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
Sabine Hossenfelder, used to love her takes on physics until she fell in the usual expert’s trap of believing she can talk equally usefully about things OUTSIDE her expertise.
First trans care, which missed a few important nuances. Then autism, which had a decades-old perspective and was at best “not informative”.
Then hoo boy Capitalism where she made a huge tangled MESS confusing and conflating markets with monetary systems and credit, all apparently based off half-remembered textbooks from 1950 using long-disproven historical claims.
A lot of criticism was sent her way. None was acknowledged, or apparently taken to heart. Repeatedly.
From skillfully presenting physics with a “explain it like I’m 5” style, she’s now spouting any trending topic in a “explained by a 5 year old” style.
She’s always been a weird nerdy lady, but endearing. Her videos were never professional, a bit tacky, but very informative. But I too dropped her channel because she started talking about nonsense she had no business giving opinions about.
This was such a disappointment, I really liked her explanations of quantum physics.
This, JFC so much this. The trans care thing was a serious blow to my interest in her videos. That capitalism BS. That killed it dead. Didn’t finish that video, haven’t watched since. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
To be fair, I think her reputation might still be salvageable. But it would take sincere apologies, earnest corrections, and getting back in her ”lane” of experience. As a physicist she’s fine, but not so much as a physician or politician.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Lock picking lawyer.
Used to be a channel about how locks works, how lock picking works, cool locks and shitty locks.
Now it’s just a channel to sell his tools.
Eh, I would have to disagree with this, I have been watching him for a while and as far as I can tell the quality is the same the only difference now days is that he mentions his tools in the videos while picking the locks, so the videos didn’t even really get longer.
He’s very much not liked in the lock picking community.
Not only does he push his overpriced tools a lot, most of them are very much not needed. He also puts a lot of focus on specialized car lock picking tools which are expensive at, made for each brand basically, and in a very dubious grey area which is a big no no in that “sport”.
From a purist side there are also a lot of complaints.
Agreed. Before it would be “so I made this tool by filing down this other thing, you can probably make one yourself” to “I used this tool that you can get in my shop, and here’s how to pick it with a few standard tools as well…”
Feels like it’s mostly because there’s not much to talk about anyway, whatever needed to be said has already been said in one of his 1.5k video. I start follow his channel before he established his company, it’s mostly the same and it’s really just about how he defeat the lock. He sometimes still talk about unique lock he find interesting though.
Yeah, those unique locks are the highlights I remain subscribed for. He used to dismantle locks more often, but at this point it’d just be more of the same if he kept doing that.
Might be a good idea for him to change up his format a bit to make fewer videos but have them be more of a deep dive into whatever locks he’s focusing on, maybe do more of the old “now let’s see if we can open this with the leg of a Barbie™ doll and half of an M67 fragmentation grenade” stunt videos. I remember he used to get more experimental with his approaches when there was back-and-forth with Bosnian Bill.
I stopped watching when he started covert instruments and immediately realized what every single future video would be like. I was right…
Can’t believe he wants to profit from his hobby. What a piece of shit.
Can’t believe I don’t want to watch advertisements all day
LPL mentions Covert Instruments once in his 1 minute video
Day ruined
pants shit in
Man picks lock with skill and tools, not allowed to mention he also sells tools? Shit that would knock out so many YouTubers… LawrenceSystems, NetworkChuck, Level1Techs, pretty much anyone who does electronics or home automation…
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.
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.
Veritasium. After he put that uncritical commercial for the self driving car company on his feed I couldn’t take any of his content seriously anymore.
It was his video on IQ tests that set off alarm bells for me.
IQ tests are not some method of determining intelligence they are very much linked to relative education/socioeconomic standing. His complete lack of criticism and neutral/positive support of IQ tests make me think he likes the result of his score…
some recent ones have been interesting, but yeah that ad really was a scummy move
I stopped watching after the “speed of electricity in a wire” video. When I realised a video about something I knew about was bollocks, it made me question every other video that taught me about something I didn’t know.
Even if that had been a one off, how would I know? The trust is gone.What was wrong with that one?
Without getting into it too deeply the way he conflates induction and conductivity just to set up some kind of gotcha.
“Oh and by the way, this is a sponsored video 🤷” and then spends half an hour sucking a company’s dick for money
That and the shampoo ad killed my interest in the channel, and ever since then I’m extremely wary of everyone. Kurzgesagt is also up there, for producing propaganda for a billionaire’s charity.
Linus Tech Tips …
Click baity as heck and most of the content are just ads or have misleading information.
The clickbait is what gets me.
The video is covering the Toughbook CF-19 but it’s not mentioned in the title and the thumbnail looks like generic YouTube trash and makes me not want to watch it out of principle.
Unfortunately, the stupid thumbnail and clickbait title is by design. Linus has spoken about this long before the latest controversy, but unfortunately they do increase views.
I’m fact, they trial different titles and monitor which brings in more views - if you catch a video early enough, you’ll probably notice the title change a few hours later as they trial different ones. So as frustrating as it is, it’s a symptom of the platform and the market at large.
For all of Linus’ flaws and mistakes, he’s generally a good businessman and make no mistake, LMG is a business at the end of the day. Put yourself in his shoes, is he going to do the thing that will get him 1,000 views but put off 1 person, or appeal to that 1 person but lose 1,000 views? It sucks, he been vocal about how much he also hates it, but it is what it is. His goal is to grow his business, at least he’s up front about it.
I’m not completely defending Linus as an individual here, he’s definitely fucked up a lot (especially lately), he still thinks he’s a “little YouTuber” and doesn’t appreciate how much sway he has, how his words can destroy an entire business overnight - the very thing his own company was nearly hit by several times in the past when he was small - but the clickbait and thumbnails aren’t something I think he should be blamed for, he’s just playing the YouTube game and if I was in his position, I’d do the same.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Louis Rossman.
I enjoyed his board repairs, now he’s only rambling.
Yeah, just took at his more recent thumbnails and titles. It feels like just ragebait. He is just angry at everything.
I stopped watching his videos when he started to put some effort into making clickbait thumbnails, because I felt the videos became much worse.
I agree with a lot of Rossman says with regard to right to repair and stuff.
but hes just an insufferable cunt.
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.
