{"id":40158,"date":"2017-08-20T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=40158"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:10:51","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:10:51","slug":"the-best-of-youtube-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=40158","title":{"rendered":"The Best of YouTube Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is the end of my list. The usualy disclaimer remains: The order is less about quality and more about viewing habits. As in: <em>How quickly do I pounce on a new video from this creator when it pops up in my feed<\/em>? Yes, that&#8217;s a vague, unfair, and poorly-justified basis for a list. But <a href=\"?p=24169\">that&#8217;s what you get when you make these kinds of lists<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s do this&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/moviebob\">7. MovieBob<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5pvoUpd2R8A\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5pvoUpd2R8A'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">Tragically, MovieBob&#8217;s content is sort of spread all over the place. His very best work was during his impressive five-year run of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/videos\/view\/the-big-picture?page=1\">The Big Picture<\/a>, which ran at The Escapist. He and The Escapist split a couple of years ago and now each side pretends the other doesn&#8217;t exist. His old movie reviews are also at the Escapist, while his new movie reviews are running at the YouTube channel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/wwwgeekdotcom\">Geek.com<\/a>, and is basically the only worthwhile video content they have. The rest of his content is on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/moviebob\">his own YouTube channel<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The whole thing is an unfortunate mess. <\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s also stuck in the unenviable position where his most popular work isn&#8217;t necessarily his best work or the work he&#8217;s most proud of. Two years ago he posted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BFD2293oGvA\">a blistering screed against the awfulness of Pixels<\/a>, which went on to get millions of views and became his biggest hit. On the other hand, he&#8217;s never tried to position himself as the &#8220;comically outraged film nerd&#8221; and that sort of brute-force schtick would be a waste of his considerable talents. So not only is his body of work spread out over multiple websites and YouTube channels, but he&#8217;s also divided between two audiences. On one hand he&#8217;s got folks like me who want informative <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=z-AAknOcQnM\">deep cuts on pop-culture oddities<\/a> and condensed explanations on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5pvoUpd2R8A\">complicated bits of nerd culture history<\/a>. On the other hand he&#8217;s got a larger, more transient audience who are looking for him to eviscerate bad movies in profanity-laden tirades<span class='snote' title='1'>Some of MovieBob&#8217;s work actually counteracts the &#8220;angry schtick&#8221; by doing long-form analysis of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BPoILjs6BYI\">movies he really likes<\/a>.<\/span>. It&#8217;s the BioWare problem all over again: <i>Do we cater to our core audience, or pivot to this far larger but less dependable one?<\/i><\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;m getting at is that he&#8217;s created a ton of content over the years, it&#8217;s scattered all over the internet, and it varies wildly in terms of content, tone, and style. So it&#8217;s really hard to recommend any single place as a good introduction to his work.<\/p>\n<p>If there&#8217;s one small gripe I have, it&#8217;s with his Boston accent. I get that he&#8217;s proud of his Boston heritage and he&#8217;s deliberately leaning into it for the purposes of his online persona, but sometimes it drives me crazy. Maybe it&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve got some Boston natives in my family and their accent is pretty strong, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WXUWrbGaaR4\">reviews where he can&#8217;t decide if he&#8217;s reviewing &#8220;Cars 3&#8221; or &#8220;Cahz 3&#8221;<\/a> are particularly vexing to my ears. <em>Pick an accent, buddy!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At any rate, I&#8217;m always surprised that MovieBob isn&#8217;t a much bigger name. Some critics sound uninformed because they don&#8217;t know the source material, and some critics sound unreasonable because they&#8217;re too hung up on the source material to judge if an adaptation makes for a good movie. MovieBob has one foot in the world of Gen-X \/ Millennial nostalgia properties and the other foot in the world of cinema. In this environment of non-stop sequels, spinoffs, reboots, adaptations, re-imaginings, ripoffs, and re-makes, he seems ideally positioned to cover the stuff currently residing near the center of our cinematic culture. <\/p><\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCUK0HBIBWgM2c4vsPhkYY4w\">6. Slow Mo Guys<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/np68FhljCb8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=np68FhljCb8'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">I know my list is pretty heavy on documentary, analysis, and educational content. But sometimes I&#8217;m not looking to learn. Sometimes I just want to kill a few minutes with cheap sensory stimulation. And if that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re looking for, then you can&#8217;t go wrong with Slo Mo Guys. <\/p>\n<p>Gavin and Dan own some top-quality HD high-speed cameras. They point those cameras at things, destroy the things, and the result is entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>This is one of those channels that looks easy to replicate but I would advise against running out and dropping $100k on the latest HD Phantom High Speed camera in the hopes of catapulting yourself to YouTube glory. While the camera is important, a lot of the magic of this channel is in the editing and pacing. A video begins with an introduction of the premise. Then some banter to discuss what might go wrong \/ build anticipation. Then they do the actual experiment. Then there are some cuts, sound cues, and background music to really sell the dreamlike magic of slow motion destruction. <\/p>\n<p>It might look easy, but there&#8217;s more to this channel than expensive hardware. <\/p>\n<p>Viewing suggestion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=np68FhljCb8\">Slow Mo Guys Channel Trailer<\/a>.<\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw\">5. Lessons From the Screenplay<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gsIQa7sH5_Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">At the start of this series I mentioned that I watched a few cinema-focused YouTube channels to help me sharpen my criticisms of AAA games. When it comes to learning about cinema, characters, and the mechanics of storytelling, Lessons From the Screenplay is way out in front. Presenter Michael is focused more on the screenplay than the strictly technical side of cinema, which is really good for my purposes. Videogames have gotten pretty good at mimicking the language of cinema in terms of lighting and framing shots. The area where they come up short is usually with the script. Michael&#8217;s explanations of character motivations, story structure, dialog, and pacing are invaluable for figuring out where a handsome but empty film went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Viewing suggestion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y\">Rogue One vs. The Force Awakens \u00e2\u20ac&quot; The Fault in Our Star Wars<\/a><\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/MrBtongue\">4. MrBtongue<\/a><\/h2>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">This one almost didn&#8217;t make the list, since the channel hasn&#8217;t gotten a new video in 9 months. But if one does show up, I&#8217;m going to drop what I&#8217;m doing and watch it twice, like I always do.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully this creator isn&#8217;t <a href=\"?p=39718\">wasting his time posting on some obscure blog<\/a> rather than making me more videos. <\/p>\n<p>Viewing suggestion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0\">The Shandification of Fallout<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/bunnyhopshow\">3. SuperBunnyHop<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rCxR__N0_is\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rCxR__N0_is'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">I admire the heck out of George Weidman. Not only does he run a great channel with great videogame analysis, but he&#8217;s also got several vids where he engages in some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iMK-kajdgMA\">honest-to-gosh gaming journalism<\/a>. I mean real, old-school journalism where you&#8217;ve got to find contacts, run down leads, dig through boring legal documents, interview people, and otherwise go to a lot of trouble to answer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BCAVbPaw5SI\">difficult questions<\/a>. I know this sort of thing is tedious, time-consuming work and I know it doesn&#8217;t really pay any better than doing a more straightforward game review, which is why I&#8217;m so grateful when George goes the extra mile.<\/p>\n<p>Viewing suggestion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rCxR__N0_is\">The Importance of Quiet Time<\/a><\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"\">2. The 8-Bit Guy<\/a><\/h2>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">Dave Murray collects ancient (1980s, and sometimes even 1970s) personal computers and restores them to the point where they look almost factory new. It&#8217;s a fascinating process and I always get a sense of satisfaction when I see a machine from my childhood restored to its former glory. <\/p>\n<p>Viewing suggestion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SO4mjEasdTM\">Apple IIc Restoration and video jack repair<\/a><\/div>\n<h2><a href=\"\">1. CGP Grey<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rE3j_RHkqJc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">I&#8217;ve lost count of how many times I&#8217;ve gone through the ol&#8217; CGP Grey archives, but it&#8217;s a lot. Grey doesn&#8217;t follow any of the supposed conventional wisdom with regards to building an audience. He doesn&#8217;t post often <em>or<\/em> on any sort of predictable schedule. He&#8217;s never done a face reveal. He doesn&#8217;t stream. The channel isn&#8217;t built around a single theme or topic and isn&#8217;t specifically targeted to any particular group. While the production values (mostly simple animations using stick figures) aren&#8217;t terrible, they&#8217;re pretty far below the other channels in his weight class. He doesn&#8217;t have unique intro or background music but instead relies on simple public domain music. But even though he doesn&#8217;t do any of that stuff he does the <em>most important<\/em> thing, which is that he makes <strong>really good content<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure why the face reveal thing matters so much to me, but I&#8217;ve always felt like my perception of someone was somehow incomplete until I&#8217;ve seen their face when they&#8217;re talking. If there&#8217;s one face reveal I&#8217;d most like to see, it would be Grey&#8217;s. One of the first things I do when I discover a new author or director is go on YouTube and look for interviews. Is this normal? I have no idea. <\/p>\n<p>And because I know people will ask: Yes, I know that Grey has a podcast called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/HelloInternetPodcast\">Hello Internet<\/a> where he teams up with Brady Haran. Brady is one of my other favorite people on the internet, being responsible for both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/numberphile\">Numberphile<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/DeepSkyVideos\">Deep Sky Videos<\/a>, which appeared earlier in this list. So obviously if two of my favorite people get together and talk for two hours every week that must be something I really love, right?<\/p>\n<p>The truth is, I&#8217;ve never listed to HI. Not once. Podcasts just don&#8217;t fit into my routine. If I <strong>did<\/strong> ever listen to a podcast I&#8217;d certainly start with Hello Internet. But no, that hasn&#8217;t happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>Getting back to CGP Grey and his channel&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y5UT04p5f7U\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin:50px\">Video, being a linear non-interactive format, will live or die on the strength of its editing and pacing. If a topic drags on too long you&#8217;ll start skipping. If it&#8217;s not covered in enough detail you&#8217;ll get bored. If there&#8217;s an obvious objection or counter-argument you want to make, not only does the author need to anticipate your point but they also need to insert their preemptive rebuttal at just the right point in order to pull you back in.  When editing is done poorly you&#8217;ll find yourself irritated, frustrated, bored, or even simply moving on to something else, even if you were initially interested in the topic. When it&#8217;s done well the editing is completely invisible. You find yourself at the end, wondering where the last five minutes went.<\/p>\n<p>I guess that&#8217;s what makes the videos work so well for me. CGP Grey is the Half Life 2 of YouTube. Maybe the visuals are dated and maybe the same things have been said and done better elsewhere, but it&#8217;s got really exceptional <em>flow<\/em> that makes it a joy to go through.<\/p>\n<p>Viewing Suggestion: The whole channel! But if you want a place to start, I suppose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg\">Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever<\/a> is a good way to spend the next four minutes and twenty seconds.<\/div>\n<h3>Honorable mentions<\/h3>\n<p>I really love <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VIVIegSt81k\">Vihart<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gxdbuuVGdS0\">DJStevePorter<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Zce-QT7MGSE\">Bad Lip Reading<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3FOzD4Sfgag\">Every Frame a Painting<\/a>, but they have either gone dark or they update so rarely that it&#8217;s not worth recommending them as a source of new content. <\/p>\n<p>Loading Ready Run is an interesting case. They produce a lot of content. I&#8217;m into about &frac14; of it. I love their skits and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LhMFcwScPp4\">Checkpoint<\/a>. On the other hand, I&#8217;m not into their videogame or cardgame stuff. If YouTube had a way for a &#8220;channel&#8221; to organize its videos into &#8220;shows&#8221; &#8211; you know, like Old Media has been doing for about 90 years &#8211; then I could just subscribe to the shows I like. Instead I have to subscribe to the whole channel, which gives me a deluge of unwanted content in my feed. Because of the way stupid YouTube handles this, it means LRR will <strong>always<\/strong> show the &#8220;new content&#8221; icon. Which makes the icon useless. Which means I might as well unsubscribe and just manually check in on the channel every few days. Which means I forget to do so. Which means when I finally come back, I&#8217;ve got tons of videos to sort through. Everybody loses. <\/p>\n<p>From LRR&#8217;s perspective, the only way to solve this would be to make a new channel for each show. But then each show would have to work to build its own audience from scratch and LRR shows would need to do cross-promotion. <\/p>\n<p>Basically, YouTube is strangely lacking in what I would consider to be very basic features. Like Steam, they&#8217;re a market hegemon. Also like Steam, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI\">it&#8217;s really frustrating when a new competitor shows up and fails because they don&#8217;t know what customers need or want<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At this point I&#8217;d ask for more suggestions, but people have sort of been doing that throughout this series. So instead let me ask this: <em>What now-dead channel would you love to see revived?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is the end of my list. The usualy disclaimer remains: The order is less about quality and more about viewing habits. As in: How quickly do I pounce on a new video from this creator when it pops up in my feed? Yes, that&#8217;s a vague, unfair, and poorly-justified basis for a list. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}