Veritasium has really gone down hill. I honestly think it started when he did the video on “clickbait” and actually realized how much more lucrative it was to make shittier clickbaity content than make straightforward science content.
It went from “here’s why magnetism is just electric field + relativity” to “I buried myself in cement - you won’t believe what happens!”
I enjoyed the back and forth over the topic, personally, but that initial video of his felt… weak. I didn’t hate it but it did make me want to unsubscribe. It felt like a technicality and like a trick more than anything, to me.
The practicalities of how two nearby parallel wires work versus one big loop wasn’t the question posed, it was based on length (As I remember from watching it once). Felt like a ‘gotcha’ moment with no gotcha.
I think you overly critical of him. His content is still good, and the video you mentioned is called “I buried myself in cement to explain how it works”, and even if you dislike this one, it’s one of many
??? His recent videos have been nothing but great. His knot, IQ, Oppenheimer, entropy, and maze solving videos (and more) are all recent and amazing videos. What’s your criticism against him?
I think the problem here is that Veritasium these days now covers popular (possibly overrated) science-y topics rather than actually interesting (but not so popular) science content to stay on the radar. It’s about the covered topic, not the quality.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m fairly knowledgeable in the natural sciences, but I still used to learn a lot from watching his videos. These days, more often than not my reaction is just “well thats obvious”. It reminds me of the MythBusters episode when they shot a ball out of the back of a moving truck, and when they confirmed the ball dropped without moving, Carrie just sarcastically said “Yay we did vector addition…”
Knot theory, entropy and maze solving are things most people don’t know about though. If this critique is pointed at the Oppenheimer video because there was a popular movie then I would say that it’s ok to talk about something trending if most of his videos are relatively niche.
to be fair the last video, the nuclear near misses one, did seem like a bunch of things stuffed together to make… something? I guess the people who didn’t know about it will find it interesting but it’s easy to see the difference from the old videos, the ones about niche topics with very in depth explanations
True, that is a fair argument, I didn’t learn anything either, except how knots are counted, but that is pretty surface level, and kind of common sense if you think about it for more than 2 minutes.
I love how Dunkey had a week where he did this sarcastically – and they still ended up being some of his most popular videos. Thankfully he’s stayed himself though and not abandoned what he does best.
Ugh, I used to follow a wildlife channel. The head of their YouTube had a kid, and then every other video was her repeating “can you say jackal?” over and over and OVER. I’m here for wildlife videos, not to watch your kid ignore the camera getting shoved in their face. But everyone was super positive towards the first kid video and she thought it was encouragement. For shame.
And of course head of youtube did youtube things. “Cute kid video” costs pennies on the dollar compared to capturing and editing wild life videos. So even if they got a measly 10% of the views they probably saw it as good business.
Perun is a fantastic channel to keep up with the Ukraine war. Probably the best resource out there. Pleasant to listen to as well, guy deserves the appreciation he gets.
Only because of the Ukraine channels did I notice that he also used to put out great videos about Dominions 5, a somewhat obscure game. I wish he had enough time to do both.
I remember the transition of prank channels from pranking each other in more or less controlled settings to “pranking” (harassing) strangers in public. Not saying that pranking each other was the pinnacle of comedy, there are definitely still problems with it, but why do people like watching random unrelated people being accosted at all, let alone enough for the prank channels to catch on and start catering to that crowd?
Heck, I remember mine craft prank wars with h20delerious. They were all happy to participate, stakes were 0, but the best pranks were creative and over engineered.
Did they over react for content? Yes, of course.
Was it fun seeing creative pranks in totally harmless ways anyway? Yes. Yes it was.
Jerma985 was my most favoritest TF2 youtuber, and now look him, a big streamer with wide meme reach. I remember the first Jerma Rumbles, the pinnacle of simulated wrestling and the first inklings of his creative genius. I don't watch streams and I don't watch VODs, but I'm just happy he's shooting for the stars.
I stopped watching after I met him at a convention one time.
I tried to say that I was a fan but every time I opened my mouth he just said ‘HUH? HUH?’ over and over, before he grabbed my Nintendo Labo keyboard, threw it on the ground and stamped on it a bunch of times.
Idk if this comment is a joke or not but i have to say you’re really missing out. Jerma’s new content has really grown so well and I’d say he’s one of the few who did shift but ultimately its only grown in quality.
Or they made good edited youtube videos and then they starting chasing the streaming trend like Critikal and other youtubers I used to watch. Sorry I want to watch a single 10-30 min video once or twice a week and not hours of unscripted rambling. The only person I can watch do that is Nothernlion but even then I don’t watch most of his content anyway.
i actually really enjoy long form interviews. i watch 5 hour interviews and want more, but not everyone can host them and only a certain kind of content is good long form.
I haven’t watched a streamer yet that could pull it off except NL. People get into this young with no education or lived life outside of streaming and honestly it’s a pain listening to them try to be relatable to talk about something for hours. Even NL starts getting tiring after the 5000th take on peloton.
Podcasters are usually better at this than streamers. There’s a Canadian political podcast I follow that’s great for hour-plus interviews. Really good for “politics in complete sentences” stuff.
I’m not sure what a “steamer” is. Is it video game related only?
The content that I watch is for 40+. The example that I was thinking about was of Mormon stories podcast host. He has a phd in psychology. Hearing him interview ex Mormons is really interesting. I always learn something about myself during 5 hour interviews.
Streamers usually people who play games for 4-8+ hours almost every day with a face cam and a running chat. Twitch is the main website for these people.
Video: 3 hours of rambling with five minutes of addressing interesting topic.
I could hardly stand his actual videos before but at least he experimented and showed some conventions to be useless traditions but recently it’s really been garbage long form rambling.
I have yet to meet any person in real life who has spoken of Subscribing to a YouTube Channel. I have never subscribed to any YouTube channel or even smashed the Like button on any YT video. I find the social media oriented facet of YT to be completely useless and irrelevant to my purpose of finding and viewing certain videos.
This whole pretend culture around youtubers is as alien to me as it would be for a Commanche Indian from the old West to be given an electric hairdryer.
I mean most people in adult spaces aren’t really discussing YouTube and who they subscribe to lol. But it’s a useful feature to tell the algorithm “hey, show me when this channel uploads a new video please”
I think you’re really over thinking it in regards to the ‘culture’ most well-adjusted adults don’t think about the people they subscribe to on YouTube as anything other than cool creators whose work they want to follow.
There is a whole dumb culture around it though. Listen to the cadence of the professional tube jockeys. There is a Youtuber Voice that has become part of that dumb culture. Notice how they all pander for their button clickers with similar carnival barker catchphrases to gather their little micro-boosts to raise their Tuber Rank.
they all pander for their button clickers with similar carnival barker catchphrases to gather their little micro-boosts to raise their Tuber Rank.
People do what helps them make a living. I don’t like it any more than you do, but you seem to be attributing way too much baggage to something that’s no different to a street vendor hawking their wares at passerby. Times change, but people’s motivation stays the same.
It’s at its worst now imo. He plays the algorithm so that you can’t get the video concept in the preview. You have to click the vid, sit through the ads(unless adblock), and then he spends 2 minutes doing his lead up just making goofy words up to describe the topic to delay mentioning what happened.
I agree with the thumbnail garbage, that shit is annoying. But the videos themselves have just become whatever he’s doing that day. It’s like he’s terminally online now, he’d stream from the shitter if it wasn’t against the ToS. He streams, puts the big clips on his moist Charlie channel, then puts the more interesting stuff on his main channel.
I don’t watch his current content but it was bittersweet seeing the transition from his original style. He mentioned at the time that he had depression during that period and it seemed like the change was a lifestyle one as well; he seemed pretty happy around that time.
I've been watching ZFG (OoT streamer) for a while. Lately he's only been playing Tears of the Kingdom, which... I don't like or care about, much. Looks like he's actually going to do runs of it, so it might be a while.
Someone else already mentioned Joshua Weissman, "comedian" cook who refuses to realize he can't sing and the "papa" thing is... cringe. Channel was much better when he didn't try so hard to be funny. Cooking stuff itself is still fine though, he does know his stuff.
I guarantee you ZFG doesn’t give a single shit about “the algorithm” - he’s always played games that he wants to play, which is usually every Zelda release, Mario Kart, Smash, and Pokemon. His only two concerns are going fast and having fun.
Literally finally made an account to respond to you. I don’t really watch streams much anymore, but he has a main channel (highlights and records) and a VOD channel on YouTube. I used to go to sleep watching Clint Stevens every night, and now I use the VODs a lot of the time. Anyway, the point I was actually trying to make is that there is a ton of old content available if TotK isn’t doing it for you.
Maybe I started watching late but Weissman always kind of struck me as trying too hard on the comedy bits, but I don’t mind because it is good knowledge nonetheless. My biggest issue is that he’s a little on the pretentious side and he occasionally uses fancy/expensive/inaccessible ingredients or tools, but that’s really just a personal problem for me.
That last bit is why I love the Aaron and Claire cooking channel. Dude cooks recipes with both ‘original’ ingredients and also just tells you it’s fine to omit/substitute stuff with other more common ingredients and even cooks using both so you can see. It’s still a Korean cooking channel so some ingredients light still be a bit hard to come by in certain places like rice wine vinegar but it should be mostly accessible if you live anywhere with more than one skintone walking around.
Fuck the algorithm. My favorite Youtubers still do quality videos, luckily, but now they take longer because they have to fill their channels periodically with less inspired stuff or the all-seeing algorithm will toss them out. I hate it.
I know this can be true, but a more predatory trend is Youtubers quitting because these vicious incentives are difficult to navigate compared to Twitch, Patreon, or a regular old career.
The algorithm tends to fight this kind of content. So if a trans person succeeds in the algorithm, they likely already had in mind that they wanted to educate about how they can empathize with transgender people.
Some YouTubers I know who are trans or who have come out as trans since I started watching and are still doing their own thing: GameChamp3000 (game challenge videos and recently some trivia), DaThings (YTP style videos), Shammy/Joy (game review/critique), and probably a few others that aren’t coming to mind right now. I’d argue Jim (Stephanie) Sterling hasn’t really changed though trans issues do come up more often. I haven’t watched Philosophy Tube recently but I do believe she still does videos on general philosophical concepts.
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