Kind of a trend, the amount of youtubers who i had loved but their content became generic after gaining popularity is quite a bit, most drastic one being mrwhosetheboss, his uniqueness went down faster than MH27 MH17

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Veritasium. After he put that uncritical commercial for the self driving car company on his feed I couldn’t take any of his content seriously anymore.

    • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It was his video on IQ tests that set off alarm bells for me.

      IQ tests are not some method of determining intelligence they are very much linked to relative education/socioeconomic standing. His complete lack of criticism and neutral/positive support of IQ tests make me think he likes the result of his score…

    • Raxiel@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I stopped watching after the “speed of electricity in a wire” video. When I realised a video about something I knew about was bollocks, it made me question every other video that taught me about something I didn’t know.
      Even if that had been a one off, how would I know? The trust is gone.

      • refoux@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I’ll purposely seek out videos covering topics I’m (more) familiar with, from unfamiliar content creators that I might be interested in watching more of. It helps me gauge their accuracy, confidence, and ability to simplify without losing the underlying reasoning.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      “Oh and by the way, this is a sponsored video 🤷” and then spends half an hour sucking a company’s dick for money

      That and the shampoo ad killed my interest in the channel, and ever since then I’m extremely wary of everyone. Kurzgesagt is also up there, for producing propaganda for a billionaire’s charity.

      • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        God kurzgesagt really bothers me for their “technology will save us” ideology. I get bad vibes.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Guys, all we have to do is trust the technology that Bill Gates stands to profit from! Never mind the fact that Bill Gates funds my videos, just trust him, guys! The future might look bleak, but you don’t have to take any action! Ol’ Billy already is! Just trust him!!

          • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yeah, it’s really egregious. I don’t really like their videos because they all feel kind of biased like that… and just a lot of editorializing. To be clear, I’m not above technology getting us out of a jam, but I really don’t think we should expect it… We should really plan with what we know is possible.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Essentially, they’re funded by billionaires, and their videos show it. Here’s a couple videos that go into it:

          https://youtu.be/HjHMoNGqQTI

          https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI

          Their videos about the climate for the last few years essentially boil down to “shit sucks, everything is bad, a lot of people are going to die. But wait, here’s an interesting new technology that could save the planet! All we have to do is trust capitalism to make this technology happen, and we’ll be saved!”

          I’m of the opinion that we should be brutally fucking honest about the climate, and that copium like this only makes people complacent. If we stopped pumping out greenhouse gases right now, we wouldn’t avoid 3° of warming. Hundreds of millions of people are going to die as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, and there is nothing we can do about that. If we get complacent, that number will be in the multiple billions. Cute cartoon birds turning into skeletons does not reflect the horror of climate change.

          • splonglo@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            The Kurzgesagt climate videos explicitly encourage political action to combat climate change. I think they even encourage it as the most important thing an individual can do. They don’t push ‘let capitalism solve everything’ , they push ‘vote in green candidates + regulation’.

            I saw one of those videos taking them down for receiving Bill Gates money and frankly I think it’s a pretty empty hitpiece.

            Don’t get me wrong, the Gate’s foundation does push this ‘never question the market’ ideology, and any organisation that relies on their funding deserves to be scrutinized to hell and back. But Kurzgesagt does not push this ideology.

            ’ The problem with Kurzgesagt’ never found any factual issues with their content, AND the broad message of their videos is ’ lobby the government for regulation + here’s the technology’ . If Gate’s Foundation money has caused them to compromise their values, it’s not done a good job of it.

            Funding is not the same as editorial control, and the amount recieved from the gates foundation is not even a large portion of their income, so it’s not like they have much leverage.

            Gate’s Foundation and similar spend money literally everywhere, so I worry about people writing good orgs off so quickly.

        • 9bananas@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          here’s a thorough analysis:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI

          TL;DW: they assume technology will magically “fix” the climate crisis and no big changes to society or the economy are necessary. thus perpetuating and worsening the climate crisis by pretty much telling people “it’s gonna be fiiiiine”…when it really won’t be “fine”.

          edit: note, that most of their content is fine, just the climate “solutions” and stuff are…so optimistic as to be misleading. their physics and futurology stuff is fine. also way oversimplified in many cases, but fine.

      • MBM@lemmings.world
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        11 months ago

        Whoa, I thought I was alone in disliking Kurzgesagt. What made me unsubscribe was a video that was very clearly sponsored by the game Cyberpunk but didn’t mention that anywhere

      • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, the new SAT video was great and i still can’t for the life of me figure how those people managed to think about the problem and realize the options were wrong, really goes to show how intelligent people are always doing things with a very alert mind, even if the problem is very easy

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Making a 20 minute advertisement rife with misinformation and having one single statement saying the video is sponsored is bad