For me it’s Skallagrim. This is a channel of a guy who specializes in ancient armory and weaponry, he also reviews swords and stuff that’s sold online and tests them. Pretty cool.
But then I started to not like him for some reason and it took me a while to put my finger on it. Until I saw the video where he tried criticizing weapons in video games. Then that was where I found problems with him as a channel.
His personality comes off very pretentious and one of those pseudointellectuals you know, who try sounding smarter than they really are. He even has the voice tone to back that with.
So yeah I really once loved his channel. Though whenever he goes on tirades about things that are meant for fantasy purposes which aren’t supposed to make sense when translated to reality, as well as try to poke at fictitious things that borrow from ancient history, I feel he misses the plot of his entire channel and why people like me once subscribed to it.
We didn’t subscribe to your channel for your stupid takes on - anything. We subscribed because you seem to know your melee weapons and historical backgrounds of said weaponry. Stick to those.
Not sure if this counts, but CGP Grey. The frequency of the videos was always a joke, but the most recent video is a 3 month old paywalled vid of an early preview for a video still unreleased publicly. I still enjoy the videos when they’re released, so it’s not the quality, but the channel is clearly on autopilot. I hope everything’s ok with him and maybe he’s just using YouTube as passive income now that he hit it big?
I can’t believe I listened to the entirety of Hello Internet only to not remember CPG even existed.
Just checked … and the videos that are paywalled on youtube aren’t even on patreon :(
Donut Media. They got bought out by an investment company and then all their videos became Buzzfeed style listicles.
I find Speeed is as close to the original vibes as you can get. They’ve actually got some great videos. I want to like bigtime but I’m starting to wonder if they may have been part of the problem
LTT comes across as someone who simultaneously wants to be a boss and also do nut taps in the locker room. He himself admits he sucks at PR and then does PR solo style anyways or with Luke held hostage. He often takes things personally when it’s actually a really good opportunity to show growth and standards, but I swear he misses the mark every. Single. Time. This behavior also corroborates the feelings of a staff member who left because someone higher up was creepy to her and wasn’t ever confronted because that’s the environment Linus fostered. You can’t be a boss that’s always joking because sometimes it’s serious, and when it’s serious, it’s not always personal.
MKHD Always seemed like a bit of an Apple shill, but I gotta say it just got worse and worse. It’s like he was shopping for himself and once he became a millionaire everything seemed like it was cheap if it was at all novel. He also handled that app launch insanely badly and seems like the type of dude to be impressed by anything a tech bro presents to him.
Berm Peak completely similar vibes. He’s rich, so crazy expensive bikes and accessories are almost always a great deal because they’re in his budget and high quality.
Ethan Klein I honestly don’t know why I ever liked him apart from the copyright lawsuit with Matt Hoss. I appreciated the goofs, but for some reason it took me way too long to see that some of those people in no way shape or form deserved that treatment. Patrice Wilson for example, not to mention later when he devoted his entire life to hate watching Hasan and Hasan-adjacents while being incredibly deceptive about his and his wifes views on Israel. I ditched him before all that, but man what a massive shitshow he turned his channels into.
EEVBlog got high on his own supply. He’s always been a bit snobbish, especially about sub par equipment that he already made up his mind about before opening, but I saw him talking about running for office with some dogshit platitudes that mean nothing like, “Dave’ll take it apart and fix it all” and seemed very defensive when people were asking what his platform actually would be. God complex vibes from all that.
Gus Johnson because he treated his ex like crap and ran from accountability, and is now sneaking back into YouTube through his and his brother’s account without ever really addressing his failures. He just wants everyone to move on and accept him again.
Cody Ko handled the fallout of sexual assault allegations horribly and is best friends for life with a known rapist, putting that relationship above everything. Gross guy, but before all that came out he was just a funny immature frat guy with a lot of jokes and good reactions. Major failure to meet the moment.
Scott Kilmer - just shitty political takes eventually wore me down.
AVE - shitty political views and then talking about teaching his daughter racist nursery rhymes was the final straw for me.
I stopped watching eevblog during the pandemic, when he regularly ranted about the strict covid rules in Australia “even though there are barely any cases”. Not realizing how those things are connected. Absolute idiot
Casual Navigation
The creator sold it and the last time I was looking it was AI slop
Top Gear, Not sure if this fully counts as YouTube but I’m sure that’s where most of us watched it. It hasn’t been the same since Jeremy, Richard, and James left.
Their spinoff shows haven’t been the same, either. It’s less about the cars and more about playing up their personalities. Or I’m just getting older and am tired of Clarkson being a condescending, belligerent prick about everything. To a lesser degree, I’m a bit bored of Hammond as well. Somehow, May is who I enjoy the most. Geek out, dgaf
Bourbon Moth
Loved to watch his videos as he made woodworking accessible. He also does really good work.
Then one day he built an epoxy river table then promptly blew it up… Literally blew it up… Which spread all that epoxy all over the place in a forested area. I still watched, but next he did a video on rags catching fire and it was all obviously staged. That was it for me, I unsubscribed then told Youtube to never suggest his videos again.
AVE
Funny enough it was AVE that exposed Bourbon Moth on his BS regarding the towels combusting. However, shortly after that whole thing AVE just really went downhill. Instead of being informative and amusing, his videos just turned into the narcissist’s playbook for look at me! Haven’t watched one of his videos since. Which is a shame, because his earlier videos were really interesting.
I used to love AVE, but there was a video where he seemed very proud of the fact that he taught his little girl the racist version of “Eeny Meanie Minnie Moe” and I couldn’t find excuses for him any more. Then he cheered for the small business tyrant trucker revolt later and it affirmed my decision to unsub earlier.
This is VERY recent but NetworkChuck. He’s such a great speaker and his videos were good intros into tech (Linux, networking, etc.) but with practical applicability. I liked that he skewed family-friendly and family positive, and some of the solutions he presented were from his perspective as a father. He was never shy about him being religious and being religiously involved. Imo 100% wholesome.
This year, several weeks of his videos were paid sponsor content for very corporate Cisco BS. Then, he comes back from that and it’s AI stuff that’s kind of a strech for a typical home user… Then “I’m going to end my videos in a prayer”. I unsubscribed right there.
I mean … if he’s using Cisco gear, he’d better be praying.
Cisco’s mitigation consisted of making the router firmware blacklist the user agent name for the ‘curl’ command-line tool …
I don’t know if they degraded over time, but I unsubscribed from SmarterEveryDay because 1.) he kept trying to slip religious BS into videos and then I couldn’t unsee his whole generic youth pastor schtick, 2.) he kept posting weird Physics Girl health update stuff. It just lost me. Not for me. I feel like the glory days of vsauce are also well behind us.
The one that got me was trying to make a grill scrubber made entirely in the US, failing to source all the parts domestically, being somewhat xenophobic in the process, and then having the audacity of selling the thing for $80 (or more) when the exact product exists already for half the price. At some point the whole point of the video changed from “rebuilding manufacturing in America” to “China bad”. I assume the attempt was in defense of the Trump tariffs, but the takeaway is the US is not in a position to manufacture things on a small scale, and throwing tariffs on it won’t change and people will just have to pay more to import items since they can’t be made locally.
Yeah I have the same impression. In one of his last videos, the one about Pompeii he advised against kids watching because a cartoonish dick showed on a wall. I’d agree, kids shouldn’t watch, not because the dick, but his sickening puritism.
So it is because of the dick… narrating\hosting.
I’m just waiting for someone to uncover that Fireship is a secret Nazi, he gives me all the same vibes as the internet historian
The channel is owned by private equity
Same one that bought Veritasium, iirc
MKBHD. He used to be, IMO, the best tech channel out there. The reviews were honest, well produced, and held companies’ feet to the fire. The old MKBHD poked fun at the companies’ shortcomings (I specifically remember him telling iPhone users to add a widget - then going “oh, wait…”). The new MKBHD interviews Tim Cook and doesn’t properly question any of the BS he speaks.
He’s really good at trying to mow down kids in suburbs, though
I’ve been watching the Kings and Generals channel for a number of years now and I’m noticing the quality starting to waver a bit in the last couple years.
I no longer get excited about a new Veritasium video.
I also don’t get excited when the title and thumbnail change 5 times in a week.I enjoyed their recent video on power law distributions and why they dramatically change how you should operate in those domains.
They also did some good content a short while ago explaining why Monsanto and Dupont are problematic.
That said you are right about the thumbnails since when I looked at the channel to double check that it was veritasium I was thinking of the title and thumbnail are completely different for all of them.
I have a browser extension that blocks thumbnails on YouTube because I got tired of seeing people’s creepy facial expressions.
He got bought by a private equity firm, don‘t be surprised
Why? I still love their stuff. The thumbnail shit is annoying though, he’s said in the past they do it to boost engagement or something.
New thumbnails mean people are more likely to click thinking it’s a new video
Yesnt. Channels are A/B testing different thumbnails to see which ones work better. It can have massive effects.
It’s not a simple “thumbnail gets changed, get more clicks”
I did this on one of their videos just last week. Annoyed the piss out of me. I think they changed the title too.
Wouldn’t surprise me to know they changed the title. I haven’t seen it personally as the people I follow seem to be honest. But it doesn’t surprise me given that clicks increase revenue.
Even news headlines change if they’re not seeing uptake at what they think they should be for a particular story
A lot of the videos aren’t even made by him anymore.
That’s true and a bit of a bummer but I think those videos are still great. I don’t care that much who makes them as long as the quality is good.
Binging with Babish - used to be a fantastic set of recipes and takes on cooking that I really enjoyed trying to make, then got into the serious money and jumped the shark, both in “I bought my brother a Tesla/fulfilled a fan dream” and “this week we’re using this dehydrator” ways (that meant I just wasn’t going to be able to even imagine using the techniques and knowledge on show).
Ohhh same. I use to love his stuff then realized I hadn’t watched for awhile. I went to the channel, saw the videos and remembered why I stopped lol
It was the migration from cooking demonstrations to celebrity presence content (Babsih tries every X, Babish ranks every Y).
Cooking demos keep the focus on the food; techniques, presentation, and results. Plus having an entertaining and charismatic host.
Now those videos lean on the now-recognizable host being entertaining and charismatic, and doing… whatever. And it kind of makes sense in a marketplace-y sort of way. I can watch anybody cook, but Babish has the corner on Babish content, so why not lean into that? Also I’m sure the guy gets tired of making the same content over and over again, so he’s trying to find something interesting that catches on.
I see Nat from Nats What I Reckon doing the same thing. And good on them for trying new stuff.
Babish did recently do a bit of a “Yeah, even we’re bored with this now” video and has gone back to his roots a bit.
It looks like he also spun off another channel to host the “Ranked By Babish” style content called Beyond Babish
Which is a fine alternative. Sometimes I want food content, sometimes I want food adjacent. He is very good at both IMO, but the reasons we gave a shit about his opinion isnt because he makes ranking lists.
The only one that I unsubbed to pretty fast was the 8bit guy. I generally enjoyed his videos and then in one of them, he had a fairly rare IBM PC and for some reason, he sticks a screwdriver into the power supply and blows a component.
But what really turned me off was when footage of him turned up on Reddit, taken by himself, of shopping in a place like Costco with his assault rifle on his back. I think he was taking pleasure in scaring some of the customers too.
(I think I’ve remembered that correctly)
Anyway, never went back to his channel after that.
I still cringe about the moment he used a Dremel on that old prototype because he couldn’t be bothered to get the correct screwdriver
What the fuck
Smashing that unsubscribe button now. Like, fucking ew dude, don’t fucking open carry at Costco you numpty fuck. Ugh…
You make a good point. I should really unsubscribe from all US content.
I remember the backlash he got from that with the IBM PC prototype. He didn’t handle the reception well if I recall, having made one big or two ‘woe is me’ videos.
There’s something about that guy’s demeanor that I never liked, like he fits the quirky, socially inept, wimpy kind of a nerd. It’s astounding he even has a wife at all, much less one he fucked to have a kid with.
He never shuts up about his crappy games too.
Oh, I always sensed something was off there. Oof.
I used to love that channel. Such a shame.
Mark Rober
He’s been going harder and harder into the Mr Beast format, and it’s off-putting. I’m still subscribed for now, but I almost never watch his videos unless the topic seems interesting.
That hotel demolition video could have been really cool
Instead it was just… Boring and weirdly edited
Since he started that subscription box company his focus shifted from telling a cool story through a creation or robot to creating a video that can sell the most boxes for him
He’s just part of a huge machine now. And he looks tired as hell sometimes.
He creeps me out. Some uncanny valley thing, like maybe plastic surgery?
He’s definitely been working out a lot, potentially juicing.
Yeah, his more recent videos seem to be more about the spectacle, rather than the education or interesting subject matter.
