And why did you stop watching them?
CGPGrey. I even listened to his podcasts.
For someone who tried to sell productivity tools at one point, he was very unproductive.
Also, given what happened with Standard and Nebula, I got to say I side with Nebula over him.
Yeah, it’s weird, CGPGrey videos used to be the most must-watch of all YouTube for me and I subscribed to his Patreon at one point. I listened to Hello Internet loyally and I was even unhurt about how it ended. I still think he’s an interesting guy and would follow his stuff again but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything of interest to me any more.
What happened with Standard/Nebula?
I responded to someone else, but there is a reason why Grey isn’t a part of Nebula.
his videos started getting sparse/boring
What happened? I’ve never heard of it
Him and Kurzgesagt were helping to build an organization for YouTubers with the current CEO. The first talent signed on was Wendover and Real Engineering.
Grey and Kurzgesagt were rather inactive partners when they should have been more active and were trying to build a much more exploitative company instead of what Nebula became. It is vague on how they left, but they left and the company became better for it.
Sorry, do you mean the current CEO of Nebula or of YouTube?
Nebula
So Nebula got rid of him (which would seem to coincide with his drop in output)?, Kurzgesagt seems to be doing just fine in comparison.
I still watch his main videos (when they actually happen…), but with a much higher degree of scepticism than I used to. And I stopped listening to his podcast (singular…).
My disillusionment with him started with a few issues with his videos. The blatantly ridiculous “royal family is good actually” video. The less obvious but no less egregious touting of Guns, Germs, and Steel. The AI techbroism of his automation video. Then he just killed off the podcast with no explanation, leaving his cohost Brady to put out a note saying “yeah we’re just on hiatus for now”. Over 4 years ago that was. There was the fact that he sided very vocally with Kurzgesagt in the CoffeeBreak drama, despite
CBKurzgesagt obviously being in the wrong at every step of the way.Then the final straw where I was no longer willing to say I was a fan of his was when he did a video about some missile silo in America, in which he used the name of a submarine-based missile instead of a land-based missile at some point. Shortly afterwards he put out a massive mea culpa video saying it was a “catastrophic” error that he could not live with himself for, and that he holds himself to too high a standard to let that stand. All while still not acknowledging the problems with those earlier videos. So one nitpicky detail gets a massive hullabaloo and a retraction, but fundamental flaws in the underlying thesis of the video gets nothing? Give me a break.
What drama, and if sided with Kurzgesagt when they were in the right as you say, what is the issue?
Oh whoops! My mistake! I’ll edit the above comment to fix that. It was Kurzgesagt who was in the wrong.
The drama was (to copy/paste an earlier comment, because it’s rather lengthy):
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
Incidentally, here’s the video that CB was working on at the time. Hari, the scientist discussed in the video whom K worked with on his video discussed earlier, communicated very well with CB on it.
Thanks for the great breakdown, it sounds vaguely familiar. I remember K’s retraction bit and I follow Philip DeFranco. Disappointed he landed on the wrong side.
For what it’s worth, Philly D is someone I could have answered the original question with too. Not for any spectacular reason like the above—I had already stopped watching him before that occurred. For me it was just finding his focus was too much on sensationalist pop culture news rather than news reporting that interested me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, it just wasn’t right for me.
Yeah he definitely can veer too much into that stuff for a time. I strongly dislike his thumbnails and titles but I feel he has to do that to compete but I do like his content, some days just less than others.
I only ever saw that Royal Family video of his, and it was enough for me never to seek out any more.
Have you seen this response video to Grey’s Royal Family one?
I haven’t, but I will definitely watch that, thanks! 👍
i love Shaun’s videos, but this is one of my favorites. the way he “negotiates” with the royal family is just chef’s kiss.
I found his video on FPTP Binary political systems video to be logically flawed and I think it ultimately caused more harm than good. It’s irritating to see people reference it in political discussions today. That eventually convinced me to stop giving him views.
I didn’t like his take, “solving” traffic nescitates the use of self-driving cars. Can’t have traffic without cars, it’s as simple as that. We need public transport, not more shit to spend our increasingly scarce money on.
Epic Meal Time and Pure Pwnage
Any of them actually make content anymore?
EMT does but its not the same. Show got repetitive, so I guess they changed it up, but its crap now.
Thanks! I honestly felt it got repetitive after just a few videos…
Good Mythical Morning
At some point they got so popular that I just felt like they sold out. I felt like I was just watching 1 giant ad with all of their videos trying to get me to buy something. Also, some of their rants that they started going on got annoying. Seemed like at some point they lost the chemistry that they had together. I just enjoyed watching their banter and them doing goofy stuff.
Huge agree about pushing their merch! They’re shameless. I used to watch every day for years but stopped a long time ago; when every episode became a food episode. Their podcast (Ear Biscuits) is a bit better, it’s more them talking about things long form, just being 40+ year old fairly normal (if not very successful) guys. They’ve talked about quitting GMM, I think once their various kids are done with school they’ll pack it up (the main show at least). They both have other passions but it’s really difficult to stop when you’ve built a successful, working media company with your childhood best friend, even if they’re both ready to retire.
They actually bought Smosh and brought Ian and Anthony back, and then sold Smosh back to them a few years later. That was a really cool move to me and and got them a HUGE pass in my book, they’re stand-up guys.
Full disclosure: despite not watching much of their video content anymore I still went and saw them on their most recent tour (about a month ago, it was a gift) and had a great time. They did some of their games but modified them to be specific to my state, did a food ranking with some local-foods, and of course had a couple musical numbers.
We used to watch a lot of game theory. Really enjoyed the over analysis. Stopped part way down the 5 nights at Freddie’s rabbit hole when all the drama started.
what drama?
i know the host stepped down and it just wasnt the same.
I remember crying videos about people being mean. It was a few years ago I don’t really remember any details.
Both Mr. Beast and Mark Rober. They got too loud and shrill over time.
Edit: Oh and Guga Food / Sousvide Everything. They just do the same thing all over, with weirder ingredients every day, and then make shocked pickachu faces when stuff tastes shit. Ribeye dry aged for 180 days in engine oil? No shit it’s bad.
Every Mark Rober video is now an ad. They’re also loud and obnoxious, so I’ve stopped watching them.
I’ve actually never watched a Mr Beast video. They never came up in my feed.
Mark Rober is a massive fraud. Recently he started selling out to the military industrial complex too.
The mistakes in that stupid weather balloon video closed that door for me. What a pretentious greedy weirdo.
He always seemed nice, but all he really cares is squeezing as much money out of everything.
Casey Neistat. Back when he was doing his daily vlog thing a lot of it was really interesting, covering him and his wife trying to make shit happen in the city as he was running and riding his powered skateboard around Manhattan. At some point his audience started drifting younger, way way younger, and I don’t know if it was him or me but I just kind of lost interest. It didn’t feel new anymore.
That might be me to be honest. I actually don’t watch YouTube that much at all anymore, unless I’m looking for something specific. Their recommendation algorithm is garbage and it is so obviously going for raw time suck engagement that it leaves me with a bunch of unfulfilling clickbait / ragebait where I could watch it for an hour and then just want my hour back so I end up not returning. The whole platform used to be more full of interesting genuinely entertaining and educational videos, now it just feels like a giant time sink. And every other video is now some paid sponsorship or plug where the creator is basically just whoring out their own influence. Case in point, look up reviews of laser engravers. Every single one that I could find, especially of a couple major brands, the creator got the laser hardware for free. Some of them are just advertisements that reuse the manufacturer’s own stock footage, and some seem more like real reviews, but for one or two brands I literally could not find one video where the creator wasn’t sponsored by the laser manufacturer.
CoryXKenshin because he stopped uploading.
AVGN… Is a corporate now and the guy is just a failed movie director that is stuck in the one thing that made him popular so he just doesn’t put the passion on it anymore.
And his last 3 year of videos are TERRIBLE.
Out of interest, have you seen hbomberguy’s recent video on plagiarism in YouTube and the section on AVGN?
for a second there i thought you were talking about AVNJ (the fish biology guy) and was immensely worried lol
Even it was AVNJ, you shouldn’t let some random strangers on the internet ruin things you like. Every one has a skeleton in the closet but if you like the videos, watch them.
While some of his stuff interested me, the whole shit / diarrhea ″joke″ shtick put me off right from beginning.
That’s prime AVGN, if you don’t like it then you missed the best part of it
I stopped watching when i read that he’s just the “actor” now. Now i watched two of his recent videos and they were way better than i expected. Not great, but it’s not like it went full unwatchable garbage. I can see someone discovering his new video and go way back to see more. So i guess it’s not that bad.
It’s kinda sad t h at they seem to never to be able to make an actual good movie.
James Stephanie Sterling after she started doing the stupid “ad spots” in videos for pogs and other memorabilia. They aren’t real ads, but they were so damned obnoxious.
Lucy Pyre after she stopped doing FFXIV videos and went full on brainrotted degenerate.
I don’t even remember the last time Stephanie Sterling did anything like this, so it was just a weird blip. Not that she doesn’t goof a bunch. Still a great channel to stay up to date on the things that actually matter in the games industry instead of the usual hype machine shit. The only thing I don’t care for on the show is the wrestling stuff and when the editor does some schtick.
Do moat people who watch her these days do so because they also watched jimquisition? I always wondered that, because to me it’s the other way around. I always saw his thumbnails but never the video. Now i listen to the podcast and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of podcasters and youtuber said that they will get “hate” for something they put out, and by “hate” they mean some 12 year olds that disagree and beed attention. I kinda accidentally went to her homepage and saw the starfield review and people in the comments were absolutely nasty. While i don’t agree with that at all, i can see gow she’s pushing buttons. Like ahe absolutely hated palworld. She hated it before she even played it, and all i could hear is that she’s such a pokemon fangirl that she couldn’t comprehend that people like that more than ger beloved pokemon and said all that palworld did was made her want to play “insert the worst pokemon game”. Same with helldivers. She wrote a review of the game in the time she was waiting in queue on launch day. She couldn’t play, so there is no review. I think that’s kinda fair in a way, but i’m pretty sure if it wasn’t helldivers 2 but something that she really liked or really wanted to like she would still waiting right now. So i’m not sure if she’s actually farming hate for engagement or what the deal is.
That’s always been her shtick though, to hate on things. Go on long rants.
Upisnotjump. It’s just not my thing anymore
Most beauty “influencers”
I watched them before they were “influencers”, and then I couldn’t trust the products they were using or recommending.
The hot wings first we feast channel
It’s entertaining but I got tired of the premise
I feel like, if they ditched the hot wings, it would still be a good interview.
I get what you’re saying, but the eating and the spiciness of the wings actually contribute to the quality of the interview.
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Eating a meal with someone is disarming and contributes to the relaxed, ungaurded nature or his guests.
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Consuming spicy food, particularly extremely spicy food or spicy food in great quantity releases endorphins which.
So while yes the eating/reacting to how hot the sauce is does interrupt the flow of the interview somewhat, it does help him get good/candid answers for his guests.
So while his research team is outstanding and he’s a talented interviewer in his own right. The hot wings do serve a role in the interview as more than a clickbaity gimmick.
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After the DJ Khaled episode I knew nothing else would be as entertaining for me so I stopped there
Eh, I’d argue the recent Conan episode is pretty insane and hilarious. Much more so than Khaled.
The DJ Khaled one was him just completely embarassing himself unintentionally. Funny because he’s so full of himself. Conan’s was funny, but you knew it was going to be before watching because it’s Conan
Yeah, but you already knew DJ Khaled’s was going to be stupid and embarrassing before watching because it’s DJ Khaled.
I watched Linus Tech Tips, and NCIX Tech Tips before that. My wife and I were discussing how the level of information was tanking but the production quality was great, then GN released their video a few weeks after we stored watching LTT and I unsubsidized.
NCIX Tech Tips: Special Victims Unit
Day9. Though I just rewatched a funday Monday from episode 200 or 300 and it was just as amazing and fun as it was back over a decade ago.
I watched newer stuff he still seems to be a great guy.
Sorted Food. Once they started with the Pass It On format they really declined. Now all their videos are pass it on sand Chef Reviews Gadets and no more actual cooking videos, especially not recipe videos.
