Lemmy, who are your favorite small-time content creators?
I’m talking YouTube channels with a few thousand views, streamers with single digit viewers, writers who only get a few reads on their submissions.
Since the fediverse is all about boosting connection to smaller voices, let’s share the love!
You know how modern semiconductor components are made in billion-dollar fabs? Well, you can actually make them in a garage, at least simple ones.
Damn, he's got a lot of equipment though. I was hoping I could just setup a jig with 2x4s and melt sand with a blowtorch
Most of it isn't strictly necessary. Like, he has sputtering equipment for making layers that can't be chemically deposited for example. The one where he makes a MOSFET on camera involves just spin coating with tape and some random motor, a little tube furnace to bake impurities in and chemical etching IIRC.
He uses commercially available blank wafers; you'd need a small arc furnace (or at least a blast furnace and patience when your product is mostly iron) to make silicon from sand and something resembling a meth lab to clean it (and then you'd grow and cut your wafer, but that could be done on a desk I'm sure).
Wait this is incredible.
I don’t even know how to hold a hammer correctly let alone solder a chip, but I might have to try a new hobby.
It didn't look that hard in the transistor video, actually. His layers were in no way straight or pretty, all that matters is the topology and timing on the baking steps.
Vzedshows is a video game content creator I really enjoy.
Strong Towns is a channel about city planning and urban centres.
Shifter is about urban cycling and focussed on Canadian cities.
Robert Hoskin finds and restores old films. Mostly Japanese ones.
Olden Demon creates cool videos about old Warhammer 40k
Mars Guy does a weekly dive into what is going on with Perseverance on mars. Super interesting.
James Channel is all about retro games and messing around with them.
Grouse House is an Australian absurd comedy group. They make fucked stuff.
Face Full of Eyes does absolutely incredible breakdowns on the aesthetics of games.
Canadiana makes some of the best documentaries about Canada.
Every channel here I believe is under 100k subscribers. So much great stuff waiting to be found.
*Edit: Fixed URLs, if they still don't work let me know.
Think your links might be broken?
Yeah sorry about that. I just went through and fixed them on desktop. I think I got them all.
Technology Connections for deep dives on seemingly mundane things
Knowing Better and Kaz Rowe for history
Alpha Phoenix for Science
I like how Knowing Better went from “general history” to the “slavery and cults” guy. Dude has found his calling.
The Space Quest Historian does YouTube videos about classic adventure games with full playthroughs, historical deep dives, and creator interviews. He also actually hangs out here in the Fediverse: he's on Lemmy as @SQHistorian@lemm.ee and on Mastodon as @sqhistorian@dosgame.club.
Also, SQH's band Error 47 does industrial rock covers of retro game music and is criminally under-subscribed. They're currently working on an album covering The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, which I'm really looking forward to.
I've also been really digging Quake Speedruns Explained lately, which is a really chill dude talking about one of the oldest and most competitive speedrunning scenes around.
@eldrichhydralisk @SQHistorian@lemm.ee Thanks so much for that, man. What a delightful thing to wake up to. 😊
I’ve recently started to go through the videos from jauwn. Really funny dives into terrible NFT games and their communities.
My wife told me to put my channel here, but I won't plug :)
But seriously though, I love the content from 4hardy! For AOE fans he's a legend: https://www.youtube.com/@4Hardy
Be your own favorite small time creator and plug away!
Don't mind if I do! Also, feel free to suggest more ideas + feedbacks. https://www.youtube.com/@FancyGUI
It isn't exactly low thousands, but I followed it since they had about 2000 subscribers.
Um... so idk if you heard of this game called FTL: Faster than Light, basically its a rogue-like, real time strategy game involving space exploration.
So one of the the youtube channels that plays FTL that I've been watching is Rand118. Well he's more of a streamer rather than a youtuber, but he reuploads his twitch content to youtube (I like pausing a lot so I never watch livestreams). Idk why I watch this dude, like it's not very "high quality" but I guess when I first played FTL, I watched 2 channels, and one of them was LethalFrag and the other is Rand118, so I kinda just occasionally watch Rand118 for the nostalgia.
Also, the other channel is Andrew Colunga, which has this 40-episode youtube series that tells a story of a Kestrel ship and it's called:
FTL Kestrel Adventures, if you're a FTL fan you should check it out.
But I'm not sure if anyone on Lemmy is an FTL fan, the reddit sub kinds went back to normal. I missed those niche subs.
Love FTL- one of the most unique takes on rogue-lites I’ve ever seen.
Nothing was more frustrating than trying to win hard with Stealth C
Magcarjoe does Pokémon videos. His animation, (purposefully) shitty photoshop, humour, all of it I find hilarious. He’s definitely extremely talented.
Crackermilk has gotten bigger, but with the quality and quantity of hilarious absurd little sketches they put out, I feel like they are still insanely underrated. Much too high for this question, but I still want to mention them.
Blame Society Films: https://youtube.com/@blamesocietyfilms
Their “Welcome to the Basement” videos have really awoken my passion for older films. They’re hilarious.
I’m surprised that Penny Pixel’s YouTube channel isn’t more popular. They create pixel-perfect parodies of old 8-bit games.
My favourite is a video of the ‘Sierra’ adventure game Joker, based on the Batman movie of the same name. But there’s also California Games 2018 (where you compete in events like fidget spinning and drone flying) and Mamma Mia! Kart Racer (which is actually worse than it sounds – don’t say I didn’t warn you!).
The Elden Ring Tiger Electronics LCD game is pretty fun.
Joe’s Classic Video Games, two brothers who repair old arcade machines. Their videos are usually in a long format so you’ll see the whole process. They explain what they’re doing and talk about the history. Really good to watch when you have a spare couple of hours.
I was looking through all the YT channels I subscribe to and most of them have millions of views per video. But if you're into fishing, there is a channel called 1fish2fish. It's a younger husband and wife on the East Coast. They have some great videos that have really helped me up my fishing game and taught me a lot and they're fun to watch.
This is extremely cute content, wow
Shameless self plug incoming!
Country Fried Minis is great. He paints Battletech and Infinity minis mostly, but my favorite aspect is that he often streams while video editing, which is a cool behind the scenes of content creation for a young artist. Very nice guy who has always been engaged and willing to answer questions, offer advice, etc when I spoke up in chat.
I know this post said YouTube, but throwing this small twitch streamer. He's done GTA RP, but has been streaming horror games. Check him out. https://www.twitch.tv/somewayz?sr=a
I was searching for some videos on The Expanse TV show and got hooked on reaction channels.
The ReviewCrew just started a watch from season one, and I'm enjoying their banter while their minds are being blown.
I'm a big fan of Reel Knewz on YouTube. They only have about 1.5k subscribers, but they're the closest thing I've found to All Gas No Breaks/Channel 5 since the news came out about Andrew Callaghan.
Kelvin Shadewing on yt. Has 737 subs as of me typing this and posts videos about the game he's working on (SuperTux Advance).
I don’t know if he’s small time, maybe a lot of people read his blog. He posts very in depth information about mobile payments in Japan, and Apple software information as it relates to Japan. Pay compatibility, map updates, those kind of things. Also he occasionally posts random cultural stuff.
If you’re into music production and song writing there’s a great twitch streamer called Plus 6 Productions. Informative, entertaining, very engaging with chat and the viewers are fun too.
Ya know, this guy ChamrsDeluxe is alright! He does music, chainmail, gaming, reaction content. He took a long break after getting hit with some depression, but he's got some quality content that is just hard to get eyes on. Even put out a fairly high production value video on "gfx artists" who are just scammers that constantly plague small creators.
Definitely check him out!
Bouncing on my boys dicks.
If you know, you know.