I’ve been watching Youtube videos since the year it came out. I remember watching Smosh, Raywilliamjohnson and Epic meal time when I was still young and full of hope for the future. I watched the Yogscast play Minecraft for what must amount to hundreds of hours. I watched every minute of RoosterTeeth content for years and years and years, although I haven’t watched much of them in recent years. I love youtube. I know it’s probably done a big part in ruining my attention span, but there’s just so much you can watch. In honor of the platform that many of us have spent way too much time on, I want to quickly talk about some of my favorite youtube channels. I’m probably very generic in my picks, so if there’s nothing new on here I can only apologize.

Vlogbrothers

Good morning Hank it’s Tuesday.

Hank and John Green have been making weekly videos on this channel for the past 15 years. Not every video is going to be equally interesting to me. Sometimes I zone out but sometimes I’m actively watching every second of them while fully entranced. They make videos on all sorts of topics from highly personal things they encounter to global problems like global warming. Their most recent video The Sad Gap is a great watch and I think that’s a good place to start. If you like their content, they have other channels and projects as well, including several books written by John Green. I’m still slowly working my way through The Anthropocene Reviewed, one chapter at a time. It’s a good read as well.

Abroad in Japan

Throughout the years I’ve watched quite a lot of anime youtubers, one mainstay throughout the years being Gigguk. After he started a podcast with two other youtubers, one of their early guests was Chris Broad. A former English teacher from the UK who moved to Japan to teach there and eventually settled into making amazing videos about Japan. He has no relation with anime whatsoever, which is probably why the algorithm never really recommended it to me. But the videos he makes on Japanese culture, cities and history are absolutely fantastic. He’s been doing a bit less serious content as well, mainly the Wacky Weekend series he does with CDawgVA. Together they go to weird places in Japan and film it. They have a great down to earth British sense of humor and just all around good chemistry. If you’re looking for a place to start watching Abroad in Japan, I highly recommend the first Journey Across Japan series, where Chris cycles across Japan, making videos along the road. If you want more comedic stuff, perhaps give the Wacky Weekends videos a watch.

How Ridiculous

Have you ever wanted to watch three Australian dudes throw stuff off of a dam, tower or into glass panes? Well, do I have some good news for you. How Ridiculous is just that. From trick shots to visiting epic locations to demolishing things with large hammers, rocks and hulk fists, this channel has it all. I’ve been watching them on and off for years now and I just love their energy. From what I’ve seen recently they do some charity on the side as well, which is always a plus. There’s really not much to say about them, it’s one of those channels where it’s best to just watch a video to see for yourself. I recommend their video where they drop things into the blade of a helicopter to see how far they can launch it.

Philosophy Tube

Let’s get to a more serious style of videos. Well, more serious topics, perhaps not really more serious ways of presenting. Philosophy Tube is a channel that does exactly what it says on the tin. I got into this channel a little over a year ago. I honestly have no idea how I came across the channel, but it was probably in my sidebar at some point. The first video I watched was a video about work and jobs. It’s one of my favorite long-form youtube videos out there since it puts into words how I’ve felt about our work culture for a very long time. It’s unfair, unbalanced, unrewarding and downright depressing. And this is a sentiment I feel coming from a lot of Abigail’s videos. The world is a scary place right now and I find it very calming to have someone much smarter than me put some of it into perspective. I have a lot of thoughts, most of which are pretty dumb, so I need a space to educate myself. The videos are getting more and more elaborate in how artistic they are, but the content is still very solid and I highly enjoy every upload.

Kurzgesagt

I feel like this is probably the most well known one in the list, but as a teacher and a massive fan of their videos I couldn’t exclude them from this list. I’ve bought so much merch from them that it’s slowly becoming a problem. For example, when I track my daily word count for writing, I write it down on their yearly calendar. For those unfamiliar, Kurzgesagt makes animated educational videos about all sorts of topics. The animation and art is always really polished, the presenter’s voice is one of the most soothing voices to listen to on the entire internet and their research always looks well done. Every video comes with sources in the description, so if you want to confirm something you can do so. I’ll be honest, their list of sources could be a link to Rick Astley’s Never gonna give you up and I’d probably never find out since I’m very lazy, but a lot of what they say makes enough sense for me to not spend the time fact checking it myself. I got other things to do. Like watch more Kurzgesagt videos.

There’s many more amazing youtubers and videos out there that didn’t quite make the list. Political news channels like Hasanabi and Channel 5 should probably be on here too, as well as my favorite Apex players Aceu and iitzTimmy. I’ve been watching a little bit of Vtubers in the form of IronMouse, who is wildly popular on both youtube and twitch. And even that’s still forgetting some great channels. But this post is getting too long already so this is where I’ll end it. Let me know if you know these youtubers or if I helped you find a new obsession. And as always, thanks for reading.