Which of your favorite creators content quality went downhill very quickly?
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
SVSeeker. At first it seemed like a really inspirational channel about a guy building a giant boat in his backyard in Oklahoma that was going to be used as a free to anyone research vessel, but as time went on everyone slowly realized the dude had basically no idea what he was doing and was super hostile to anyone telling him otherwise. Now it’s been two years since lunching the boat and he has done none of the things he promised to do with it (like even leave the coast) and it seems pretty clear everyone got duped into helping him build a retirement house boat instead of a research vessel.
Bon Appétit after the issues at their workplace were raised, they all make some decent content outside the BA brand though. Nice to see Sohla doing so much content too since she wasn’t treated the best at BA.
Just so contrived. Even before the harassment allegations, their videos just seemed so corporate. That’s the Conde Nast influence, but it makes for such milquetoast content.
I actually liked the magazine before they did YouTube stuff cause it was different than the typical food mags directed at moms. Industry leading photography and good deep dive pieces in to food trends and unique restaurants, always getting in to the process. Their video editors were youtube guys given a budget and their video content had that feel to it. They did some innovating with how they approach recipe vids, keeping in and even highlighting mistakes was a major editorial decision that set them apart. At their peak they were found to be treating the staff poorly regarding compensation and allegations of sexism, and not paying Sohla for her video appearances etc. They switched their editor in chief and hired new staff but now it just seems even more corporate than it used to.
I miss gourmet makes. Claire Saffitz solving industrial food issues on a small scale was fascinating and unique. Her new stuff, dessert person, is nice, but it’s standard cooking show fare, not solving weird industrial hacks.
She’s been putting out some great cook books, Dessert Person is excellent. I always liked her and BA for highlighting process of making food and how important indicators are vs simply measurements. What does “cream the butter and sugar” actually look like and why is it important etc.
Brad’s definitely the kind of extrovert host who takes other interesting professionals and lifts the energy up to very entertaining affect, I used to watch everything BA put out, they were a great channel.
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.
The level of self awareness in the idubbz apology blew my mind. I was an edgy teen and grew out of him, and while it took him a bit longer than me, he came around too. Was a weird and cool moment.
Same here. Had the worst bottom feeder energy to it. Just scraping up shit and shitting it out, with the worst possible takes he just takes up all the oxygen in the room. Charlie isn’t much better than XQC.
It’s not the expression of opinion that sinks a channel, but a pivot from topic-focused to issue-focused. AvE didn’t go downhill for getting frustrated about the pandemic, he fundamentally changed the focus of his channel.
It’s one of the things I appreciate about the better firearms channels. I know they’re probably unpalatably conservative (to my taste), but by largely sticking to a topic (rather than the multitude of issues that are doubtless important to them), they manage to reach a wider audience.
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.
But he already made those in top 10 format. There isn’t much “mystery” to talk about without hyping up certain things like science journalism tends to do a lot.
He could make a documentary that goes into deeper details about one of the things he already mentioned in his older top 10 videos…
I didn’t watch the top 10 videos because this format doesn’t appeal to me. Topics like why there is a universe/anything at all, what is beyond the observable universe, how the universe will end, etc are the greatest mysteries and deserve their own videos.
Top 10 videos aren’t typically my thing either. But Lemmino is next level. His top 10 videos are very well informed, and before he started making actual documentaries, only got longer and longer. It got to the point where every entry in a top 10 vid was like a mini documentary on its own.
Remember when they had all 3 channels firing on all cylinders? Vsauce for mind blowing science videos, Vsauce2 for awesome shorter format wtf internet widget videos, and Vsauce3 for gaming science stuff. One of the best eras of YT.
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…
His side gigs are super grifty. Curiosity box was a straight scam. Two months delayed and full of shifty products that break or fall apart trying to assemble them.
Vsauce2 is still good and mindblown just recently came back, Kevin basically said on his podcast that the mindblown videos just take too much time to research for something that’s presented extremely fast and short, since he’s not a tabloid making wildly innacurate reporting on science papers.
Check it now. I’m not even sure where it’s slant is anymore. It’s full Palestinian support now. Unless that’s become right territory now. I don’t even know in this world 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.
her podcast (which is just the audio of her videos) keeps getting pushed to my Spotify feed. I don’t even use Spotify for podcasts nor I even listened to her at all on said platform. She must be spending a pretty penny in that algorithm push
Ethan Klein and H3. Before the Israel stuff happened in October, the silliness was enjoyable because it seemed like the guy had an earnest, intellectual curiosity underneath it all.
I dropped off when he stopped making content and switched to the podcast full time. Seems like every 6-18 months Ethan has another controversy where he accidentally lets his mask slip and a whole new group of people find out he’s actually an asshole.
What did he ever do? He seems to be the YouTube equivalent of famous for being famous. I’ve tried watching but it’s a lot of nothing talk and seemingly contrived drama with other YouTubers who also talk a tremendously long time about nothing.
He gave a few lukewarm takes but the worst one was probably him sticking with “we gotta get rid of hummus” which is literally impossible because every time the IDF does a genocide tour through Gaza they create three times as much Hamas as they destroy.
He really hammers on the “both sides are bad” when almost everything in the conflict is clearly israel’s fault. It’s like the teacher punishing both the bully and the bullied kid when the bullied kid fights back.
edit removed a rumor that’s most likely untrue from further research
I stopped watching when they stopped doing the prank vids, I was subbed when he did the “it’s a ten” vid and all the edits and meme vids, the Vape Naysh.
Google #changethechannel, but to sum up, people got fed up with the mistreatment by the Walkers (Doug, the NC, and Rob) as well as Mike the ceo, especially after one of the best liked members was fired from the site.
And THEN it came to light that they had known about a pedo in their midst and protected him for years. Justin Carmical, Aka JewWario.
CinemaSins. They were always kind of bottom-of-the-barrel, but their early videos pretty much just amounted to narrating the IMDB trivia pages so it was harmless. I went back and checked in on their channel for the first time in 8+ years and holy shit they’ve gotten bad. Videos running a quarter the length of the movie they’re doing with word-salad voice over that doesn’t even make sense.
Also: “[female actor] isn’t 18 in this scene” was just as fucked up in 2012 as it is in 2023.
I agree, I don’t think that CinemaSins was ever really good, but it definitely got worse over time. His content has been criticized to death and there are some good commentary videos covering the issues with his channel. I will plug CinemaWins as a pretty good “counter” channel. I don’t watch it because I’m not really into that kind of content these days, but the videos that I have seen are worthwhile if you’re looking to fill a similar hole.
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”.
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.
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.
I find that connection hilarious cus Jazza is way more popular and talented with true artistic ability, where shad is an anti-woke dipshit who gets mad at the mario movie and plays with swords.
After a certain point, what else can you cover about the medieval period thats interesting, entertaining, understable to a general audience, and can fit in a youtube video?
I still think he needs to collab with Jill Bearup on boob armor, though.
That’s fair enough, though I do think there are a ton of interesting medieval topics he still could have covered. I’m the kind of guy who likes watching multi-hour essays on ancient civilizations though, so I might not be “general audience” and he moved pretty much in the opposite direction of what I like to watch. Finding his second channel was what sealed the deal for me though, couldn’t take him seriously after that.
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.
I actually appreciate that he's taken care to keep the two channels separate, I just didn't bother to subscribe to Knights Watch and so it doesn't bother me.
I guess mileage varies on the "wacky weapons" vs "medieval history" division, though. I like both so I'm fine with them being mixed.
Yeah, I forgot when I stopped watching him, maybe take a look at the videos he makes to understand my point. He’s very enthusiastic but it’s not informative and he gets stuff wrong.
Probably means Gamers Nexus, a pretty solid PC build/review channel that does some great deep dives. Steve is sometimes jokingly referred to as Tech Jesus, but he’s pretty respected in the PC building community.
So far I think I can trust MrMobile to give an honest opinion. When it comes to his channel its not just specs and numbers but real experiences. Quite different from the myriads of other tech channels on YT today.
Gardiner Bryant I liked him when he was doing Linux News updates and talking about Linux gaming but after he blew up with the LTT Linux challenge.
It’s like his personality shifted and has that I’m being managed vibe and doesn’t hide it very well. I’m glad he found success but he is just not for me anymore.
I just checked back in and I guess he is just a generic gaming handheld reviewer now like we don’t have a million of those.
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