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Wouldn’t it be easier to list ones who aren’t overrated?
I really don’t understand the popularity of the “big” YouTubers. PewDiePie being the prime example from a few years ago, though I don’t think he’s still making videos.
Pew is still making content but it’s more vlogs about him trying to stop being a hyped up youtuber and to find work life balance while now also raising a tiny bebe.
So he moved to Japan so that people wouldn’t recognise him as much, started making friends and is now living quite a normal life to what he used to do.
Never use to watch him, but actually enjoying his content as of late.
Edit: probably because he’s an internet goofball around my age.
That actually sounds pretty cool for him.
I don’t really follow any of the big ones, and the creators I do follow are pretty nice :)
I mainly subscribe to ASMRists, and even then I don’t follow the bigger ones because I don’t enjoy their content.
And one of the gaming channels I follow is brilliant and yet they have so few subscribers. Filthy Casuals, three Australian comedians chatting about games. Their Let’s Plays are great.
It would probably make more sense for them to be evaluated in comparison to similar offerings withing the respective “genres” which would be hard for those that don’t fit in to neatly defined formats, but it seems that most do.
I couldn’t watch PewDiePie, it’s damned irritating, but it’s an entire format and style of video that some people like and he seems presumably to be the king of it and is widely emulated so it would be saying something then if you consider him overrated within that context. I couldn’t venture an opinion though because I would just never watch that kind of video.
While I dislike PewDie as an adult, had I discovered him at the age of 13, I’d have absolutely loved him.
I feel like people frequently forget that internet demographics are very unique compared to the overall demographics of the whole population. It is definitely easier and more fun to spend lots of time on here while you’re still very young, and generally have more free time and open curiosity.
Jenna Marbles was genuinely a great youtuber.
I feel like most youtubers are pretty obvious after money.
Almost everyone that is on the popular front page feed. I loath the emotional content, drama, click bait type nonsense.
Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly you figure out you’re not logged into your account when you load the homepage. Literally none of the videos that are popular is anything I’d ever consider watching.
All I see in the “you’re not logged in” frontpage is music videos anyways, and not conventional youtubers. I dunno how someone finds Mr. beast “organically”.
to reach there, you have to game the algorithm. to game it to that extent takes a whole lot of viewer manipulation
All influencer types. Influencing kids to be more vain, more selfish, more money focused, more vapid and empty?
Veritasium. As soon as he put out a video with sponsored content where he lied with science I immediately knew he could no longer be trusted. I completely stopped watching his videos that day.
I kinda slowed down on his videos since that Tom Nicolas video, but I watched his video from a few days ago about blimps because blimps are cool. But it just seemed like a corporate ad. The amount of the video that’s renders of products vs actual products is pretty bad.
It didn’t feel like a science video about blimps, it felt like half blimp startup ad, half simple blimp explanation. I don’t know, it just felt a little devoid of depth.
I would really like a channel that covers start-ups well, like explaining their idea and what they hope to accomplish then going into some of the challenges they face.
Far too many seem to be nothing but reading the press release and the first couple of paragraphs of Wikipedia.
Damn, really? His concrete video was pretty interesting
yeah. honestly it stinks because he did have good science videos. but as soon as he sold out and the way he did so I knew he was no longer an educational channel.
Which video?
There was this one from a couple years ago that was about self-driving cars and also sponsored by Waymo. Tom Nicholas made a video which IMO does a good job of covering the problems with that video, and the broader implications of this kind of content on YouTube.
Ha, I wasn’t even talking about that one. I think I stopped watching before then because he just went in deep with the sponsors and it was clear he wasn’t actually caring about the science anymore. The one I’m talking about he ‘proved’ that wet wipes are flushable.
here’s the video. https://youtu.be/5zI9sG3pjVU?t=983
found it. https://youtu.be/5zI9sG3pjVU?t=983
there’s even people in the comments that don’t realize the experiment was bad science and think that maybe these wipes are ‘different’
more people actually saying they’re going to switch to flushable wipes.
Thanks for the answers! I had a bad taste in my mouth after his dandruff video which felt very corporate but I gave him the benefit of the doubt assuming that the science was solid. I guess my gut instinct was right.
I still think a lot of his videos are good, it’s just sad that the obviously sponsored ones are low quality. I’ll check out the links and response video someone else posted and keep being skeptical.
I don’t remember which video it was, I’d have to go find it. At the end he sets up a ‘science experiment’ to show that wet wipes are flushable, unlike what everyone says. And the way he ‘proves’ it is clearly a terrible way to prove it, but if you aren’t thinking about it you’ll agree. I’ll try to find the video.
So many tech YouTubers are overrated, but one who really stands out to me is JayzTwoCents. Somehow I have several memories of clicking on one of his videos and being shocked at him being confidently incorrect about something. I no longer click on his videos at all.
His alpha nerd persona comes across hard.
Another one I’d mention is Rooster Teeth (the whole gang). I watched some of their “shenanigans” videos and they were just destroying office furniture, doing shitty pranks and in general being man-childs.
I just thought all the mess they left behind for everyone not on camera and what a shitshow it must be for the production crew to work with a bunch of internet mini-celebrities. They were basically the OG streaming mansion.
Fast forward a few years and you hear all these allegations of terrible work conditions. Go figure.
Stopped watching after the “I understand where racists are coming from” podcast bit
MrBeast is a horrible example of a person and everyone acts like he’s a second coming out Jesus. He fucks up people’s lives with his “charity” on a regular basis.
PewDiePie is one of the most annoying people ever born.
How does he fuck up people’s lives?
Yeah I want to know as well. His content isn’t exactly my cup of tea and can feel dystopia, but my dude flies around the world giving away free surgery to people and shit, and he promotes charities and foundations and actually moves people to donate to them. His thumbnails are creepy as shit, and his content feels like it was made to be cut up into a bunch of 6 second tiktok videos, but I don’t really see a dark side here.
I’m no Mr beast fan, but the dystopia you feel isn’t his fault. It’s the fault of our society. It’s the fact that some people have to rely on a clickbait youtubers generosity to have vision surgery, instead of it being freely available. It’s the fact that inequality is so rampant and ever growing due to our infinite capacity for greed.
Mr Beast - all his videos look and feel the same. And there’s nothing new that you learn from them.
most Poketubers
there’s this weird conundrum where a lot of Pokemon fans are older, mostly in their 20s, but the big name Poketubers almost universally aim for kids as their prime demographic
like that’s fine and all, but why are you aiming for kids when you’re playing a Professor Oak challenge, or something stupid hardcore? show the kids the shiny Rayquaza, show me your 900+ hour save file
also the ones that aren’t aimed at kids are usually pretty low quality, sorry Johnstone, sorry Bird Keeper Toby, sorry Absol Plays Pokemon
Real Engineering
Some really uncritical videos about “pretty out there” startups. It’s basically a PR channel.
Practical engineering is much better imo
Same with Undecided. Dude it’s basically just a shill for random startups. He’s basically just Popular Science magazine, the YouTube channel.
Is all of them a valid answer?
No. There are plenty of YouTubers who make excellent content but are struggling to get views, hardly fits the definition of overrated. Just because they chose YouTube as a platform doesn’t automatically invalidate their work. Besides, which other platform do you want them to go to?
Pretty much all of the ones we’ve ever heard of and most of the ones I haven’t.
I don’t personally get the appeal of many gaming YouTubers. I’m not personally very into watching other people play videos (not review, but just play). I can kinda understand some people wanting to watch that, but it always surprises me just how many people watch it and for how long.
It also seems all too common that they have very questionable views and their fans will defend them to the death. I don’t get that either. There’s some YouTuber creators I really enjoy, but if they said horrible things, I sure as hell aren’t going to defend them at all, let alone to the degree that some gaming YouTubers get ardently defended.
I watch some game playthrough streamers. I don’t have time or the hardware to play, so I “watch” them in the background while I work. There’s a lot of shitty content out there, but the ones I watch are really decent people, some of them with only <100k subs. Really knowledgeable about the games they play too. I am talking about people like Rhadamant, Quill18, Blindirl, ChristopherOdd…
I’ve really got into watching Willjum play Rust in particular, not stream, but his VODs. My wife doesn’t even play rust, but says he’s got a soothing voice and also enjoys his videos. They’re well edited pieces of Rust television.
If it’s a skill/competitive game I totally get watching. Like if I like basketball I’m gonna watch Steph Curry or an NBA game cause I’ll learn how awesome people play the game. If I liked valorant or something i could totally see watching the top pros (or a really high level YouTuber) or comp matches from tourneys and stuff.
I watch a lot of gaming YouTubers and very rarely play games, I find the content really enjoyable as background while I’m coding or doing something on the computer. They’re great because it’s interesting enough to keep my brain active but also it doesn’t matter if I miss a bit because I’m focusing.
I don’t watch the kind that say questionable things tho
It’s actually amazing how creative and funny a lot of them are.
It’s hard to find someone who makes content that doesn’t kowtow to Youtube’s terrible system. Content takes time to make and time costs money but youtube will make these people break their spine bending over backwards to make sure they don’t get demonitized and get the scraps of ad revenue that Google designs to give them. So now we get people trying to dance around stupid censorship rules, finding more and more sponsors because they don’t get paid enough and have to scream figuratively and literally to get enough attention to pay the bills.
Johnny Harris. I really hate the delivery style that he kept from vox. The “guys this is super bad and I’m really concerned but in a like cool and detached way.” His delivery just reminds me of every dude I’ve ever talked to at an indie coffee shop.
His content may or may not be good, but I can’t get passed his smarmy delivery to find out.
My problem with him is accuracy, but I actually really like the way he and his team produce and present these videos.
His production quality is top tier for sure. I sadly never made it far enough into a video to evaluate accuracy.
Full disclosure though, I live in Utah so I interact with a lot of people who look and act like him so it drives me up the wall.
