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  • Defunctland is great for high quality documentaries on amusement parks and 2000s television

  • I'm mostly into educational channels:

    • CGP Grey (infrequent posting schedule, but really good when he does)
    • Minute Earth (Quick Earth science videos)
    • Minute Food (Quick food science videos)
    • Technology Connections (explains new and old technologies)
    • Kurzgesagt (general science with cartoon birds)
    • Mark Rober (over the top engineering)
    • The 8-bit Guy (retro computing and pc gaming)

    Then there's "You Suck at Cooking" for silly, but good recipe videos.

    "Film Joy" for deep dives into films

    "Lock Picking Lawyer" to watch a guy pick any lock in a few minutes (addictive)

  • Echoing some other suggestions surely, but here are a few that I regularly come back to:

    GAMING:

    • CallMeKevin (really funny, wholesome Irish guy known for playing games kinda hilariously incorrectly )
    • GameGrumps (two best friends playing games and riffing. Usually very funny and wildly inappropriate. Feels like gaming with high school buddies)
    • Outside Xbox/Outside Xtra (small team of British friends with lots of quirky, easily digestible “7 things” lists over the years)
    • Dungeon Dudes (pretty broad and approachable dives into all things D&D)
    • Smooth McGroove (older channel with many delightful a cappella renditions of video game songs)

    COOKING:

    • Babish Culinary Universe (super approachable, funny, and well-edited cooking tutorials with fun themes and lots of room to be wrong)
    • How to Cook That (Ann Reardon is a super knowledgeable, friendly, crazy talented baker, and she does a lot of good work to address and debunk dangerous & stupid trends on social media)
    • Joshua Weissman (similar vibes to Babish, but a little more overtly comedic. Does great recreations of fast food classics)

    SCIENCE & TECH:

    • Technology Connections (deep dives that make mundane things in our lives seem super fascinating)
    • OzTalksHw (very wholesome, budget-friendly PC builds with an emphasis on self care.)
    • ZeFrank (excellent, accurate, and very funny short nature documentaries)
    • NetworkChuck (friendly, well-edited tutorials on lots of IT-related things)

    ENTERTAINMENT AND OTHER/MISC:

    • Kitboga (fairly wholesome considering the content area. He exposes and confronts phone scammers with hilarious made up character voices and fake websites & accounts, and he teaches people what to look out for in the process. Lots of swearing and shouting from scammers that he regularly pisses off by wasting their time and getting their accounts closed)
    • Watcher (Ryan and Shane do a lot of different interesting things, and their banter and chemistry are infinitely watchable. Puppet History is a particular favorite)
    • Digging the Greats (really cool deep dives into the makings, origins, and fun facts about all things hip hop)

  • kurzgesagt - Science & Education - I personally love their videos of nuclear technology and their videos such as "What if we nuked the moon?"

    • Tasting History: Historical recipes re-created and the history behind them.
    • Accented Cinema: Video essays covering foreign (mainly Asian) films and actors.
    • ComicTropes: History of certain comic book runs, spin-offs, writers, artists, and tropes.
    • Game Sack: Deep dives into classic video game consoles and games.
    • Ordinary Sausage: A guy who makes sausage out of anything and everything.

    Tried to hit multiple interests with this list. There’s so many smaller creators I’d love to recommend, but they all revolve around more specific topics / hobbies / interests.

    • Oh god, the sausage one... I was just a little curious. There's videos making an air sausage and a water sausage (which go about as you'd expect).

    • Go HAM on the hobbies... I am interested, I doubt people will mind if you have the time.

      • Here are a few of the top of my head…

        Calvin Dyson: In depth reviews on all things James Bond.

        The Backyard Scientist: Crazy guy in FL doing crazy science experiments.

        Doctor Wolfula: Horror related channel that harkens back to the days of horror movie hosts.

        Comic Book Corner 2.0: Casual video centered around comic book collecting.

        Minnime: Reviews / retrospectives of more obscure games.

        Scarfulhu: Reviews / retrospectives of mainly point and click adventure games.

        Jim Browning: Exposes all sorts of tech support scams. Unlike other scam channels (Scammer Payback, Kitboga, Trilogy Media, etc), Jim is more focused more on educating rather than comedic scam baiting.

        Puppet Nerd: If you ever wanted to learn how to make a puppet or get into puppetry, this is the go-to channel. The creator (Adam) was diagnosed with brain cancer last year, but he’s doing much better now and starting to put more videos out again.

  • Mathologer makes great math videos that should be understandable even by people with no higher math education.

  • Moon Channel, a lawyer who dives into some of the legal topics surrounding the gaming industry, most of them Nintendo related. Really well researched information about emulation legality, modding, even copyright infringement Nintendo themselves committed in the 90's (in the Mother 3 video), all sorts of stuff.

    He also has a few other things, like a REALLY LONG video on JRPGs, or commentary on MMOs.

  • Vlogbrothers has been a favourite for many years. They do so much good! And do lots of silly stuff too, like making a series of videos with titles taken from smash mouth’s rockstar 😀

  • Dankpods

    Astonished to see a thread about YouTube and not see any mention of Dankpods. I sub to two patreons, and Wade's is one of them. It's because of him that I have an ever-growing collection of iPods.

189 comments