2d ago

Truly delightful

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Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
- You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
  
  It's not simply the Gates money, but the pivot to pursuing grants by chasing clicks to the exclusion of all else.
  They've been Mr Beast-ified.
  
  So happy capitalism allows me to experience network decay on the internet.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_drift?wprov=sfla1
  
  Oops. Everything is The Learning Channel.
  
  Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it's all "vote with your wallet 🙂"
  
  It has been neoliberal biased for ages. For example this is a 2021 article calling out their neoliberal bias. https://aninjusticemag.com/the-inescapable-neoliberal-bias-behind-kurzgesagt-in-a-nutshell-215eb1e9b70f?gi=9574bf28f4a0
  But it has undoubtedly gotten a lot worse recently. That south korea video was abymaly blind and baked in unrealistic capitalist assumptions.
- They're doing the thing where they upload a video and then change the thumbnail and title of the video every few days which I've only seen done by all the low effort click bait channels. It's what finally got me to install the dearrow extension which swaps titles and videos of YouTube videos to be more informative and less click bait.
  
  I believe this is a YouTube feature that effectively runs A/B tests on your behalf. You give it multiple titles and thumbnails and it'll gauge engagement with each and then use the one that was most popular. I hate it.
  
  Every other week I learn something about YouTube that makes me sad
  
  Damn YouTube is such a shitty platform
  
  A lot of channels do this, you might've just not noticed.
- Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of "What is the purpose of dust? I guess we'll never know. Isn't the universe a mysterious place?"
- Yeah they’re kinda bullshit.
  
  SpaceTime and 3Blue1Brown are good science educators for the college level.
  Veritasium is good for the middle/high school level.
  Kurzgesagt is probably useful for an infant. Or like a smart dog. Maybe an Australian shepherd.
  Garbage channel.
  
  What exactly is bullshit?
  
  If this is meant to be a tongue in cheek comment on their video titles, then you deserve a dramatic slow clap.
  
  Their videos about the climate catastrophe are paid by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  
  A lot more than those. It's usually the ones that say Big Pharma saved the world and will do it again or that things are great actually
- Ah, yes. Their "We found space whales on Nimbus!" video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled "What actual aliens might look like" was something I could excuse. I don't consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
  However, what I really hated was their ad for a "strange matter" vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the "buy now because they'll never come back" trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
- They seem to be trying to copy xkcd's video format with the fantasy tier what if questions answered seriously. Seems out of place to me, not sure what Gates Foundation gets out of fluff pieces like figuring out what banana rain would do to the planet while getting the terminal velocity of a banana wrong right off the bat too. What a shit video.
- I stopped watching them several years ago. I can't say it was a specific video or event, but I just started zoning out when trying to watch them. I don't do that much, I generally only watch, play, listen to and do things I can focus on. I've tried to watch some videos since then but I just lose interest after a minute or two. It's like they refined their style so much that it all became too "samey" and it feels like they're so scared of offending anyone that they end up saying nothing.
- A lot of their political and historical videos are propaganda
  
  Such as?
  
  Not going to give them views, but find any modern history video especially if it's from a designated enemy nation by the US State Dept
  
  Oh you were talking about oversimplified... I thought you meant kurzegesagt and was very confused. They don't do any history, well with a focus on it at least.
  
  the one that talks shit on so-called third parties is basically all conjecture and poorly interpreted academics.
- Dang, I'm surprised to see how many folks are down on Kurtzgesakt in the comments here! Bummer!
  They might not be perfect, ya'll, but at least they encourage open thought and critical thinking! Better than a lot of other media can say these days! 🙂
  
  But they don't encourage open thought and critical thinking. They basically tell you what to think.
- It's not as good as it used to be, but I still find it comfortable to watch. I like the black hole and space stuff, like what terraforming a planet would look like, but yeah they definitely have some fluff videos. Unfortunately clickbait titles like THE WORLD MAY DIE is just YouTube 101, seems baked into every channel now. Very hard to find a channel that feels organic.
- It's honestly the fate of most edutainment videos.
  Eventually they run out of cool stuff to educate people on, so they pivot to hypotheticals.

240 comments