thread of youtubers whomst are not terrible

a place to talk Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, and anyone else anyone cares to recommend or complain about, prompted by the former's newfound level of popularity, but pls feel free to talk about any cool #content providers, not just politics folx

thx comrade

also there was some discussion on the second thoughts thread of Natalie being problematic in some way but I couldn't really follow it, so pls hash that out here if you are so inclined

I've heard good things abou hbomberguy but can't really bring myself to click on someone who uses formulations like "x is terrible and here's why", regardless of what the x is (well, maybe if it's capitalism).

hbomberguy is tight with the other two youtubers already mentioned so he tends to get lumped in as well, but my big problem with his videos is they're too damn long. if you care about the politics of gaming you could do a lot worse and he is quite funny and charming at times, but he could really take a page from Contra when it comes to concision

For anyone who's curious about Lindsay Ellis, her three-parter on the Hobbit films is a bit of a form-buster when it comes to YouTube video essays, particularly for the way it blossoms from an essay into an actual documentary partway through

danielfromsl has popped up on ILG plenty but I think he potentially has mass appeal. Kind of the Nathan Fielder/Eric Andre of online gaming, reliably hilarious.

Kinda wish this thread was a video game-free zone but whatever, that's just me. Carry on.

I wish that too, but it's kind of an impossible wish given how everyone plays video games obsessively

Anyway, I have lots of quasi-viable options for this thread but I don't know which ones to foreground

I'll say that Jon Bois >>>>>>>

Well, NB, the only other game-related videos I really watch are Skate 3 glitch compilations so clearly I'm mostly just in it for the lols.

how did I not know that Jon Bois has an entire channel

speaking of which, let's begin the actual youtubing with the best video on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2anpoKeNM

(although really his Pretty Good and Chart Party series are MANDATORY viewing)

Stevem does pretty good videos about Japanese music (from Jazz to City Pop to Japanese Hip-Hop) and the more respectable end of anime (Miyazaki etc.)

Vinilteca is good if you want to get a grasp on the Brazilian music canon but it's in Portuguese.

Strictly Dumpling is my guilty pleasure food go-to. It's pretty vapid, dude doesn't have a ton of charisma and the music's terrible BUT he does seem to know his shit and has a stomach of steal, so seeing him eat prodigious amounts of grub throughout South East Asia is pretty entertaining. I'm sure accounts like that are a dime a dozen but this one's at least well edited and doesn't have too many calls to action.

incidentally, since you mentioned calls to action, if anyone doesn't know what that means, the most recent Lindsay Ellis video is a meta meditation on the youtuber business model that gets into all this stuff and it's a good overview of the madnesses inherent to the platform

Yeah, that's where I learned the term :)

I go back and forth on whether to just block Youtube entirely. As much as I like Contrapoints and free music, it's a site that activates my worst internet compulsions. Like she put it in the CTH interview, "Youtube forced me to watch it."

Not crazy about how this conflates Disney and Warner Bros but whatever, I guess both could be equally restrictive in their own ways:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8-09DbxHBU

Primitive Technology, in which a man makes all kinds of things using pretty much only what he finds in the woods:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE

You Suck at Cooking, a fine decoction of deadpan self-deprecation and sheer absurdity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHF2hDuH5HE

Michael New is a guy who teaches music theory & composition basics in a very accessible way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhJsShMF2g

scott brown carpentry & the MRE man

I assume people know about Simone Giertz and her intentionally-shitty robots but if not well then there you go.

Someone tried to get me into asmr videos because he thought it would totally be my thing. IT IS TOTALLY NOT MY THING.

I like this funny South African woman who does car reviews that contain some great real life info and also bad singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCw6N5iNV8g (that statium is in Cape Town, by the way)

http://www.youtube.com/user/julietmcguire/videos

cool channel having weirdos guide you through their tiny weirdo houses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXRJE2caPNY

in a way, it's anti-youtuber in that it's more errol morris than the "me-me-me-me i have a take on everything!" approach that youtube seems to encourage. speaking of which, I think errol morris's son has a channel where it's just him taking a bunch of drugs.

you suck at cooking was a great call

oh yeah scott brown carpentry

kiwami japan's latest bestrides youtube like a colossus

Polygon did a list of best video essays of 2018, with the usual suspects (ContraPoints, Linsday Ellis) present. The last one about a scene from Tarkovsky's Nostalgia felt to me like a bunch of interesting ideas that never really came together; now I'm in the madness of the two hour video about parasocial relationships.

lol, forgot to link: https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/28/18156334/best-youtube-video-essays-2018-watch

Noah Caldwell-Gervais deserves a mention.

Ostensibly long, literate and humane retrospective reviews of video games by someone who toiled in pizza delivery, but he's also adopted a vagabond lifestyle out of a restored VW bus with his new wife, and his video essays on their journeys through the US West put the rest of his work in perspective.

Todd in the Shadows reviews pop music, and recently, 1 hit wonders. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to find he lurks here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwl9xmM3IuQ&t=758s

I watched some of the parasocial relationships series. V interesting but yeah crazy long.

todd in the shadows does lurk here or at least has before. one of his videos directly cited an ilm thread in the description (a compilation of songs that actually stop when the singer says stop, like the ilm thread on the same subject).

found the parasocial relationship video basically unwatchable. it was heavily rt'd by that whole circle of #content creators (a comically large proportion of ppl on that list are friends and frequent collaborators -- the fellow who wrote the list might as well have had it served up to him by algorithmically generated recommendations) so i tried to watch it around the time it came out. her intro video on the subject was good/interesting but the rest was just tediously extended to an absurd degree not at all justified by the insight provided in the commentary or the ridiculous number of clips of bo burnham. i don't think i would have even found it necessary if i were stoned.

anyway that circle of creators is sometimes informally referred to as 'leftube' or similar by its audience due to i guess being leftists and/or critical of the worryingly visible far-right factions of the site. i am personally very unimpressed by this collective's obvious awareness of, and apparent lack of interest in directly addressing, a phenomenon that any leftist viewing them will have noticed: virtually all of these creators are white, and given that most if not all of them rely heavily on cultural touchstones and memes to illustrate their broader theses, the narrowness of the cultural literacy that's evident in their work (this includes both lindsay ellis and todd in the shadows btw) will serve as a significant handicap to creating a space on youtube representing their political leanings that does not also reproduce racial separation and hierarchy. contemporary online meme culture is spawned in enormous part within black culture, so their utter cluelessness about, say, the work of any currently active black musician who isn't favorably covered on pitchfork and explicitly 'political' enough to make sense to them, coupled with their inability to include anyone who does have this level of cultural literacy in their frequent collaborative efforts is disappointing to say the least.

when this obvious phenomenon was brought up on twitter, the response from these creators was merely to retweet contrapoints's quote-tweet of a user's list of left-leaning creators of color along with the message "let's make leftube more representative!" or somesuch. meanwhile i am not especially hopeful that they won't continue to collaborate exclusively with one another, continue to congregate only with one another at fan meet-and-greets, #content creator conferences and the like, etc. etc. maybe one of them will retweet kat blaque or the1janitor once every month or something.

i have unsubscribed from both of the 'leftube' creators to whom i'd previously subscribed (contrapoints and hbomberguy). while i will probably continue to enjoy their work when i do come across it, i would rather spend whatever time i use actively seeking out content looking for creators who are not creating networks (because these creators are not just creating content, but networks of content!) that are so insular.

that's a fair criticism. I would hope that in time the network becomes less insular but at the same time I'm happy to throw some $$ at anyone fighting the RW content machine and doing so in a way that's engaging

this has 1.1k *replies* so far

Have my videos helped to change your viewpoint (about the Alt-Right, trans issues, whatever else)? Are you willing to talk to a journalist about it? Respond to this tweet if so! 🙏🙏🙏

— Natalie Wynn 🦋 (@ContraPoints) January 10, 2019

I'm a bit less fond of Hbomber because I think he makes less effort to be approachable to the opposition, very different from Contra and Shaun the skull.

learned a lot from the latest Contra video

has anyone else noticed a marked uptick in complaining about the garbage YouTube recommendations?

and speaking of Hbomberguy, he's currently like 27 hours into a Twitch charity stream for Mermaids and is up to $100k, so I think it's safe to say the community is growing

Retail Archaeology
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR2LNeZSqINp0WTd_eWCIGg

Dead malls, zombie retail stores, etc

Harris is still going, $133k / 33hrs

youtube's sidebar recommendations are inexcusably shit and compromised and i feel guilty about continuing to use youtube knowing sidebar recs still exist but honestly i find youtube too useful to seriously consider quitting.

hey so @AOC HAS JOINED THE STREAM GO WATCH AND DONATE https://t.co/Fz8plugN5y

— Mary Ellen (@alissacaliente) January 20, 2019

I just caught the very end. Crazy.

I can't see it well on my phone, what's the $$ up to?

Over $221k. Since I clicked a few minutes ago they've made about five thousand.

I don't feel old until I see how popular twitch streams are.

I wonder whether AOC is a gamer.

I would say not because it is a total time suck and she seems actually really productive.

Good enough for me.

Here’s @aoc talking about how Nintendo 64 was the best system. She’s on @twitch helping to raise money for trans kids. pic.twitter.com/cJIfUif1mv

— New Super Blood Wolf Moon Bros. U Deluxe (@GenePark) January 20, 2019

Loved the Youtube episode, Simon. You each found your way to a different circle of hell.

Ha, thanks! We suffered for your entertainment.

Ash Sarkar interviewed Harris

https://novaramedia.com/2019/01/23/donkey-kong-is-beautiful-ash-meets-hbomberguy/

perhaps a cum factory lives in you

listen I feel like this thread has maybe gotten too personal? I'd like to just focus on the raccoons

xp That's what my dad told me as a boy. I guess I just stopped believing.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/raccoon-whisperer-jim-blackwood-1.3894924

https://austinkleon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/PUpqokK-e1539020529199.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-WjIVxyR5c

has anybody mentioned this guy yet, i enjoy his videos (most of which have less swearing)

the bigfoot all gas no brakes is fucking great
can AGNB get a thread already

50 000!

first AGNB i didn't like tbh

does AGNB only interview people/stuff he doesn't actually like, or is that just an editorial strategy for rackin up the clicks?

he's good at what he does, and godbless ye the COVID for isolating me this year so that I can familiarize myself with the content that I'm probably too old for anyway, but is this really what the kids are approving and wanting more of? from what I can tell it's just Vice but from a more kosher funding source

even when it's not madlads and madlasses he has obvious affection for and it's more expressly political, he'll always give people on the 'progressive' side a platform to speak as well

that said i couldn't watch the bigfoot one

australian youtuber 'I did a thing' remains the best tho

enjoyed bedroom anthropologist and his relationship with his stuffed jay, ty lukas

the great explorer of our age has returned, now with 1x girlfriend on kayak-dragging duties

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDPhdkdR9qI

Great to end the week with some GeoWizard straight line adventures. A promising start, I guess things might get a lot trickier...

boutique vodka infused with greek flavors named Feta Alcohol Syndrome.

This Franco-Ontarian one-man orchestra specializes in mostly acoustic covers that effortlessly capture the lockdown spirit of 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_02vCoxAYP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEtSSNNp2Gk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEPPAAJhXyw

First one comes with a bonus doggo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FucG0GQrEbU

Really into this guy lately

i love that pump up the jam

not sure what to make of this guy yet, but, he's a hobo. he rides the rails

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TheHoboShoe

i have watched exactly 0 of their vlogs but this goat farm has live barn cams that i put on all the time during the workday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SymanSaysFa

oh i just realized ilx mucks up youtube urls hang on

Hobo Shoestring looking out over Chattanooga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYctSLAUC8

Syman Says goat barn LIVE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfbmJIvwzgI

if u really need some slowness in ur life, here's the Duluth Harbor Cam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPM2pxCNHlQ

Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration, 187 Flaggy Meadow Rd, Gorham, ME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBwJ2PnUksY

^ have really enjoyed his videos recently

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that lots of YouTube series in 2020 are nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like any particular series and would like to see them have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

New ContraPoints out. Topic: J. K. Rowling.

this should go great

I haven't watched it yet because it's, well, 1h30 mins long, but I look forward to hearing her deliver the line 'He never said he hated the jews. He is simply concerned about the overrepresentation of Jewish people in media and banking' (quoted in the YT comments).

I'm skipping that one because it's about JK fucking Rowling and I cannot countenance any further promotion (see "Streisand rule") of her or anything related to her fucking media empire, which has poisoned the brains of at least two generations at this point.

anecdotally I have some normie friends who only became aware of trans issues when this Rowling thing exploded and Contra is good at laying out situations in a way that reaches those types so this is good

yeah I'm only a few minutes in and I like her approach already, I think this is actually useful

framing it as "let's use this as a case study to determine the nature, origins and methodology of bigotry" is a pretty good angle, or at least it hooked me, and her videos have been hit or miss for me lately

anecdotally I have some normie friends who only became aware of trans issues when this Rowling thing exploded and Contra is good at laying out situations in a way that reaches those types so this is good

I watched it today.

As an old "normie" ish guy I think she was very good at spelling out the red flags and tropes that I could easily miss.

yes I thought this was one of her best, a lot of the jokes land and she navigates dissection and (the appropriate amount of) empathy as basically no one else I am aware of in the "same field" even cares to try to do

I watched yesterday and totally agree it's one of her best in the last year. She's very good at foregrounding the concerns of the opposing view in her videos in a completely uninflammatory way that (I imagine) disarms those people before they've had a chance to look away from and knee-jerk refute her explication of things. At least some comments seem to suggest this is the case.

Loved the idealism at the end too that Rowling could be the one in a million to change her outlook. If anything could work...

Watched it last night. Don't have anything to add other than: everyone otm.

yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgxQMgw4bA

The Raccoon Whisperer has expanded his horizons and remains extremely wholesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwuClKryAhQ

lol Zen School Of Motoring got a BBC deal!

I am addicted to a few music reaction youtubers, not in a particularly healthy way, I keep staying up late impulsively going through their channels picking out all the songs I like. if I could stop after 2 or 3 it would be fine, but no, I do not have that kind of self control.

Same. I find it fascinating to watch people react to early Rage Against the Machine for some reason.

I'll watch any reaction video where they do Great Gig in the Sky

yeah I have seen plenty of RATM and Pink Floyd, current favourite is Dave's performance of Black from last year's Brit Awards.

big all gas no brakes energy: nyc edition here
https://www.instagram.com/sidetalknyc/

Did any of his Capitol footage come out?

dude has a tv deal, i'm sure he's either saving it for or to directly promote that, would be hard to imagine more valuable marketing