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Scrubbles @poptalk.scrubbles.tech

What's your go-to long form Youtuber?

Title essentially. Youtube's algorithm is hot garbage, so I can't search for anything anymore without a ton of AI slop and rage bait. So, who do you go to for actual good long form videos? Exposes, scandals, behind the scenes, documentaries, film, travel, transit, who do you recommend I follow?

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  • Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that's powerful. Her video that's absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.

    Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He's most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. "I don't know James Rolfe" was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.

    Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think

    Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He's largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax

    Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.

    Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She's like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that's generally respectful to them? She's got you. In particular I like how she's respectful towards weirdness when it's not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.

    Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He's a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.

    Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He's a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.

    Defunctland, listen I'm not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.

  • Mostly history documentaries below:

    • Fall of Civilization (takes forever to upload stuff, but it's always superb quality)
    • Kings and Generals (wars, historic battles and the context surrounding them)
    • Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (several videos show the very likely migrations of different peoples in ancient times)
    • Ancient Americas (north, central and south americas)
    • Real Time History (most videos are ~27 minutes, but the Franco Prussian war is a whopping 6 hours and worth it)

  • who do you recommend I follow?

    What I like may not be what you like at all. I mean, depends on your interests.

    And I don't "follow" any of these, watch every thing when it comes out. These are just some YouTubers for whom I've had a high proportion of their material wind up being something that I feel is worth watching.

    Montemayor

    Does military history, mostly naval. Does not put out a lot of videos, but from the ones that I do follow, has really done his research through the written material out there before putting the material out, does a good job of highlighting what's important.

    To a lesser degree, Drachinifel and The Operations Room. They're also military history, but I don't feel like they do as much research or highlight the important bits as well. Drachinifel focuses more on surface gun-era naval warfare, and The Operations Room tends to deal with newer stuff.

    The Slow Mo Guys. Not exactly deep stuff, but they do one thing: high-quality interesting slow-motion footage. Pretty popular, so you may have heard of them before. I think it might be interesting to have some sort of analogous channel that does videos of microscope stuff, pans around something with a nice microscope.

    SmarterEveryDay does, I think, a good job of explaining interesting things in our daily world from an engineering/technical standpoint; guy does a good job of researching his material. You'll probably walk away from this knowing this that you didn't.

    CGPGrey does stick-figure illustrated things that also highlight interesting stuff, often relating to legal or political or historical stuff.

    Perun does defense economics, and has had interesting and informed material on the Russo-Ukrainian War. Michael Kofman, an analyst who focuses on the Russian military, doesn't have a YouTube channel, but many YouTube channels do interview him, and while he's kind of dry, I also think that his material on Ukraine is pretty worthwhile -- he's consistently avoided alarmist stuff or cheerleading over the course of the war. Can find material with him via searching for his name.

    One of the problems I have with YouTube is a side effect of the fact that it pays content creators. I don't have any real problem with that per se -- I mean, sure, you wanna do work and get paid, that's fine. The problem is that there's no real "YouTube of articles". The result is that a lot of content creators out there are putting stuff in video form that really doesn't need to be in video form, just because they want some reasonable way to monetize it. The above videos are from people who generally take advantage of the video format (well, Michael Kofman could really do just fine on a podcast and often does, but aside from that). I've seen too many YouTube videos -- including those being submitted on the Threadiverse -- that would really be better as text and possibly image articles.

    EDIT: Oh, right. Someone else mentioned Primitive Technology, which I would definitely second. Has a guy go out in the woods with just his shorts and basically manufacture a lot of basic technology from the ground up. Does have subtitles, but no narration or speech. The practical use of what he does is probably limited, but I found it fascinating. I remember that this was very popular for a while on Reddit.

  • I have a few to recommend:

    • SEA and Astrum. Almost interchangeable calm and chill space documentary channels. If you're like me and get a spinny mind around bedtime, these are great, they hold my attention to keep my mind from racing and are calm enough to drift to sleep while listening.
    • Bedtime Stories. Anything from urban legends to strange disappearances told in a campfire ghost story format accompanied by hand drawn illustrations. Sometimes wanders into hibbidy jibbidy but fun nonetheless. See also Wartime Stories for a similar format focusing on stories from/about the military.
    • History For Granite. I read this guy as an armchair archaeologist who is interested primarily in the pyramids and megalithic structures of ancient Egypt almost as much as he is at sniping at Zahi Hawass. Possibly a bit of a crank, though his wild ideas tend to be things like "The pyramid was designed to remain open for worshippers to routinely enter" and he often focuses on the engineering of the structures and layout of the stones.
    • Nexpo. Short for Nightmare Expo, purveyor of creepy stories.
    • Captain KRB. Video essayist, fond of minecraft, retro media, and occasional odd stories like the Voynich manuscript or the Cicada 3301 mystery.
    • Lemmino, started out as a top ten list channel, has pivoted to long form documentaries on a "when it's done" basis. Topics range from the history of the "Cool S" graffiti symbol to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
    • Ahoy. Churns out one, maybe two videos a year on the topic of video games, primarily video game weapons. Typical format will introduce a weapon, say, the M-16 combat rifle, discuss its real world invention and service history, then its depiction in video games and possibly other media. Peppered in are other more general video game topics; his video on Polybius is particularly good.
    • This Old Tony. A dude named Tony whose got a hobby machine shop full of dad jokes in his garage.
    • Clickspring. Australian dude who makes soul-achingly beautiful videos about clockmaking and machining. Go watch him build a clock out of raw brass and tell me your life hasn't changed.
    • Tech Tangents. One of those guys who will hold an 8-bit ISA card in his hands with a look of utter rapture on his face, he repairs, restores and documents old computer and gaming equipment, and operates a capacitor wiki. He once reverse engineered an ISA adapter card to get a very early CD-ROM drive functioning...live on Twitch.

  • A couple fun ones I haven't seen mentioned:

    Myron Cook - Think "the Bob Ross of Geology." Basically he goes out, finds some rock formation, goes "Huh. Isn't this cool? What do you think happened?" and walks you through everything dating back to like the formation of the planet. He's like a teddy bear and his channel is wonderful and fascinating.

    Dan Hurd - He's a dorky gold prospector. He may have caused me to buy a gold panning set.

  • Nerd³ (nerd cubed) long form video game content while he talks about the game he's playing, sprinkled with commentary about life and current events

    Cold Fusion. Sort of a mini documentary on news items, one item at a time. Tech focused.

220 comments