Mark Rober

He's been going harder and harder into the Mr Beast format, and it's off-putting. I'm still subscribed for now, but I almost never watch his videos unless the topic seems interesting.

I no longer get excited about a new Veritasium video.
I also don't get excited when the title and thumbnail change 5 times in a week.

MKBHD, Linus, Most of the tech reviewing kids who got money and then hired an entire staff and in lots of cases also bought up really good solo YouTubers.

Motherfcking Casey Neistat. He was never an amazing person, his exploitation of his wife’s ass in thumbnails and being comfortable with click bait titles always felt off. But he’s a masterful propagandist and videographer until I saw him waving Israeli flags at pro Palestine protests during a filmed documentary.

It's been a while, but AvE. Dude used to be some chill guy who would take apart tools or do some deep dive into a manufacturing process. But then the covid nation attacked and all of a sudden the guy is sprinkling an opinion in here and there that made me say, eh, and then the Canadian trucker thing happened and dude was all in on that shit. AvE was the first thing I ever donated money to on patreon and the first one I yanked my monthly from because the content had changed to something it once wasn't.

I don't know if they degraded over time, but I unsubscribed from SmarterEveryDay because 1.) he kept trying to slip religious BS into videos and then I couldn't unsee his whole generic youth pastor schtick, 2.) he kept posting weird Physics Girl health update stuff. It just lost me. Not for me. I feel like the glory days of vsauce are also well behind us.

The only one that I unsubbed to pretty fast was the 8bit guy. I generally enjoyed his videos and then in one of them, he had a fairly rare IBM PC and for some reason, he sticks a screwdriver into the power supply and blows a component.

But what really turned me off was when footage of him turned up on Reddit, taken by himself, of shopping in a place like Costco with his assault rifle on his back. I think he was taking pleasure in scaring some of the customers too.

(I think I've remembered that correctly)

Anyway, never went back to his channel after that.

EDIT: I found this Reddit page where someone asked what he did. Didn't realise that was 5 years ago now!

Binging with Babish - used to be a fantastic set of recipes and takes on cooking that I really enjoyed trying to make, then got into the serious money and jumped the shark, both in "I bought my brother a Tesla/fulfilled a fan dream" and "this week we're using this dehydrator" ways (that meant I just wasn't going to be able to even imagine using the techniques and knowledge on show).

Linus Tech Tips. It used to be good informative content. After they moved from the house in particular it started to really ramp up the clickbait. It just didn't feel like it was still about technology. It felt like it was about whatever gags they could throw into technology related videos.

The all the controversies happened after I had already unsubbed. Yeah, I don't know how people still engage with that channel.

I find most channels will degrade once the creator makes Youtube their full-time job. Afterwards, it's all about selling products, donations, sponsors, and memberships.

Survival Lilly and SirSic and two channels that come to mind.

MKBHD. He used to be, IMO, the best tech channel out there. The reviews were honest, well produced, and held companies' feet to the fire. The old MKBHD poked fun at the companies' shortcomings (I specifically remember him telling iPhone users to add a widget - then going "oh, wait..."). The new MKBHD interviews Tim Cook and doesn't properly question any of the BS he speaks.

Not sure if this counts, but CGP Grey. The frequency of the videos was always a joke, but the most recent video is a 3 month old paywalled vid of an early preview for a video still unreleased publicly. I still enjoy the videos when they're released, so it's not the quality, but the channel is clearly on autopilot. I hope everything's ok with him and maybe he's just using YouTube as passive income now that he hit it big?

This is VERY recent but NetworkChuck. He's such a great speaker and his videos were good intros into tech (Linux, networking, etc.) but with practical applicability. I liked that he skewed family-friendly and family positive, and some of the solutions he presented were from his perspective as a father. He was never shy about him being religious and being religiously involved. Imo 100% wholesome.

This year, several weeks of his videos were paid sponsor content for very corporate Cisco BS. Then, he comes back from that and it's AI stuff that's kind of a strech for a typical home user.... Then "I'm going to end my videos in a prayer". I unsubscribed right there.

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.

LTT comes across as someone who simultaneously wants to be a boss and also do nut taps in the locker room. He himself admits he sucks at PR and then does PR solo style anyways or with Luke held hostage. He often takes things personally when it's actually a really good opportunity to show growth and standards, but I swear he misses the mark every. Single. Time. This behavior also corroborates the feelings of a staff member who left because someone higher up was creepy to her and wasn't ever confronted because that's the environment Linus fostered. You can't be a boss that's always joking because sometimes it's serious, and when it's serious, it's not always personal.

MKHD Always seemed like a bit of an Apple shill, but I gotta say it just got worse and worse. It's like he was shopping for himself and once he became a millionaire everything seemed like it was cheap if it was at all novel. He also handled that app launch insanely badly and seems like the type of dude to be impressed by anything a tech bro presents to him.

Berm Peak completely similar vibes. He's rich, so crazy expensive bikes and accessories are almost always a great deal because they're in his budget and high quality.

Ethan Klein I honestly don't know why I ever liked him apart from the copyright lawsuit with Matt Hoss. I appreciated the goofs, but for some reason it took me way too long to see that some of those people in no way shape or form deserved that treatment. Patrice Wilson for example, not to mention later when he devoted his entire life to hate watching Hasan and Hasan-adjacents while being incredibly deceptive about his and his wifes views on Israel. I ditched him before all that, but man what a massive shitshow he turned his channels into.

EEVBlog got high on his own supply. He's always been a bit snobbish, especially about sub par equipment that he already made up his mind about before opening, but I saw him talking about running for office with some dogshit platitudes that mean nothing like, "Dave'll take it apart and fix it all" and seemed very defensive when people were asking what his platform actually would be. God complex vibes from all that.

Gus Johnson because he treated his ex like crap and ran from accountability, and is now sneaking back into YouTube through his and his brother's account without ever really addressing his failures. He just wants everyone to move on and accept him again.

Cody Ko handled the fallout of sexual assault allegations horribly and is best friends for life with a known rapist, putting that relationship above everything. Gross guy, but before all that came out he was just a funny immature frat guy with a lot of jokes and good reactions. Major failure to meet the moment.

Scott Kilmer - just shitty political takes eventually wore me down.

AVE - shitty political views and then talking about teaching his daughter racist nursery rhymes was the final straw for me.

Donut Media. They got bought out by an investment company and then all their videos became Buzzfeed style listicles.

Well Wranglerstar is pretty good example. Used to be about homesteading and tools, then turned into politics, grifting and Jesus talk. There's even a subreddit dedicated for hating him for it.

Van Neistat (Casey's brother) is another one for me. It's actually one of those channels that went from me utterly loving it to entirely stopping watching it the quickest. I can't really put my finger on why but I think I just started to get the sense that this is a job for him, not a passion.

I'm just waiting for someone to uncover that Fireship is a secret Nazi, he gives me all the same vibes as the internet historian

Basically any channel that started doing "reaction" content. Oh you're reading the top page of Reddit today? Cool, what creative value does that have to me? Absolutely none. Goodbye. I get that it's really popular but I have no idea why, and I get it's cheap to make but it's also shit, so you get what you pay for I guess.

The only exception to this is Jimmy Broadbent who occasionally does his "Sim Racing Stewards" series which is basically his take on Reddit user submitted clips of their online racing mishaps. I find it really interesting to watch because he has so much sim racing experience and, albeit less, experience of real world racing with real life stewards and racing rules. It's entertaining and interesting and I want to know his opinion on these incidents because he has enough context to have an opinion, and doesn't act like his opinion is gospel.

Stephanie Sterling (and not for the reason you probably think).

I understand that the gaming industry is shit, and therefore reporting on it is always going to skew negative, but it really felt to me like the negativity started permeating their content as a whole - to the point that I got the feeling that they didn't really enjoy video games at all anymore.

I also started to get the feeling that they resent their audience for responding positively to such negative content, too - doing things like complaining that the worst-of lists get more views than the best-of lists. You don't have to make them if you don't want to.

Also, it's cool that they found a passion, but I really don't care about wrestling.

Top Gear, Not sure if this fully counts as YouTube but I’m sure that’s where most of us watched it. It hasn’t been the same since Jeremy, Richard, and James left.

Degraded as in opinion or actual metrics?

If it's opinion I feel most channels naturally degrade over time as the broadcasters personality changes with the popularity increase.

My largest case and it's a likely a controversial take would be Markiplier. When he hit fandom he all but left the youtube lets play field in favor of other opportunities(which to be fair he was fully upfront with before he did it), then after months of almost no activity he came back with a different personality. (somewhat like how Jack did when he did his rebrand but was more noticeable). My eye opener to it was his GTFO series, I don't know of a good way to put it, he seemed super offputting and mean/childish to the people he had gamed with for years. I know it was likely meant to be a bit but, after an extended inactivity in the genre and then coming back and acting like that it was whiplash. He also seems to really be putting his fandom/viewer base on the side burner with everything, he hasen't posted regular videos in a long time(I expect it's due to his movie that he's putting his heart and soul into) and it's made it so I no longer get recommendations to any of his content since his channel has fallen off the algorithm for me. Like don't get me wrong, I still like his content(when he releases it), and he's been clear that youtube was a stepping stone for him and that his passion is in other areas but for the sake of the question I feel the channel fits.

The one that jumps to mind for me the most has got to be Rick Beato.

When I first found out about him he was just a super passionate and likeable dude totally geeking out listening to stems of classic records, just being endlessly appreciative and highlighting things that he thought were cool in a way that was reasonably accessible to regular music listeners. On the side he did some more technical music theory and musicianship stuff, which I could take or leave to be honest. But overall it felt like a channel that was there for sharing this dude's love of music with others.

Lately it's just been pounded down into mediocrity, I feel. He spends a lot of time chasing after bullshit trendy stories about AI music, spotify rankings, controversies of the week, long rambling live stream rants about various meta things that nobody has time for. The silver lining to all of that is that he has been doing interviews with musicians, which are generally pretty good, but it really depends on who he's talking to. I understand that DMCA takedowns get in the way of breaking down songs, and that sucks, but my problem is that it's often kind of negative stuff that distracts from talking positively about music, musicianship, production, etc.

I think he knows this because he recently put out a video about a big "change of direction" in the channel.

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...

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

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

Bourbon Moth

Loved to watch his videos as he made woodworking accessible. He also does really good work.

Then one day he built an epoxy river table then promptly blew it up... Literally blew it up... Which spread all that epoxy all over the place in a forested area. I still watched, but next he did a video on rags catching fire and it was all obviously staged. That was it for me, I unsubscribed then told Youtube to never suggest his videos again.

AVE

Funny enough it was AVE that exposed Bourbon Moth on his BS regarding the towels combusting. However, shortly after that whole thing AVE just really went downhill. Instead of being informative and amusing, his videos just turned into the narcissist's playbook for look at me! Haven't watched one of his videos since. Which is a shame, because his earlier videos were really interesting.

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.

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.

Let people explore their creativity 😢 The unsubscribe button is always there if you lose interest. That's what YouTube was about back in the day. You. Not how many you can please for likes and shares and enfuckment. Post what you want, and interact with people who like your content.

I've dropped a couple of channels because I suspected the presenter was a choad. I once unsubed from a movie-review channel because the presenter made a joke about "games journalism".

Another popular channel had (has) amazing content about historical guns. I first got a bad taste in my mouth because he covered some shit from Rhodesia. But I decided to give the benefit of the doubt. I know that collecting Nazi artifacts doesn't imply politics. Then the channel decided to cover "anti-riot" "crowd control" type weapons during the George Floyd Summer protests. Nah, I'm out.

For some obvious and dated answers: AVGN and =3

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.

Casual Navigation

The creator sold it and the last time I was looking it was AI slop

Ashens, but I can understand why, he's been on youtube for 19 Earth years. He's doing the same schtick he's been doing since there was hope in the world, there's basically no object that fits on a sofa he hasn't snarked about. An entire registered voter's life ago, he would do some quite edgy content, but it's faded to snark. I wish him all the best, he seems to be an okay guy.

The Modern Rogue face planted hard. I think Brushwood tried growing the business bigger and faster than it could, while making a few obvious mistakes.

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.

Most degrade over time as they either grow tired of doing it after years of treating it as a job/ buisness with mutliple employees or they move on to other things and its just no longer a priority besides keeping the revenue going. Similar to watching a TV series or a podcast, they are all eventually must end but some go way past their time or upload frequency that worked and just end up a either corporate style mess since it is a job to sell ad space now or just too exhausted from the years to keep up the effort of being good. The second part is moreso for those that switched over to mainly streaming to make clips of them reacting to other people's content.

OG Youtube watcher since back with the Lonely Island being the only thing on there at The start. Ironically they're still pushing 20 years later as a podcast now vs their SNL style skits.

Philosophy Tube

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.

Regular Car Reviews definitely peaked long ago.

They've largely stuck to the same formula for the past decade-plus, hiding masters-level literary theory, and copious amounts of toilet humor, under the guise of automotive journalism. And there's nothing wrong with sticking to the tried-and-true.

I still enjoy their videos, I make sure to watch them every Monday morning like clockwork. But they just don't hit the same anymore. There's not much that's memorable about their commentary these days, unless the vehicle in question is unusual on its own, like the shuttle bus RV conversion they reviewed... four months ago. I had to scroll past a bunch of videos for cars I honestly forgot they'd reviewed, when I checked their channel just now.

I miss the anger. I miss the passion that resulted from it. Brian's acknowledged this, and he's mentioned how he's just generally calmer and happier these days. And there's nothing wrong with that. I admit to souring a bit to all the giveaway cars he'd review/advertise... especially how you'd enter these giveaways by paying FIFTY dollars, pre-shipping, for a crappy camping mug, with a vaguely car-culture-related picture on it. But not an RCR mug. And I respect him for having (largely) stopped doing those giveaways.

But, like, the last video of RCR's that has actually stuck in my mind, was when they absolutely ripped into an Oldsmobile Bravada. And that came out nearly 5 years ago.

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.

Skallagrim huffs his own farts almost as much as Matt Easton. I miss Mr. Chickadee.

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.

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).

FilmRiot

Used to be a fun channel about DIY filmmaking. They would replicated a number of things using DIY gear (how to make a dolly track, etc...)

After a while, it became entirely about replicating digital effects in After Effects and stuff like that, and when they do talk about hardware, it's sponsored content about gear that is far out of any amateur filmmaker's budget.

The why files feels very AI generated now, both visuals and story telling.

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.

Skallagrim! I am subbed to him also.

He is and has always been the weird metalhead kid in high school who is really obsessed with medieval weapons and not very socially apt. I don't mind his takes personally.

It's off topic to the rest of the thread, but I also want to point out that LGR has been consistently good for more than a decade.

Channels that are in the process of going down the tubes would include Skeeter Jean, Jidion and Predator Poachers. which are really three flavors of the same thing but they're all going downhill fast - although Predator Poachers (or more specifically, the guy behind him, Alex Rosen) has always been a scummy person.

I've been watching the Kings and Generals channel for a number of years now and I'm noticing the quality starting to waver a bit in the last couple years.

I might be playing Devil's Advocate here, but Psivewri.

I started watching him years ago for his tech videos, usually restoring mundane computers, and I still enjoy that content.

However, he started getting into automotive, and I'm glad that he's stretching out into other areas. It's clear he's still learning and probably on my level of mechanics (backyardie who can watch videos and read a workshop manual), but my issue is how he presents the videos like he knows what he's doing, almost like a tutorial - giving random tips throughout.

His Dad assists him with the work he does on cars (like myself) and in that sense, I'd rather hear tips from the Dad than him because I'd have more confidence he knows what he's talking about.

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Otherwise maybe PhoenixSC? I started watching him when he was uploading redstone contraptions to r/Minecraft and he had 4K subscribers. His older, experimental videos were always interesting, and his work on adventure maps like PokeCA was amazing to watch.

Today, most of his videos boil down to the following:

• Meme reactions
• Takes on Mojang controversy and how he believes the community should respond
• Joke Minecraft creations

I'm glad that he's grown to be more confident in himself and in general, become more entertaining when he talks, but I feel he's gone too much into the mainstream over the last few years rather than keeping to his lane.

I still like Skallagrim. He still gave helpful reviews about blacksmiths and historical weapons that I'm interested in. And IMO, his channel was always more entertainment than scholarship. But HEMA is a martial art that develops slowly, way slower than YouTube algorithm's demand. There are not many new stuffs to talk about. If there has to be fillers to get his channel going, I'm okay with that.

Edit: Back to the topic. There are not many channels that I care about degraded to the point that I can't bare. What makes me a little sad is that from time to time, channels stop publishing videos. Especially after Covid, people found better things to do, so they hibernated their YouTube channels.

Used to love Flossy Carter. His long form videos and overall style weren't for everyone, but personally I thought he was massively entertaining and funny. Hasn't been the same since he was called out for promoting a scam and then doubling down and using homophobic slurs against people who criticised him. An apology would have went a long way.

I watched a channel called- Escape the dream restoring a French chateau. I watched it religiously for likr 5 plus years and it helped distract we through covid. Within the last year as they became more popular the ads and selling amped up so much that I couldnt stand watching anymore. Before it felt relaxing and fun to watch now it feels like they are always trying to make money off everything to the detriment of their actual content. Full videos that are only ads, lots of content locked behind patron and now also YouTube membership too and the obnoxious in video sponsorships

Recently? Besides some specific and lesser known YT channels I watch, EWU and JCS comes first to mind.

All time? That is way too much to count but some most famous imo are PewDiePie, AVGN, JohnTron, =3, ТиХ (This is хорошо), Stonewall008, tons of ones I already forgot about.

Catfish Cooley. He made some funny parody redneck shit but it because clear he was not playing a character and that is what broke it for me. It ceased to be funny when you realize what he was behind the mask.

Upisnotjump

The videos have the same vibe and all, but there is no soul. It feels like there is no overarching point anymore, just opinion pieces in the same format. It feels like most videos could just as well have been ai written

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.

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.

Not sure how many of you will know about Tom from the Geowizard channel, but I recently learned he's a reform voter (UK's trump-style party, Nigel Farage) and honestly I was kinda devastated. Took me completely by suprise too, considering he never talked about anything political and the nature of the content and his actions would've never suggested it. In hindsight there were a few small tip-offs that I brushed out as him being a bit old-school/rural and not very plugged in to internet culture and modern no-no's. I found out by listening to an album he recently released and one of the songs is about the replacement theory conspiracy...

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.

Lindybeige lost basically all credibility for me after the whole "Spandau" fiasco where he was trying to talk authoritatively about things he clearly didn't understand or had any knowledge of. It really made me question whether he knew anything at all about the things that I didn't know much about (pre-modern warfare mostly) and I ended up not watching another video of his after that.

Is that the right wing religious anti woke weirdo? I know that there are two guys who do similar content, and even have similar names, but i haven't seen them in years.

Almost all of them that "care" have terrible thumb nails and titles. Just so clickbaity. Channels seem to get worse over time on that front

I used to watch Destiny, and while I still like that he does tons of research and shows people why maga talking points are wrong, I started noticing more and more I hate being around people who really care about their ego. He would be having a discussion with someone and instead of saying hm that's partially true but here's what I think could be missing, he says NO that is WRONG! It's such a massive waste of time to care about "winning" a debate, both people learn less and get more angry. I've noticed this with basically everyone who gets successful streaming, they kinda lock in at the age they were when they got successful.

VanlifePlus, or as the channel is now known, MATV. I started watching because I had an interest in Van Life. Regardless of your opinion on Van Life, it was a good channel, as he really showed what it was like to live in a van, and trying to navigate fatherhood as well as a full time job, etc. Matthew is very personable, and likeable. He explored not only places to stay in a van, but actual camping in a van as well.

He finally made enough money from YouTube to get his own place, and now he's only part time in the van, and is trying to get a gaming channel going, as well as building out a trailer for camping. I still find him likeable, but his content just isn't doing it for me anymore. I can see that the views on his channel are going down, so it's just a matter of time before he either has to quit YouTube and get a full time job, or supplement his YouTube with a job on the side. The content just isn't there anymore.

Bellular news. It used to be focused on giving gaming news. Now they use gaming news as an introduction for long ramblings, and added click bait titles.

. . . All? . . . of them?

What was the animated youtube channel that was someone rant blog? Started fine because it was about harmless stuff like shopping carts and shit, but they went on a break and came back in the middle of covid ranting about vaccines and restrictions. Under something?

All of them. All they do now is bitch about the algorithm and YouTube policies. They turn from content on a subject to a bizarre social realtionship with the viewers. Nah dude, I don't care about you cat's hemorrhoids, just rebuild that carburator.

Cooking With Jack just hasn't been the same since he had his third stroke

Kurzegast (or however it is spelled). Lot's of copium and straight up denial, e.g. with respect to climate change.

All of them.