In my opinion Game theory has degraded quite a bit, partly because they grew too big and started bumping out more and more content on multiple channels which in my opinion saturated quite a bit. It doesn’t help that there exists now long form video essays that go much more indepth in certain aspects of games and other forms of entertainment. MatPat leaving did also leave huge void that they can probably never fully replace.

Jimquisition or now rebranded as ‘Stephanie Sterling’ channel has also degraded quite a bit albeit there are some highs here and there. I liked their game coverage and loved the “Squirty Plays” and “Jimpressions” where they played and made fun of numerous sloppy games but they seem to no longer make them (maybe twitch? but I don’t watch Twitch). But Jimquisition has become quite repetitive with its ramblings and I don’t really care all that much about any of the LGBTQIA+ or wrestling stuff. Still following the channel though for those better videos that do occasionally pop up.

Similarly YongYea is one of those channels I’ve started to watch less. It’s one of those channels that try really hard to please the audience by telling them what they want to hear instead of having more nuanced takes. Not only that many of his videos are overly long while providing very little substance. Nowdays I prefer Bellular News and Second wind more, and If I ever watch YongYea i’ll ususally just jump a head in the video immediately when I hear him start rambling instead of focusing on actual news.

This may be hot take but Hbomberguy has degraded not necessarily in the quality but in the quantity department. I’d much more prefer smaller more concises videos more frequently than 1-3 hour long mega essays that get realeased like every other year. While many of these can be bangers I am not sure if they’re overall worth the wait. These could at least be split to multiple smaller videos to spread out the content a bit and make them easier to digest. It’s also huge risk if the topic is not something that doesn’t interest you all that much. Similar could be said about ActionButton a.k.a Tim Rogers who took more than 2 years? to make 9 hour video about La Noire? Which I can’t be bothered to watch because it’s age restricted in youtube which would require me to log in.

i followed this asian talking/joking about news since my college days, they definitely declined and degenerated into magats over the pandemic. apparently it was over a female employer they fire unprofessionally, because she spoke out against them,a bout her pay, and all the drama snowballed from there, the old fans thought everything was going great until that employee posted on her own channel why she been removed from the channel. now they cant stop blaming women for thier own decline. i stopped following thier channel, and only visited the sub about them from then on, like in '23 which reports on thier decline, which they consistently tried to take down multiple times. thier NU Fans are mostly incel asians, and muslims, and Parasocial female fans, it was quite cringe when they actually brought one of the parasocial fans on the channel(read it throught the sub), and HOSTING tulsi gabbard.

and one of the channel owners as a veneer of progressive streak, but he often lets his libertian/ conservative leak often, it was kept in check until the INCIDENT with women in his channel, he pretends to be pseudointellectual now an anti-intellectual. being the right wingers they are, they are still to loudmouth that youtube buries them in thier algorithm. and yes they are trying to grift from the right, but them being asian and poc makes its very hard to compete white magas.

pretty much all of the ones that got bought out by PE. the biggest offender of that in my realm is veritasium

AvE used to be good but a while back starting saying dumb right wing political stuff. not dumb because it was right wing, to be clear. just that it was right wing and also was dumb. I still have thisoldtony though, he’s better anyways. AvE mostly just had funny quips with a bit of knowledge. ToT has funny scripts and a lot of knowledge.

Scotty Kilmer was always a character, but I stopped watching years ago because idk I guess he just started putting out crappy clickbait content? idr

most Minecraft channels simply ran out of content to produce. the best two, to me right now, are mahjongblonsky and bigbooty17

what else… there’s a ton of those informational sciency type channels that I no longer like because they’re just too big budget trying to appeal to too many people. smartereveryday lost appeal to me — though I cannot say if quality has declined. it just lost appeal to me. mark rober, similar situation. haven’t seen a video from either of them in a year, but been phasing it out for several now. I disliked when a bunch of channels did promo stuff with the US military, too.

oh, MKBHD — turned into a shill for excessive-tech-having cars. at least he made a separate channel for automotive content. I think? still, another situation of somebody speaking in your area of knowledge — I couldn’t take him seriously or hear the shitty opinions any longer. as a counter, UnderDunn made a separate channel for his automotive content, and while not my favourite stuff to watch, it’s not shill crap like MKBHD.

I tried scrolling through my YouTube subscriptions to see what other channels fit the bill, but I’ve already unsubscribed from them…

A lot of older channels I watch, but due to a combination of not liking their content style¹ anymore and changing tastes. Channels like Kub Scouts, GrayStillPlays, Bijuu Mike, etcetera.

1. A combination of how their content has evolved and adapted to a platform strangling itself every new day.

Lunduke and Sabine Hossenfelter took similar paths downward towards more money in the rage economy.

I saw Markiplier do a lets play for some indie roomba game many many years ago, he proceeded to have an almost religious experience, and I was like “fuck yeah, this guy gets it”

Fast forward and he promotes shit like No Mans Sky and TikTok, I automatically unsubscribe from anyone and everyone who promotes TikTok, and he’s got this whole survivorship bias like “ANYONE can make a successful movie or webseries. Anyone! A Heist with Markiplier was only like $30,000 dollars production value… well, okay, thats a lot of money, but still!”

He’s lost touch with reality and now he’s just another salesperson.

Another one that’s kind of downhill is Kurzegast, their recent AI video was really hollow and vacant of all the reasonable criticisms about AI and its immediate effects, some people have theorized that channels like theirs are being sponsored by a company called “Control AI” to muddy the waters and move the discussion away from things like holding companies accountable.

Nearly all of them. Even if you pay for premium or use an ad blocker, the YouTubers just make their own commercials as part of the content and the more popular they become the more ads they create.

Everything on YouTube apart from niche special interest content creators has gone to shit because all these high viewership channels got bought out by private equity.

This might be too niche for anyone here, but Ronny Dahl.

He used to make good videos on four wheel driving in Australia, with good gear tips and longer form camping trips with his friends. Well, either he started editing his videos alone or stopped taking his meds or something, but now every video is quick cuts, stupid voice effects, stories that build into nothingburgers or intermingled stories that have nothing to do with each other and just get confusing. I also notice those friends he used to camp with aren’t in his videos any more, so that’s probably saying something.

At least I still have the 4WD 24/7 guys (although I don’t really like the “next generation” they’re trying to bring in).

Do you guys remember Ray William Johnson? Last time I looked he was doing like super weird clickbait-y non news story naration. I don’t know if anyone understands what I tried to say there.

SMG4 is one that comes to mind, having watched his channel since its early days. His older videos, while clearly lacking polish and obviously made by a teenager, were actually funny and memorable. As time went on though, his content started to slip. Sure, the production quality improved as he started Glitchy Boy and later Glitch Productions, but the humour ended up becoming secondary as he switched from self-contained episodes to various “seasons” with ongoing storylines. It meant you had to keep up with every episode to know wtf was going on (the same mistake South Park made), and his attempt at making the series more of a drama than a comedy meant that the humour was more of a distraction that made it hard to take the drama seriously. Why should I believe Mario will die this time if I’ve seen him survive being blown up, set on fire and shot dozens of times before? Some of the best characters (Bowser, Toad, etc) ended up taking a backseat to his numerous OCs as well, and the voice acting sucked compared to back when everyone spoke with various meme clips and subtitles.

SMG4 was at its best when it was a bunch of multicoloured Marios just doing random funny shit, and didn’t take itself seriously one bit. It’s pretty clear Luke’s passion is with Glitch’s other productions, hence why SMG4 finally ended.

Braille Skateboarding. Dude shut it down without letting his team know beforehand because he’d fallen deep into Scientology.

Pretty much all the old gaming YTers I used to watch I barely have time for because of how long the videos are. Most of this is down to streaming, and how long and plodding VODS are.

Also, ditto anytime they transition to doing it full-time. I remember YT in the 2000’s when people basically just did it as a hobby.

Cinemassacre, for a couple reasons:

1. The character of the AVGN is based on Mike Matei, not James Rolfe. James is mainly a horror movie nerd, and Mike is the gamer. As toxic as Matei can be about gaming, When Mike left, part of the Nerd left with him.

2. They expanded to more recent games. It was inevitable, but it really killed the last personal touch the series had. The AVGN Earthbound episode is a great outlier, because you can tell that James wanted to make it and had at least some connection to the game. Most of the episodes now, he’s reviewing games he has no connection to, using a script written by someone else.

Game Grumps, for similar reasons. Dan stopped being familiar with the games they played, so he stopped offering as much input. During Covid especially, he would order in food and just eat for half of the episode. They pivoted to not really marking the number of an episode in a series, thus making it harder to follow a series. Then they started releasing longer episodes and doing stuff like the 10 Minute Power Hour. I originally was drawn to the fact that you could watch an episode of GG or play it as background noise and still get some good laughs or vibes. That kinda went out the window, and so did I.

Most of them to be honest, not through their fault but the ever tightening squeeze of ABC Corp. on what is “acceptable” content and language. To the point some are giving up or deplatforming from Youtube to elsewhere. Stephanie Sterling if I had to say one but that’s because they even acknowledged it’s just the same thing over and over again. So they do less videos unless it’s something particularly poignant.