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.
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 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.
Mine is “te lo resumo asi nomás” he did resume/commentary of movies but the resumes became shit he did less of them and everytime he did more and more meme commentary. He picked things I love and did shit with them then he started doing rankings and such I wasn’t mad but bored as fuck mostly.
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.
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.
He's "funny". Except if you don't think he's funny, then you might think he's extremely unfunny. He used to not try so hard, and IMO made better videos for it. Now it's off-pitch singing, cringe catchphrases, clickbait, and general "funny stuff".
Yeah agree with amio. He used to do actually useful instructional cooking videos - his sourdough series is great. Now he’s really leaned into the mega high energy persona, clickbaity concepts ($1,000 waygu in a HOTDOG?! kind of thing).
That happened to some Minecraft youtubers that I was subscribed to, they switched over to fortnite to appeal to young children and I unsubscribed from them
I mean it sucks but its clear enough of the "original" audience stuck around. Growth is important and only appealing to your og audience is a sentence for death if you are trying to make being an influencer a job. There is a reason why many influencers have to diversify even when they originally were primarily making videos of a single game because once that game popularity starts to drop, their audience is all they have and people simply "age out" of content and there is nothing wrong with that. Hell this isn't only to influencers but to most products.
Look at Jon Tron (ignoring his controversial parts) and PewDiePie. They kept adapting and growing.
While people like cadi, peanut butter gamer and other og normal boots folks didn’t want to grow with their audience and change, and they have just flat lined in growth.
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.
Hah, to be fair the guy is literally producing a movie. Honestly I think his semi regular content has taken dives a few times while he works on big projects, but YMMV whether it bothers you or not.
@ericbomb I used to watch a YouTuber called Skip the Tutorial, and he would make these challenge run videos, such as Punch Out Wii without dodging. This later extended to modded Minecraft runs, and this led to the whole channel just becoming Minecraft trivia videos since these came out during a massive nostalgia boom for the game. Sometimes I look back to see if he’s made any more challenge runs, but nope.
Boo I love stupid challenge videos and feels like so many youtubers burn themselves out and so cut back to trash as a result.
Stupid algo that rewards garbage and won’t reward creators who spend the time. Like they make a 30 minute video of talking and will get as much reach as a 20 minute video that took weeks of work. Like just to get their own subs to see their vids they have to play games, and the algo loves the trash.
As much as it is “the algorithm’s fault”, I also blame humans for being, broadly speaking, incredibly dumb and with bad taste. Whenever I happen upon the “what’s popular” view, it’s filled to the brim with everything void of anything thoughtful.
I mean you say that, but top movies are usually high quality big budget. Where it was thousands of professionals doing their best with state od the art tech.
Best books are generally pay off from authors who have been working tirelessly for decades.
Best comics are veterans that almost everyone agrees are funny a big part of the time.
Then we get to youtube where we have enormous content creators that are just reacting to tik toks. So I blame the algo.
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.
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