Someone made a YouTube channels thread in the Axe months and months ago, and I remember thinking, "Who actually subscribes to channels on YouTube?
About a week later, I was into a bunch of channels on YouTube. (But I still don’t subscribe to them for some reason).
Here’s my list, broken into categories. As an added bonus, this list really describes how much more of a nerd I’ve become post college. I shudder to think how much of a dork I will become if I ever feel settled and financially secure. Man cave, here I come.
Probably! A lot of them are pretty lame/dumb, but I actually think his Matrix videos are great head canon and better than the actual movies. The Antman video is actually pretty good, and the Kamehameha Wave and Martian episodes are okay and at least involve some honest research.
Mostly, you can just color me as Part of the Problem, because even though some of the theories are just dumb clickbait, I enjoy the concept and production enough to check them out. At least it never gets to “Guys, the Rug Rats are totally ghosts!” territory of complete inanity. There’s a certain line he doesn’t cross.
Informative reviews of Regular Cars, with insights that range from the state of the automotive industry at the time of a car’s manufacturing and critique of car culture at large wrt that car’s place in its fabric. His humor may be offputting to some but he’s often cracked me up
Used to watch a few gun people but it gets old after a while. Now I just look up things as curiosity gets me.
Except CarnikCon, who is a comic genius everyone should watch (except his annoying if predictable gun control video).
CGPGrey does great little animated explanations of geography, voting theory, and whatever else strikes his fancy. Doesn’t update much which I count as a plus.
If you like Scholagladiatora et al for historical arms talk, Knyghterrant is the best I’ve found for detailed and practical information about the construction and wearing of armor (“arming”, as they call it).
FailArmy is America’s Funniest Home Videos for the YouTube generation, without any stupid commentary or fake dialogue or annoying competition show structure. I can’t not watch. (They also have a separate “show” with “personalities”, avoid at all costs.)
I’m a little stressed to say I don’t follow a lot of channels that aren’t vlog or game related.
I want to assume PBS Idea Channel is well known but nonetheless I feel obligated to promote it at every possible opportunity. Super charming and fun digestible academic theory applied to popular media.
Also I guess(??) I’m a koreaboo now because I follow a mukbang channel. I don’t understand anything Shoogi says but she’s cute and has the kind of hypnotizing eating methods that Haruki Murakami would write about (pls ignore the proximity of this Korea/Japan connection, I’m problematic). Watching her eat is a weirdly effective way to de-stress.
Since RedLetterMedia has already been mentioned, here are some of my favorites:
Neros77 makes music videos for various (typically 80’s-themed) songs, some of which are used in dance clubs, where they’re projected onto a back wall. Most of his animated ones are particularly great.
Often get some really great songs out of this small label.
Make sure you turn on closed captioning if you want commentary to go along with the video because the guy doesn’t talk at all.
Found this one looking up lectures on the philosophy of time and related topics. There are a lot of hour+ long panels discussing and debating the latest theories and ideas in physics, cosmology and even a little bit of philosophy from time to time.
The description says it all. Videos and documentaries on organized crime, often includes making-of documentaries of classic crime movies like Casino and Heat.
Podcast channel of three or four comedians who discuss all things weird, strange or just plain fucked up.
I just started watching this one recently. Oliver Harper does reviews and retrospectives of movies from the around the 80s onward. His critical analysis trends toward the technical ins and outs of movie making. Retrospectives are well edited. He also gets together occasionally with some other movie buffs and they all talk about the latest hot thing of the moment.
These guys film things (usually breaking or exploding) in super duper million-frames-a-second slow motion. That’s, uh, that’s pretty much their whole thing. It’s awesome.
moderndayjames is an artist, designer and musician. His channel is relatively new but he posts regularly. His topic is usually art/design tutorials where he explains overall theory and demonstrates his own processes.
Just what it says on the tin, an educational channel dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion.
Timeline posts documentaries from different major broadcasters like the BBC. Documentaries and Chill are all PBS Frontline episodes.
These channels feature shorter (~5-10 minutes in length) videos introducing and exploring various philosophies, ideas and so on.
Bobby Duke is an artist who makes neat things and sells them sometimes.
This last one isn’t a youtube channel per se (though all the video links are from youtube), it’s just part of Cosmologist Sean Carroll’s website with links to lectures and symposiums and such that he’s spoken at or participated in.
If you like rollicking good discussion of games and movies Cinemassacre will not fail you. Dat Glitch Gremlin!
A cast of your favorite characters take on the greatest gamer challenges of all time… Might be a bit rough and tumble for some.
This goofball isn’t as obscure as my other faves, but you can’t deny hes got style! Don’t sell yourself short, Pewds… you make a lot of people happy, too.