Best Channels of 2018
- Cracked (but actually peopleWatching)
Synopsis: A shamelessly optimistic show about contemporary humans.
Okay, getting past the fact that peopleWatching still being distributed by Cracked is like seeing new posts on a dead person’s Facebook page, Season 2 is just as unabashedly uplifting as Season 1. And the first episode was the best way to start it, because right as I was feeling kind of uncomfortable with the show’s in-your-face positivity, there was a fake headline in the background of the shot: “Study: Need to Imagine a Better Future in Order to Create One.” peopleWatching isn’t naive—it’s aspirational.
I remember a conversation I had with my friend Jack about organizations with impossibly grand mission statements. That’s what a mission statement should be, he explained. Sure, in the day-to-day of the organization they should set achievable goals, but their mission statement, their reason to exist, should be unachievable, or else at some point they will no longer have a reason to keep striving, despite there being so much yet left to do.
Which also makes me think of this related quote from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia: “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.”
I seem to have gotten a bit off track. Watch you some people, people who watch people. They are, perhaps, the luckiest people in the world.
Good places to start: “Why Speed Dating is Terrible”, “Why Non-Religious Confessionals Should Be a Thing”, “The Museum of Alternate Realities”, “Hope in Every Box”
- Errant Signal
Synopsis: Literary criticism of video games.
The best criticism can make you want seek out a work you might otherwise have passed on, can give you access to the important themes and ideas from a work that you wouldn’t actually want to seek out, and can add to the value of a work you may or may not already be familiar with by bringing in the critic’s own ideas. Errant Signal tends to do at least the latter two, and occasionally even manages the former, which is why it doesn’t matter that I haven’t played a single game reviewed on the channel in 2018. I still got something from these essays, and you might as well.
Good places to start: “Fallout 4 and Role Playing”, “Burnout: Paradise”, “0451”, “Getting Over It”
- Extra Credits
Synopsis: Short videos on video game development, history, the history of the sci-fi genre, politics, mythology…
With the launch of Extra Politics and Extra Mythology, Extra Credits continues their quest to have a series for every kind of nerd. Though the videos are fairly surface level, given their short length and breadth of topic, they’re still pretty fun, and you can usually learn a thing or two.
Good places to start: “How Games Speak – Learn the Language of Design”, “Ned Kelly – I: Becoming a Bushranger”, “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus”, “Points, Actions, and Marginal Votes – The Game of Politics”, “Izanami and Izanagi – Underworld Blues”
- FilmJoy
Synopsis: Long-form film criticism, focusing on the positive, with an offbeat sense of humor.
There are other series on the FilmJoy channel besides Movies With Mikey, but if I’m being honest I almost never watch them. MWM is the flagship, and it’s good enough that I can tolerate my feed being cluttered with everything else. Mikey Neumann makes a point of only doing videos on films he actually likes, which makes his videos feel affirming in a way that a lot of film criticism (including some that appears on this list) does not. His videos on Star Wars are the best anyone has done in light of the Last Jedi backlashaganza, and his 3-parter on the Harry Potter movies made me appreciate them in a way I would have thought impossible. I highly recommend looking through the archives to see if he’s done a video on a movie you don’t like—he may not change your mind, but if you can’t understand why anyone with half a brain could like that movie, you will after watching his video.
Good places to start: “Stranger Things”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “How We See Star Wars” (2-part series), “Lessons Animation Taught Us”, “The Story of Harry Potter” (3-part series), any video on a movie you want to understand better/differently
- Folding Ideas
Synopsis: A mix of long-form critical essays about films and video games.
Dan Olson has done some great videos on film and video game theory. His video last year on Triumph of the Will is incredibly important and you should watch it. And then this year, for some reason, he decided to do 3 videos, totalling 2.5 hours, on the Fifty Shades of Grey film trilogy. And it’s great. Yes, a large part of it is schadenfreude as Olson meticulously points out all of the various flaws and foibles of these largely terrible movies and the largely terrible person behind the largely terrible books and entirely terrible fanfiction upon which they’re based, but he’s also showing us that for something this popular, it’s worth taking it seriously. In that way, it’s not dissimilar to Triumph of the Will. (But if that doesn’t interest you watch the above video about Annihilation and metaphor, it’s pretty good too.)
Good places to start: “The Kuleshov Effect”, “Ludonarrative Dissonance”, “Vlogs and the Hyperreal”, “A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades of Grey” (3-part series + bonus video about a movie that somehow exists)
- Lindsay Ellis
Synopsis: Smart, funny long-form essays about films, film theory, and film criticism.
From the ennui-filled breakdown of what went wrong with The Hobbit films to the return of her hit series The Whole Plate (in which Ellis presents various critical lenses and elements of film theory using the Transformers films) to discussions of capitalism, art, and authenticity, Lindsay Ellis continues to up her game and put out some of the best work on YouTube.
Good places to start: “The Case for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, “Mel Brooks, the Producers, and the Ethics of Satire About Nazis”, “The Whole Plate: Film Studies Through a Lens of Transformers” (ongoing series), “The Hobbit: A Long Expected Autopsy” (3-part series)
- Nerdwriter1
Synopsis: Arts analysis and criticism but shorter.
I’ve gotten to prefer longer videos, but The Nerdwriter (yes, it’s a bad name) knows how to do a lot with a little. His videos are focused and concise, usually focusing on one smaller work or one piece of a larger work or oeuvre. While he takes a broader view occasionally, I think it’s the more granular videos that are his strongest, and that make him stand out from the crowd.
Good places to start: “Jack Nicholson: The Art of Anger”, “Norm Macdonald is a Comic Genius”, “Westworld: What Makes Anthony Hopkins Great”, “Holocene: How Bon Iver Creates a Mood”
- Philosophy Tube
Synopsis: Philosophy, on YouTube.
This year Oliver Thorn, YouTube philosopher extraordinaire, transitioned from doing mostly straight-to-camera lectures to more elaborate productions, incorporating not only different sets, costumes, and props, but also his theatrical training. While this did make the videos more entertaining, there where parts of this transition that I felt iffy about. But, of course, Olly being Olly, he did a video that both incorporated this new style and addressed the philosophical implications of it, laying to rest many of my concerns.
Good places to start: “Knowledge Explained”, “Mad Marx” (4-part series), “What Was Liberalism?” (4-part series), “The Philosophy of Antifa”, “Are You Rational?” (4-part series), “Is Philosophy Just White Guys J3rk!ng Off?”
- Polyphonic
Synopsis: The whowhatwhenwhywheres of music.
Similar to The Nerdwriter but often with a more historical than critical point of view, Polyphonic covers everything from how David Bowie created the character of the Thin White Duke to how Sufjan Stevens tells the story of Illinois.
Good places to start: “How Fleetwood Mac Wrote “The Chain””, “The Thin White Duke: David Bowie’s Darkest Character”, “Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz”, “Circle Game: Joni Mitchell’s Response to Neil Young”
- Scary Pockets
Synopsis: Funk (or at least, funk-adjacent) covers of non-funk songs.
One of the biggest names in YouTube covers for the past few years has been Postmodern Jukebox, and while their arrangements are interesting and their musicians are talented, few of their performances transcend the novelty of the premise. Not so for Scary Pockets (which also happen to feature a lot of the same singers as Postmodern Jukebox). I’ve watched some their videos upwards of ten times, and they don’t get old because it’s just good music. I mean, they covered not one but TWO Coldplay ballads (which I think is scientifically as unfunky as a song can be) and it works.
Good places to start: “The Scientist”, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”, “Pure Imagination”, “Hey Jude”, “Footloose”
- Some More News
Synopsis: Some Other News Dude delivers updates on some more of the news.
One of the great losses of the Cracked layoffs was the recently launched Some News, which, as I said at the time, filled the Jon Stewart-sized hole in my heart. Which is why I was so excited to find out that Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll were launching this legally distinct new show on their own, bringing the same sharp wit and eagle eye for BS as the original show, as well as more analytic and historical material, such as their 4-part series on why the current President is a fascist. It may not have a big studio and a live audience, but this sits right up there with Full Frontal and Last Week Tonight as some of the best news satire/commentary out there.
Good places to start: “Kanye West, Prager University, and the Illusion of Free Thought”, “Life in the Fash Lane” (4-part series), “EXCLUSIVE: The Boars Are Coming For Us”, “Why Republicans and Corporations and the Media Are Failing Us On Climate Change”, “Criminals, Judges, Prisons, and Laws: Everything Wrong With Sexual Assault In America”, “Why Good Guys With Guns Can’t Be Black”, “President Trump and His Punk Rock MAGA Teen Rebellion”, or the most recent video
- Tom Scott
Synopsis: Tom Scott goes to Amazing Places, tells you Things You Might Not Know, looks at things that are Built For Science, explains The Basics of computer science, makes sci-fi shorts about the near-future, and sometimes just hangs out with his friends playing invented game shows.
Tom Scott was one of the first YouTubers I ever subscribed to, and it’s pretty impressive he’s been able to maintain a consistent output of consistent quality for this long. Certainly the diversity of his content helps, and the fact that he’s started taking month-long hiatuses during which he runs guest videos (through which I’ve found a couple other channels on this list). Clearly the admirable duration of his success has not been lost on him, as he got reflective in the 3-part “How to Be Popular on the Internet*” series he put out this year, a valuable, down-to-earth look at how one might break out in these content-saturated times.
Good places to start: “The Collapsed Dam That Stopped Los Angeles”, “Connectome Scanning: Looking at the Brain’s Wiring”, “Acoustic Kitty and Bat-bombs”, “What Counts as a Word?”, “2030: Privacy’s Dead. What Happens Next?”, “How To Be Popular on the Internet*” (3-part series)
Honorable Mentions:
- AgentXPQ
- BlinkPopShift
- CGP Grey
- Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
- hbomberguy
- La Blogothèque
- Maggie Mae Fish
- Patrick (H) Willems
- pennyarcadeTV
- Shipwrecked.
- Small Beans
- StevenBridges
- Technicality
- Veritasium
- Vihart
- Vsauce2
Certain of Eventual Failure 