Forrest Valkai. He’s a biologist who makes a mixture of educational content, videos debunking creationist claims (in an educational way rather than the “look at this fucking idiot” approach that much of atheist youtube seems to take), and just some silly fun in-between.
He doesn’t have the insanely high production value of other channels named here, but he’s the most wholesome person I’ve ever seen. His love for life and science radiates off of him and watching him passionately explain how cool something is genuinely makes me happy in such a depressing and pessimistic world.
A lot of the old “Golden Age” League of Legends content creators have moved on to making really good content about other topics and games. Basically Dunkey and everyone who was at one point accused of being a Dunkey clone lol
Dunkey obviously still makes content and it’s still good. I’ve never personally been a huge fan of the short length goofy one off gag style of his but I know people still really like his content.
Skooch does miscellaneous other games now (mostly Mario and sonic lately) but the content is the best it’s ever been
Bricky does Warhammer mostly but also makes long form analyses of big AAA titles that are sequels to franchises from the 360 days
Keyori (now Barny/Maddy) rebranded, transitioned, and now makes literally the best World of Warcraft content I’ve ever seen
FrostPrime streams I know but I think his YouTube is literally exclusively just stream VODs now.
Outside of that group I still get a kick out of Game Grumps 10 years later but I know the old school let’s play thing isn’t really for everyone. Also Alpharad still makes good content, though lately it’s been a lot of mid, sponsored or otherwise kinda forced out stuff.
I think guns are neat, and Ian’s channel is a gun oriented one without the reactionary politics. I wouldn’t say his quality went down, but he (this was a few years ago) did a series on Rhodesian guns he got from a collector. I thought it was gross, but not necessarily bad. Lots of people are interested in Nazi stuff without being into the politics.
But then, in the middle of the George Floyd protests, he covers a grenade launcher (Like the one from Terminator2) that shoots rubber bullets and a bean-bag firing shotgun in the same week. Weird time to cover riot police gear. I haven’t watched since.
Rhodesia was an ultra-racist regime back during the Cold War which fought a desperate war to avoid giving black people rights. Note - they were a country in Africa ruled by a tiny white minority of Anglo-Dutch settlers. Because their well-funded army performed relatively well against Zimbabwean militias and a newly formed national Zimbabwean army and had some domestic industrial capacity, far-right goons slaver all over anything Rhodesian and peddle “TEN MILLION ZIMBABWEANS < ONE RHODESIAN OPERATOR” style stuff.
Me, given Ian’s tendency to stay away from politics in general, his interest in a very wide variety of guns, and having given considerable pushback to Rhodesian fans and ‘white genocide’ loons in the past, as well as speaking against corporate and systemic racism issues in passing, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Weird, since most people I’ve heard speculate Ian is actually on the left, minus, of course, gun control. But go far enough left and the standard position on gun control becomes much more loose.
Ian has never really come off to me as a secret right winger. His politics are something I’ve never seen or heard expressed in anyway. He comes off to me more of an apolitical academic interested only in firearms. He’s even written books about them. His favorite guns are French Army rifles which are not Nazi or Rhodesian. His book about them is very detailed.
AAVE. He used to be a cool tool review channel who really got into the nitty gritty of how electric tools worked and what made them quality. Now he’s an anti-vax spouting asshole who loves the truckers who blocked the bridge in Canada. Spiraled into the right-wing like a waterslide
He kinda always flirted with being overly caustic in my experience. Definitely creeped a little too close to heteronormative, western world good, global south bad, clunky boomer type shit humor wise. But ya, around covid popping of I sensed some real cracks forming and I bounced on outta there.
I’d argue that none can claim to be high quality if they use tons of ads. I just can’t stand this sort of thing, and YouTube’s own paid system doesn’t block them all.
This said, my (free) adblockers currently work, and they block the sponsored stuff as well. When they work, I still really enjoy Kurzgesagt videos. They are excellent.
The Jeff Bezos rowing boat video is a goddamn masterpiece. The amount of effort put into such an absurd project plus his entire side quest about baldness is just art!
Tbh I did fall off of his videos. His charm became smugness to me. I was excited to see his indian videos but then they never came. I used to listen to his podcasts but HI has been down for so long, and him and mike talking about making stuff lost interest when grey wasnt making that much stuff. It felt like he was cooking a huge pile of videos making they really good, but then we got hexagons. Maybe I have changed. Maybe I have.
I went exactly the same route as you, loved his old videos, HI. At some point I started to listen to the one with Myke (Cortex - had to look up the name) . The first few episodes where quite interesting, but it got repetitive at around episode 50 or so…
Now even the few videos he releases don’t really get me anymore
Cortex is basically a yearly cycle of talking about iPhone releases, WWDC, yearly themes. I still enjoy it but the main topic of productivity is mostly lost at this point.
Is it us or did something change? I almost thought it had something to do with Brady tempering grey into not being so I dunno. It felt like Brady was getting frustrated with grey towards the end
I hear historians hate him, for example because of the Americapox video. It’s heavily based on the book Guns, Germs and Steel without mentioning that it’s a theory many historians disagree with. /r/BadHistory has a wiki page dedicated to it.
While looking for this I also found economists unhappy with Humans Need Not Apply. In general I guess he has a tendency to confidently talk about things he’s not an expert on.
Ah yes, I also find some of his videos are totally incorrect. The humans need not apply one, as a public transit and cycling nerd, fails so hard to miss the point that we need less cars, not more and “smarter”.
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