YouTube content has grown up. Here are some channels to prove it.
If you ask somebody on the street what content originates on YouTube nowadays, you’ll sure come to an list that includes Life & Make Up-Tutorials (with sponsored products), Live Gaming or Fail Compilations.
Look at the YouTube Trending section — it isn’t so far away from truth.
Unfortunately this is reflected in the mainstream media as well: YouTube is the place to go to for cheap and easy entertainment. That the top 1% channel creators get incredible rich by doing so, doesn’t help.
In short: Mankind's biggest opportunity to discuss topics (in video form) is engaged in a huge pile of trashy content. This is the moment where all the nay-sayers of technology shine.
And of course the YouTube scene (if only the german) has its problems. But at least the blogosphere (who is in some cases envious of the new found glory for its social media siblings) shouldn’t focus on these bad examples. We should focus on the positive sides of independent content creation.
I’ll start: Here’s a list of great content channels that I consume on a daily basis. Filtered out are the ones with a big company/brand behind them.
- Philosophy: The School of Life
- Education: VisualPolitik, CPG Grey, Great Big Story, Wendover, RLL
- Science: Minute Physics
- Video Game Design: Errant Signal, Mark Brown
- Food: Mark Wiens, FoodWishes, BrothersGreen
- Culture: Nerdwriter, Langfocus, Pop Culture Detective
- Technology: Matt’s Macintosh, Lon Seidman, MKBHD
- Comedy: Bad Lip Reading, Glove and Boots, Rémi Gaillard
- Movies: No Small Parts, kaptainkristian, Now You See It
- Adventure: Devin Supertramp, on the roofs
- Music: La Blogotheque
Note that the variety of topics goes beyond dealing with technology. YouTube has outgrown the techie-nerd-early adopter-crowd long ago (arguably it is far ahead in comparison to Twitter or Podcasting).
Most of them don’t make the millions you hear the public talking about, while everybody that dealt with video editing once, knows that this takes a lot of time. Instead, they are dependent on donations coming trough Patreon.
Some additional tips:
- I use the tools PodSync and docast to get content in the (offline available) Podcasting format.
- If you are overwhelmed by the quantity, try some aggregators like Devour or Vimeo Staff Picks first.
I’ll end with this: As with every new (web) technology it’s up to us how to utilise it best.
