These are the creators whom I still watch most of their videos; otherwise, I mostly don't actually really use YouTube much anymore. I pay premium for my extended family to all use it without ads lol

No, I'm not going to try and teach my mum how to use Vanced or whatever is popular now. I used to ask for a bit of cash from each of them, but you know how that tends to go.

• SexuaLobster - funny animations
• Kurzegezegazagat - educational animations
• Singsing - streamer I like to watch play games I don't have energy for
• TerminalMontage - funny parody animations
• Dunkey, as others have mentioned

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned but here's a few that I haven't seen:

• Chris Spargo - Documentarian 'Answering life's little questions' (in his own words)

• HowTown - Well researched, slick documentaries on science and sociology

• Useful charts - Family trees and history combined with some nuanced religious history

• Map Men - Somehow both an incredible geography channel and very funny skit show

• ToldInStone - Regular and endlessly fascinating ancient history content

• Captain Disillusionment - A one man special effects genius makes funny deep dives and debunks on special effects topics

• Nile Red - Chemistry wiz kid makes alcohol from toilet paper - The closest thing to a modern alchemist I can imagine

• Joel haver - Inventor the rotoscoped paint cartoon, funny, creatively driven and refuses to sell out

• Patrick Boyle - Educated, nuanced and cuttingly dry humoured takes on popular economics issues

• Steve Mould - High quality science demos and explanations with an engaging and humble host

Off the top of my head, I love Sam O Nella and Casually Explained

Anton Petrov. Talks about scientific papers. Cool guy.

Cody's Lab. A lot of channels do cool shit for their youtube channel, and it feels like Cody has a youtube channel for the cool shit he's already doing. Like, vacuuming out a chicken coop. Check out how he does it without dirtying the filter on his shop vac. Or an infinite pickle jar. With a couple design modifications, that could legit be a marketable product.

Also Know Art. I can't even imagine the effort it takes to make the 3d models he uses to explain things, but damn if I don't know a hell of a lot more about telescoping mechanisms and drills and buttons and phones and staplers and saws and like a million other things because of their amazing channel

Gamers Nexus

Syd and Macky (Mountain Biking)

SomeOrdinaryGAmers. I find his switch to awareness about current issues regarding privacy is really good. It's easy to get lost in our busy lives.

I would also say that Clabretro and Cathode Ray Dude are really cool. Been watching them for years at this point.

I really like travel stuff, I like Kara and Nate. I like maker/cosplayer Rachel Maksy.

One that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet is AntsCanada. He has an incredible vivarium series going on right now and posts weekly updates.

I'm convinced that dude will continue to add 1000 gallon tanks to his house until the structure physically can't support it anymore.

PBS Spacetime, MandaloreGaming, RedLetterMedia, Jenny Nicholson, Middle Nation, SpaceIce.

✌️

8-but guy. Every video is a fucking banger.

In no particular order:

Dr. Becky (astronomy)

Josh Johnson (comedy)

New Venture Games (old man boardgaming)

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ornithology)

Ant Lab (entomology)

Practical Engineering (engineering, mostly civil)

Numberphile (maths, as they say across the pond)

The Octopus Lady (marine biology)

Juniper Dev (young gun making games)

suckerpinch (software stuff)

Jenny Nicholson (media critic)

engineerguy (engineering)

Steve Mould (physics)

Dang, I gotta clean up my subscriptions. I tend to add people when I find one good video, then ignore them when I find they aren't to my taste

In alphabetical order for no good reason:

BeardMeatsFood - Competitive eater turned touring food challenge attempter. Wins more than he loses.

Dr Becky - Astrophysicist. Monthly space news updates.

Lock Picking Lawyer - Masterlock's greatest foe. And a foe to many other terrible locks and safes too. Look out for the April Fools videos.

Numberphile - Brady Haran's popular channel about mathematics

[Periodic Videos (https://www.youtube.com/@periodicvideos) - Chemistry videos by the same producer as Numberphile. He has a bunch of channels, but I'll only list the two here.

Primitive Technology - No voice-over or talking head(s), chill vibes, primitive building techniques. The original. Be sure to turn on subtitles / closed captions!

Simone Giertz - Down-to-Earth Inventor and Entrepreneur. Formerly the Queen of Sh*tty Robots.

Simon Roper - Linguist with an interest in English

Weird Explorer - Reviews weird and wonderful fruits from all around the globe, many you've probably never heard of. Currently branching out into some home gardening videos, but still doing fruit.

Most of these have extensive back-catalogues that would take some considerable time to get through. Enyoy.

Tom Scott (he's back after a break)

John Michael Godier (science and astronomy)

Videogamedunkey

Any Austin (deep dives into minutea of video games)

• Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik
• Veritassium
• William Osmon
• Technology Connections
• LGR
• Bringus
• Macho Nacho Productions
• polymatt

Mighty Car Mods is still putting out great content after all these years.

I've been watching since they were replacing head units in crappy 90s nuggets in their mums driveway. Now they've really evolved and are replacing head units in crappy 90s nuggets in their own workshop.

• Mathematics
  • 3blue1brown
  • Numberphile
  • Mathologer
• Science
  • PBS Space Time
  • minutephysics
  • Alpha Phoenix
  • The Rest Is Science
• Technology
  • Technology Connections
  • Benn Jordan
  • Internet of Bugs
• Video Games
  • Any Austin
  • Acerola
  • Displaced Gamers
• Speedrunning
  • Summoning Salt
  • Bismuth
  • pannenkoek2012
• Other random stuff
  • Amelia Dimoldenberg (Chicken Shop Date)
  • Ghoul City Online (Comedic reviews)
  • Hazel Thayer (Leftist topics)
  • In Deep Geek (Tolkien lore)
  • udiprod (Algorithm animations)

Drew Gooden. I've always loved him, but his anti-capitalist renaissance has been very enjoyable to watch

watched for a long time and still find worth returning to

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Internet Today - ever since the Machinima days

RedLetterMedia

Blame Society (Beer and Boardgames and Welcome To The Basement)

Jimmy Broadbent - Following him going from being a 'degenerate simracer' in a shed to racing IRL has been inspiring

Loading Ready Run - from way back when they were on The Escapist, and then to Penny Arcade and now their own channel.

Inside Games - another from Machinima.

I've watched A Dose of Buckley, Stephanie Sterling, and Vinesauce (yeah he's a Twitch streamer, but I only watch his Vods) for over a decade. There's a few others, but those 3 I feel have had the biggest impact on me.

A lot of them, but if I'm going to pick a top 10:

Urbanism: About Here, Not Just Bikes, Adam Something

Video Essays: Big Joel

Intercultural life: Chinese Cooking Demystified, Uyen Ninh, The Korean Vegan

True Crime: Matt Orchard- Crime and Society

Health: Viva Longevity!

Recipes: Rainbow Plant Life

New find shout out: Animagraffs, very cool video on the construction of the Hoover Dam

Red Letter Media - the guys are still just as cynical and witty as ever. Maybe even better as they’ve gotten older. I’ve got random episodes of Best of the Worst on in the background pretty often.

I am an unusual consumer of YouTube content, with interests that go in many different directions. All of these folks are likeable, have been going for a really long time and know their topics intimately:

Thus, in no particular order, YouTubers I like are:

Enes Yilmazer (luxury real estate / mansion walkthroughs): https://youtube.com/@enesyilmazer

Aquaholic (boats and yachts): https://youtube.com/@aquaholic

The B1M (construction and civil engineering): https://youtube.com/@theb1m

The Bond Experience (Bond, James Bond): https://youtube.com/@thebondexperience

Red Dead Restoration (vintage watch restoration - usually completely silent videos except for ASMR as he restores old watches): https://youtube.com/@reddeadrestoration

Jay Leno's Garage ('nuff said -- in no way an obscure channel, but Jay knows and loves his cars): https://youtube.com/@jaylenosgarage

Hodinkee (watches) - https://youtube.com/@hodinkee

Berliner Philharmoniker (sublime music and orchestral performances) - https://youtube.com/@berlinphil

Bright Sun Films (abandoned buildings, bankrupt companies and other things, usually in a mini-documentary format): https://youtube.com/@brightsunfilms

Tech Moan

In no particular order:

• The Rest Is Science (podcast)
• Technology Connections/Connextras
• Jeff Geerling / Level 2 Jeff
• Techmoan
• Gamers Nexus / GNCA
• LGR
• Switch and Click
• The Linux Experiment
• Tasting History with Max Miller
• Ben Eater (breadboard computers)
• Stuff Made Here (engineering)
• Up and Atom (science)
• Simon d'Entremont (photography)
• Words Unravelled and Rob's Words (English language)
• Kurzgesagt
• Veritasium
• Tom Scott (the returned)
• Asianometry (tech history)
• Clabretro (retro networking and server hardware)

I've watched Maru and Walter Santi (cats) for a long time.

My husband likes Bourbon Moth Woodworking. I can't stand the stupid fake speech pattern he adopted when he got popular.

I'll add my own recommendations as well!

• Mike Okay (travel)
• Any Austin (niche gaming deep dives)
• Inheritance Machining and This Old Tony (machining)
• Pask Makes (woodworking, metalworking)
• Tested (particularly Adam Savage's One Day Builds series)
• Quips&Guac (MTG)
• Pete Complete and Ambiguous Amphibian(gaming challenge and long form roleplay series)

Man, people here have a very different sense of "A long time" on YouTube. I was hesitating to include TimeGhost because I've only watched them for about eight years.

For stuff I've been watching for less long, the creators that come to mind are:

Timeghost - they do history documentaries, focusing on chronological "real time" content, such as their current series, the Korean War Week-by-Week

LEMMiNO - does deep-dives into supposed mysteries. His older stuff isn't great, but shifted towards higher-quality long-form content about 8 years ago, and he does a good job on them.

AHOY - does documentaries on the history of games, and adjacent tech and culture. Not usually super deep, but well written, produced and animated.

Desync - makes stupid gaming videos, usually abusing bugs or just being silly. Doesn't post often, but on the rare occasion he does, it'll be well produced and funny.

For stuff more at the age I was thinking of originally, 10+ years:

John and Hank Green - cover a whole range of topics, although nowadays, it tends to be a mix of advocacy, science, philosophy, and just sillyness.

The Yogscast - Just a plain old gaming channel, albeit with unusually frequent and higher production quality videos. Nothing extraordinary, but consistently good and fun, despite the fact that they've been making videos for nearly 20 years.

Tom Scott - short video essays, explainers and documentaries on a variety of topics. Primarily, videos on different interesting places.

TomSka - The ASDF Movie guy. That said, just as good or better are his other skits, and now even his long-form content and videos essays.

Fortnine. No question.

If you fancy yourself joining the resistance and might run into law enforcement, Audit the Audit is a treasure trove of knowledge on what is legal or not in those encounters.

Smooth McGroove - Really good a cappella video game covers.