Ghostcharm. Casual video game analysis
My big two are:
Jreg, makes satirical comedy vids, but behind that as a surface level, there are some very personal works that are some of the best art I have every experienced. For me at least. Watch his Centricide series, and go full in on EP 7, there’s lots to it and it means so much to me
The other is DJ Peach Cobbler, used to do video essays on games, and his style is just perfect. Schizo-autist stuff, speaks to me. Lately he has transitioned to doing historical overviews of what groups thought of each other, and I am all for it. “What the Romans thought of carthage” is a fav of mine. My fav vid by him is “Feminist for Clout: The Story of Unbiased Katie”
Rationality rules - mostly religion debunking
Applied Science - Varying videos about science phenomenons and use cases
LaurieWired - Cyber Security
Veronica Explains - Mostly Linux.
James Lee - animated videos
Awesome open source - videos and tutorials about self hosting and open source software
fly with Greg - paragliding videos
Mary’s Test Kitchen - awesome vegan and keto food
AlphaPhoenix - Science Videos
the hated one - privacy videos
crackermilk - comedy skits
Theramintrees - psychology videos
Weird fruit explorer - exploring fruits and vegetables from all over the world
Earthling ed - videos about veganism and animal welfare and rights
Drue Langlois - animator/filmmaker who makes absurd and fun videos. One of my favorites
Wigglewood - another animator who’s in the process of making their own little shared world of silliness.
Oboeshoesgames - streamer who has a decent sense of humor and is actually pretty creative with coming up with little parody songs for the games he plays. He also knows a SHITTON about Bionicle and will throw in references sometimes, which is always nice to see.
RudeJackArt - artist/animator behind this masterpiece
SplinterChalk - very small YouTuber who does challenge runs in games, similar to MittenSquad (RIP Paul), but mostly focusing on the Batman: Arkham games. He does play others though.
ChadCat - he condenses other long-form YouTube videos (i.e. videos over 10 minutes) down to their most important details, usually taking up to about 20 seconds to a minute each time, calling them the “ADHD Versions.”
Venjent - DJ/producer who makes badass beats using sounds he finds out in the world, such as a squeaky door
2 Guys and A Cooler - family-run cooking channel where they make different cool things. Their video on pemmican got me interested in them.
CharlieBo313 - basically a modern anthropologist who goes to the 'hoods and ghettos of America and talks to the people who live there, and showcases what life is like.
Poe’s Sketchbook - stop-motion animator behind this badass fight
Luka Big Pants - strange guy who makes videos in that weird stuttery FMV game style. It’s all weird and absurd but it’s all really good.
Crazy Korean Cooking - a Korean family eating food, pretty much. They try different foods they never have, like Mexican and Jamaican foods, then they’ll experiment and try mixing the new stuff with their Korean food and it gets pretty fun. The parents are honestly super fun to watch because they just enjoy it all.
BM Cartoons - an animator who just makes silly little cartoons.
Edit: oh there’s more.
Fearnley Fitzroy - the animator behind this absolute masterpiece and other fun souls-like dance videos.
GilGamesHello - gamer who plays a lot of physics-based games like Exanima and Half Sword.
Spine_apples - Saruman the Stupid
TRYBALS - a very cool channel that shows western media and such to tribal villagers from Pakistan.
Bill McClintock - someone who mashes up songs from wildly different genres and somehow makes them sound fuckin awesome. Stuparena (a mashup of The Macarena and Stupefied)
Bushy - another challenge gamer, but he focuses on Elden Ring and other Souls-likes.
Bax Taylor - a musician who makes his own original songs, but also does silly covers of others like Toto doing Apple Bottom Jeans, or Frank Sinatra’s Balls In Yo Jaws.
Media Zealot - he breaks down different civilizations/organizations/other groups from different popular IPs and says why they wouldn’t be able to work in reality. Like “villains too stupid to win” and so on.
Corey Laddo - an SFM animator who makes funny shorts, based around G-man and Gordon interacting and playing out a meme or something.
I watch one of these videos every day when I wake up. Every piece is improvised on various instruments. Some are fantastic, some are kinda so-so like today’s. They’re always calm and a great way to start the day. Haven’t yet heard her speak.
Some channels that I can remember:
Archeology:
Archery:
Armin Hirmer, he does a lot of reviews of bows and equipments and I personally don’t like that type of content but the other videos are really good and I like the vibe of the videos.
History:
Fandabi Dozi is more than history that’s a lot of survival and bushcraft but I really like the channel as a whole
All this channels have a vibe of showing the stuff they talking about, recreating things and so on. For the video format is the type of content that I really like.
So…so many.
Politics:
Sociopolitical:
Trans Rights/Philosophy/TV Reviews:
Anarchist Philosophy:
Tech:
Animation Reviews:
Philosophy/Pop Culture:
Niche Product Reviews:
Horror Movie Reviews/Synopsis:
Comedy:
Chemistry/Psychedelics:
Worker’s Rights:
SciFi/Fantasy Book Reviews:
Tabletop RPG Reviews:
Star Trek Analysis:
Privacy:
Musicians:
Country:
Synthwave:
JRock:
outstanding list!
Videos documenting restorations of exceptional vintage electronics and early computers, space hardware and the odd mechanical calculator or Teletype. It often showcases my Hewlett-Packard test equipment collection and, from time to time, my R2-D2 robot build. Things rarely work when I start, but almost always do when I end. A nerdy place for your inner engineer, to celebrate engineering exploits of our predecessors, and learn a lot from it.
If you want to watch an Irish dude play and talk about a variety of obscure PS1 games, everyone should definitely check out Sean Seanson (currently at 44k subs). He has 2 ongoing series where a game is picked at random and he checks it out, one for western releases and another for japan exclusive PS1 games.
Majuular (166k subs) also does videos on mostly obscure or forgotten games. I really enjoyed watching his “I played every RPG on the <console>” videos, the one for the Saturn showed up some real gems.
Moon Channel (182k subs) is one of the “slow content creators”, which makes nearly every video he posts a great watch. He has great stuff like “Why do Japanese games love Brazil?” and “Gacha Games and the Korean Gender Wars” - the latter an incredible look into how and why Korean culture is the way it is today.
NeverKnowsBest (329k subs) is yet another gaming channel, focusing on very long videos. One that I do recommend to any Bethesda fan is “Lies, Hate and the story of Emil Pagliarulo” (it’s an eye opener and I am guilty of having joined the “it’s all Emil’s fault” bandwagon due in no small part to the videos he references). If you want to keep it to genres, his 2 most recent videos are “The Entire History of Japanese RPGs” and “An in-depth look at Romance in video games” - the latter shows up a number of famous dating sim games.
Basement Brothers (33k subs) is a channel devoted almost entirely to 80s and 90s Japanese computer games. So, if you were ever curious about PC-88 and PC-98 games, or the origins of franchises like Ys or Legend of Heroes, this is the place to find that.
As a bonus, SAMA Study of Antiquity and Middle Ages for history stuff. It’s very well researched stuff, often citing studies that follow DNA heritage among human groups to get an idea of when they migrated from one place to another.
Jeremy Parish has less than 100k, and constantly puts out great retrospectives on the nooks and crannies of retro game history.
While the Retronauts podcast he’s involved with is well known, I feel like his YouTube kinda flies under the radar.
James Lee animation
I like tech, old and new, so:
https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude
https://www.youtube.com/@TechTangents
https://www.youtube.com/@ConnectionsMuseum
https://www.youtube.com/@VeronicaExplains
https://www.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric
https://www.youtube.com/@PlatimaTinkers
https://www.youtube.com/@RetroBytesUK
https://www.youtube.com/@harkeofficial
I"d also suggest Jeff Geerling but he’s close to a million subscribers.
About trains, cycling, transit, and urbanism:
https://www.youtube.com/@OhTheUrbanity
https://www.youtube.com/@BenDurham
https://www.youtube.com/@MilesinTransit
https://www.youtube.com/@JagoHazzard
https://www.youtube.com/@TFTSB
And about hiking, camping, outdoors stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/@StephenJReid
Oh and on languages and etymology:
https://www.youtube.com/@WordsUnravelled
https://www.youtube.com/@RobWords
https://www.youtube.com/@Xidnaf
https://www.youtube.com/@kklein
https://www.youtube.com/@Linguisticae (in French)
https://www.youtube.com/@Linguriosa (in Spanish)
I would add in City Nerd for urbanism too.
Which stadium does his current subscriber count fill now?
This is a fairly niche answer, but Noah Caldwell-Gervais.
He does very smart critical analysis of video games as a medium, often in multi-hour long retrospectives of entire franchises. They are all split into chapters, so it’s easy to watch in parts. The visuals and editing are not very flashy, pretty much just footage of the game he’s talking about, but they are so well written and thoughtful I find them extremely compelling. There’s also road trip travelogues, but I’m not as into those.
Love me some Noah
Imagine watching youtubers with subscriber counts so high, youtube needs to hide part of it
https://youtube.com/@aetthefurry
https://youtube.com/@luigiman_
https://youtube.com/@myth1cal_
https://youtube.com/@tastybread2
Honorable mentions:
https://youtube.com/@aarthificial
https://youtube.com/@ethyriely
I’m shocked nobody has mentioned Bobby Fingers (266k subscribers at this time). He’s a sassy Irish man with a really deep voice who makes incredibly detailed dioramas of weird moments. My favorite diorama is the one he made about Fabio Lanzoni (the sexy guy on the cover of hundreds of romance novels) getting hit in the face by a goose while riding a roller coaster: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2RIEPKEhE2s
It’s absolutely spectacular. He sculpts the faces out of clay in 1:1 scale, scans them, 3D prints them in miniature, and just goes above and beyond. The videos are funny as all fuck too, with tons of jokes with long setups. I’d highly recommend them.
I like the one when he had a single ass hair transplanted on to the top of his head.
