askchapo

Honestly? Modern Yogscast.

I'm biased as I was a fan as a kid but watching their minecraft shit in 2025 is still so good, and Simon is even funnier now everyone is older and he spouts some hilarious shit. Politically they're also decent folks too.

I'm glad the Sjin thing was dealt with (I wasn't watching them back then) but now they seem to be hitting their stride.

Bonus mention

Posy explores weird and wonderful stuff that he enjoys with masterful editing, music, and a voice that should be immortalised on a golden record.

I’m sorry to keep NL-posting but there’s a reason he’s like the only youtuber/streamer with emotes on here. He’s simply the GOAT of being a nice well-rounded person who is also actually funny.

• Retro Game Mechanics Explained - pretty much what it says on the tin. Super well-structured breakdowns of retro game stuff (like getting down to the assembly level) with some of the best visualizations I've ever seen.
• pannenkoek2012 - this man has so much passion for pushing the SM64 A Button Challenge to its limits and all of the SM64 minutiae that have been discovered in the process. I want to live in a world where everyone can pursue their passion like pannen no matter how seemingly trivial.
• Kaze Emanuar - detailed technical breakdowns from a German man with a monomaniacal drive to squeeze every last microsecond of performance gain out of Super Mario 64, which has led him to rewrite large swathes of the game engine.
• MartSnack - okay, so he's only got two videos as of this comment, but they're some of the best goddamn videos on YouTube. Even if he had just posted the first one he would have a better output than most could dream of, but then two years later he dropped an even more impressive video. They both involve playing Pokémon "deaf and blind"--in other words, coming up with a sequence of inputs that will beat the game regardless of any RNG. The amount of work that went into these videos is truly mind-boggling, and he presents it in a very digestible and entertaining way.
• 8-Bit Music Theory - wonderful music theory channel which teaches concepts using examples from all across the world of gaming (two great videos to start with are his videos on the Dolphin Shoals sax solo and Baka Mitai). I appreciate that he uses concrete examples with detailed transcriptions and doesn't dumb down the explanations, and he doesn't just focus on the what but the why, showing how you can apply these concepts in composition. I think you can enjoy his channel even without music theory knowledge just for the experience of going, "Oh, neat, I never realized that this technique was being used in these different pieces!" and gaining appreciation for the craft; that said, if you are interested in music theory this is a really fun way to get introduced to concepts big and small. You're not going to master any one concept just from watching a 15 minute video with some examples, of course, but watching his videos has primed me for when I do come across those topics in my more rigorous study and helped me hear things when doing transcriptions. Just having that bit of prior exposure really makes things less daunting, and I treat his channel as a library for when I want to brush up on a topic (his series on modes is especially invaluable!).
• Jonko the ROM Hacker - Another channel with only a few videos, but if you're interested in ROM hacking I can hardly recommend a better place to start. The channel is run by the leader of a Haruhi fan translation group (that website also has some technical blog posts if you're hungry for more or prefer written explanations). As a bonus, you don't have to worry about whether he's some cryptofascist because he puts at the beginning of all his presentations.
• Hilltop - Another wonderful romhacking channel this one with a focus on PS1 games; I've linked to the playlist of all his romhacking breakdowns. Not much to say other than, if anyone can recommend other channels with romhacking/game reverse engineering videos of similar depth and quality, please share them!
• hazel - comfy cozy anime/retro game vibes. I'm gonna be real, I've only watched a few of her videos, but I've enjoyed all the ones I've seen so far. I think her video on old-school fansites will resonate with fellow millennials wistful for the days of the personal web before big tech got their claws into everything.
• Hunter R. - all the weird little trivia you could ever want to know about Animal Crossing and more! As you might guess from the other channels I've listed, this one has a fair bit of focus on some of the technical aspects of the series, and there's a focus on the GameCube game in particular.
• KRAZAM - satire on the world of software development. Highlights include Microservices, The Hustle, and AI Boyfriend.

Astrum

PBS Spacetime

PBS Eons

Technology Connections. I know nothing about that guy, but being able to watch someone with terrible hair talk about washing machines for an hour basically justifies the existence of YouTube imho

I'm amazed it's not been mentioned here yet - Luna oi! is a very cool socialist Vietnamese channel. Her videos are both fun and informative, and good for getting a non-western take on so many things.

Moose2 (Brutalmoose)!

Extremely comfy streams of random stuff, mostly vintage games for Windows 98 and XP, on original hardware (no emulation). His Nancy Drew videos are just the best.

Farya Faraji! He got really popular with his video on Orientalist music vs actual Middle Eastern music: https://youtu.be/LR511iAedYU

Really funny, clever, passionate, dedicated to his craft (the intersection of music and anthropology). I almost never like video essays but his are actually good and actually engaging. His music is great too and i love just he includes detailed descriptions about them.

Man's channel deserves more love.

• a people's history of rome, that sort of stuff. i get the feeling they're marxists keeping it on the down-low, but who knows. - https://www.youtube.com/@tribunateSPQR
• some cool geology lectures about the west coast of north america - https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick
• she visits interesting houses - https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen
• japanese man builds houses - https://www.youtube.com/@ShoyanJapaneseCarpenter
• history stuff, i think he's not bad - https://www.youtube.com/@premodernist_history
• they build houses in western north carolina (they're probably enormous chuds but they mostly keep it out of the videos. mostly) - https://www.youtube.com/@PerkinsBuilderBrothers
• various linguistics-related videos - https://www.youtube.com/@DrGeoffLindsey
• civil engineering stuff, with hand-built models and demostrations - https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel

F.D Signifier is really cool but not exactly a hidden gem by now. He kind of blew up huh

I dont really care much for comdey on youtube but I do like "Man Carrying Thing". Skits that are usually just like a minute or so.

I would imagine many people here who watch Youtube are already familiar with Folding Ideas, at least from his video about NFTs. He is imo the best video essayist by a wide mile.

Then there's Jenny Nicholson, her videos are hit or miss in the sense that I really don't care about most topics she talks about, but I find even those videos engaging and when she does talk about an interesting topic it's an all-timer for me.

T90 for competitive aoe2 videos and just aoe 2 in general

Jimothy cool for mostly gen 3 OU pokemon videos

Wolfeyvgc for his pokemon vgc tournament videos that are always fun

Solid jj for funny videos

Big cooking video person here

J Kenji Lopez Alt is my muse. I will not hear anything against him.

Chef John/Food Wishes - He makes some great old school recipe videos, just no bullshit 8-10 minute videos walking you through the recipe steps. Also has great puns.

America's Test Kitchen Has a bunch of filler videos, but I really like What's Eating Dan and Techniquely with Lan Lam, just very knowledgeable chefs.

I like Scaredy Cats. It's Thought Slime's other channel focused mostly on horror movies, from the high art ones to the cheesy, B horror ones. In fact, I'd probably say there's more of the latter than the former.

They try to keep is non-political, but every now and then anti-capitalist themes slip in to their movie reviews, which I'm just fine with.

I really enjoy Exurb1a

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hK9fOxyy_TM8FJGXIyG8Q

Dhar Mann, the goat

If I try to restrict to the smaller channels (some of these are quite big anyhow, but whatever):

Kaze Emanuar

Mario 64 modding focus, with coding deep dives

https://www.youtube.com/@KazeN64

Decino

Classic Doom content, with coding deep dives

https://www.youtube.com/@decino

Timbah.On.Toast

Music and culture focused video essays

https://www.youtube.com/@TimbahOnToast

José

Musings on historical sitcoms and conservative media

https://www.youtube.com/@JoseBird

Cass Eris

Scathing book reviews of pop psychology

https://www.youtube.com/@CassEris

Dr. Fatima

Astrophysics, Space, and Politics

https://www.youtube.com/@dr.fatima

Simon Roper

Linguistics and other stuff

https://www.youtube.com/@simonroper9218

Clickspring

Precision hand manufacturing

https://www.youtube.com/@Clickspring

Acorn to Arabella

Wooden sailboat build, and now sailing

https://www.youtube.com/@AcornToArabella

I still, unsurprisingly, like the kids in hololive and holostars. They're all a bunch of bright and talented, essentially, theater kids.

I also like false edge hema and dequitem because it's fun watching large adult children beat the shit out of each other with metal sticks fancily.

I also enjoy natural habitat, under studio hub, fire department chronicles, and some others

LGR and Angela Collier. I hardly use youtube except to watch jerma vods

Smight is mostly a twitch streamer, but he posts all his stuff to YouTube. He's the creator of the Arcade Pit, a internet gameshow where contestants play old games answer trivia and generally have fun with games.

Super friendly to the trans community, the pit crew recently hosted a marathon to raise money for trans causes, and many of the guests on the show are often trans as well, with the co-host being Emily Aster an awesome trans lady.

So tune in every Sunday evening at 8pm EST for the arcade pit live. Smight has not missed a show in over 15 years or something insane. His channel is twitch.tv/smight