Veritasium. Sold out to private equity.
Yeah I noticed it seemed to be different recently. Used to watch every video he put out but it’s definitely changed :(
He sold several years ago already
True, but the change was slow, and Derek still appeared in most of the videos at first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoibAbdQf58
Basically what this video explains. Channel gets sold -> everything as usual -> small changes -> “we need return for the investment” -> bigger changes -> channel ruined.
I got a weird feeling from him when he did a whole video (or ad) about head and shoulders shampoo.
Some videos are still worth the watch, it’s not a bad channel but it clearly took a quality hit after Derek started being more hands off. Also you can see it on his face how he’s just there because of a contract. Good for him though.
Ah! That’s sad, damn
His contents are still miles better than some other YouTubers that were bought out. While I’m not pleased with the direction he took, I do not have any qualms with the quality or the content or the depth of topics.
Same here, I’d use it as an example of how to do that right.
Aw :(
Linus …
The other LMG talent is so good. Although I was really disappointed when they let Jonathan and Emily (fka Anthony) go.
But I really enjoy Riley, and James and Elijah aren’t so bad either.
Linus’ “I had to buy a private jet or I’ll lose money” video was so cringeworthy though
I still don’t get the hate for Linus. He worked hard, made money and now employs a lot of people. The majority of people who left have only nice things to say about him.
Only a few have bad views and everyone has people who dislike them. A lot of the controversies seem like stupid oversights or mistakes rather than malicious.
I definitely feel like he lost touch a long time ago.
There was a video that was hosted at one of his employee’s houses (I’ve tried to find the video before but couldn’t) and there were multiple points where Linus was being incredibly rude to the guy’s new home. He was making fun of things for looking cheap, and at one point stood on (or placed something heavy, I don’t remember) a table as the owner asked several times not to in fear of it damaging the table. The video didn’t really get much attention as far as I’m aware, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I kinda stopped watching as many of their videos.
A few years later the fiasco with the prototype they sold without permission happened and his reaction and the fallout that ensued took LTT off my subscription list.
The video where he talks about how it just didn’t make sense not to buy a private jet was so far beyond out of touch I don’t know how anyone thought it was a good idea (the video, not the jet).
There was also a series of videos at his own new house where he’s getting the LMG employees to work on things for him at his house.
The power dynamic felt super off like he’s rubbing his wealth in their (and our) faces. I’m not mad that he built a business, is doing well and got a nice house with his family. I would have been happy for his success, but the whole vibe of making that into content made it feel uncomfortable to watch. It felt more like he wanted to show off than it being about the tech.
That, and the way he reacted to various scandals including the one you mentioned was extremely poor and his disingenuous reviews, I had to drop them, the list just kept growing.
It’s a shame because I liked a lot of the content and I really like Riley, James and the other staff as presenters but my heart sinks any time Linus’ face appears again in my feed.
There was also a series of videos at his own new house where he’s getting the LMG employees to work on things for him at his house.
Thank you for reminding me of another thing that put me off.
One of the employees that left is quoted as saying, “there’s a moment when you’re working on your boss’s third home when you start to wonder if you’ll ever be able to afford your own”.
That stuck with me.
I have been enjoying jakkuh’s farm videos but I’ve never really followed LTT. I didn’t know he got his start there until I happened on the video where he explained why he left.
how much was he paying thier employees.
dint alot of people who recently left linus, started complaining too, or shared thier experiences.
I hate his voice and braces, personally
He’s become a company that generates regularly timed content whether they should or not.
Sabine Hossenfelder, after she went full anti-science, like “and you can trust me because i am a scientist, but not like those other scientists.”
I think i stopped watching when she read a fake email to the camera.
Her defending Eric Weinstein, the crackpot who pretty much everybody knows is a Peter Thiel-funded dickhead with a fake theory of everything, was especially crazy.
I also remember her defending Trump’s threats of taking away funding from a certain university, because the university was “anti-semitic” for allowing anti-Zionist protests, but can’t find the video now.
Her defending Eric Weinstein
That made me like 99% sure shes bought and paid for by Thiel or some such person. Seeing a actual receipt of a payment from Thiel to her would make me 100% sure.
it wouldnt be surprised if she associated F,aka musk who primarly funds the ADF too.
i wouldnt be surprised, people like thiel, musk, bezos tries to be “pseudointellectuals” themselves, but because thier names are so well known, they have to use people with PHDs washouts.
deleted by creator
i actually never heard of that guy. i heard of another crackpot like frank greene whos peddling his own theory.
I unsubbed her when she started going anti-feminist and pro-merz
Her anti trans stuff was also a good warning sign.
After knowing it, I agree with the university of Munich kicking her out like trash.
im guessing there was truth about some of the commenters saying she was the one that was “hard to work with” after seeing the first 30seconds of the video(about giving up as a physicist", at first i thought it was anti-feminist comment, but it make sense now.
This is when I stopped watching. What does an astrophysicist know about gender? Why did she feel the need to insert it into an astrophysics video? Scientists: stay in your lane and recognize you might not be the authority you think you are on every subject. Also, irrelevant to the content at hand.
There’s a huge phenomenon of people who are experts in random fields pretending that it gives the competence to speak about trans issues.
Eg, Helen Joyce is a mathematician but has made her entire career into being aggrieved about trans people.
i suspect alot of these are paid to be right wing mouthpieces by someone funding them. they need new ones currently(the likes of tim poole, shapiro isnt enough), and “intellectuals” aka, pseudointellectuals with degrees have more validity to would be potential “far right supporters” in the audience, and drawing men into the manosphere.
Yeah, I think the Heritage Foundation and a few other groups are deliberately recruiting and paying people for anti trans propaganda. Consider how Riley Gaines has made an entire career out of tying with someone for fifth place at a swim competition.
There’s a phenomenon of fake detransitioners as well. Maia Poet and Chloe Cole.
Fulnecky is a new one made a fake paper, she knows that the trans TA would get in trouble. Faux news is lining upnew bimbos, incase ingraham gets the axe from being an anchor.
jordan peterson was very effective in getting people into the manosphere with pseudo-intellectual bs. im guessing they need more for each STEM background. and he was mostly paid by putin, his ties to russia is pretty obvious.
transphobia, lgbtq+ phobia seems to be the thing "uniting hate amonst even POCs (that are bigoted)too, transphobia issue seems to be unresolved in POC groups, like asians, blacks, hispanics, because its almost never discussed…
NdGT will talk about ANY subject as though he was an expert. I’m kind of shocked he hasn’t said anything stupid about trans people yet, but he sure has said a lot of stupid stuff.
I didn’t kniw her, but heard her name critisized in an Angela Collier video once. I get sad at the state of social media sometimes
I tried to get into her like 5 years ago, absolutely couldn’t do it. Her whole personality feels off to me.
I liked her covering science, but her takes on politics were either shallow or just wrong.
thats whats happening to her, i guess she far right herself. her video first caught notice, after her “why i left academia, or gave up being a physicist” im guessing she wasnt telling the whole truth to that video, she probably was so difficult to work with in academia, or a job that nobody wants to hire her, or her political leanings were annoying asf, at first she said something about being a woman and being ignored in the field dominated by men. im guessing people in the comments were right: she was the troublemaker.
At some point I noticed that she always sounds like she’s talking with clenched teeth, as if she was on speed. Kinda ruined it for me, also her format is kinda lame.
Didn’t know about those other things so… Yikes…
You are right and there is all kinds of legitimate criticism against here. That’s not what’s about to follow, please abandon expectations.
What is the deal with her face??? We can all see (and possibly hear) that there’s something going on there, right?
LTT. Linus is a whiny out of touch git and all the good content creators have already left
Essential Craftsman - he’s an older guy who knows a hell of a lot about carpentry and blacksmith work. He dedicated a ep. to Charlie Kirk I felt like finding our my favorite uncle was in the klan. Noped the hell out of his channel as did a lot of others.
didnt Hickok45 do something similar? I think I remember something about him having someone on or having a memorial or something for someone distasteful… but I cant remember, and may be totally and absolutely wrong.
I generally don’t like Hickock45 because if you watch any of his non-gun content he likes to leave things in a hedging, vague, “all I’m saying is…” context and honestly if he can’t say what side he’s defending then he’s kind of just being a douche.
“if you live in a free state” was the statement that knocked me off Hickock45’s channel.
Tbf gun dudes use that term without hesitation. That’s a technical term for them.
i feel like most gun dudes on youtube are right wingers.
This was tough to learn. He was my para social grandpa. What a letdown. Also, can’t he just Google around and learn that Kirk was an a-hole?
More likely the things that make it clear Kirk was an asshole are the things he likes about him.
I missed that he did that. I might not agree with that but he really does have a wealth of knowledge, I’m not sure cutting him out entirely is the right call as I haven’t noticed it infecting his other videos.
I was 100% on board and donated $2 every month to keep his channel going. I switched that to Lemmy after the Charlie Kirk comment.
I ditch anyone who inserts a bible verse or anything similar into their videos
Or if I find out that they are a conservative
I used to watch a lot of fishing/outdoors channels.
during covid all but one of the outdoor channels I watched either did straight up covid denial, or went full mask off on their right wing extremism in general and with crazy conspiracy theories about covid, so I dropped them.
I also dropped bigclive around the same time, because he thought people getting sick from vaping was, iirc, some kind of government hoax or something, while also engaging in the whole “covids just the cold, stop being silly” type of denialism, Which really sucked cause I used to love his content… but I havent watched since.
Self-Sufficient Me fell into this category for me. Tons of very relaxing videos about growing fruit and vegetables at home… Then COVID hit and he started talking about “prepping” and “Doomsday” in every video. Didn’t work for me anymore after that.
There was another that I just remembered, Survival Lilly, who did survivalist and bushcraft videos. Again, lots of natural outdoor scenery and birdsong and just enjoying the weather and all that, but fell into a bunch of anxiety-inducing Doomsday prepper talk. Just looked her up now and she’s gone completely off the rails and is mostly putting out right-wing conspiracy stuff. Bummer.
Self-Sufficient Me fell into this category for me. Tons of very relaxing videos about growing fruit and vegetables at home… Then COVID hit and he started talking about “prepping” and “Doomsday” in every video. Didn’t work for me anymore after that.
I must have moved on before the prepping and doomsday stuff, because I totally watched him to, for a long time. I checked out and moved on cause, I dont know, he started feeling preachy and sanctimonious? like, I cant put my finger on a specific example as to where, how or why, so it could have very well just been in my head, but it kinda pushed me away from watching his content after that.
Maybe less direct, but I was a big Joe Robinet fan for a while. After he lost his brother and his dirt bike accident, it felt like he was going off the deep end a bit. Felt sorry but also felt uncomfortable watching.
Shadiversity. Guy made some really interesting videos breaking down different kinds of historical melee weapons, showing how, when, and why they were used. Genuinely interesting content until he started randomly spewing right wing nonsense a few years ago.
He really went in on the “ai art” too.
Have you read his book? If not good because it’ll kill some of your brain cells if you do. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing a bad book. Most writers first book won’t be great but shadow of the conquer has more problems than just being bad. In it the main character a former genocidal, mass murdering, serial rapist does nothing to redeem himself but gets forgiven anyhow by all the rape victims who got pregnant from the involuntary intercourse because they’re so happy with their kids.
It has some troubling attitudes towards a great many things (mainly women) and those attitudes are presented by the book as self evident and true. I find it very telling of the man who wrote it.
I’m disappointed that my fascination for sword staves came from his video, and he turned out to be a bigoted pro AI chud that is jealous of his own brother because his brother is reaping the hard work he put up as an artist
And poor Jezza the brother, just saw that his wife has breast cancer now. :(
i feel like weapons +right wingers go hand in hand, they are obssesed with it otherwise. i used to followed a channel how these people like owning guns to “Defend” themselves, but then go on a rant how they love to shoot “intruders”
Same, it was really a disappointment to see his descent. Though as I have later learned, he always spouted a lot of nonsense while acting confident, so he didn’t start out very well either.
Watching a lot of sellsword arts, blumineck and others now instead, though it doesn’t fill exactly the same niche.Tod Cutler might fill in the gap there.
I’ll have to check them out, thanks for the suggestion
He’s a craftsman and historical weapons enthusiast. He built a trebuchet and did a bunch of videos with it, he’s tested various weapons against real steel armor, and he’s very forthcoming with what he knows and what he doesn’t.
Mike Rowe gave a platform to JD fucking Vance to spew his nazi bullshit.
Thats cause Mike Rowe is a right wing twat, who likes to cosplay as blue collar
100%. He takes a majority of his funding from the Koch brothers, and is famous for pushing for “safety 3rd” instead of “safety 1st,” I.e go ahead and die as long as it makes someone else money.
his screws got loose when trump won his first term, at that point i knew he was a rightie.
His screws were loose long before Trump. He’s always been a right wing asshole masquerading as a blue collar working dude.
Rumor has it he is starting a new AI company called Mike Rowe Soft
I’m Mike Rowe and I know dirty jobs, that’s why you can trust what I say.
fucking twat
Here’s an episode of the podcast Citations Needed all about how much Mike Rowe sucks.
Kinda surprised it took that long. Pretty sure Rowe was an anti-covid chud too
No mentions of MKBHD. Guy had decent reviews of tech stuff, but decides to be a corporative, carfluencing, reckless driving sellout.
i dropped Mark Roper when he said he loves his Tesla and plans on buying another. I just can’t deal with Nazi fanboys.
Renaissance Periodation. He kept suggesting to his viewers that we should check his facts against Chatgpt. His sex jokes got boring and repetitive.
Mostly, i drop a youtuber when i get bored with their content.
I block any channel as soon as AI slop creeps into their visuals or their scripts. Sometimes I’ll do it even if they use AI slop in their thumbnails. I’m just sick to death of AI slop. Fucking HATE the aesthetics of it.
Joshua Weissman, he used to have some good cooking content but it got too brain rotted for me.
Similarly I almost dropped Binging with Babish, but he started a new channel for his non-BWB content and actually put up a classic-style video recently!
I never saw Weissman’s supposed glory days, but I did hear people talk about him and checked him out and found him insufferable.
I also dropped Babish, I just got tired of the slop content and the overall drop in quality.
I genuinely think cooking channels have a finite lifespan, because theres only so much you can cook before your audience basically has all the cooking knowledge they need to do everything.
He’s slowed to the point of years passing between videos (last one was 2 years ago now), but Jacques Pepin is still making new ones (I hope) 😔
I used to watch Cowboy Kent Rollins a lot +2 years ago. Great cooking outdoors channel with a family vibe, and his dogs “helping” cooking, with a little bit of history thrown in. Then his content shifted to less of that and more long form podcasts, which I don’t do on youtube cuz idgaf about everyone having a podcast now.
Even professional chefs learn new recipes on a fairly frequent basis. You can’t run out of content on a cooking channel.
while there may be near infinite variety in the recipes themselves, theres only so many times you can sit down and watch someone make a soup, or a roast, or a casserole, or what have you, regardless if they have 30,000 different recipes for each.
Ethan Chlebowski has many very good science and subjective testing based videos. Without any bullshit added in, except maybe his new website and app.
Today I’m going to eat 9 different versions of vinegar and talk about why pickles are great…
Same with Weissman. I did drop Babish entirely, though, and don’t feel like I’m missing anything not adding him back.
I miss early weissman…now his head up his ass. I enjoyed living in his cupboard.
He has a new channel called Joshua Weissman recipes, which follows a similar format to his early days (including the cupboard bit). But recently he did a poll about doing a “but better” series on this channel, where 90% said yes. I’m just concerned that this channel might also go down the same path.
Yes exactly for both of them. Babish is still kinda okish but Joshua feels like I’m watching AI.
If you want pure cooking, Alton Brown has been posting weekly on Saturday’s. Good eats style.
Alton Brown’s new show is hitting just like I needed it to.
Yep been watching and loving Alton for years.
Alton got me into cooking. Hes brilliant. Can be a bit… big and exuberant at times, but all around excellent guy.
So many good cooking YouTube channels. “America’s test kitchen” tend to be excellent, with a wide range of topics. I’m a big fan of “Aaron and Claire” for his breezy, chill takes on Korean fusion.
“Not another cooking show” does amazing recipes out of the NYC cooking scence, and of course the champ, “J. Kenji lopez-alt,” of serious eats fame, just cooking every damn thing the PNW has to offer.
I checked out on Brown during COVID when he went on one of his political/mask rants and I just couldn’t deal with his right wing bent anymore.
I love his old stuff, but even that doesn’t really draw me in like it used to.
fuck I feel this. I used to watch Joshua Weissman videos ALL the time. Then he went from cooking content in his apartment or whatever, got a little popular, wrote a cookbook, and sold out. Now all his content is crappy click baity I ate all the chicken nuggets in Texas so you don’t have to. Such low hanging content is worthless to me.
AvE - got introduced him just before he decided to start talking positively about MAGA and the similar Canadian trucker protests. Plenty of other people out there doing teardown my videos, so I bailed.
Rose Anvil - loved his work boot teardowns, but he gradually started promoting his own collabs and seemed to favor certain brands even if they were doing things he called shoddy in other brands. Then he started doing a lot with Jim Green boots in South Africa and making a lot of comments that felt pro-Rhodesia to me and started giving me the ick for watching.
Forgotten Weapons I still watch if there is something of particular interest to me. I used to watch every one, but as the country got more MAGA invested and gun culture felt like it was becoming more toxic than usual, I wasn’t happy with Ian staying neutral. If he’s worried about losing viewers and connections with gun manufacturers, I get that, but I also don’t have to like it or support it.
I agree with you on Forgotten Weapons. Also got kinda skeezed out with all the giveaways that required to to buy ridiculous and overpriced crap for an entry into the raffle.
You might like InRangeTV then, it hits all the stuff. Pro LGBT, Anti Maga, Anti Racist, while producing excellent videos about guns, history, etc.
I sound like i paid shill dont I :\
I was going to mention Karl at InRange as a good example. As a lefty gun owner, it is so rare to find someone in the gun community willing to speak up if they want to have any kind of standing.
C&arsenal I still kinda like, because they seem to steer more clear of any politics in a way better than Ian does, though I don’t think I’ve ever watched their Q&A videos, kinda out of fear at being disappointed after getting meh on Ian. Their videos, while great, are just so dang long! I can’t watch 90+ minutes of details on every iteration of rare guns, so I stick to the ones I’m more familiar with.
Inrange and and Ian from forgotten weapons had like a big falling out over inrangeTVs politics being too critical of rightwing bs if I’m not mistaken
I do somewhat recall some things with Brownells and the ARs, but at that point I was getting tired of the behind the scenes infighting.
I just assumed they decided to split with each other professionally before they started to dislike each other personally.
Ian not wanting to bite the hand that feeds is understandable to a degree, but him walking that path only helps him and the toxic parts of the fanbase.
Oh I dont recall fully, so don’t take what I’m about to say as facts…
But I believe the “official” reason was that InRange was taking up time Ian needed to travel to do episodes for Forgotten Weapons.
and I believe the unofficial reason was something to do with the company that originally made and sold the What Would Stoner Do AR for them, And how they ended up outing themselves as assholes for using like…right wing dog whistles and antiLGBT things for discount codes, Which Karl has zero issue calling out on, but Ian was more interested in avoiding making a public stance on any of it and risking being political, and causing any harm to his relationship with that company. So Ian parted ways and, if I recall, has had zero interaction with InRange since.
Again, I reiterate, its been a while since i last brushed up on it, and I may have details wrong, so do not take this as hard and true fact.
I’ll take the added context with the appropriate grain of salt, thanks for the additional info!
ultimately, I don’t think we’ll ever know the true depth of details until Karl or Ian come out and lay them out in a video. Which will probably never happen
Thanks for recommend InRangeTV. I was kind of lost about which historical weapon channel to follow, after Forgotten Weapons getting increasingly uncomfortable to watch.
I miss AvE sometimes. Last video I watched he something about at least trump isn’t boring, or something to that effect. No thank you.
Yeah, I got no time for anyone who finds any entertainment in anything trump related. My extended family is about 80% Trump lovers, and since I can’t get rid of them, I can sure as heck choose to ignore anyone I’m not related to.
ave was a huge disappointment. watched him for years and then he started dropping his political beliefs. I get it, people have opinions, and they’re entitled to those opinions. hell, feel free to share your opinions on your platform you spent years building. but when you share your political opinions on your nonpolitical platform don’t get angry when people leave.
dude was straight dumb as shit for throwing it all away.
Sometimes I question if it’s hypocritical to get mad at AvE for sharing opinions I don’t like while also being disappointed at someone like Ian at Forgotten Weapons for not bringing up his opinions to try and stay neutral. But at the same time, not addressing a worldwide wave of discrimination and prejudice still feels like taking a stance. Like, is there an acceptable degree of nuance I am missing? Is there some degree of religious intolerance or racism or gender discrimination that should be seen as tolerable? Most things do have some gray area to the conversation, but I just am not feeling that with all the comfort a lot of people now seem to have with treating fellow humans and our planet like crap.
I’m not expecting everyone to draw a line in the sand or anything. I think conversation has lost a lot of nuance. Even just saying something like “I didn’t know enough about this topic to have an opinion” is much better than either changing ahead while being ignorant or just rejecting anything you can’t currently understand. Refusing to say anything though feels like “I support the thing that is going to make you mad, I’m just afraid to say it.”
AvE, for better or worse, at least made it clear who he was. I can respect that to some degree. He at least has conviction. With Ian, I would guess he is something like a conservative libertarian that would support more old school Republicans, but the thing is we’ll never know, so while he may support shitty policy to further his personal interests and career, that is still kinda a shitty position when we’re talking people’s rights and safety being the price for that. And that’s the best case scenario. If he’s harder right wing than that, it only gets worse.
Talking guns/wati/history I feel it’s much harder to dodge taking some stance, because no matter what, every part of that learning ties in with politics. AvE tearing apart stuff and doing shop things rarely needs to lean into politics, so him leaning into it was all on him. I didn’t notice anyone calling on him in comments for his political insights.
Finding out AvE was really dumb as fuck was a gut punch. I really enjoyed his content and it sucked to walk away. But I dropped it cold turkey when the first video supporting the trucker convoy came out.
I used enjoy the critical drinker. But his videos got anti-woke instead of just being critical of bad writing.
The last straw was him on a podcast agreeing with right wingers/maga/fascists.
I blocked him since then. Not sure if he was always like that or just fell down a dark rabbit hole.
