Inspired by this post but the other way around. Which channels (any subject) do you think have stayed true to their beginnings and are still worth watching today?
My pick would be Gamers Nexus.
Primitive technology. There are many imitators, but the original is a man on his own in Australia. His videos focus on building structures in the woods. Starting with river mud, he will make a furnace in order to make bricks in order to make a building to sleep in in order to use it for kiln drying for larger structures etc…
Be sure to watch with subtitles to read his explanation of things!
Edit to fix: he is based in Australia, not new Zealand.
All true, except he’s in Queensland, Australia.
I’m still amazed he’s alive after all this time working in the Australian jungle
Also needs to be said that he’s been creating for a decade and every video is consistently as good as the last one. The man single handedly spawned an entire genre and he just kept doing his own thing, algorithms and influencer culture be damned.
Very glad to see this mentioned, yet somewhat miffed you think he’s in, I assume “Tropical” New Zealand?
His videos, and those of Lemmino, are the only ones where I’ll set aside a time of day so I can watch them alone and happy.
You can blame this all on me for my ignorance. As someone from the US, I can’t say I am very familiar with the details on Australian versus New Zealand geography. No miffing was intentional, I assure you!
This was also the first channel I thought of when looking at the question. Shame that it created so many low effort imitations that are obviously fake though.
Is there anyone out there that is even vaguely similar without being fake?
I watched this channel for at least 5 years before I knew to turn on the captions!
The various PBS YouTube channels almost never miss.
Some of the best science content on the internet and explains everything in layman’s terms.
For higher level science:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas
Puts up conferences and interviews of some of the top scientific minds on the planet.
PBS spacetime is the only channel I watch at 1x
Tasting History with Max Miller.
I’ll hop on the Technology Connections train and add
Styropyro CathodeRayDude Civvie11 Northernlion
O hey cancer mouse.
I LOVE TC, NL, and Styropyro. I’ll have to check out CRD and Civvie11!
Numberphile and any other channel by Brady Haran.
Computerphile as well.
No captain disillusion?!
What’s no captain disillusion all about?
Captain disillusion is an OG YouTube who never sold out but he also rarely puts out videos unfortunately. Extremely high quality stuff and if you just heard of him now you have a bunch of good videos to go watch now
I haven’t actually seen it myself yet but I believe he makes a cameo in this new Corridor Crew video: https://youtu.be/MVUuoXAkuUg
If you follow his Patreon it’s insane how much he’s working round the clock for that one video a year.
He did make a cameo and that corridor crew video was very well done. Would recommend it when you have the time
The prompt was a question for you lol. You should have just written “captain disillusion” as the reply.
It was meant more like “how come no one has mentioned captain disillusion yet?!”.
That was why I was confused lol
He’s the best. I’m just sad he publishes one video a year
I think a whole lot of “maker” type channels have all stayed pretty solid, off the top of my head
This Old Tony
Adam Savage
Xyla Foxlin
Clickspring
Blondihacks
Colin Furze
Inheritance Machining (though compared to some of the others he’s relatively new)
Stuff Made Here
Jeremy FieldingBranching out a bit
How to drink
Caitlin Doughty (ask a mortician)
LockpickingLawyer
NileRed (and NileBlue)
Tasting History
Townsends
Useful Charts
EDIT: Almost forgot Technology ConnectionsSome of them have changed their format a bit over the years, I don’t think that’s been a negative for any of them. Also due to how YouTube revenue works these days a lot of them have had to rely more heavily on sponsors, patron, merch etc. don’t hate the player for that, hate the game.
Colin is a blast lol
I watched Colin Furze for the first time in some time, recently. I was surprised by how much more calm and measured he seemed. And then I realized it was likely because he was a little older, had more people in his life to be careful for, and probably moving a little slower in general. And then I felt old. And sad. And surprisingly irrelevant.
Clickspring is absolute gold. The guy is crazy talented and to be fair most of the time I don’t know what he’s talking about, I just enjoy watching a master at work.
Practical Engineering. His videos are about all the infrastructure that makes the modern world function.
Project Farm
we’re gonna test that!
Honestly I have begun to question whether Project Farm staying exactly the same is good or not for me as a viewer.
I used to watch every video, even if it was for a tool I’d never need myself. Now on a lot of them, I just tend to watch just the beginning to see the initial assessment of the competing products and the final summary, since I know what the whole middle is going to be.
I’m sure that’s not the healthiest thing for the channel, as it cuts “engagement time” and I’d like to see a heat map to see if I’m not the only one doing this.
I just trust the guy maybe too much at this point, plus since most products I don’t need, I’m not that invested in the minutia show by the main segment of the videos.
None of this is a knock on the channel or his videos, but as the question was about what has stayed good and you are still watching, that made me think how PF was still as good as ever, but that has somewhat reduced my watching of it.
I just wanted to say, y’all are my people, we don’t agree on everything, but I’m glad to have moved to lemmy. The few channels mentioned here that I’m not subbed to, I’ll be checking out.
Smarter Everyday (space, slow mo, manufacturing), PBS Space Time (space, quantum physics, astrophysics…), Xisumavoid (Minecraft Let’s Play), Magnus Midtbø (Climber), Asianometry (technology, manufacturing, science history)
Almost all of the smarter everyday videos I wish were 1/10 of the size, or two videos (learning vs something glittery that he’s distracted by). I’m glad that he’s there for people that enjoy that though
Smarter Everyday has only gotten better and better as he has grown in notoriety. Fantastic content, and not beholden to sponsors.
except him spouting more and more religious shit
Absolutely, he’s getting access to places and hardware that keep pushing the envelope, but still remains that very humble human being he always was. He’s so kind to everybody working in the factory tours. Absolutely recommend. The only thing i’m not a big fan of is the content he produces with weapons, but that’s a cultural thing, i get it.
Hbomberguy has been getting nothing but better.
Foldingideas also has fantastic long form video essays that I really enjoy.
Yeah Folding Ideas is one of the few youtubers I often make a point to watch with my wife as an event. As is Hbomberguy
Similarly, I know controversy follows her everywhere, but contrapoints maintains very good content, and while some of her videos have their issues they tend towards high quality and extremely well thought out, even when I don’t entirely agree with all of the takes she has in them.
Some ones I haven’t seen yet:
- Camping with Steve (relaxed Canadian camping with plenty of dry humour, usually some wild stealth camping adventures)
- Budget-Builds Official (tries out random ass computer hardware and finds its limits)
- dosdude1 (infamous for crazy Mac upgrades that require resoldering BGA chips and chip programming)
- EthosLab (already saw Xisumavoid mentioned, Etho is still happily making mature Minecraft videos)
- Flexiny (ASMR-like videos of mechanics fixing old cars to run again)
- FlyTech Videos (Windows experiments and deep dives into how Win32 and NT do things)
- GIFGAS (usual accomplice with shiey in train surfing, although I enjoy GIFGAS’ edits more than shiey)
- Side note: His videos are taken down regularly so you have to be quick to download them before they disappear
- Hugh Jeffreys (Australian right to repair advocate, usually repairs smartphones but has dabbled into more vintage items recently)
- Janus Cycle (2000s deep retrospectives into technology)
- Plainly Difficult (British industrial accident examinations with wonderfully shoddy graphics)
- polymatt (absolute 3D modelling wizard who takes on restoring vintage tech to beyond brand new with incredible attention to detail, and very engaging edits)
- Seytonic (cyber security news roundup weekly)
- This Does Not Compute (retro computer repairs and retrospectives)
- Usagi Electric (extremely vintage computer repairs, going right back to vacuum tubes to 1980s minicomputers)
Edit: fixed formatting error
Going to be checking some of these out for sure. Nice list!
You and I have very similar viewing tastes. Nice list.
Funny enough, you’re not the first one who’s also noticed this. A couple years ago, me and a colleague (in helpdesk) shared our YouTube subscriptions and found 80% of them matched, and he introduced me to such channels like Usagi Electric.
I do otherwise tend to notice comments on one channel’s videos make references to other channels I also watch (outside of the usual Bringus Studios and DankPods references), so I tend to think I’m part of a larger niche of Gen Z / Millenial computer geeks.
Oh no, my PKCell!
Kent Survival is another relaxing, casual camping channel. Not quite like Steve.
Budget Builds kind of inspired me to fix up this Dell Precision 690 I rescued from the trash.
Polymatt’s video on LGR’s laptop was positively incredible. So good. So impressive.
Ever watch Brick Immortar? Mostly maritime tragedies, and much more dry than plainly difficult. But I kind of feel they are in the same sphere. I fall asleep to them sometimes.
Man, Usagi Electric’s homebrew project is insane.
I could go on and on. So few people I know are interested in this stuff.
Big Old Boats? Hyce? How about Atomic Shrimp? I’m interested in other channels we might share.
Techmoan, if you are interested in old or weird tech.
Love techmoan. Guy’s an unsung national treasure.
Benn Jordan
https://youtube.com/@bennjordan
If you are into sequencers and drum machines then for sure Captain Pikant
Starsky Carr, Woody’s Piano Shack, and David Hilowitz are great as well!
I definitely second David Hillowitz.
Not only is he semi-local so I get to see landmarks I recognize, but he’s so calming when many creators try to be 90s levels of extreeeeeme these days. Also lots of his repair/resto/DIY stuff is affordable, he gave us Decent Sampler, and the weird and homemade instruments he often uses are actually musical, not the weird ambient beeps, boops, and screeches many channels feature.
