Seeing the other post here about YouTuber that went downhill and seeing content creators I am familiar with makes me sad. But how about those that still makes great, high quality content?
Tom Scott
Won’t he stop doing videos in like a week?
I think he’s gonna slow down on his main channel, but still upload. He does have a second channel as well. Tbf he’s been doing his thing for 10 years
Tom Scott is a beacon of YouTube quality.
He never had a phase where all of his videos were 10:00 for the algorithm, he never jumps on topical shit for clicks, he just talks about genuinely interesting shit, and has gotten to do so on a higher and higher budget.
He has diversified, and has other channels that interface with other YouTubers in gameshow and stuff. But it’s all still legit content.
And a deep cut from 9 years ago. Same kind of content. Slightly lower quality but… Guys been doing this kind of “hey I think this is neat let me tell you about it” for a decade, without becoming a dingbat.
You get the idea.
Unfortunately not for much longer, though
I fell in love with him after the execution of the Dasani video. Walking backward ten minute single take, amazing: https://youtu.be/wD79NZroV88
Video icon has giant red text saying “NOBODY SURVIVES”. Open with Tom Scott standing at a gate to the Chernobyl exclusion zone
“Today I’m here to talk to you about something dark, something that has produced so much pain, something that decays life itself. Me standing in Chernobyl actually has nothing to do with it, because pulls up a laptop showing a game I’m referring to League of Legends”
Gaming
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EthosLab - most authentic Minecraft YouTuber around. No trash clickbait, cringeworthy attempts to appeal to children, ad spam, etc. Just a dude chilling out and playing Minecraft.
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Battle(non)sense - Tests various input lag reduction tech + strategies. Input Lag: Low DPI vs High DPI - turns out increasing your DPI can significantly reduce input lag! AMD AntiLag+ vs Nvidia Reflex - turns out not only does AMD’s solution trigger anti-cheat, but it also offen increases system latency.
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Marblr - High quality analysis of weird game behavior. Mostly Overwatch for now. Overwatch: The Effectiveness of Shield Spinning
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People Make Games - Videos about games and the gaming industry. Highly accessible to folks not familiar with the industry. Making Sense of VR Chat, the Metaverse People Actually Like
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NoClip - Crowd funded feature length video game documentaries. Making of Horizon Zero Dawn
Makers
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ColinFurze - builds crazy stuff and does an amazing job of it! Currently building an underground garage at his house that connects to his underground tunnel system.
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I Did a Thing - Australian man with a great sense of humor. Makes ridiculous stuff. Giant Beyblade destroys stuff
…more in Honytawk’s comment below
Science + Technology
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Applied Science - In depth videos about random science-y things this dude finds interesting. No clickbait, just an excited dude talking about a project he tried.
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Atomic Frontier - A lot like Tom Scott. He’s also a rare case where the video is more interesting than the title/thumbnail. Generally focused on science-y topics + has shockingly high production value considering the dude seems to be an overworked college student.
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NileRed/NileBlue - Crazy in depth chemistry videos. Personally find NileBlue more entertaining as he tends to explore things he’s not that great at.
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Practical Engineering - Explanations of various civil engineering concepts.
Other
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Krazam - Legendary comedy channel focused on software engineering related topics. Most famous video - microservices.
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You Suck At Cooking - Short videos presenting recipes in an entertaining way.
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Studio Binder ; High quality videos about all things movie/video production. Owned by a movie production software company so you’re gonna see ads for it in every video but SponsorBlock gets rid of that with no issues. Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement - Every Technique Explained
Your makers can be padded out a bit more.
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I did a thing - dry humor Australian who walks barefoot and wears an apron.
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Michael Reeves - chaotic coding goblin that makes robots
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TheBackyardScientist - Floridaman using his backyard to explode stuff
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Mark Rober - Nasa engineer explaining science to kids with great editing
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William Osman - Collaboration expert, you will see him in all the other channels mentioned above.
1 more dude I skipped but I’ll put here - Stuff Made Here - Insanely skilled engineer who seems to be able to make just about anything. Skipped because his thumbnails are horribly clickbaity.
Thanks for the list, I’m sure others will appreciate it!
I’m actually subscribed to almost all of those channels lmao. I skipped several because I’m being picky, and I mean picky. You probably won’t agree with a lot of my decisions. Here’s what I mean…
- I did a thing - forgot about him I’ll add to the list
- Micheal Reeves - Last real video was a year ago
- Backyard scientist - Unsubscribed a whole ago due to clickbait. Videos seem fine now though.
- Mark Rober - Video quality has been going downhill. More and more clickbait, and videos seem to be spend a lot more time than necessary on “look at our happy family fun time we’re having.”
- William Osman - I like him just not enough to put him on the list
They all do a podcast called safety third, I watched it for a while but I stopped cus the content feels really lazy. And when I realized most of them have slowed down their main channel video output a ton like Osman and NileRed and Reeves I just got bored of the lot. Like their videos are all dumb shit like “i gave a snake legs” and it’s the most half assed 3d printed shit the barely works and they just act like teenage boys the entire video, then look at view count and it gets millions of views. Kinda starts to feel dumb and more like youtube celebrity shit than actual quality maker content, sorta pisses me off a little seeing them get so much money making like 1 video every 6 months where they build literal garbage. And they sorta brag about it in their podcast. It sorta feels like they are slowly slipping into more cringry content like trash-taste kinda stuff and im just not into it anymore.
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Second on Etho, he’s remarkably constant all the way from when Minecraft was in alpha.
He’s also a rare case where the video is more interesting than the title/thumbnail
It’s insane but it’s true. Great guy.
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CGP Grey
I can’t get enough flag videos
- Some More News (Last Week Tonight-like political commentary)
- AngryTurtle (fallout 76 content)
- videogamedunkey (gaming/humor)
- Yahtzee Croshaw (game reviews/rants)
- Wendover Productions (random interesting education and air travel gameshows)
- Practical Engineering (how the world around you is built)
- Technology Connections (deep dives into engineering everyday gizmos)
- Tom Scott (interesting tech/education)
- RealLifeLore (explains geopolitics)
- Internet Historian (amusing yarns, discussions, and stories)
- LegalEagle (law)
- Kurzgesagt (explains scientific concepts, lots of what if scenarios, animated birds)
- Tasting History with Max Millar (historical cooking in a modern kitchen)
- Let’s Game it Out (dude who breaks games in the most amusing way possible)
- My Name Is Andong (cooking)
- Chef Jean-Pierre (cooking)
- Economics Explained (economics)
- Matthew Berman (explores the latest AI/LLM tech)
“Well hello there friends!” Chef Jean Pierre makes me so incredibly happy every time I put one of his videos on. His delivery, humorous self-awareness, and sheer passion for cooking never fail to put me in a good mood. Highly recommended!
Primative Technology. A dude out in the bush building houses and tools out of mud, sticks, and rocks without speaking a word.
I know there are several similar channels so maybe I’m mixed up, but wasn’t this the one where they found out the guy was using machinery to create his projects off camera and claiming it was all done by hand?
Nope. This guy is the real deal. Nothing he does is large scale or unbelievable. If you turn on captions he walks you through what his thought process is/what he is doing. Very enjoyable.
Nah, this is the guy that basically spawned the entire “genre”. He’s legit as can get.
He is legit.
The most popular fake primitive building channels are obviously fake if you have even a little bit of critical thinking. They usually pretend to build some preposterously sized waterparks and other complex structures that are obviously above the scale of two guys with hand tools.
Lemmino creates amazing documentaries about a wide variety of topics. He uploads very infrequently, but it’s totally worth it when he does.
Barely Sociable is similar in style and uploads high quality pieces about various mysterious occurrences.
Drachinifel uploads frequent, high quality content about naval history from the age of sail to the 1950s.
Our Own Devices is a very small channel that feels similar to Technology Connections (another excellent channel). He uploads content about the history and inner workings of old devices of all sorts.
Throttle House is the best car channel on YouTube.
Jason Cammisa’s Revelations series on the Haverty channel has really good deep dives into the histories of some important cars.
Aging Wheels/Under Dunn are excellent car and/or wood project channels. Chickens make frequent appearances too.
Mentour Pilot has excellent analysis of airline crashes.
Jay Foreman uploads funny and informative content about maps (Map Men) and tidbits about the history of London.
Cathode Ray Dude uploads deep dives into weird computers, computer peripherals, and old cameras. I’ve watched his half hour video about modems at least 5 times.
Mustard uploads excellent content about crazy ideas in transportation (like the Soviet love affair with the ekranoplan)
CAPTAIN DISILLUSION
The oniy way his quality has changed since the invention of the wheel is youtube allowing higher resolution uploads.
Definitely some of the best production value on youtube. Even his stuff from 10+ years ago holds up incredibly well aside from the resolution.
Haven’t seen Summoning Salt mentioned yet. He does great videos on the history of speed running a video game.
An example video would be Super Mario Bros: The Human Limit where the difference between a tool assisted speed run and what a human is capable is discussed. And how Super Mario Bros has an interesting mechanic allowing humans to be imperfect but still able to tie a perfectly executed speed run done using essentially a script of commands.
- The Bread Circus
- They go through the Star Wars movies from a book lore perspective, point out flaws in the writing and lore-breaking, and offer suggestions on how the sequels could have been handled differently. They did The Last Jedi, and I really enjoyed it. They also have some cool videos on podracing, ships, and guns.
- Defunctland
- History of Disney rides, takes the culture of the time into consideration, the video on queues is a must-watch, imo.
- Draw Like a Sir
- Really solid drawing tutorials that aren’t very complicated, takes the time to break down high-level concepts into simple exercises. Overall a really fun channel to watch, even if you’re not into drawing.
- Fredrik Knudson
- Long, deep-dive videos into internet history/culture. Rare uploads, but a banger every time.
- James Lee
- Newgrounds-era animator with amazing compositing techniques and a very unique animation style where he inserts himself into his videos as a very animated caricature of himself.
- Lemmino
- Like the History Channel but without the fluff. Cool topics, very nice animations, high production, high-quality content.
- MattKC
- Known for a Lego Island decompilation project. Also does retro console repair from time to time — very fun watch.
- Paper Will
- Rare uploads. but interesting video essay topics. High quality and a nice watch during lunch.
- Pecos Hank
- A storm chaser who is Reed Timmer’s ying to his yang. Very chill, documentary-quality footage featuring himself playing guitar and talking about the beauty and power of nature. You’ve probably seen his footage on the Weather Channel!
- Technology Connections
- Great deep dives into random technology, old and new. The video on the popcorn button on microwaves is really good (I think that may be on his second channel?)
Technology Connections
“It’s november, so that means no effort videos all month.” proceeds to make high effort video
- The Bread Circus
Tom Scott
Curious Droid - lots of sci fi, technology content.
WaterlineStories - all sorts of nautical/diving disasters narrated by a South African chap with a lot of experience.
Qxir - Irish guy with a lot of weird stories told in stick figure form.
Plainly Difficult - a lot of disasters frequently nuclear.
Nile Red is still fun - and a nice dude. Chemistry
Vince Vintage is hilarious, great editing (like internet historian but not a jerk)
Also my homeboy Video Game Dunkey.
Dreading is good(sort of successor to JCS), very sober and tasteful host discussing true crime.
Oh also Brick Experiment Channel for fun stuff with Lego.
Red letter media
My favorite YouTuber for sure - no thumbnails, no clickbait, no asking for subscriptions or money (he used to accept donations way back but stopped since he felt like he could make do without them), minimal intro and outro, he reads comments (he reads at least one comment from the previous episode on every episode of his main let’s play) and he’s been making the same kind of content for over a decade (main let’s play has over 500 episodes, each usually around 30 minutes long, sometimes much longer).
I haven’t played Minecraft in years at this point but I still watch every video he puts out.
StyroPyro
Cody’s Lab
NakeyJakey
InfernoPlus
Kruggsmash
Your Movie Sucks
juliaplaysgroove
The 8-bit Guy
Code Parade
Adam Savage (via Tested)
Climate Town
Captain Disillusion
Naomi Wu
