Title essentially. Youtube’s algorithm is hot garbage, so I can’t search for anything anymore without a ton of AI slop and rage bait. So, who do you go to for actual good long form videos? Exposes, scandals, behind the scenes, documentaries, film, travel, transit, who do you recommend I follow?
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Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that’s powerful. Her video that’s absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.
Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He’s most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. “I don’t know James Rolfe” was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.
Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think
Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He’s largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax
Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.
Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She’s like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that’s generally respectful to them? She’s got you. In particular I like how she’s respectful towards weirdness when it’s not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.
Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He’s a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.
Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He’s a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.
Defunctland, listen I’m not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.
Additional creators I forgot or left out:
Lady Emily is Sarah Z’s cowriter’s channel. It’s definitely weirder but in a direction completely different from the way strange aeons is. She doesn’t care to make her content have mainstream appeal and so it winds up being an autistic woman making videos about stuff she finds interesting.
Innuendo Studios is someone I intentionally left out for two reasons: a lot of his videos are short and they’re very political. But they aren’t low effort ragebait political, they’re analyses of modern right wing rhetorical tactics. I’m including him now purely because he’s one of my favorite youtubers
Münecat is a long form video essayist who started with anti-mlm content and has moved into other topics like internet gambling and debunking evo psych.
I’ll add more comments if I think of more
Perun for military stuff, especially Ukraine.
Asmongold
Along with Technology Connections, Philosophy Tube, and Primitive Technology, here are my “must watch” subs
Climate Town - Excellent videos about climate change and environmental impact that are insightful and funny
Contrapoints - Well written and meticulous deconstructions of philosophical concepts in media, pop culture and society with a dry wit
Every Frame a Painting - Amazing content on film-making. No longer active, but if you haven’t seen it yet, lucky you, enjoy.
Pop Culture Detective - Interesting meta analyses of popular tropes in pop culture
Because I’m into historical clothing and fashion, Bernadette Banner and Abby Cox both do great videos on costuming, history and creating cool stuff
Love climate town. I hate that someone needs to waste their time disproving lies from the oil, gas, politicians and the like, but it does give me hope in the future that there are people like that out there.
Every Frame a Painting came back to life one year ago! He uploaded some new videos :)
Yes! It was such a pleasant surprise on my feed. Unfortunately they said they won’t be continuing because of Youtube’s enforcement policies around copyrighted material so those videos were meant to be a limited series.
Technology Connections
It might be worth adding that some people might find him (and similar long form content) verbose if they are not into the topics. I watch probably most of his episodes, but some people in my life don’t vibe with those. The same people did not appreciate the 7 color e-ink display I had been tinkering around with until I made it display a dog pic, so it’s also about how the topic relates to what you already like.
Did you see his latest video about algorithms? Best video so far this year imo
Yes, I figured that might have been part the trigger for the thread.
My recommendation for travel would be ‘Bald and Bankrupt’, in particular I loved his whole Russian/Ex-Soviet Union series.
For documentaries, I do enjoy the ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ documentaries. They did a great one on Terry A. Davis a few years back
The soviet Union series was great, but anything I watched after that was boring to be honest.
Coffeezilla for crypto exposes
Potholer54, does very good scientific debunking videos
PBS spacetime, physics that you’ll understand for 60% yet it keeps being super interesting
Thunderf00t, does good debunking videos. Has a bit of an attitude but so far always is right on piint. already has been bashing musk since a decade ago
Thunderf00t is smart about physics, I liked his science videos, but I really stopped paying attention to him when he started doing gamergate stuff. Is he still whining about feminists, or has he gotten better?
I left at the same time. As a science minded person the phrase “Feminism ruins everything” is just such a low effort and absolutist statement that even if it were somewhat accurate it would betray a lack of serious consideration. On top of that, it isn’t true. He makes all sorts of claims that are just not true and has no understanding of feminism beyond his echo chamber. He knows some stuff about chemistry, has done legit research such as on how the sodium water explosion happens, and yeah, in that area he knows his shit, but like many people he steps past his actual area of expertise without the humility required to learn about a new field without jumping to conclusions.
The world of feminism is deep and full of confronting ideas like how the low availability of emotional expression on boys leads to low emotional regulation in men, but Thunderf00t just goes with the lowest effort “Men are victims” line rather than seeing feminists agree with harms happening to men and want to fix those too.
He still hates Anita Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson.
Jeff Gerstmann, video game journalist
Lindsay Nikole, paleontology pop sci
Gutsick Gibbon, prehistoric anthropology pop sci and some academic stuff
Spacetime and SEA, cosmology pop sci sometimes leaning more academic
Rifftrax/mst3k, comedians that add audio tracks over bad mostly public domain movies, there’s a ton of them
Ben G Thomas, prehistoric biology pop sci
I love Technology Connections for an easy, interesting watch. He just explains how appliances work lol
Have you seen his latest? It’s all about algorithms and a societal shift in what people expect from computers and media.
It’s a video I loved, and I understand why some of his fans wouldn’t but a lot of people need to see it.
I haven’t had a chance yet! Seems like a bit of a departure from his usual stuff but very topical
Yes, I also love it! But sometimes he’s a bit repetitive. I usually watch his videos at 1.2x speed
I really like my weekly hour long defense/economics powerpoint from Perun.
Hakim, Mental Outlaw, Second Though , Alice Capelle, The Hated One
Two video game ones:
+1 for NCG. His gears of war retrospective is fantastic
Vice grip garage.
This Old Tony - if you like tools, machines, and clever dad jokes. He’s the best.
