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Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

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Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#81
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

Stuff Made Here

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#82
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

Not quite in the same theme, but as far as gaming goes I'd put both videogamedunkey and MandaloreGaming there.

Dunkey doesn't post hour long video essays, but I find that apart from the occasional filler and joke content, his focus is on fun and it is completely infused with an empathetic passion for gaming.

Mandalore does the occasional deep dives into the weird and obscure but he's thorough and doesn't take it too seriously. Again, seems like a guy who is passionate about games but prefers to go off the beaten path in terms of game coverage.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#83
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

This thunderf00t video made me avoid "Undecided by Matt Ferrell": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDXqOfC61U

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#84
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really on you to sort and sift, or is it on you to find a good guide? In the hobby store example, there are other people around to ask, and I think that is similar as well. The future is more content, not less, so finding mechanisms to cope with that is well worth the effort.

Not exactly. Assuming the number of people in the hobby store didn’t grow exponentially, you would be completely empty in your favorite isle, most of the time.

But you aren't, because there's really only a few stores, not thousands, so people congregate at the same ones, and if there's nobody in those aisles continuously, they stop getting stocked (people create less content if nobody consumes it).

The problem is almost never that there's nobody in your aisle, it's about finding the right way to connect with them. There are numerous ways to do this. Even just leaving a comment on a video asking a question or responding to someone else's comment. That's about as low effort as you can get, but actually works.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#85

Tom Scott’s work stands out as some of the best examples of how interesting and valuable web content can be. In a sea of short derivative junk-food content, he made things that i honestly learned from, without demanding more than 10 minutes of my time a week! There’s of course a lot of people also doing the same sort of great content, but it does feel like a slowly dying breed. Tom definitely deserves an indefinite b…

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

Educational youtube is modern age what Discovery Channel documentaries used to be

And they are better, way better

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

Yeah but the burden is now on you to sift through the garbage to find the good stuff, especially since it's mostly mixed together in recommendations or search results etc. It feels more limited to me the other way around, like yes we have added some more good stuff, but good luck finding it. If my favorite hobby store kept on expanding and expanding and the ratio of great stuff to garbage kept going down, I would def…

Youtube makes it pretty easy for me. The algorithm recommends videos nd channels, and I say 'not interested' to the garbage, the result: a high quality subscription tab.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#87
I first saw Tom Scott on Computerphile. He’s so good at explaining topics with excitement and enthusiasm. It’s amazing he’s been so consistent with a video every week for the last 10 years. Not only “a video”, but videos that go above and beyond the norm in quality. He’s an inspiration.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#88
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

Answer in Progress - a bit of everything, personal favourite right now! Simone Giertz - engineering EEVBlog - engineering ElectroBoom - engineering Technology Connections - stories about technology Cathode Ray Dude - stories about technology, watch if you like technology connections!! Socratica - math, science, programming explainers VWestLife - retro consumer tech TechMoan - retro consumer tech AvE - Canadian in a w…

To continue with the transit/urbanism channels...

* Not Just Bikes

* City Beautiful

* Alan Fisher

* donoteat01 (not really uploading anymore since he has a podcast that takes all his time)

* Eco Gecko (also doesn't really upload anymore)

* Adam Something

And also others...

* Folding Ideas (popular topics video essays)

* hbomberguy (popular topics video essays)

* Epoch Philosophy (drier more academic video essays)

* BobbyBroccoli (intersection of science and politics, very well animated)

* Jacob Geller (media analysis)

* Explosions&Fire (aussie backyard chemistry, like NileRed, more of a vlog style)

* Mustard (engineering, similar format to Real Engineering)

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy his reasoning there. He said that he uploads a video every week which is a brisk pace. Why not a video every month? Every quarter? Perhaps he really just wants a break and this explanation sounded the most reasonable. But I hope he didn't get burned out because he was afraid of switching things up.

Well, smaller could also mean moving this project to a monthly basis.

Some YouTubers did this quietly. hbomberguy and Contrapoints come to mind. Fewer videos, more unscripted/lightly scripted stuff like streams, podcasts, and collaborations.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#90

On the latest cortex, CGP Grey made the point that what's happening in youtube education-adjacent videos is much the same as what's happening for entertainment in those spaces: the law of the excluded middle. You either do long infrequent videos e.g., like MrBeast, or frequent short videos. Both CGP Grey and Tom Scott did frequent mid-length content, which gets squeezed out.

CGP Grey did almost zero YouTube content in the past few years. Definitely not “frequent”.
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