription list as well :)
Does lazerpig still claim mathilda 2s were immune to flak 88s?
- Some More News (Last Week Tonight-like political commentary)
- AngryTurtle (fallout 76 content)
- videogamedunkey (gaming/humor)
- Yahtzee Croshaw (game reviews/rants)
- Wendover Productions (random interesting education and air travel gameshows)
- Practical Engineering (how the world around you is built)
- Technology Connections (deep dives into engineering everyday gizmos)
- Tom Scott (interesting tech/education)
- RealLifeLore (explains geopolitics)
- Internet Historian (amusing yarns, discussions, and stories)
- LegalEagle (law)
- Kurzgesagt (explains scientific concepts, lots of what if scenarios, animated birds)
- Tasting History with Max Millar (historical cooking in a modern kitchen)
- Let’s Game it Out (dude who breaks games in the most amusing way possible)
- My Name Is Andong (cooking)
- Chef Jean-Pierre (cooking)
- Economics Explained (economics)
- Matthew Berman (explores the latest AI/LLM tech)
It’s great how Some More News is so consistent. I can only think of a few episodes where they seemed to be stretching for content on a topic.
News daddy must gives us our juicy news
There’s plenty more, but here’s a few of mine:
RedLetterMedia - Got pretty big on YouTube about 15 years back for their review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, where they made an actual, honest critique of why the film (and later the other prequel films) didn’t really work on their own merits and hid it inside a 1.5-hour skit about an elderly serial killer. They’re, uh… they’re not for everyone, but I like them. Also, Macaulay Caulkin as a recurring guest star. Worth your time.
Technology Connections - Did you ever want to know why ceiling fans start at max power when you turn them on? Because I already knew before I clicked on the video and I still watched the whole damn thing. I swear this person could make ANYTHING sound interesting, no matter how dry.
They’ve been mentioned already but Second Wind - I mean, Yahtzee Croshaw pretty much picked up his fanbase and moved it here when his bosses at The Escapist made the boneheaded move to fire, uh… his boss? I think? I don’t watch a whole lot of the other stuff, but I haven’t had any complaints about anything of theirs I’ve watched.
Project Farm - This dude legit goes out with his own money, buys like 8 different items in the same category (mainly tools, though his most recent video is on space heaters) and subjects them all to fairly rigorous testing to see which one is the best for the money. If I’m looking to buy something, I’ll check and see if Project Farm has a video on it first.
LGR (Lazy Game Reviews) - I think someone already mentioned this as well, but I thought I’d bring it up too. The channel covers more than just games now and just covers all kinds of (mainly 80s/90s) computer tech. Plus, Clint’s a good dude.
Colin Furze - He’s a bit extra but he started making Wolverine claws in his little garage workshop and now he’s building a “secret” tunnel under his house. Following this man’s videos are wild. He basically says “what if (crazy idea)” and then just… does it.edit: omg how did I forget DankPods? Of course he has like five channels now. He’s got a masters in music, he made a living playing jazz drums, he started a dumb YouTube channel about fixing iPods, and now he has a warehouse where he plays drums and games and fixes cars and all kinds of shit. Wade is great.
Colin Furze is a perfect example for this post! I completely agree! He’s basically producing the same type of content that he’s been doing for years now. He even has a second channel now with deeper dives into his tunnel making videos, etc.
Summoning Salt.
Not many people can make a 2 hr video about the world record progression of a game I’ve never heard of and have me absolutely invested in it all the way through.
Dude makes a video every 3-6months but god I love them. If anything they’ve improved over the years as his style has been refined and the videos got longer.
I’m late but a couple I didn’t see mentioned:
BeardMeetsFood - funny guy doing eating challenges, never thought I could like this kind of content, and the only one I watch in this category
Itchy Boots - Amazing travel videos from a Dutch girl riding her motorcycle through remote places on all continents. Very positive meetings with people all over the earth to give you back hope for humanity.
Nikolai Schirmer - Ridiculously high quality alpine skiing videos, mostly from Norway. Fantastic story telling and nature combined with too steep skiing. Shouldn’t be possible to get this quality for free.
Expedition Evans - very enjoyable videos of sailboat life for a couple and their two dogs.
Beau Miles - best story teller I know of. Adventurer that mostly make videos about local projects where he’s doing something that involves running very long while philosophizing about interesting topics.
Harry Mack - the most insane freestyle rapper ever, usually makes content on the spot for people on the street or online.
Sheena Melwani - Whenever I need a laugh. Her husband Trid is hilarious. Short videos of them laughing and joking basically.
Iron Chef Dad - wholesome videos with his son, for example making gourmet out of fast food.
Galdoc’s Tutorials - great DevBlog content from making a Factorio mod. Development, debugging, designing, Blender. Fairly technical. Great voice.
Stuff Made Here - great engineering channel, makes crazy contraptions like a moving basket hoop you’ll always hit, a hair cutting robot, auto-aiming bow etc.
Practical Engineering - in depth presentations of civil engineering feats, concepts, problems, solutions
Joe Scott - just simple, entertaining discussions of interesting topics
Philosophy Tube - longer format, intensely well-cited presentations on philosophy related to current events (with theatrical costumes!)
Ryan Hall - who knew that a weather forecast could be so fun? Regularly updated weather forecasts for the entire United States with detailed coverage and livestreams of events like tornado outbreaks, hurricanes, and large snowstorms. With charity drives to provide supplies to people on the ground
PBS Spacetime, PBS Eons, all the PBS channels really
Plainly Difficult - consistent quality, often hilarious presentations of various disasters. I particularly like his entire series on radiological accidents, often involving lost radioactive sources that random members of the public stumble onto, which is terrifying.
Tom Scott
Curious Droid - lots of sci fi, technology content.
WaterlineStories - all sorts of nautical/diving disasters narrated by a South African chap with a lot of experience.
Qxir - Irish guy with a lot of weird stories told in stick figure form.
Plainly Difficult - a lot of disasters frequently nuclear.
Nile Red is still fun - and a nice dude. Chemistry
Vince Vintage is hilarious, great editing (like internet historian but not a jerk)
Also my homeboy Video Game Dunkey.
Dreading is good(sort of successor to JCS), very sober and tasteful host discussing true crime.
Things I haven’t seen.
’ Steve mould - does cool little kiddie explanations of physical phenomenons.
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Foureyes furniture - a bit asmr, but a woodworking channel. Guy makes neat stuff and talks about life while doing it.
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Wristwatch revival - alsp kinda ASMR, but guy takes apart and repairs mechanical watches. Very repetitive after the first few watches, but I keep watching anyway.
Steve mould - does cool little kiddie explanations of physical phenomenons.
C’mon now put some respect on his name lol. Steve is an incredibly talented science communicator, and just because he can break things down to a level a kid could understand, doesn’t mean his explanations are “kiddie”.
It seems that Steve Mould looks progressively more tired in his videos as he goes along.
Are you a Paul Sellers fan too?
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Primative Technology. A dude out in the bush building houses and tools out of mud, sticks, and rocks without speaking a word.
I’m a fan of him.
Do you watch How To Make Everything?
I know there are several similar channels so maybe I’m mixed up, but wasn’t this the one where they found out the guy was using machinery to create his projects off camera and claiming it was all done by hand?
Nope. This guy is the real deal. Nothing he does is large scale or unbelievable. If you turn on captions he walks you through what his thought process is/what he is doing. Very enjoyable.
Nah, this is the guy that basically spawned the entire “genre”. He’s legit as can get.
NeverKnowsBest For very in depth game essays. He has a 2:44:46 in depth look into the history of MMO’s. 2:03:15 Elder Scrolls analysis. And he has an absolutely comforting voice that sweeps you along so easily that you don’t even feel the time pass.
Mortismal He reviews games after he 100% them, makes guides, game lore, builds. His favorite genre is tactical rpg’s but he’ll to do others of people ask him to. The man is a consummate professional, and work horse. Puts out a video 5 days a week. He went from foster care, to being homeless to making a living doing what he loves. Used to put up posters offering to make game guides for money when he was a kid.
Lex Fridman He did long form interviews of really brilliant people. Novel prize winning scientists, mathematicians, biologists, philosophers, politicians, tech moguls, artists. The list goes on. He’s not funny, but he is refreshingly sincere in his wanting to try and understand the topics, people, and life. He’s a Russian-American computer scientist and research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.I don’t always agree with him, but I love getting to listen to the people he interviews.
Quinn’s Ideas A wonderful fan of sci-fi that reviews and explore the worlds of great sci-fi novels, turning over the abstract concepts inside those universes. He has an extensive playlist on the world of Dune, Lovecraft, authors I’ve never heard of, and he also covers other nerdy things too. He has a wonderful voice that brings you down into the world he’s describing. You can tell her really gets into the books he reads, the more mysterious or awe inducing the better.
Wes Roth I recently found this guy. He reports on current news on AI. He does a great job at explaining things you would be too afraid to ask about for fear of sounding stupid. He’s not an AI expert he’s just discovering AI advancements with you, for you. Calm, nothing flashy, and curious to see where this is headed. If you wish you had time to look up and read about what’s new in AI, this is your guy.
The Big Lez Show An all knowing multidimensional immortal Aussie Sasquatch doing a bunch of drugs, also some humans and some aliens.
The Royal Institute Like TED talks but in Great Britain, much longer, more in depth and very scientific. The intended audience are scientists, but some talks are just too fascinating to miss out on.
Luetin09 Warhammer 40k everything. Really great lore videos that are darkly beautiful to watch. He is a veritable font of WH40K knowledge.
dslyecxi It’s like watching a team of military professionals conduct missions in ARMA 3, and with all of the hilarious fuckery that ensues. ARMA 3 is a realistic military sim, nothing like the arcadey Call of Duty or Modern Warfare. Really great footage.
Edit: Mr Sunday Movies Movies, comic, and TV shows, shooting up your butthole. They’re Australian, but they make up for it.
Also Technology Connections.
Here’s some of my own, in no particular order:
Gotham Chess - also known for his catchphrase: “Sacrifices… THE ROOK!!!”. Yeah, that guy.
Kyle Hill is a science communicator and makes awesome educational content; he also debunks conspiracy theories.
Jeff Geerling is a RasPi aficionado who’s made tons of projects.
Louis Rossmann specializes in consumer tech (mostly computers); he’s a great critic of corporations and DRM.
Jenna Moreci is a published fantasy writer and has great videos on what to do and not to do when writing fiction.
One Topic at a Time - shares LGBTQ memes found on reddit. His voice may sound annoying. (What can I say? It’s an acquired taste)
Bits inside by René Rebe specializes in Linux and Open Source stuff.
Noralities is a girl who makes video essays about anime, and they’re not trivial opinions They involve writing, stereotypes, romance, society, and stuff. She’s done her homework.
EDIT: Added details.
To boil down Kyle Hill as simply debunking conspiracy theories is so sad… He’s a science communicator and makes awesome educational content. Occasionally, he debunks a conspiracy or two.
His video about the SL-1 meltdown was the first I saw of him. Incredible video and definitely not worthy of being called just a conspiracy debunker.
Fixed, thanks for the heads up.
Thanks!
Highly recommend anyone interested in approachable nuclear science adjacent entertainment or science entertainment in general to check him out.
Funnily enough I just got done with his video about the “nukes aren’t real” conspiracy theory. Of course that’s just one in his long Half Life Histories series which is mainly about the science and not conspiracies at all.
I second Second Wind. The quality they’ve been putting out so far is surreal
Lol, I used to hang out with Jenna way back in HS. I knew she was writing books, didn’t know she had a YouTube channel and/or was successful at it. That’s cool to hear.
Love Geerling and Rossmann, but I simply don’t understand the appeal of Levy; he is so over the top. Not that I would downvote this though, he is just not my style, and there are many good chess channels since the boom. Chessbrah, Anna Cramping, Hikaru, Banzea, and Hanging Pawns all come to mind.
Anna’s content, especially with parents GM Cramling and GM Bellón López is so fun and wholesome.
🐮
It’s a matter of taste. I like his humor, but I do understand he’s not for everybody. Yeah, Anna Cramling is one of my favs, too.
