Seeing the other post here about YouTuber that went downhill and seeing content creators I am familiar with makes me sad. But how about those that still makes great, high quality content?
Technology Connections
One of the most informative channels I’ve ever watched. I recommend his dishwasher video, because everybody is doing it wrong.
Been on reddit for over a decade, never heard of this channel. On lemmy since a few weeks, I keep reading about him and his dishwasher video at least twice a week.
And yes, I’ve watched it a couple of weeks ago, it is good. I’ll have to watch some of his other videos sometimes
I love his videos on CDs and LaserDisks
His one about basic style rice makers is fantastic
He’s a big Fediverse guy, too. Very active on Mastodon.
Absolutely love him.
Was going to comment this
Ze best
Tom Scott
Won’t he stop doing videos in like a week?
I think he’s gonna slow down on his main channel, but still upload. He does have a second channel as well. Tbf he’s been doing his thing for 10 years
The back log is great and still very watchable.
There’s no backlog if you’ve seen them all #notastalker
I remember subscribing to his channel 20 years ago.
hbomberguy
SELL THEIR HOUSES TO WHO BEN? FUCKING AQUAMAN?
IT WAS THEM’LL
And Dan Olson (Folding Ideas)
Dan’s videos have gotten better over time.
I JUST recently found out about his Donkey Kong 64 Nightmare stream and just how much fucking money he raised for charity by torturing himself for 58 hours.
He’s an angel.
CGP Grey
I can’t get enough flag videos
Tom Scott is a beacon of YouTube quality.
He never had a phase where all of his videos were 10:00 for the algorithm, he never jumps on topical shit for clicks, he just talks about genuinely interesting shit, and has gotten to do so on a higher and higher budget.
He has diversified, and has other channels that interface with other YouTubers in gameshow and stuff. But it’s all still legit content.
And a deep cut from 9 years ago. Same kind of content. Slightly lower quality but… Guys been doing this kind of “hey I think this is neat let me tell you about it” for a decade, without becoming a dingbat.
You get the idea.
Unfortunately not for much longer, though
Video icon has giant red text saying “NOBODY SURVIVES”. Open with Tom Scott standing at a gate to the Chernobyl exclusion zone
“Today I’m here to talk to you about something dark, something that has produced so much pain, something that decays life itself. Me standing in Chernobyl actually has nothing to do with it, because pulls up a laptop showing a game I’m referring to League of Legends”
Primitive Technology
He’s mastered the bronze age and is making progress on the iron age, all by himself.
Kind of skipped bronze, since there aren’t ready sources of copper and tin on his property. But yes his experiments with iron processing have been interesting. Pretty incredible what can be managed with such simple tools.
Gaming
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EthosLab - most authentic Minecraft YouTuber around. No trash clickbait, cringeworthy attempts to appeal to children, ad spam, etc. Just a dude chilling out and playing Minecraft.
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Battle(non)sense - Tests various input lag reduction tech + strategies. Input Lag: Low DPI vs High DPI - turns out increasing your DPI can significantly reduce input lag! AMD AntiLag+ vs Nvidia Reflex - turns out not only does AMD’s solution trigger anti-cheat, but it also offen increases system latency.
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Marblr - High quality analysis of weird game behavior. Mostly Overwatch for now. Overwatch: The Effectiveness of Shield Spinning
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People Make Games - Videos about games and the gaming industry. Highly accessible to folks not familiar with the industry. Making Sense of VR Chat, the Metaverse People Actually Like
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NoClip - Crowd funded feature length video game documentaries. Making of Horizon Zero Dawn
Makers
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ColinFurze - builds crazy stuff and does an amazing job of it! Currently building an underground garage at his house that connects to his underground tunnel system.
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I Did a Thing - Australian man with a great sense of humor. Makes ridiculous stuff. Giant Beyblade destroys stuff
…more in Honytawk’s comment below
Science + Technology
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Applied Science - In depth videos about random science-y things this dude finds interesting. No clickbait, just an excited dude talking about a project he tried.
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Atomic Frontier - A lot like Tom Scott. He’s also a rare case where the video is more interesting than the title/thumbnail. Generally focused on science-y topics + has shockingly high production value considering the dude seems to be an overworked college student.
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NileRed/NileBlue - Crazy in depth chemistry videos. Personally find NileBlue more entertaining as he tends to explore things he’s not that great at.
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Practical Engineering - Explanations of various civil engineering concepts.
Other
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Krazam - Legendary comedy channel focused on software engineering related topics. Most famous video - microservices.
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You Suck At Cooking - Short videos presenting recipes in an entertaining way.
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Studio Binder ; High quality videos about all things movie/video production. Owned by a movie production software company so you’re gonna see ads for it in every video but SponsorBlock gets rid of that with no issues. Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement - Every Technique Explained
Your makers can be padded out a bit more.
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I did a thing - dry humor Australian who walks barefoot and wears an apron.
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Michael Reeves - chaotic coding goblin that makes robots
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TheBackyardScientist - Floridaman using his backyard to explode stuff
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Mark Rober - Nasa engineer explaining science to kids with great editing
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William Osman - Collaboration expert, you will see him in all the other channels mentioned above.
1 more dude I skipped but I’ll put here - Stuff Made Here - Insanely skilled engineer who seems to be able to make just about anything. Skipped because his thumbnails are horribly clickbaity.
Don’t know about this person, but honestly the thumbnail is pretty tame compared to majority of YouTube ngl
If you like making/engineering videos, don’t let a thumbnail dissuade you. It’s always in the details. Stuff Made Here is literally top 3 for me. He’s amazing.
Been scrolling to make sure he was included somewhere. Cool projects and so many Easter eggs in the videos. One of the best maker channels for sure
Thanks for the list, I’m sure others will appreciate it!
I’m actually subscribed to almost all of those channels lmao. I skipped several because I’m being picky, and I mean picky. You probably won’t agree with a lot of my decisions. Here’s what I mean…
- I did a thing - forgot about him I’ll add him to the list
- Micheal Reeves - Last real video was a year ago
- Backyard scientist - Unsubscribed a while ago due to clickbait. From a quick glance his videos seem fine now though.
- Mark Rober - Video quality has been going downhill. More and more clickbait, and videos seem to spend a lot more time than necessary on “look at our happy family fun time we’re having.”
- William Osman - I like him just not enough to put him on the list
They all do a podcast called safety third, I watched it for a while but I stopped cus the content feels really lazy. And when I realized most of them have slowed down their main channel video output a ton like Osman and NileRed and Reeves I just got bored of the lot. Like their videos are all dumb shit like “i gave a snake legs” and it’s the most half assed 3d printed shit the barely works and they just act like teenage boys the entire video, then look at view count and it gets millions of views. Kinda starts to feel dumb and more like youtube celebrity shit than actual quality maker content, sorta pisses me off a little seeing them get so much money making like 1 video every 6 months where they build literal garbage. And they sorta brag about it in their podcast. It sorta feels like they are slowly slipping into more cringry content like trash-taste kinda stuff and im just not into it anymore.
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Second on Etho, he’s remarkably constant all the way from when Minecraft was in alpha.
Been watching etho for at least a decade if not more, one of my all time favorites
Oh shit a Marblr shoutout! I love his stuff, his propensity for finding and diagnosing bugs is out of this world. He used to stream on twitch and it was really fun because it would essentially be a behind the scenes look at all the custom workshop stuff he’s built in order to reproduce bugs and get footage for his videos.
My homie (don’t actually know him) Road guy Rob makes some of the BEST videos on roads and the engineering of traffic systems and infrastructure. His content is insanely good and wayyyyy better than any small YouTuber should be.
+1. I love this guy because he’s not just another one of those new urbanism YouTubers complaining that every American doesn’t have 10 trains showing up at their house every minute and anyone that disagrees is mentally compromised (see: “car brain”). He instead focuses on feasible, practical, incremental solutions to our problems over shouting about the “kill all cars with fire immediately” solutions.
I didn’t post him because I figured the audience on Lemmy would eat me alive for saying all that.
I think all of the Hermits are still really good.
You win. Nice effort.
Veritasium is one of the oldest and consistently greatest science channels
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LGR.
As a DOS gamer, he’s pretty much me in a more American and charismatic package.
Primative Technology. A dude out in the bush building houses and tools out of mud, sticks, and rocks without speaking a word.
I’m a fan of him.
Do you watch How To Make Everything?
I know there are several similar channels so maybe I’m mixed up, but wasn’t this the one where they found out the guy was using machinery to create his projects off camera and claiming it was all done by hand?
Nope. This guy is the real deal. Nothing he does is large scale or unbelievable. If you turn on captions he walks you through what his thought process is/what he is doing. Very enjoyable.
Nah, this is the guy that basically spawned the entire “genre”. He’s legit as can get.
CAPTAIN DISILLUSION
deleted by creator
Definitely some of the best production value on youtube. Even his stuff from 10+ years ago holds up incredibly well aside from the resolution.
Tom Scott. Only gotten better with time.
Seems like he’s been doing his thing for the entire existence of the internet. Silly little flash animations and games in the early 2000’s and now his ‘true facts’ of animals videos. Seems to keep true to his own style, ever evolving as it may be, but always similar- and maybe thats what I find comforting- he’s been there for most of the 20+ years I’ve been ‘surfin the web’, as the kids like to say.
I was hoping someone would post ZeFrank! His True Facts series is exactly what education content should be - entertaining, interesting, funny, and most importantly, rigorously sourced and credited to the real life scientists and researchers he bases his info on.
For more animal facts, check out Isabella Rossellini “Green Porno”. A little more risqué, and a different kind of humor, though interesting and educational as well. It was a Sundance thing from about 10 years ago that was semi ‘viral’ at the time.
He is also able to fart bees!
This was my answer! I watched a couple old videos last night actually and then watched some new ones. He’s gotten better in my opinion. What you said is right. It’s in the same style but now it’s more polished.
He left for a while to do buzzfeed content. But now he is back Those were the dark years lol
I was wondering where he went, very happy when he come back.
3blue1brown
Makes great visual math videos. Without him I would have never studied electronics.
Also wrote open source software to generate those fantastic visualizations. It has been forked and is maintained, and it has therefore influenced the whole genre positively.
On the topic, Brady Haran’s channels are also putting out great educational content.
Damn, I was going to post this list, you beat me to it though.
I love that whole maths group, Brady Haran, Matt Parker, Hannah Fry, James Grimes, Ben Sparks, Ayliean MacDonald… (and so many more.)
As soon as I get a notification that a new Numberphile video drops, I’m watching it ASAP.
Without him I’d have failed linear algebra
Consumer Tech: mkbhd, LTT, MrMobile, Dave2D, JerryRigEverything, UrAvgConsumer, GamersNexus
Geeky Tech: TechnoTim, ServeTheHome, Explaining Computers, Level1Techs, Jeff Geerling, , Low Spec Gamer, Modern Vintage Gamer, Wolfgangs Channel, Network Chuck, Project Farm, Tech Rules
Smart Home: Everything Smart Home, The Hook Up, Smart Home Solver, Paul Hibbert, Reed’s Smart Home, NotEnoughTech
Popular science: Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, Smarter Every Day, Hank Green
Science: Cleo Abram, Physics Girl, Nile Red/Blue, Computerphile, NumberPhile, Minutephysics, The SciShow, PeriodicVideos, Sixty Symbols, Scott Manley, The Action Lab, 3blue1brown, Kyle Hill, Steve Mould, Fermilab, PBS Space Time
Engineering: Practical Engineering, B1M, Coby Explanes, engineerguy, Technical Connections, Simone Giertz
Entertainment with some science/engineering sparkled in: Colin furze, Mark Robert, Slow Mo Guys, Johnny Harris, TheBackyardScientist
Entertainment: CGP Grey, Tom Scott, Max Fosh, Lockpicking Lawyer, Legal Eagle, Kitboga, Not Just Bikes, Cheddar
Docutainment: Cold Fusion, Wendover Productions/Half as Interesting, Anything with Simon Whistler (Megaprojects, etc)
Programming: Fireship, The Primeagen, Tech world with Nana, freCodeCamp, Ben Eater, Jake Wright, Dreams of Code, mCoding
Electronics: Andreas Spiess, GreatScott!, Tall Paul Tech, EEV
Chess: Anna Cramling, Gotham Chess, Hikaru
Cars: Carwow, Out of Spec Reviews, TeslaBjorn, Throttle House, Engineering Explained, autoTrader, Donut, Hagerty, RSEV
Travel: HONEST GUIDE (the Prague guy), Pack Hacker, SV Delos, Tim Traveller, Trek Trendy
History: the fat electrician, historigraph, history matters,
Woodworking: Shaun Boyd, Blacktail Studio, Foureyes furniture
Late Night: Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel, Daily Show, Last Week Tonight
Russia/Ukraine: LazerPig, 1420 (Daniil Orain), Perun (edited to add)
If you speak German: HausbauHelden, FelixBa, Lohnt sich das, Finanzfluss, Next Move, Autogefühl, Smarthome yourself, Jonas Winkler, Held der Steine
Ltt is debatable now tbh.
Edit: if you aren’t aware of the situation that happened, here’s a video from Gamers Nexus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
They’ve more or less addressed this issue. Their videos are like double checked now and you can kinda tell.
I think they corrected, they don’t upload strictly one video per day anymore. I’m hope the working conditions / stress for the staff improved. They content produced is still pretty entertaining.
For factual info about a purchase I would trust GamersNexus, tho. And their content about cars sucks, Alex is a terrible car reviewer.
meh. their content is at the same level it was before, they just look over the specs twice before uploading now.
Half of the channel you mention here were listed in the thread about youtubers who went to shit, which triggered this one here…
It’s funny because I read through that other thread about creators going downhill and (while I don’t know most in either thread) you mention a couple of them here.
Interesting, I just checked it out, and it seemed people really idealize “the good old days” plus they go absolutely crazy the second a youtuber wants to earn some money doing what they do.
Here’s what I think of the individual channels that I saw mentioned:
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LTT had a big controversy after the Gamers Nexus video and it looks like they corrected. MKBHD was never super deep, he does reviews after a week or two of using a phone. You never get a full picture with just one review, if you are interested in spending your money watch a few, otherwise it’s just entertainment. I like LTTs server/Linus’ home series and MKBHD for the visuals.
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Mark Rober had a few bad videos a year ago and now has a product that he sells, that fits perfectly with his theme “learning engineering by building stuff”. But his videos were never always perfect, people just remember the good ones.
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The Primeagen reacting to stuff is the very reason I watch him (actually mostly listen while doing other stuff). He reads articles about programming/It stuff and comments about them. Yeah, sometimes he’s not an expert on the topic, but it’s still informative and very often he admits it from the beginning.
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The lock picking lawyer picks locks. I don’t know what people expect him to do, there’s only so much variety. The 100th video about picking locks is not going to be so thrilling as the first one you watched… And again, him trying to monetize by creating products related to his hobby and selling them doesn’t seem like a capital sin to me.
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Edit, because I forgot about Veritasium and Kurzgesagt: I completely disagree. Veritasium has gotten better with time and the last year has been awesome. The “Epic Math Duel” (somewhat older than a year, but the channel is 10 years old, so relatively recent), “Franz Haber” or “Sawing Machines” are excellent videos. Kurzgesagt is completely transparent about their funding and cite all sources, if some people feel a video about using stars as fuel for intergalactic travel or about Dyson spheres is “capitalist propaganda”, that is their right to an opinion I guess. If anything I would criticize for being a bit “too dreamy/science fiction”, but the visuals are great and it’s a great watch nonetheless.
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Sebastian lague and acerola are some other programming channels I like
I just checked Sebastian Lague. Last video is more than an hour and about chess bots, so two hobbies in one, awesome, thanks!
I will check acerola later, but seems very focused on graphics, not my biggest interest :)
Rex Krueger, Stumpy Nubs, Jonathan Katz-Moses , Bourbon Moth Woodworking for woodworking.
AlphaPhoenix, Applied Science for science.
Strange Loop Conference, and many such other for programming.
No Steve Mould? Definitely up there imo.
Edit: nvm I see him up there! I overlooked it the first glance.
i also love crinacle for the occasional review of audio gear i will never buy.
and also all of the collabs he’s doing so i can recommend decent IEMs to people.
also in woodworking mokongtv123 has so much amazing builds , worth checking out
Dang! Thanks for the detailed list, this had to take a while! Definitely going to look through it when I get a chance!
Not really commenting beyond the fact that you have a separate category for Russia/Ukraine and have lazerpig on it? I think he did like three maybe four videos on it. Max. And you didn’t even mention Perun…
Does lazerpig still claim mathilda 2s were immune to flak 88s?
Lemmino creates amazing documentaries about a wide variety of topics (DB Cooper, JFK Assassination, Jack the Ripper). He uploads very infrequently, but it’s totally worth it when he does.
Barely Sociable is similar in style and uploads high quality pieces about various mysterious occurrences.
Drachinifel uploads frequent, well researched content about naval history from the age of sail to the 1950s.
Our Own Devices is a very small channel that feels similar to Technology Connections (another excellent channel). He uploads content about the history and inner workings of old devices of all sorts.
Throttle House is the best car channel on YouTube.
Jason Cammisa’s Revelations series on the Hagerty channel has really good deep dives into the histories of some important cars.
Aging Wheels/Under Dunn are excellent car and/or wood project channels. Chickens make frequent appearances too.
Mentour Pilot has excellent analysis of airline crashes.
Jay Foreman uploads funny and informative content about maps (Map Men) and tidbits about the history of London.
Cathode Ray Dude uploads deep dives into weird computers, computer peripherals, and old cameras. I’ve watched his half hour video about modems at least 5 times.
Mustard uploads excellent content about crazy ideas in transportation (like the Soviet love affair with the ekranoplan).
I don’t understand how Drach has the time to make so much video when I don’t even have the time to watch all of it.
For real. When he releases the 5 hour Drydock episode every month, I usually spend the next week watching it at 2 times speed while I make dinner. Crazy amount of content.
