Shadiversity. Guy made some really interesting videos breaking down different kinds of historical melee weapons, showing how, when, and why they were used. Genuinely interesting content until he started randomly spewing right wing nonsense a few years ago.
He really went in on the “ai art” too.
I’m disappointed that my fascination for sword staves came from his video, and he turned out to be a bigoted pro AI chud that is jealous of his own brother because his brother is reaping the hard work he put up as an artist
And poor Jezza the brother, just saw that his wife has breast cancer now. :(
Have you read his book? If not good because it’ll kill some of your brain cells if you do. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing a bad book. Most writers first book won’t be great but shadow of the conquer has more problems than just being bad. In it the main character a former genocidal, mass murdering, serial rapist does nothing to redeem himself but gets forgiven anyhow by all the rape victims who got pregnant from the involuntary intercourse because they’re so happy with their kids.
It has some troubling attitudes towards a great many things (mainly women) and those attitudes are presented by the book as self evident and true. I find it very telling of the man who wrote it.
Shadiversity was a sword youtuber who would get into occasional e-drama, but still produced interesting content about medieval weaponry. Over time they started releasing pro-AI and culture war rants completely unrelated to their sword stuff. They had another channel that was more streamer/podcasty where they pandered to a right-wing crowd which I guess leaked over into their main channel.
i dropped Mark Roper when he said he loves his Tesla and plans on buying another. I just can’t deal with Nazi fanboys.
Renaissance Periodation. He kept suggesting to his viewers that we should check his facts against Chatgpt. His sex jokes got boring and repetitive.
Mostly, i drop a youtuber when i get bored with their content.
Mark does rub me the wrong way. He’s just a very positive guy and clearly cares about being a good guy. But is way too buddy buddy with the big man.
I get creeper vibes from him, always have. Something about the way he behaves around kids, as a dude who has gotta be in his 40s-50s at this point… Yeah it’s weird.
Linus …
The other LMG talent is so good. Although I was really disappointed when they let Jonathan and Emily (fka Anthony) go.
But I really enjoy Riley, and James and Elijah aren’t so bad either.
Linus’ “I had to buy a private jet or I’ll lose money” video was so cringeworthy though
Do you know why was emily let go? Did she do anything wrong? Or just because they didn’t want a tran on camera?
When she first came out, she took her self off camera because she was afraid of abuse and backlash. As far as I know, Linus was nothing but supportive. She just never got back on camera at LMG and eventually moved on
It’s sad but I’m hardly surprised she went offline, her coming out video got brigaded by the most disgusting 4chan scum
She’s active on bluesky and I’m fairly certain starting her own YouTube channel (or already has? I forgot to follow up). I reached out once or twice to say hey, pass on support, and she always messages back.
From her videos it seemed like she wanted to go out on her own.
I still don’t get the hate for Linus. He worked hard, made money and now employs a lot of people. The majority of people who left have only nice things to say about him.
Only a few have bad views and everyone has people who dislike them. A lot of the controversies seem like stupid oversights or mistakes rather than malicious.
I definitely feel like he lost touch a long time ago.
There was a video that was hosted at one of his employee’s houses (I’ve tried to find the video before but couldn’t) and there were multiple points where Linus was being incredibly rude to the guy’s new home. He was making fun of things for looking cheap, and at one point stood on (or placed something heavy, I don’t remember) a table as the owner asked several times not to in fear of it damaging the table. The video didn’t really get much attention as far as I’m aware, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I kinda stopped watching as many of their videos.
A few years later the fiasco with the prototype they sold without permission happened and his reaction and the fallout that ensued took LTT off my subscription list.
The video where he talks about how it just didn’t make sense not to buy a private jet was so far beyond out of touch I don’t know how anyone thought it was a good idea (the video, not the jet).
There was also a series of videos at his own new house where he’s getting the LMG employees to work on things for him at his house.
The power dynamic felt super off like he’s rubbing his wealth in their (and our) faces. I’m not mad that he built a business, is doing well and got a nice house with his family. I would have been happy for his success, but the whole vibe of making that into content made it feel uncomfortable to watch. It felt more like he wanted to show off than it being about the tech.
That, and the way he reacted to various scandals including the one you mentioned was extremely poor and his disingenuous reviews, I had to drop them, the list just kept growing.
It’s a shame because I liked a lot of the content and I really like Riley, James and the other staff as presenters but my heart sinks any time Linus’ face appears again in my feed.
There was also a series of videos at his own new house where he’s getting the LMG employees to work on things for him at his house.
Thank you for reminding me of another thing that put me off.
One of the employees that left is quoted as saying, “there’s a moment when you’re working on your boss’s third home when you start to wonder if you’ll ever be able to afford your own”.
That stuck with me.
I used to watch a lot of fishing/outdoors channels.
during covid all but one of the outdoor channels I watched either did straight up covid denial, or went full mask off on their right wing extremism in general and with crazy conspiracy theories about covid, so I dropped them.
I also dropped bigclive around the same time, because he thought people getting sick from vaping was, iirc, some kind of government hoax or something, while also engaging in the whole “covids just the cold, stop being silly” type of denialism, Which really sucked cause I used to love his content… but I havent watched since.
Self-Sufficient Me fell into this category for me. Tons of very relaxing videos about growing fruit and vegetables at home… Then COVID hit and he started talking about “prepping” and “Doomsday” in every video. Didn’t work for me anymore after that.
There was another that I just remembered, Survival Lilly, who did survivalist and bushcraft videos. Again, lots of natural outdoor scenery and birdsong and just enjoying the weather and all that, but fell into a bunch of anxiety-inducing Doomsday prepper talk. Just looked her up now and she’s gone completely off the rails and is mostly putting out right-wing conspiracy stuff. Bummer.
Maybe less direct, but I was a big Joe Robinet fan for a while. After he lost his brother and his dirt bike accident, it felt like he was going off the deep end a bit. Felt sorry but also felt uncomfortable watching.
Veritasium. Sold out to private equity.
what?
they gave the channel to a PE firm, its little more than some to push ads.
https://www.electrify.video/news/electrify-completes-majority-investment-in-veritasium
Hadn’t heard of this either, but it wasn’t hard to find
sad noises over here
Yeah I noticed it seemed to be different recently. Used to watch every video he put out but it’s definitely changed :(
He sold several years ago already
I got a weird feeling from him when he did a whole video (or ad) about head and shoulders shampoo.
True, but the change was slow, and Derek still appeared in most of the videos at first.
deleted by creator
His contents are still miles better than some other YouTubers that were bought out. While I’m not pleased with the direction he took, I do not have any qualms with the quality or the content or the depth of topics.
Same here, I’d use it as an example of how to do that right.
Hoovies Garage - He stopped finding and fixing vehicles that I can relate to, and went to supercars I couldn’t care less about.
The king of random - went from being mainly constructive to destructive. Even before Grant hired new hosts, he started to do easy break/burn/explode shit. Then he collaborated with Jake Paul and that was the stick that broke the camels back.
He started up a used car dealership. He’s back to buying normal cars.
The Young Turks.
It was annoying me for a while but I had been a paid member for years and watched their whole show every day. I noticed them giving a bit too much ground to the right and Anna swinging too right for my taste but Cenk was still left enough to let it pass.
I don’t remember what finally convinced me but my yearly subscription was coming up and I just couldn’t see myself watching it anymore so I unsubscribed and cut off my membership.
I pay for The Majority Report, The Humanist Report, and Kyle Kulinski and those are people I don’t think will be betraying the left.
It pains me to say it, but I don’t watch any new AVGN episodes. James has gotten into that phase where he’s just a parody of himself now. In the old episodes, it seems like he GENUINELY gets angry at the games, but nowadays it’s very clear that he’s acting. His crude humor and angry rants just come off as obligatory and contrived now. The old episodes had a VIBE to them, like you’re in a dark basement playing games with a weird nerd. The new episodes just feel like a polished, scripted show. And I know James has to make money, but seeing the Nerd do an ad read is just too jarring. I hate it.
Techmoan. I used to be super into his content on old obscure stuff but it fell off a cliff for me a couple years ago. Instantly bored.
AvE when he started getting right wing preachy. Guy had a winning formula and destroyed it.
Electroboom. Similar to techmoan… Booooooring. I don’t care about the outlets in whatever country you are visiting this month.
John Oliver. It’s too depressing to find out what levels of depravity and corruption the ruling class is up to. I can’t handle it anymore.
Techmoan fell off for quite a bit when he got sick. He’s had some better stuff recently, now that he has a better outlook. YMMV
AvE… man I used to dig that guy… When he started going all public right during covid… I go back now and then to watch an episide but it’s just nothing redeeming enough to draw me in. He’s fine, he don’t need us anyway, he’s got enough in his camp.
I think boom should have kept on the electronics training. I still watch him now, but it’s for the travel videos, he’s pretty good at drone footage and going to places I can’t afford.
Oliver I never picked up on.
AVGN I guess, not because of any controversy but just because he has no passion to make videos and the quality is low and the videos are soulless
I agree.
I wonder if he’s tired of doing the AVGN character and wants to go on to something else, but he’s carved out too big a rut for anyone that supports him to want to support him as anything but The Nerd.
I haven’t checked his channel in a while, but I thought they did movie stuff occasionally (it is Cinemassacre after all!) and I thought for a minute they might lean more heavily into that since he seemed to have an equal passion for film as he did video games. I’d watch him just being himself nerding out on movies.
Mike Rowe gave a platform to JD fucking Vance to spew his nazi bullshit.
Here’s an episode of the podcast Citations Needed all about how much Mike Rowe sucks.
Thats cause Mike Rowe is a right wing twat, who likes to cosplay as blue collar
100%. He takes a majority of his funding from the Koch brothers, and is famous for pushing for “safety 3rd” instead of “safety 1st,” I.e go ahead and die as long as it makes someone else money.
his screws got loose when trump won his first term, at that point i knew he was a rightie.
His screws were loose long before Trump. He’s always been a right wing asshole masquerading as a blue collar working dude.
Joshua Weissman, he used to have some good cooking content but it got too brain rotted for me.
Similarly I almost dropped Binging with Babish, but he started a new channel for his non-BWB content and actually put up a classic-style video recently!
Yes exactly for both of them. Babish is still kinda okish but Joshua feels like I’m watching AI.
If you want pure cooking, Alton Brown has been posting weekly on Saturday’s. Good eats style.
So many good cooking YouTube channels. “America’s test kitchen” tend to be excellent, with a wide range of topics. I’m a big fan of “Aaron and Claire” for his breezy, chill takes on Korean fusion.
“Not another cooking show” does amazing recipes out of the NYC cooking scence, and of course the champ, “J. Kenji lopez-alt,” of serious eats fame, just cooking every damn thing the PNW has to offer.
ATK is fantastic!
Lan Lam is a particular standout with her fantastic technique breakdowns.
All of them because youtube blows
Donut. Its corporate sellout trend-chasing temu garbage and tiktok reaction algorithm bullshit now. I just hope Nolan and Justin leave and make new channels, because I really like them as hosts, but can’t bear to watch Donut.
Speeed and Big Time are pretty kick ass though.
Don’t forget I Can Do That!
Speeed turning into a variety and (non-toxic) advice for men channel wasn’t what I think anyone was expecting but it’s worked out great so far.
Big Time feels like they’ll surpass Donut’s peak eventually.
Agreed and agreed. It is nice seeing James with a broey non-toxic masculinity dude channel.