And why did you stop watching them?
Mrwhosetheboss. Dude seems like he sniffs a line before every video. I’ll probably need to watch one of his videos right now to explain more reasons but it’s just not something I would like to watch now.
Rooster Teeth. They stopped being watchable a few years ago. Now they’re gone. Never sell your baby to a giant, faceless corporation or it will either die ugly or be mutated into a cancerous abomination.
Same. I’ll occasionally download some of their old podcasts if I’m flying and just need something to pass the time, but their new stuff was dull. It’s a shame that it ended the way it did.
Well a lot of the old guard left and all the new “talent” sucked ass. Mostly I just liked RvB until it outlived itself.
Was rip once ray left
All of them.
Hyperbolic but there is some truth there
Boogie2988. I thought he seemed like a reasonable, unbiased person when I was watching around 2016. Kind of just moved on with my life after realising he was just following YouTube drama.
Have checked him out in the last year or so and it’s not looking good for him. The really sad thing is that he could have just taken his money and lived a chill life, but he seems to want a spotlight and to feel important even if it’s because people are shaming him for being a washed up b list youtuber.
Most recent thing i heard was that hes pushing crypto scams on his fans and feigning ignorance when confronted with the fact that his fans are losing money directly because of him
Gross. I heard he lost a hell of a lot of money on crypto and hookers, so that checks out.
TotalBiscuit
:(
This one hits hard. “Gaming YouTube” isn’t the same without him, I don’t watch many gaming videos nowadays
A big loss. I’m still wondering what happened to his family since then. I heard they got out of the USA?
I’ve understood the dogs got new owners, Genna moved to South Korea.
What about the kid?
I can’t remember hearing anything about him, I also couldn’t find anything with a quick search yesterday.
I’ll never forget him for introducing me to dungeons of dredmor, the game is the bad roguelike, but I don’t know if I ever would have gotten into roguelikes without it
I’ve never heard anyone else mention Dungeons of Dredmor! That’s the game that taught me how much I loathe total randomness in roguelikes. Without it I wouldn’t have discovered Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm, and a host of others where your skill actually matters, so even though I hated DoD I’m glad I picked it up after TB’s video.
(And the artist of Dredmor later ended up on the development team of my literal favorite game ever, Starsector. Weird how things turn out.)
Guy was a legend, I bought Terraria because of him. His voice and style was amazing. Rest in piece!
… Fuck
Still miss him
Especially this week.
My interest in gaming plummeted after he passed.
I was also in this position, there is so much gaming content out there but the whole state of journalism seems to have really fallen off.
Last year I discovered MinnMax though and some of my faith has been restored. They are a community funded group of journalists and enthusiasts who run a weekly ~3 hour podcast about games and the industry. They are mature, lucid, insightful, and also pretty funny. They’ve also been doing a yearly best-of list for a long time which is a good jumping off point if you want to dip your toe in. Definitely recommend for anyone interested in gaming and the industry.
Same here, friend. Still hits me every now and then when I see a Steam game with a recommendation from his curator page. Doesn’t happen too often these days, but still the occasional older game I haven’t picked up yet goes on sale.
The hot wings first we feast channel
It’s entertaining but I got tired of the premise
I feel like, if they ditched the hot wings, it would still be a good interview.
I get what you’re saying, but the eating and the spiciness of the wings actually contribute to the quality of the interview.
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Eating a meal with someone is disarming and contributes to the relaxed, ungaurded nature or his guests.
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Consuming spicy food, particularly extremely spicy food or spicy food in great quantity releases endorphins which.
So while yes the eating/reacting to how hot the sauce is does interrupt the flow of the interview somewhat, it does help him get good/candid answers for his guests.
So while his research team is outstanding and he’s a talented interviewer in his own right. The hot wings do serve a role in the interview as more than a clickbaity gimmick.
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After the DJ Khaled episode I knew nothing else would be as entertaining for me so I stopped there
Eh, I’d argue the recent Conan episode is pretty insane and hilarious. Much more so than Khaled.
The DJ Khaled one was him just completely embarassing himself unintentionally. Funny because he’s so full of himself. Conan’s was funny, but you knew it was going to be before watching because it’s Conan
Yeah, but you already knew DJ Khaled’s was going to be stupid and embarrassing before watching because it’s DJ Khaled.
Viscount Strophanthus. My first androgynous crush. In hindsight the content was pretty edgey and cringe, though.
Breaking points, their geopolitical analysis is out right misinformation
Any good examples off the top of your head?
Stopped watching after early ukriane war coverage.
Who do you watch now? I thought Breaking Points was ok.
Kinda moved away from milenial political talking heads after them.
They turned out same shit as boomer teeveee jisr packaged for modern audience.
Fediverse comment section under fake new articles provides better coverage imho.
I’ve been watching Majority Report with Sam Seder. Watched Breaking points since they were on the Rising with The Hill. Something just started to slowly change with them when they broke off. There’s the constant Ad’s (which is understandable, but was excessive), segments hidden behind a paywall, personalities started to change after surgery then Kyle Kulinski got heavily into the mix including romantically. I don’t know, just seemed the show started to take over the lives of the hosts, Sam and Emma have been a breathe of fresh air on Majority (even when Emma drinks a little too much lol). The show is their job and Sam is pretty professional, decent daily live show with clips of segments also being uploaded.
Northernlion. He’s still a cool person in my books, but the moment he started actively trying to maximize revenue is when he began to lose his appeal to me. Nick’s - RockLeeSmile’s - departure was the first warning bell, but I stuck with him for a long while after that.
I completely get it, though - he wants to ensure a good future for his family.
Is NL trying to maximize revenue? How so other than playing games that bring in more viewers than those that don’t? He showed the stats for Midnight Sons and it basically cut his income in half. He’s got bills and a kid, so unless there’s other stuff, I don’t really get this criticism because there’s gotta be a limit when its your job. He still frequently plays different games too. Recently did a bunch of demos for the Steam nextfest.
I’m still subscribed to him, but I have definitely not been watching him as often as I used to, and I couldn’t exactly say why. I will say that The Library of Letourneau scratches the itch when I have it because it’s just edited content of the best parts of NL.
CGPGrey. I even listened to his podcasts.
For someone who tried to sell productivity tools at one point, he was very unproductive.
Also, given what happened with Standard and Nebula, I got to say I side with Nebula over him.
I didn’t like his take, “solving” traffic nescitates the use of self-driving cars. Can’t have traffic without cars, it’s as simple as that. We need public transport, not more shit to spend our increasingly scarce money on.
I still watch his main videos (when they actually happen…), but with a much higher degree of scepticism than I used to. And I stopped listening to his podcast (singular…).
My disillusionment with him started with a few issues with his videos. The blatantly ridiculous “royal family is good actually” video. The less obvious but no less egregious touting of Guns, Germs, and Steel. The AI techbroism of his automation video. Then he just killed off the podcast with no explanation, leaving his cohost Brady to put out a note saying “yeah we’re just on hiatus for now”. Over 4 years ago that was. There was the fact that he sided very vocally with Kurzgesagt in the CoffeeBreak drama, despite CB obviously being in the wrong at every step of the way.
Then the final straw where I was no longer willing to say I was a fan of his was when he did a video about some missile silo in America, in which he used the name of a submarine-based missile instead of a land-based missile at some point. Shortly afterwards he put out a massive mea culpa video saying it was a “catastrophic” error that he could not live with himself for, and that he holds himself to too high a standard to let that stand. All while still not acknowledging the problems with those earlier videos. So one nitpicky detail gets a massive hullabaloo and a retraction, but fundamental flaws in the underlying thesis of the video gets nothing? Give me a break.
I only ever saw that Royal Family video of his, and it was enough for me never to seek out any more.
Have you seen this response video to Grey’s Royal Family one?
i love Shaun’s videos, but this is one of my favorites. the way he “negotiates” with the royal family is just chef’s kiss.
I haven’t, but I will definitely watch that, thanks! 👍
What drama, and if sided with Kurzgesagt when they were in the right as you say, what is the issue?
Oh whoops! My mistake! I’ll edit the above comment to fix that. It was Kurzgesagt who was in the wrong.
The drama was (to copy/paste an earlier comment, because it’s rather lengthy):
It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.
K claims to be interested in science communication. But here, he decided to make the selfish decision to do what he thought would protect his own personal brand through duplicitous means. He got ahead of the story that falsely assumed was coming, and put up a pre-emptive response to that. Now, CB isn’t entirely blameless. In response to the above, CB put out a rather hot-headed reaction to the whole incident. He didn’t follow up with K to try to understand what had happened; he lashed out in anger at K’s self-righteous arse-covering video.
And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made, but the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience, and now also the general public who becomes aware of this, almost all take his side.
Incidentally, here’s the video that CB was working on at the time. Hari, the scientist discussed in the video whom K worked with on his video discussed earlier, communicated very well with CB on it.
Thanks for the great breakdown, it sounds vaguely familiar. I remember K’s retraction bit and I follow Philip DeFranco. Disappointed he landed on the wrong side.
For what it’s worth, Philly D is someone I could have answered the original question with too. Not for any spectacular reason like the above—I had already stopped watching him before that occurred. For me it was just finding his focus was too much on sensationalist pop culture news rather than news reporting that interested me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, it just wasn’t right for me.
Yeah he definitely can veer too much into that stuff for a time. I strongly dislike his thumbnails and titles but I feel he has to do that to compete but I do like his content, some days just less than others.
Yeah, it’s weird, CGPGrey videos used to be the most must-watch of all YouTube for me and I subscribed to his Patreon at one point. I listened to Hello Internet loyally and I was even unhurt about how it ended. I still think he’s an interesting guy and would follow his stuff again but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything of interest to me any more.
What happened with Standard/Nebula?
his videos started getting sparse/boring
I responded to someone else, but there is a reason why Grey isn’t a part of Nebula.
What happened? I’ve never heard of it
Him and Kurzgesagt were helping to build an organization for YouTubers with the current CEO. The first talent signed on was Wendover and Real Engineering.
Grey and Kurzgesagt were rather inactive partners when they should have been more active and were trying to build a much more exploitative company instead of what Nebula became. It is vague on how they left, but they left and the company became better for it.
Sorry, do you mean the current CEO of Nebula or of YouTube?
Nebula
So Nebula got rid of him (which would seem to coincide with his drop in output)?, Kurzgesagt seems to be doing just fine in comparison.
I found his video on FPTP Binary political systems video to be logically flawed and I think it ultimately caused more harm than good. It’s irritating to see people reference it in political discussions today. That eventually convinced me to stop giving him views.
HAWP, DayJobOrchestra, BadLipReading, YourGrammarSucks, LTT
Also, I do not reliably watch YouTube.
As far as I know, BLR is fine they’re just not super active.
I still wish their GoT “Medieval Land Funtime World” BLR was a real thing.
Good, I love BLR
Demo ranch. Started making comments about the George Floyd protests and I was out
AvE started praising the trucker convoys
Shadiversity got super homo/transphobic and also is just an arrogant douche since his book.
Yeah AvE was a punch in the nuts
Shad is constantly trying to get one over on his co-hosts to the point where it’s difficult to watch. Always has to win. I liked learning about how castles worked a hundred times more.
Oh it gets worse with Shadiversity. Huge AI art guy, his brother’s an actual artist too so it’s hard seeing Shad brag to him. Very “anti-woke” and paints his conservative Mormon beliefs on everything.
The worst unforgivable part is the end of his book has impregnated rape victims step up to defend the rapist protagonist because he “gave them” a child, while the ones that didn’t get pregnant were jealous.
He loves to bring up that the book is supposed to explore this immoral character. But this isn’t the protagonist’s viewpoint this is just how Shad thinks the world works. This is how Shad believes rape victims think.
Very sad to see, I followed him for swords and castles but Jesus Christ.
His brother (Jezza) is a great artist and while I don’t know much about him I don’t think he’s anything like shad. I regularly see him cooperate on a warhammer channel called tabletop time and they have videos about women in the warhammer scene (made by one of their female members). So I highly doubt those two have much in common.
Oh yeah, Jezza seems great, from what I know he actively left the Mormon faith and was ostracized by most his family. He uses this experience to be a more empathetic and better person.
All the more sad when Shad tries to claim he’s just as good an artist and Jezza doesn’t have the heart to call him out on it.
i watched demo ranch for a while but figured it would only be a matter of time before that guy would dissapoint me with blatant fascism apologia. guess i wasnt wrong.
Same deal with ave. It’s fine, his content also started going downhill.
The 8 bit guy. I loved his retro computing channel and then one day, he acquired a rare IBM computer and promptly destroyed the power supply by sticking a screwdriver into it (if I remember correctly).
For some reason, I googled about this and discovered he’s a gun nut. They’re videos of him going grocery shopping with his rifle on his back which apparently he does this knowing it will annoy people.
Unsubscribed from the channel and never looked back.
wasnt this guy found to be a nazi?
Do you have a source for that? I have never heard this.
no thats why i asked. i remember something about it back when i found out about the guns thing.
and honestly whats the chance of a dude having that kind of attitude towards guns not being a fascist?
Oh, fair enough.
I mean with that kind of attitude, he almost definitely is a conservative, whether he’s gone full Nazi, I don’t know.
but it is his right!!!
lol
No one argued that?
When somebody carries a gun into a public space like that… That is what is being said.
I love guns, but… Bro… Don’t do that.
Too bad about him, his passion for old electronics made me interested when I don’t have any particular interest of my own.
Pains me to say it, but Cody’s Lab.
I still catch an episode now and again. It just hasn’t been the same since he moved to Nevada.
He got locked out of his youtube income for a loooong time and had a rough time with it. He also had some legal issues that prevented him from doing some of the videos he used to do. I don’t watch it as much as I used to, but I still watch some.
I think he spiraled for a good while after he broke up with his girlfriend. Seemed like about that time he went dark, but that could be related
100% this. That was the beginning of the day end.
was it related to the time he refined uranium and got visited by the feds? 😂
I like him but his mental health issues remind me why it’s probably a bad idea to play around with mercury as much as he did.
We used to watch a lot of game theory. Really enjoyed the over analysis. Stopped part way down the 5 nights at Freddie’s rabbit hole when all the drama started.
what drama?
i know the host stepped down and it just wasnt the same.
I remember crying videos about people being mean. It was a few years ago I don’t really remember any details.
