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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Preface - I enjoy car stuff, so there's more than a few car channels here:
Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that's powerful. Her video that's absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.
Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He's most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. "I don't know James Rolfe" was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.
Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think
Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He's largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax
Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.
Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She's like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that's generally respectful to them? She's got you. In particular I like how she's respectful towards weirdness when it's not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.
Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He's a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.
Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He's a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.
Defunctland, listen I'm not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.
Additional creators I forgot or left out:
Lady Emily is Sarah Z's cowriter's channel. It's definitely weirder but in a direction completely different from the way strange aeons is. She doesn't care to make her content have mainstream appeal and so it winds up being an autistic woman making videos about stuff she finds interesting.
Innuendo Studios is someone I intentionally left out for two reasons: a lot of his videos are short and they're very political. But they aren't low effort ragebait political, they're analyses of modern right wing rhetorical tactics. I'm including him now purely because he's one of my favorite youtubers
Münecat is a long form video essayist who started with anti-mlm content and has moved into other topics like internet gambling and debunking evo psych.
I'll add more comments if I think of more
Hoog, fern, Thinker and Moon do rather similar styles of documentary content.
rSlash and Mainly Fact are the best "Reddit stories" channels that actually provide their own commentary rather than reading out Reddit posts verbatim with text-to-speech tools, or passing off blatantly fake AI slop hallucinated by ChatGPT as genuine.
Ahoy mainly does documentaries about weapons and how they're depicted in video games, but he's also done some retro gaming stuff too.
Rav is one of the few League of Legends content creators I actually like. He doesn't just lazily regurgitate stream VODs as video guides with clickbaity thumbnails like a lot of creators do. Yes, he uses text-to-speech commentary to narrate his games but his scripts are actually fucking hilarious.
I actively avoid shorts so most of what I watch is long form.
Perun for military stuff, especially Ukraine.
Steve Wallis - Calm Canadian dude that does stealth camping, he'll just camp behind a McDonald's billboard and is very chill about it
Steve is awesome. Another favorite of mine is Kent Survival. I've tried more than one of Andy's camp meals, and he's the reason I bring a cast iron dutch oven with me now.
Technology Connections
It might be worth adding that some people might find him (and similar long form content) verbose if they are not into the topics. I watch probably most of his episodes, but some people in my life don’t vibe with those. The same people did not appreciate the 7 color e-ink display I had been tinkering around with until I made it display a dog pic, so it’s also about how the topic relates to what you already like.
Did you see his latest video about algorithms? Best video so far this year imo
Yes, I figured that might have been part the trigger for the thread.
Define long form? Under an hour is about all I can take.
"Mr. Beat" (no S) is a nice little US history class, but there are TONS of streamers just starting out with no viewers who could really use your support.
One I haven't seen mentioned yet that I think needs more exposure is miniminuteman: https://m.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773/
He does a mix of long form archeology videos and short form pseudo-archeology debunking. Some of it should be dry content but his delivery bridges the gap every time. He has a side channel where he posts about his side projects like his solo motorcycle trips that's also interesting.
A Catholic socialist, a Jewish anarchist, and a Muslim communist walk into a bar, and they make a podcast about engineering disasters: Well There's Your Problem. It's great for that intersection of people for whom the phrase "crimes against TERFs aren't crimes" resonates and like listening to an engineer complain about low quality as-builts 2 hours into a 3 hour episode about 9/11
I was sold on the show when I found out that the episode about the Titanic was split into two parts, totaling around 5 and 1/2 hours. That's partially because they spend a lot of time bullshitting, and partially because they go really in-depth about how and why structures fail
OK that sounds exactly made for me
Well ... My go-to is still Hbomberguy. Eben if I don't know/care about the topic I know every vid of bis will be interesting and worth the time investment. The jokes are really funny (even on rewatches) and I've learned a lot. I watch old Hbomb videos to Fall asleep to almost every night.
Main issue: there's one video every 1-2 years ... However if you've never seen one you'll have the back log to get through.
I made this spreadsheet a while back for easy sharing. Some have been mentioned like F.D Signifier and HBomberGuy. Also like Mr. Beat for history, Nth Review for games, Astrum for space, and Maritime Horrors for... maritime horrors.
Maritime Horrors is great, but for the same vibes as him I also watch Brick Immortar and Big Old Boats from time to time.
And if you're into mode sky boats then Green Dot Aviation is your guy
Along with Technology Connections, Philosophy Tube, and Primitive Technology, here are my "must watch" subs
Climate Town - Excellent videos about climate change and environmental impact that are insightful and funny
Contrapoints - Well written and meticulous deconstructions of philosophical concepts in media, pop culture and society with a dry wit
Every Frame a Painting - Amazing content on film-making. No longer active, but if you haven't seen it yet, lucky you, enjoy.
Pop Culture Detective - Interesting meta analyses of popular tropes in pop culture
Because I'm into historical clothing and fashion, Bernadette Banner and Abby Cox both do great videos on costuming, history and creating cool stuff
Love climate town. I hate that someone needs to waste their time disproving lies from the oil, gas, politicians and the like, but it does give me hope in the future that there are people like that out there.
Brick immortar- probably the single most technical long form YT channel in the engineering disasters category
NNKH - fixing things that probably shouldn't be bothered with.
Green dot aviation - air disasters and near disasters
Pilot debrief - light aviation crash analysis
Andrew camarata - long, long form time lapse videos of running backhoes and dozers to cut roads and things, nice to relax to.
The great war - I watch on nebula but I think they are on YT too.
Hoog - explainers
Bald and bankrupt - I've heard mixed things about the guy as a person but his videos are entertaining, in the "travel to unusual places" genre
Integza - another one on nebula but I think also on YT. Building rocket engines with 3d printers, etc
Driving 4 answers - probably the single best automotive focused engineering channel
Peter Santanello
Dime Store Adventures
Moon
SomeOrdinaryGamers
SamONella
There's probably more, but these are the ones I recall
Jerma Long Edits, Skye4 and dumptruck make good ones
Steve Wallis is my comfort creator. Genuine dude from Canada who does loads of camping from simple in the woods stuff to hiding in a roundabout overnight. He's had a rough go these last few years as he lost his wife, mother, and best friend all within a year and a half. This is a man just enjoying what mother nature has to offer.
Jeff Gerstmann, video game journalist
Lindsay Nikole, paleontology pop sci
Gutsick Gibbon, prehistoric anthropology pop sci and some academic stuff
Spacetime and SEA, cosmology pop sci sometimes leaning more academic
Rifftrax/mst3k, comedians that add audio tracks over bad mostly public domain movies, there's a ton of them
Ben G Thomas, prehistoric biology pop sci
Jenny Nickelson does.. nerd stuff? Highlights include:
"Church cinimatic universe" where she becomes a sommelier of art and walks you through a decade or so of some church in Canada's Easter plays, which are delightfully technical and imaginative while also being a beautiful form of cringe.
And a 4+ hour documentary/review/commentary on her visit to the short lived "star wars hotel"
I'm not big into star wars or Disneyworld/land wherever it was, but I watched that whole thing.
I love Jenny, she has some of the best long forms!
Well There's Your Problem - Engineering disaster podcast, with slides! And the hosts vary from left, to very left.
JunkyardDigs/PoleBarnGarage - Two separate channels. Love them both for just fucking around with old cars/farm equipment/vintage snowmobiles
He's a weird plumber. From Australia. He unclogs drains. When he walks, he moves his arms like a player character in an FPS. He has a toy rat and crocodile that help him. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's a sound effect and what's a real sound.
It seems like it shouldn't work but somehow it does.
I love Technology Connections for an easy, interesting watch. He just explains how appliances work lol
How long-form?
I absolutely love “More Kitboga”, videos where a fella calls scammers and uses a Roland VT3-3 voice transformer to improv. Video lengths range from a few hours to… I believe his record fucking with the same call center (like two or three specific people) is 54 hours. I put it on when I’m working from home. He is HILARIOUS. He and his team have whole fake websites, fake banks, and a fake Google Play store where he can redeem fake Google play cards into his account and it works as the actual play store would. People go insane when they see they “lost” thousands of dollars because an “old lady” redeemed the codes they wanted.
True crime: Explore With Us is a channel my partner recently found. Lots of FOIA’d videos and pictures that have never been seen before they made their videos. Very interesting.
I am not normally a fan of long form videos unless I'm in the mood for it, but Philosophy Tube is my go to. Thanks to her, she (he before she transitioned) actually taught me what liberal really means, socially progressive but economically conservative.
Science and futurism with Isaac Arthur.
