Ask Lemmy

I saw Markiplier do a lets play for some indie roomba game many many years ago, he proceeded to have an almost religious experience, and I was like "fuck yeah, this guy gets it"

Fast forward and he promotes shit like No Mans Sky and TikTok, I automatically unsubscribe from anyone and everyone who promotes TikTok, and he's got this whole survivorship bias like "ANYONE can make a successful movie or webseries. Anyone! A Heist with Markiplier was only like $30,000 dollars production value... well, okay, thats a lot of money, but still!"

He's lost touch with reality and now he's just another salesperson.

Another one that's kind of downhill is Kurzegast, their recent AI video was really hollow and vacant of all the reasonable criticisms about AI and its immediate effects, some people have theorized that channels like theirs are being sponsored by a company called "Control AI" to muddy the waters and move the discussion away from things like holding companies accountable.

Pretty much all the old gaming YTers I used to watch I barely have time for because of how long the videos are. Most of this is down to streaming, and how long and plodding VODS are.

Also, ditto anytime they transition to doing it full-time. I remember YT in the 2000's when people basically just did it as a hobby.

Do you guys remember Ray William Johnson? Last time I looked he was doing like super weird clickbait-y non news story naration. I don't know if anyone understands what I tried to say there.

Top Gear, Not sure if this fully counts as YouTube but I’m sure that’s where most of us watched it. It hasn’t been the same since Jeremy, Richard, and James left.

Nearly all of them. Even if you pay for premium or use an ad blocker, the YouTubers just make their own commercials as part of the content and the more popular they become the more ads they create.

Well Wranglerstar is pretty good example. Used to be about homesteading and tools, then turned into politics, grifting and Jesus talk. There's even a subreddit dedicated for hating him for it.

Van Neistat (Casey's brother) is another one for me. It's actually one of those channels that went from me utterly loving it to entirely stopping watching it the quickest. I can't really put my finger on why but I think I just started to get the sense that this is a job for him, not a passion.

Stephanie Sterling (and not for the reason you probably think).

I understand that the gaming industry is shit, and therefore reporting on it is always going to skew negative, but it really felt to me like the negativity started permeating their content as a whole - to the point that I got the feeling that they didn't really enjoy video games at all anymore.

I also started to get the feeling that they resent their audience for responding positively to such negative content, too - doing things like complaining that the worst-of lists get more views than the best-of lists. You don't have to make them if you don't want to.

Also, it's cool that they found a passion, but I really don't care about wrestling.

Basically any channel that started doing "reaction" content. Oh you're reading the top page of Reddit today? Cool, what creative value does that have to me? Absolutely none. Goodbye. I get that it's really popular but I have no idea why, and I get it's cheap to make but it's also shit, so you get what you pay for I guess.

The only exception to this is Jimmy Broadbent who occasionally does his "Sim Racing Stewards" series which is basically his take on Reddit user submitted clips of their online racing mishaps. I find it really interesting to watch because he has so much sim racing experience and, albeit less, experience of real world racing with real life stewards and racing rules. It's entertaining and interesting and I want to know his opinion on these incidents because he has enough context to have an opinion, and doesn't act like his opinion is gospel.

Most of them to be honest, not through their fault but the ever tightening squeeze of ABC Corp. on what is "acceptable" content and language. To the point some are giving up or deplatforming from Youtube to elsewhere. Stephanie Sterling if I had to say one but that's because they even acknowledged it's just the same thing over and over again. So they do less videos unless it's something particularly poignant.

Not sure how many of you will know about Tom from the Geowizard channel, but I recently learned he's a reform voter (UK's trump-style party, Nigel Farage) and honestly I was kinda devastated. Took me completely by suprise too, considering he never talked about anything political and the nature of the content and his actions would've never suggested it. In hindsight there were a few small tip-offs that I brushed out as him being a bit old-school/rural and not very plugged in to internet culture and modern no-no's. I found out by listening to an album he recently released and one of the songs is about the replacement theory conspiracy...

Bourbon Moth

Loved to watch his videos as he made woodworking accessible. He also does really good work.

Then one day he built an epoxy river table then promptly blew it up... Literally blew it up... Which spread all that epoxy all over the place in a forested area. I still watched, but next he did a video on rags catching fire and it was all obviously staged. That was it for me, I unsubscribed then told Youtube to never suggest his videos again.

AVE

Funny enough it was AVE that exposed Bourbon Moth on his BS regarding the towels combusting. However, shortly after that whole thing AVE just really went downhill. Instead of being informative and amusing, his videos just turned into the narcissist's playbook for look at me! Haven't watched one of his videos since. Which is a shame, because his earlier videos were really interesting.

The one that jumps to mind for me the most has got to be Rick Beato.

When I first found out about him he was just a super passionate and likeable dude totally geeking out listening to stems of classic records, just being endlessly appreciative and highlighting things that he thought were cool in a way that was reasonably accessible to regular music listeners. On the side he did some more technical music theory and musicianship stuff, which I could take or leave to be honest. But overall it felt like a channel that was there for sharing this dude's love of music with others.

Lately it's just been pounded down into mediocrity, I feel. He spends a lot of time chasing after bullshit trendy stories about AI music, spotify rankings, controversies of the week, long rambling live stream rants about various meta things that nobody has time for. The silver lining to all of that is that he has been doing interviews with musicians, which are generally pretty good, but it really depends on who he's talking to. I understand that DMCA takedowns get in the way of breaking down songs, and that sucks, but my problem is that it's often kind of negative stuff that distracts from talking positively about music, musicianship, production, etc.

I think he knows this because he recently put out a video about a big "change of direction" in the channel.

Degraded as in opinion or actual metrics?

If it's opinion I feel most channels naturally degrade over time as the broadcasters personality changes with the popularity increase.

My largest case and it's a likely a controversial take would be Markiplier. When he hit fandom he all but left the youtube lets play field in favor of other opportunities(which to be fair he was fully upfront with before he did it), then after months of almost no activity he came back with a different personality. (somewhat like how Jack did when he did his rebrand but was more noticeable). My eye opener to it was his GTFO series, I don't know of a good way to put it, he seemed super offputting and mean/childish to the people he had gamed with for years. I know it was likely meant to be a bit but, after an extended inactivity in the genre and then coming back and acting like that it was whiplash. He also seems to really be putting his fandom/viewer base on the side burner with everything, he hasen't posted regular videos in a long time(I expect it's due to his movie that he's putting his heart and soul into) and it's made it so I no longer get recommendations to any of his content since his channel has fallen off the algorithm for me. Like don't get me wrong, I still like his content(when he releases it), and he's been clear that youtube was a stepping stone for him and that his passion is in other areas but for the sake of the question I feel the channel fits.