Title essentially. Youtube’s algorithm is hot garbage, so I can’t search for anything anymore without a ton of AI slop and rage bait. So, who do you go to for actual good long form videos? Exposes, scandals, behind the scenes, documentaries, film, travel, transit, who do you recommend I follow?

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 months ago

      It might be worth adding that some people might find him (and similar long form content) verbose if they are not into the topics. I watch probably most of his episodes, but some people in my life don’t vibe with those. The same people did not appreciate the 7 color e-ink display I had been tinkering around with until I made it display a dog pic, so it’s also about how the topic relates to what you already like.

  • Sunsofold@lemmings.worldEnglish
    25·
    2 months ago

    I actively avoid shorts so most of what I watch is long form.

    • Technology Connections - A guy needing out about household tech
    • Unlearning Economics - a trained economist turned public edutainer who kept learning after Econ 101, unlike others who shall remain nameless
    • Behind the Bastards - Chummy laughter about the worst people ever
    • RPG with DBJ - RPG talk with a focus on creativity and exploring the opportunities afforded by the space of ‘limited only by your imagination’
    • We’re in Hell - A guy looking at pieces of media and the ideology infused into them by culture
    • Gresham College - lectures on widely ranging topics, presented by professors but targetting the layperson
    • The Morbid Zoo - A cool gal doing analysis of movies, usually horror, but sometimes others, with an eye toward ideology and culture (Hellraiser, Smile, Twilight, PotC, etc.)
    • Folding Ideas - More film analysis, but with a tack toward various criticisms
    • Doctor Who - the old series are all on the tubes now. Not educational, but fun.
    • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Behind the Bastards is fucking great! If you like their stuff, you might also enjoy “Respect The Dead (A Podcast Where We Don’t).” It’s a kind of queer younger sibling to BTB and a whole lot of fun, but they only cover people who are for sure dead.

  • Nefara@lemmy.world
    24·
    2 months ago

    Along with Technology Connections, Philosophy Tube, and Primitive Technology, here are my “must watch” subs

    Climate Town - Excellent videos about climate change and environmental impact that are insightful and funny

    Contrapoints - Well written and meticulous deconstructions of philosophical concepts in media, pop culture and society with a dry wit

    Every Frame a Painting - Amazing content on film-making. No longer active, but if you haven’t seen it yet, lucky you, enjoy.

    Pop Culture Detective - Interesting meta analyses of popular tropes in pop culture

    Because I’m into historical clothing and fashion, Bernadette Banner and Abby Cox both do great videos on costuming, history and creating cool stuff

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
      7·
      2 months ago

      Love climate town. I hate that someone needs to waste their time disproving lies from the oil, gas, politicians and the like, but it does give me hope in the future that there are people like that out there.

      • Nefara@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        Yes! It was such a pleasant surprise on my feed. Unfortunately they said they won’t be continuing because of Youtube’s enforcement policies around copyrighted material so those videos were meant to be a limited series.

    • ajoebyanyothername@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      These two were my first thought! I’ll add that both cover a range of topics, Jenny does do a lot of videos around Star Wars, but also covers obscure films, and theme parks, wherenl HBomber runs the gamut from flat earth to vaccines to video games to plagiarism. Both are incredibly well researched and, in my opinion, offer very fair takes on the subject matter.

  • somenonewho@feddit.org
    17·
    2 months ago

    Well … My go-to is still Hbomberguy. Eben if I don’t know/care about the topic I know every vid of bis will be interesting and worth the time investment. The jokes are really funny (even on rewatches) and I’ve learned a lot. I watch old Hbomb videos to Fall asleep to almost every night.

    Main issue: there’s one video every 1-2 years … However if you’ve never seen one you’ll have the back log to get through.

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    2 months ago

    A Catholic socialist, a Jewish anarchist, and a Muslim communist walk into a bar, and they make a podcast about engineering disasters: Well There’s Your Problem. It’s great for that intersection of people for whom the phrase “crimes against TERFs aren’t crimes” resonates and like listening to an engineer complain about low quality as-builts 2 hours into a 3 hour episode about 9/11

    I was sold on the show when I found out that the episode about the Titanic was split into two parts, totaling around 5 and 1/2 hours. That’s partially because they spend a lot of time bullshitting, and partially because they go really in-depth about how and why structures fail

  • lobut@lemmy.ca
    13·
    2 months ago

    Steve Wallis - Calm Canadian dude that does stealth camping, he’ll just camp behind a McDonald’s billboard and is very chill about it

    • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 months ago

      Steve is awesome. Another favorite of mine is Kent Survival. I’ve tried more than one of Andy’s camp meals, and he’s the reason I bring a cast iron dutch oven with me now.

    • AoxoMoxoA@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      I fuck with Steve . Solid dude living the dream I always had as a kid on a road trip: " I could build a fort and camp in the middle of that traffic circle and nobody would ever know I was there"

    • SannKa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      On the same note I really like GIFGAS. Bit of the same, just with train hopping across Europe. YouTube is apparently removing some of his videos though, but all should be on his Patreon.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    13·
    2 months ago

    Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that’s powerful. Her video that’s absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.

    Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He’s most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. “I don’t know James Rolfe” was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.

    Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think

    Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He’s largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax

    Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.

    Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She’s like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that’s generally respectful to them? She’s got you. In particular I like how she’s respectful towards weirdness when it’s not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.

    Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He’s a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.

    Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He’s a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.

    Defunctland, listen I’m not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 months ago

      Additional creators I forgot or left out:

      Lady Emily is Sarah Z’s cowriter’s channel. It’s definitely weirder but in a direction completely different from the way strange aeons is. She doesn’t care to make her content have mainstream appeal and so it winds up being an autistic woman making videos about stuff she finds interesting.

      Innuendo Studios is someone I intentionally left out for two reasons: a lot of his videos are short and they’re very political. But they aren’t low effort ragebait political, they’re analyses of modern right wing rhetorical tactics. I’m including him now purely because he’s one of my favorite youtubers

      Münecat is a long form video essayist who started with anti-mlm content and has moved into other topics like internet gambling and debunking evo psych.

      I’ll add more comments if I think of more

  • acchariya@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 months ago

    Brick immortar- probably the single most technical long form YT channel in the engineering disasters category

    NNKH - fixing things that probably shouldn’t be bothered with.

    Green dot aviation - air disasters and near disasters

    Pilot debrief - light aviation crash analysis

    Andrew camarata - long, long form time lapse videos of running backhoes and dozers to cut roads and things, nice to relax to.

    The great war - I watch on nebula but I think they are on YT too.

    Hoog - explainers

    Bald and bankrupt - I’ve heard mixed things about the guy as a person but his videos are entertaining, in the “travel to unusual places” genre

    Integza - another one on nebula but I think also on YT. Building rocket engines with 3d printers, etc

    Driving 4 answers - probably the single best automotive focused engineering channel

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 months ago

      AvE (though I’m pretty sure he’s conservative)

      You’re right. AvE went completely off the deep end during the height of Covid, and revealed that his being a scumbag isn’t just doing a bit for the camera.

      • demesisx@infosec.pubEnglish
        9·
        2 months ago

        Do you have a link to his undoing?

        His knowledge of everything mechanical and electronic is pretty useful though. I’ve learned a TON from him but now I prefer Cutting Edge Engineering to scratch that kind of itch.

    • livingcoder@programming.dev
      1·
      2 months ago

      Great list! I would just add The Majority Report if you’re looking to learn more about politics while also trying to understand what is happening today. They do a ~2.5-hour live show every weekday which includes a quick overview of the latest headlines for today, an interview of someone with knowledge about some politics-related topic, and then an hour of mostly right wing videos that they discuss, argue with, and vent about.

      I love it for how informative it is and for keeping me sane.

  • Leavingoldhabits@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 months ago

    Haven’t seen Philosophy Tube on here yet.

    High quality and engaging deep dives on various philosophy-related topics. Abigail, the face of the channel is an actor and playwright (and an academic) and that very much shines through.

    • NKBTN@feddit.uk
      1·
      2 months ago

      Seconded. Love their stuff. Also Contrapoints (who Philosophy Tube kinda ripped off, but hey ho, both great content.)

      FD Signifier is good too.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        Contra and Philosophytube are an excellent example of how two people with a lot of similarities can do the same concept and wind up with wildly different results even when both are excellently done.

  • InvisibleShoe@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 months ago

    Crime related:

    Disaster related:

    Weird medical stories: https://www.youtube.com/@chubbyemu

    Interesting economic vids: https://www.youtube.com/coldfusion/

    Business and economics: https://www.youtube.com/c/Wendoverproductions/

    Geopolitics explainer vids: https://www.youtube.com/@CaspianReport/

    Theme park history: https://www.youtube.com/@Defunctland/

    Interesting historical themed vids: https://www.youtube.com/@YoreHistory/

  • endlessvoid@lemmy.todayEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    One I haven’t seen mentioned yet that I think needs more exposure is miniminuteman: https://m.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773/

    He does a mix of long form archeology videos and short form pseudo-archeology debunking. Some of it should be dry content but his delivery bridges the gap every time. He has a side channel where he posts about his side projects like his solo motorcycle trips that’s also interesting.