Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
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You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
It's not simply the Gates money, but the pivot to pursuing grants by chasing clicks to the exclusion of all else.
They've been Mr Beast-ified.
Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it's all "vote with your wallet 🙂"
It has been neoliberal biased for ages. For example this is a 2021 article calling out their neoliberal bias. https://aninjusticemag.com/the-inescapable-neoliberal-bias-behind-kurzgesagt-in-a-nutshell-215eb1e9b70f?gi=9574bf28f4a0
But it has undoubtedly gotten a lot worse recently. That south korea video was abymaly blind and baked in unrealistic capitalist assumptions.
They're doing the thing where they upload a video and then change the thumbnail and title of the video every few days which I've only seen done by all the low effort click bait channels. It's what finally got me to install the dearrow extension which swaps titles and videos of YouTube videos to be more informative and less click bait.
I believe this is a YouTube feature that effectively runs A/B tests on your behalf. You give it multiple titles and thumbnails and it'll gauge engagement with each and then use the one that was most popular. I hate it.
A lot of channels do this, you might've just not noticed.
Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of "What is the purpose of dust? I guess we'll never know. Isn't the universe a mysterious place?"
Ah, yes. Their "We found space whales on Nimbus!" video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled "What actual aliens might look like" was something I could excuse. I don't consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
However, what I really hated was their ad for a "strange matter" vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the "buy now because they'll never come back" trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
They seem to be trying to copy xkcd's video format with the fantasy tier what if questions answered seriously. Seems out of place to me, not sure what Gates Foundation gets out of fluff pieces like figuring out what banana rain would do to the planet while getting the terminal velocity of a banana wrong right off the bat too. What a shit video.
How in the actual hell is technology connections not on that list and also why have I not seen it in any of the comments yet
Through the magic of buying two of them, you have someone who agrees that it should be on the list.
+Practical Engineering
+Real Engineering +Technology Connections +EngineerGuy +Explosions&Fire +NurdRage +NileRed (more entertainment than education nowadays but his old videos are pretty information dense) +Chris Boden +MinutePhysics/MinuteEarth/MinuteFood +LegalEagle +Engineering Explained +Wendover Productions / Half as Interesting
I got tons more but my legs are starting to fall asleep.
Technology connections is so good. I watched a video and wanted to share it but peoples response was always "I'm not fucking watching an hour video on how a dishwasher works" I say but thats the shorten version
I learnered about some interesting looking channels from this thread so I'll pay it forward and share some that I like.
2 and 20
Angela Collier
Bobby Broccoli
Climate Town
Computerphile
Defunctland
fern
Folding Ideas
JimmyTheGiant
KnowledgeHusk
Lextorias
Not Just Bikes
Odd Compass
Ordinary Things
PBS Space Time
slow start
Suibhne
Thought Slime
Tom Nicholas
Kurgesatz was really good before they started the black mirror season, where every video is about how humanity can get killed by various things.
Never heard of the other ones but I'll give it a try.
And there's a PBS video for anything you can think about, sometimes they just don't surface properly with search.
They're honest, direct, open, and willing to learn, I love kurzgesagt. The world sucks, but we shouldn't shy away from understanding why it sucks and how we can improve it
I am big fan of their prepandemic work. But if you can get past their click bait videos, I think they still do good content.
Science pieces spreading awareness about something are their best videos.
This recent video on fentanyl was very good.
The south korea one, the vaping and weed ones. Very good at condensing complicated topic while still retaining pertinent information that's new and not patronizing.
Anyone here like Folding Ideas? He's done some good stuff about flat earthers, crypto bros, and such.
Angela Collier completes a nice Venn diagram of (making me feel like I'm) learning stuff, righteous anger, and being a person with a face who isn't some new media production studio
I'd like to submit
SmarterEveryDay (Highly suggest this video of the James Webb Telescope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu97IiO_yDI )
Honorable mention (because 'retired') Tom Scott
And because it's a good channel Dad How Do I?
I liked smarter every day but recently I have been kinda put off because of his fairly frequent military propaganda for USA's military.
They're pretty okay for shallow understanding on a subject, but Wendover (not on the list), Economics Explained (not on the list), and CGP gray all get stuff pretty wrong once you get past shallow depth. I know because I'm a huge transit/urbanism nerd. If these channels haven't wronged you in some minor way, they just haven't talked about something you're a subject matter expert in yet. The point here isn't that they're bad, just understand that these are shallow explainers, the next step in from like a news article, Wikipedia, or a blog, and take them with a grain of salt.
My personal list is Kurzgesagt, XKCD explained, and The Action Lab.
Wendover is pretty bad and finding out they take essentially bribes in the form of free stays and travel from an amusement park to say only nice things a little them after the park had an accident that killed a kid makes it so it's pretty obvious it's not about being good content for us but for the people making it. Likely tax write-offs and funny accounting all over their channels.
They state that they aren't for education but entertainment and thus don't have a to cite sources either.
Yeah they aren't a trustworthy source is my point.
I stopped watching kurzgesagt after their copium video on global warming where we all hold hands and sing and magically reverse it.
Veritasium?
The Rest is History is always a good listen.
Historia Civilis and others like Kings and Generals etc are often good too.
Nothing like turning on Sam O'Nella for some entertaining educational comedy for the kids only to hear "removed" over and over again
Like all pop-science I think they're really educational on topics I know nothing about. On topics I do know well, I think: well that's wrong and that's wrong.
I’ll add Captain Disillusion to this thread
wheres wendover and reallifelore?
None of them on the fediverse :/
What a weird bunch, to me these are 2 titans, 1 serial one-hit-wonder, and 1 guy whose humour is family guy cutaway gags.
Also:
LockPickingLawyer
How To Cook That
Captain Disillusion
Pilot Debreif
Stand-Up Maths
I'm more of a Real Engineering and Mustard kinda guy
If you wanna learn from the best chef in the world:
You Suck At Cooking! Yeah, you totally suck!
Or Preppy Kitchen if we're being serious
Legal stuff:
Meidas Touch and Legal Eagle
Retro video and music devices:
Techmoan and VWestlife
Also: Tom Scott. Or at least his backlog because he retired.
And a very important one! - Science stuff: Potholer54 I can't believe he doesn't have millions of subs. It actually kind of makes me sad.
If anyone likes music theory, Adam Neely, Nahre Sol, Charles Cornel, and Open Studio Jazz are all amazing.
I really would love to hear what a non musician thinks about them too. I bet maths heads would love it.