Ask Lemmy

Hoog, fern, Thinker and Moon do rather similar styles of documentary content.

rSlash and Mainly Fact are the best "Reddit stories" channels that actually provide their own commentary rather than reading out Reddit posts verbatim with text-to-speech tools, or passing off blatantly fake AI slop hallucinated by ChatGPT as genuine.

Ahoy mainly does documentaries about weapons and how they're depicted in video games, but he's also done some retro gaming stuff too.

Rav is one of the few League of Legends content creators I actually like. He doesn't just lazily regurgitate stream VODs as video guides with clickbaity thumbnails like a lot of creators do. Yes, he uses text-to-speech commentary to narrate his games but his scripts are actually fucking hilarious.

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.

"Mr. Beat" (no S) is a nice little US history class, but there are TONS of streamers just starting out with no viewers who could really use your support.

Perun for military stuff, especially Ukraine.

Define long form? Under an hour is about all I can take.

Jerma Long Edits, Skye4 and dumptruck make good ones

used to be a bunch asain tubers, but they turn shitheel after misdirecting thier channels declines towards thier own female employees(resulting in a unprofessional firing), apparently they continued thier mysogyny against thier past female employees, and yes they are full MAGATs now. also had unchecked racism allowed to fester on the channel which drove most if not all AA influencers away.

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

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.

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.

Sarcasmitron is a lesser known, but really good history youtuber, with a pragmatic but leftist analysis. A lot of his earlier work was focused on critiquing right wing YouTube, but more recently he had been focused on historical events rather than responding to a specific video.

Peter Santanello

Dime Store Adventures

Moon

SomeOrdinaryGamers

SamONella

There's probably more, but these are the ones I recall

Jeff Gerstmann, video game journalist

Lindsay Nikole, paleontology pop sci

Gutsick Gibbon, prehistoric anthropology pop sci and some academic stuff

Spacetime and SEA, cosmology pop sci sometimes leaning more academic

Rifftrax/mst3k, comedians that add audio tracks over bad mostly public domain movies, there's a ton of them

Ben G Thomas, prehistoric biology pop sci

Bill simmons podcast. Mainly sports but a lot of just in general topics too. Famous guests athletes and not.

Not as long form as they usually max out around an hour. Good enough for walking dogs.

New Rock Stars.

Dark Net Diaries.

Star Talk.

Beyond Trust has a podcost interviewing tech people.

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

I made this spreadsheet a while back for easy sharing. Some have been mentioned like F.D Signifier and HBomberGuy. Also like Mr. Beat for history, Nth Review for games, Astrum for space, and Maritime Horrors for... maritime horrors.

• Weird Fruit Explorer
• Tasting History

Steve Wallis is my comfort creator. Genuine dude from Canada who does loads of camping from simple in the woods stuff to hiding in a roundabout overnight. He's had a rough go these last few years as he lost his wife, mother, and best friend all within a year and a half. This is a man just enjoying what mother nature has to offer.

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

Asmongold