YouTube is my TV

When we bought our house in 2015 we got all the regular communication appliances; TVs and cable subscriptions, landlines, internet, etc.
But we soon realized that we prefer to be on our computers more and as such the TV was left unused, most of the time.

Recently I realized that I'm really using YouTube as if it was my cable TV. I could also clearly see the type of content that I'm watching, and it made me think that I've actually built my own TV channel.

In order to share some gems I wanted to write this blogpost.

Categories

You can jump to specific topics with these tags. They are in no specific order.

Tech

Marques Brownlee has been at the game for quite a while, he does a bunch of hardware tech reviews and has recently even ventured into car reviews, mostly EVs.

Undecided with Matt Ferrell is a channel about undecided technologies, solutions etc. Matt is always coming with new information from the STEM field and I find this quite interesting.

Joe Scott has more of a science channel, but does quite a broad range of topics. His work is always quite researched, and he has a very calm and soothing voice.

Wendover Productions is a channel about aviation and transportation, at heart. However, he also does a lot of other interesting topics, like China's energy grid, Angola's richest city or NYCs water supply.

Comedy

Honorable mentions: Andrew Rousso, Lennar Young, Drew Lynch, Elanor Morton, Chris Turner, CalebCity, Fairbairn Films.

Vlog Creations is practical comedy in Florida. So that's absurdity on top of absurdity. Motorized porta-potties, family van with hydraulics, dressing up as a spider and calling pest control. All with a good heart, which must be said!

Sammy O'Beid is a Palestinian-American comedian. He used to be a math teacher, so there's quite a few math-related jokes involved. Obviously doesn't shy away from making fun/drawing attention to his heritage.

Chocolate Sundaes is a predominantly black and people of color comedy channel. They're part of the Laugh Factory company. Some comedians feel like they're not even doing a bit, but just sharing stories and being funny as hell.

Trevor Wallace is a stand-up comedian, although also quite a YouTube personality. He's very good at "fuck boi", "crypto bro", "Subaru driver" and similar stereotypes. Somehow he always makes it look so natural and if you watch his performance videos also, clearly good at crowd-work.

Gaming

LevelCapGaming is a big name in the First-Person-Shooter (FPS) community. He's been documenting the Battlefield franchise since I can remember. He's also doing news updates from time to time, very useful for someone who doesn't play many FPSs anymore.

Quill18 is a Canadian YouTuber who's big into 4X, but also space games and colony builders. He used to be a programmer and has a second channel where he does programming tutorials for games, as well as videos of him attending Game Jams such as Ludum Dare.

KatherineOfSky is big into productivity and management games. She's also a big fan of anything cute. Her biggest series is Factorio. I consider her the Queen of Blueprints.

SplatterCatGaming does all the indies games that come out. He's perfected it to a tee, and within a 30-minute video you can get a good overview of what's in the game. There's a lot of research and playing that's required.

History

Absolute History is like the Discovery Channel from my youth. It's honest and good quality history. It's part of the History Hit network, which has several other channels, all worth a watch.

CrowsEyeProductions recreates fashion and hairstyles from the past. It's a very interesting channel, but they only release content once a month.

Townsends is a channel about exploring the 18th century lifestyle in the United States. They do this by actually living it. Building log cabins, dugout canoes, cooking old recipes.

Time Team Classics is a channel about the British TV show Time Team. It's a show about archaeology, and they're digging up old sites. It's a very interesting show, and the channel has a lot of behind-the-scenes footage.

Music

Dreambound has been my favourite music channel for quite a while. They promote artists in the melodic hardcore genre and that's my jam.

Spaceuntravel promotes up-and-coming alternative rock and metal bands. Sometimes they have some duds, but often time they don't, and you'll find some great new music.

ＴＲＡＳＨ 新 ドラゴン creates music videos for dark trap and trap metal songs. It's as if someone is vetting soundcloud rappers and letting the good stuff through.

Ghost Killer Entertainment promotes independent post-hardcore and metalcore bands. Most bands even have nice looking music videos.

Honorable mentions: Arising Empire (promoter), Century Media Records (label), UNFD (label), Chase Carneson (reaction), Fearless Records (label), Pure Noise Records (label), Greyscale Records (label), デーモンAstari (promoter), Solid State Records (label), Roguenjosh (reaction).

Van life

Ladi & Margaret is a couple that travels around in a van with their custom-built electric bikes. They're stationed in the Czech Republic and have their makers-hub there.

LeAW Leave Everything And Wander are Luca and Sara from Italy, and since 8 months a baby too. They traveled the US, then Europe in a small campervan and recently bought a bigger van.

Kinging-It are Craig and Aimee from Wales. They're travellers and have a giant 80s Mercedes van. They do a bunch of travel content as well.

Kombilife is Ben from Jersey along with his dog Alaska. Over the years he's had some short-term passengers too. He's driven an old VW van through South America.

Paranormal

After initially watching Buzzfeed Unsolved, I got hooked on paranormal content. I decided to start actively looking for channels and found a few that I liked.
Eventually I ended up on 'medium YouTube' and those are now also part of my diet.
Honorable mentions: Exploring With Josh, TCS Everyday Psychics, Sam And Colby.

Twin Paranormal is a group of guys, spearheaded by a set of twins, that go to haunted locations. They've got this alternative style going on (black, piercings, tattoos) and are very kind, a trademark of their channel.

Mackie & Amanda are two Californian girls, one of them a medium and the other clairaudient. It's very interesting to see a ghost hunting channel where at least one person is a medium. Not always accurate, but with a good heart.

Paranormal Quest a two man team that has been doing this for a long time. They've become a bit tainted by all the things they've already witnessed, but they're still a very good team and show a lot of interesting aspects.

Meta PsycKicks are two mediums. They introduced me to a lot of concepts. In fact, they still do and it takes some mental fortitude for certain videos, like "are mermaids real" and "my house speaks to me".

Geography

Don't actually follow that many geography channels, but since it makes a lot of sense as a TV channel, figured I'd find a few that might match that description.

Atlas Pro is a documentary-style channel that does a bunch of geography related topics. But also geology, ecology and "whatever is needed to explain the subject".

GeoWizard is a personal channel consisting of 50% playing Geoguessr and 50% doing adventures. A big series is the "x in a straight line", where he tries to walk a country in a GPS-coordinated straight line.

Jay Foreman adds a bunch of comedy to documentary-style vlogs. A lot of concepts are located to London, or England in general, but there's always a hint of geography or topography involved.

Caspian Report does documentaries on a bunch of topics, but mostly located near the Caspian Sea. Since the invasion of Ukraine, there's been an increase in Ukraine/Russia related content.

Documentaries

Stefan Milo is an archeology and anthropology channel. He's created quite a few nice documentaries about our species and the world we live in, and how this all came to be.

The Budget Museum is a paleontologist channel. They've created videos about extinct creatures, but also endangered, misunderstood and strange animals.

Yes Theory is a group of friends that travels a lot and does social experiments, in a sense. Travelling to war-torn Syria, cooking for strangers, staying in complete darkness for several hours.

Kirsten Dirksen makes videos about sustainable and minimalistic living. She finds and shares a lot of 'tiny houses'. But also talks about different styles of building houses, such as earth ships and mud houses.

Urbex/Exploring

Gifgas is a Belgian channel about trainhopping. Interesting guy and beautiful shots. Wasn't aware that it would be possible in Western Europe, but apparently it is.

Shiey does urban exploration (urbex), trainhopping and rapping. He's from Lithuania and has a nice documentary-like style to his videos.

Destination Adventure is a Canadian guy driving his long motorhome around Western Canada. He visits old places, abandoned buildings and other interesting locations within the wild nature that is north-west pacific.

The Proper People are two friends who are exploring abandoned places, urban malls, factories, hospitals and asylums. The usual creepy locations. They've perfected their videography skills.

Financial

Capital Mindset is a finance channel by Fabio, who's an accountant (of sorts), and does a bunch of livestreams with some thoughtful comments.

Moore Money focuses a lot on Chinese stocks, but not exclusively. He's a very smart guy and has some decent valuation models.

Sven Carlin is originally from Yugoslavia, but also lived in the Netherlands as a professor. Now he gives a lot of value in the sense of helpful YouTube videos.

Joseph Carlson Show has two portfolios, a growth and a dividend portfolio. He gives weekly updates on these, as well as whatever is happening with the companies.

Dungeons And Dragons

Or more generally; role-playing games, even including LARP.

Critical Role is a group of voice actors playing Dungeons And Dragons. They've been doing this for quite a while and have become quite famous.

Dimension 20 is a spin-off from CollegeHumor and is hosted by several DMs. They have a very high production value and it shows.

Mo Mo O'Brien does LARPing videos, but also dabbles in D&D in second channels. She's known for making her own costumes and going to special LARP events.

Viva La Dirt League D&D is the D&D channel of the Viva La Dirt League. They play D&D and have custom cutscenes where they sometimes act out what happened in the game.