For me it’s Skallagrim. This is a channel of a guy who specializes in ancient armory and weaponry, he also reviews swords and stuff that’s sold online and tests them. Pretty cool.
But then I started to not like him for some reason and it took me a while to put my finger on it. Until I saw the video where he tried criticizing weapons in video games. Then that was where I found problems with him as a channel.
His personality comes off very pretentious and one of those pseudointellectuals you know, who try sounding smarter than they really are. He even has the voice tone to back that with.
So yeah I really once loved his channel. Though whenever he goes on tirades about things that are meant for fantasy purposes which aren’t supposed to make sense when translated to reality, as well as try to poke at fictitious things that borrow from ancient history, I feel he misses the plot of his entire channel and why people like me once subscribed to it.
We didn’t subscribe to your channel for your stupid takes on - anything. We subscribed because you seem to know your melee weapons and historical backgrounds of said weaponry. Stick to those.
Pretty much any channel once they make it big. I have watched so many channels that just starts out as a person in their basement, or bedroom and make great but simple content. Then they catch on, get a lot of subs and starts making content for the algorithm instead of their existing viewers. They go full time, hire an editor, a cameraman etc. And the content moves further and further away from what made it good to begin with.
A turning point is usually when they quit their dayjob and go full time, that’s when the pressure to perform well really begins.
Some exceptions of course, like LGR and Explaining Computers, who just keep chugging along solo. And I still enjoy them because of it.
I remember way back, before people made money on YouTube, or right at the time maybe. I was watching some guy making videos in his backyard. He just talked, it was the simplest format imaginable, the most effort he ever made was wearing a different jacket to act as a second person. He was really funny and his content was relatable and he was just shooting the shit. After a while, he got a bunch of subscribers, i don’t really remember the numbers, or what counts as many back then, but he started doing green screen stuff a lot. He made his videos more like a news show, he was wearing a tie and a suit and was an angry news anchor or something. It was still good, it was still funny, but it wasn’t why i watched his videos, so i stopped. I went back a bit later and his video was basically him complaining because of dropped viewerships and the effort he makes to make better videos. It was pretty sad.
The big big exception to this for me is the guys at Red Letter Media.
Even once they got big, they’re still just shitty b-movie lovers who don’t really give a crap about an algorithm. And that’s why I love 'em.
I was never super into RLM at all, but i still appreciate that they still pretty much haven’t changed.
They pissed off a lot of culture war grifters with their review of The Acolyte that was more about the culture war grifters then the series itself. They then made a video about them buying the mold for the Star Trek Salt Vampire monster that got much bigger numbers then the grifter’s raging about RLM. It was great.
So many RLM episodes have edits that are just annoying to watch, and they do that on purpose and I love them.
Three of those come to mind immediately:
“I hope this is a children’s suicide…video.”
A guy having his head run over by a three-wheeler 20 times in a row. Twice.
A guy falling shoulder first onto a wooden crate 20 times in a row.
the biggest issue for me is that it seems impossible to find those small channels anymore, whatever you search for, it’ll just give you big ones, even if not really related to your query