Best Channels of 2019
- AgentXPQ
Synopsis: Levni Yilmaz’s Tales of Mere Existence is a series of animated shorts based on real life.
I tend to relate to most of Yilmaz’s work, but his “Stuck” miniseries really struck home with me.
Good places to start: “I Didn’t Go Out”, “Good Deeds Are Bulls**t”, “My Brain at Night”
- Anark
Synopsis: Video essays on Leftist politics.
Anark does a great job of making these ideas accessible to people who may not be familiar with them, and of presenting arguments in a calm, rational manner, without being too dry or disinterested.
Good places to start: “Decrypting the Jargon”, “Philosophy Underpins Everything”, “The Case Against Hierarchy”
- Big Joel
Synopsis: Video essays analyzing pop culture.
Big Joel combines insightful analysis with offbeat humor, a deadpan delivery, and a willingness to watch every God’s Not Dead movie so you don’t have to.
Good places to start: God’s Not Dead and Christian Propaganda (3–part series), “The Red Pill: The Strange Art of Men’s Rights Activism” (2-part series), “The Christmas Shoes: The Fever Dream of Capitalism”
- Errant Signal
Synopsis: Video essays analyzing video games.
This year Errant Signal began a new ongoing series called “Blips,” videos that highlight a selection of smaller indie games rather than doing a deep dive on a single title. It’s always nice to see someone with an audience use their platform to promote smaller projects, and a lot of the games seem really interesting. And I still haven’t actually played any of the games he covered this year.
Good places to start: “Fallout 4 and Role Playing”, “Burnout: Paradise”, “0451”,“Getting Over It”
- FilmJoy
Synopsis: Long-form film criticism, focusing on the positive.
When the dust settles, I think Mikey Neumann will go down as one of the premiere Star Wars critics of our times. I didn’t like Rise of Skywalker. I don’t think it’s a good movie and I think there are plenty of reasons to criticize J.J. Abrams and the Powers That Be at Disney for the decisions they made—but none of that negates what Neumann has to say, and that’s what makes him so good. He finds the positive without looking at things through rose-tinted glasses, and that makes it all the more valuable.
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
- hbomberguy
Synopsis: Video essays about pop culture but also sometimes reactionary YouTubers.
hbomberguy only put out 5 videos in 2019, but they were all good, and his Transformers video was probably the best April Fools video I watched. It was a toss-up between this and his video on Pathologic, but that’s a 2-hour+ deep dive into a relatively obscure survival/horror RPG…so, yeah. It’s great, though, you should watch it.
Oh, he also helped raise over $350,000 for the charity Mermaids, which supports trans kids in the U.K., by playing Donkey Kong 64 for three days. It was kind of a big deal.
Good places to start: “What Modern Games Can Learn From Yooka-Laylee“, “Outsiders: How to Adapt H.P. Lovecraft in the 2st Century”, “Speedrunning is Awesome, and Here’s Why”, “Pathologic is Genius, and Here’s Why”
- Innuendo Studios
Synopsis: Video essays about games, web culture, and social politics.
Innuendo Studios’ ongoing “The Alt-Right Playbook” series can be seen as a sort of sequel to his post-Gamergate analysis, “Why Are You So Angry?” Both series go beyond simply arguing with the very online Right-wing, and try to actually understand them. Some of these videos focus on the fascist grifters pulling the strings, analyzing what their tactics are and how to combat them, while others focus on the angry, alienated people being grifted, looking at what makes them vulnerable and how they might be turned aside from that path—and naturally there’s some crossover, as in the video above.
Good places to start: “Why Are You So Angry?” (6-part series), “The Alt-Right Playbook” (ongoing series)
- Jack Saint
Synopsis: Leftist pop culture analysis.
I’ll be honest here: I fell for it. Well, sort of. I didn’t actually think that Joker was a full-blown white supremacist, MRA love ballad. But I was put off by director Todd Phillips’ comments, and by star Joaquin Phoenix’s unfunny on-set meltdown gag, and felt like maybe this movie wouldn’t have anything to say that I’d be interested in hearing. Fortunately, other people did watch it, and pointed out that, for all its flaws, it actually had a lot to say about class and the evils of capitalism, which is especially relevant for a movie tangentially related to Batman, aka Captain Capitalism.
Jack Saint’s other videos are also very good.
Good places to start: “The Truth About 90s Cartoons and ‘LGBT Brainwashing'”, “Long Critique is Not Deep Critique”, “The Political Implications of Talking Dog Movies”, “The Strange Subtext of Toy Story“, “Dirty Harry: The Good Guy With A Gun In Fiction”
- Lindsay Ellis
Synopsis: Smart, funny long-form essays about films, film theory, and film criticism.
It was a slow year for Lindsay Ellis (possibly because she wrote a book), but any amount of new Lindsay Ellis videos is a good amount, so at least we got something.
Good places to start: “Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera: A Video Essay”, “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: Media analysis and criticism but shorter.
It’s not really what he’s known for, but I really like Nerdwriter’s videos on paintings. I feel like he and I have similar taste and are drawn to the same aspects—but he knows enough to actually make a video about it.
Good places to start: “Jack Nicholson: The Art of Anger”, “Norm Macdonald is a Comic Genius”, “Westworld: What Makes Anthony Hopkins Great”, “Edvard Munch: What a Cigarette Means”, “Holocene: How Bon Iver Creates a Mood”
- Peter Coffin
Synopsis: Leftist media analysis and politics.
Editor’s note: While I’m not going to take back my recommendation of these specific videos, as I found them worthwhile at the time and others may as well, I can no longer generally recommend Peter Coffin’s channel or any associated channels.
I got into a lot more explicitly Leftist content this year, and it all started with Peter Coffin. Aside from their well-made video essays, I like that Coffin’s shorter “Many Peters” videos, which often respond to current events, always make a point of tying those events into broader systemic issues.
Good places to start: “Horseshoe Theory”, “EVERYTHING IS LABOR”, “Self-Help”, “Fetishization of Competition Between Demographics”, “The Outrage”
- Philosophy Tube
Synopsis: Philosophy on YouTube.
This was a great year for Philosophy Tube, which of course makes picking the video to highlight a lot harder. In the end, I decided to pick the video that best combined Olly’s philosophy with his theatricality. Unfortunately, that video was “Men. Abuse. Trauma.”, which is a little too emotionally heavy for this context (though I do highly recommend it). So I had to go with the runner-up, which is still pretty great, and shows off one of the new recurring characters that was introduced this year (if you want to learn more about The Arsonist, watch “Steve Bannon”).
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?”, “YouTube: Art or Reality?”
- Renegade Cut
Synopsis: I’ve run out of different ways to say Leftist pop culture and media analysis.
Renegade Cut’s Rick and Morty video isn’t necessarily my favorite of the year, but I wanted to highlight it because I happen to like Rick and Morty and still think that this video makes some good points. More importantly, I had to repeatedly overcome my knee-jerk defensiveness in order to get to the point where I could accept that. When asking people to respect the nuance of your argument without getting defensive, it’s easy to forget how difficult that can be. This was a good reminder.
Good places to start: “Archetypes & Stereotypes – The Breakfast Club“, “What is (and Is Not) Toxic Masculinity?”, “Burning King’s Landing – ‘It’s Only Terrorism If They Do It to Us'”, “Saturday Neoliberalism”, “Home Alone – White Suburban Revenge Fantasy”
- Some More News
Synopsis: Some Other News Dude delivers updates on some more of the news.
Really, what sets Some More News apart from more mainstream satirical news shows is that they don’t have to fit a strict time frame, but can do anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour on whatever topic they want, including the impending boar uprising. (Also I just realized this show might disprove my theory about desks. Exception that proves the rule?)
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, or really any video.
- Thought Slime
Synopsis: Leftist politics with very little pop culture or media analysis.
Thought Slime is maybe the most accessible of the political YouTubers on here (who aren’t couching their politics in terms of pop culture) because, in addition to being a Leftist agitator, he’s also kind of a lovable goof. And he’s Canadian.
Good places to start: “Ten things everyone gets wrong about Anarchists!”, “Destiny and the Liberal Mind Prison”, “But how come revolution?”, “50 Ways Capitalism is Hurting YOU Personally” (2-part series)
- 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. And this year he brought back Language Files!
While most of the YouTubers I watch have an analytical and/or critical approach, Tom Scott is one of the few purely educational YouTubers whose work I consistently find interesting and engaging. His curiosity about the world is infectious, and it doesn’t hurt that sometimes he just plays fun games.
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), The Game Garage (6-part series)
Honorable Mentions
Certain of Eventual Failure 