Ask Lemmy

Mark Rober

He's been going harder and harder into the Mr Beast format, and it's off-putting. I'm still subscribed for now, but I almost never watch his videos unless the topic seems interesting.

I no longer get excited about a new Veritasium video.
I also don't get excited when the title and thumbnail change 5 times in a week.

MKBHD, Linus, Most of the tech reviewing kids who got money and then hired an entire staff and in lots of cases also bought up really good solo YouTubers.

Motherfcking Casey Neistat. He was never an amazing person, his exploitation of his wife’s ass in thumbnails and being comfortable with click bait titles always felt off. But he’s a masterful propagandist and videographer until I saw him waving Israeli flags at pro Palestine protests during a filmed documentary.

It's been a while, but AvE. Dude used to be some chill guy who would take apart tools or do some deep dive into a manufacturing process. But then the covid nation attacked and all of a sudden the guy is sprinkling an opinion in here and there that made me say, eh, and then the Canadian trucker thing happened and dude was all in on that shit. AvE was the first thing I ever donated money to on patreon and the first one I yanked my monthly from because the content had changed to something it once wasn't.

I don't know if they degraded over time, but I unsubscribed from SmarterEveryDay because 1.) he kept trying to slip religious BS into videos and then I couldn't unsee his whole generic youth pastor schtick, 2.) he kept posting weird Physics Girl health update stuff. It just lost me. Not for me. I feel like the glory days of vsauce are also well behind us.

The only one that I unsubbed to pretty fast was the 8bit guy. I generally enjoyed his videos and then in one of them, he had a fairly rare IBM PC and for some reason, he sticks a screwdriver into the power supply and blows a component.

But what really turned me off was when footage of him turned up on Reddit, taken by himself, of shopping in a place like Costco with his assault rifle on his back. I think he was taking pleasure in scaring some of the customers too.

(I think I've remembered that correctly)

Anyway, never went back to his channel after that.

EDIT: I found this Reddit page where someone asked what he did. Didn't realise that was 5 years ago now!

Binging with Babish - used to be a fantastic set of recipes and takes on cooking that I really enjoyed trying to make, then got into the serious money and jumped the shark, both in "I bought my brother a Tesla/fulfilled a fan dream" and "this week we're using this dehydrator" ways (that meant I just wasn't going to be able to even imagine using the techniques and knowledge on show).

Linus Tech Tips. It used to be good informative content. After they moved from the house in particular it started to really ramp up the clickbait. It just didn't feel like it was still about technology. It felt like it was about whatever gags they could throw into technology related videos.

The all the controversies happened after I had already unsubbed. Yeah, I don't know how people still engage with that channel.

I find most channels will degrade once the creator makes Youtube their full-time job. Afterwards, it's all about selling products, donations, sponsors, and memberships.

Survival Lilly and SirSic and two channels that come to mind.

MKBHD. He used to be, IMO, the best tech channel out there. The reviews were honest, well produced, and held companies' feet to the fire. The old MKBHD poked fun at the companies' shortcomings (I specifically remember him telling iPhone users to add a widget - then going "oh, wait..."). The new MKBHD interviews Tim Cook and doesn't properly question any of the BS he speaks.

Not sure if this counts, but CGP Grey. The frequency of the videos was always a joke, but the most recent video is a 3 month old paywalled vid of an early preview for a video still unreleased publicly. I still enjoy the videos when they're released, so it's not the quality, but the channel is clearly on autopilot. I hope everything's ok with him and maybe he's just using YouTube as passive income now that he hit it big?

This is VERY recent but NetworkChuck. He's such a great speaker and his videos were good intros into tech (Linux, networking, etc.) but with practical applicability. I liked that he skewed family-friendly and family positive, and some of the solutions he presented were from his perspective as a father. He was never shy about him being religious and being religiously involved. Imo 100% wholesome.

This year, several weeks of his videos were paid sponsor content for very corporate Cisco BS. Then, he comes back from that and it's AI stuff that's kind of a strech for a typical home user.... Then "I'm going to end my videos in a prayer". I unsubscribed right there.

LTT comes across as someone who simultaneously wants to be a boss and also do nut taps in the locker room. He himself admits he sucks at PR and then does PR solo style anyways or with Luke held hostage. He often takes things personally when it's actually a really good opportunity to show growth and standards, but I swear he misses the mark every. Single. Time. This behavior also corroborates the feelings of a staff member who left because someone higher up was creepy to her and wasn't ever confronted because that's the environment Linus fostered. You can't be a boss that's always joking because sometimes it's serious, and when it's serious, it's not always personal.

MKHD Always seemed like a bit of an Apple shill, but I gotta say it just got worse and worse. It's like he was shopping for himself and once he became a millionaire everything seemed like it was cheap if it was at all novel. He also handled that app launch insanely badly and seems like the type of dude to be impressed by anything a tech bro presents to him.

Berm Peak completely similar vibes. He's rich, so crazy expensive bikes and accessories are almost always a great deal because they're in his budget and high quality.

Ethan Klein I honestly don't know why I ever liked him apart from the copyright lawsuit with Matt Hoss. I appreciated the goofs, but for some reason it took me way too long to see that some of those people in no way shape or form deserved that treatment. Patrice Wilson for example, not to mention later when he devoted his entire life to hate watching Hasan and Hasan-adjacents while being incredibly deceptive about his and his wifes views on Israel. I ditched him before all that, but man what a massive shitshow he turned his channels into.

EEVBlog got high on his own supply. He's always been a bit snobbish, especially about sub par equipment that he already made up his mind about before opening, but I saw him talking about running for office with some dogshit platitudes that mean nothing like, "Dave'll take it apart and fix it all" and seemed very defensive when people were asking what his platform actually would be. God complex vibes from all that.

Gus Johnson because he treated his ex like crap and ran from accountability, and is now sneaking back into YouTube through his and his brother's account without ever really addressing his failures. He just wants everyone to move on and accept him again.

Cody Ko handled the fallout of sexual assault allegations horribly and is best friends for life with a known rapist, putting that relationship above everything. Gross guy, but before all that came out he was just a funny immature frat guy with a lot of jokes and good reactions. Major failure to meet the moment.

Scott Kilmer - just shitty political takes eventually wore me down.

AVE - shitty political views and then talking about teaching his daughter racist nursery rhymes was the final straw for me.

Pretty much any channel once they make it big. I have watched so many channels that just starts out as a person in their basement, or bedroom and make great but simple content. Then they catch on, get a lot of subs and starts making content for the algorithm instead of their existing viewers. They go full time, hire an editor, a cameraman etc. And the content moves further and further away from what made it good to begin with.

A turning point is usually when they quit their dayjob and go full time, that's when the pressure to perform well really begins.

Some exceptions of course, like LGR and Explaining Computers, who just keep chugging along solo. And I still enjoy them because of it.

Donut Media. They got bought out by an investment company and then all their videos became Buzzfeed style listicles.

Well Wranglerstar is pretty good example. Used to be about homesteading and tools, then turned into politics, grifting and Jesus talk. There's even a subreddit dedicated for hating him for it.

Van Neistat (Casey's brother) is another one for me. It's actually one of those channels that went from me utterly loving it to entirely stopping watching it the quickest. I can't really put my finger on why but I think I just started to get the sense that this is a job for him, not a passion.

I'm just waiting for someone to uncover that Fireship is a secret Nazi, he gives me all the same vibes as the internet historian

Basically any channel that started doing "reaction" content. Oh you're reading the top page of Reddit today? Cool, what creative value does that have to me? Absolutely none. Goodbye. I get that it's really popular but I have no idea why, and I get it's cheap to make but it's also shit, so you get what you pay for I guess.

The only exception to this is Jimmy Broadbent who occasionally does his "Sim Racing Stewards" series which is basically his take on Reddit user submitted clips of their online racing mishaps. I find it really interesting to watch because he has so much sim racing experience and, albeit less, experience of real world racing with real life stewards and racing rules. It's entertaining and interesting and I want to know his opinion on these incidents because he has enough context to have an opinion, and doesn't act like his opinion is gospel.

Stephanie Sterling (and not for the reason you probably think).

I understand that the gaming industry is shit, and therefore reporting on it is always going to skew negative, but it really felt to me like the negativity started permeating their content as a whole - to the point that I got the feeling that they didn't really enjoy video games at all anymore.

I also started to get the feeling that they resent their audience for responding positively to such negative content, too - doing things like complaining that the worst-of lists get more views than the best-of lists. You don't have to make them if you don't want to.

Also, it's cool that they found a passion, but I really don't care about wrestling.

Top Gear, Not sure if this fully counts as YouTube but I’m sure that’s where most of us watched it. It hasn’t been the same since Jeremy, Richard, and James left.