With the world's most boring title. Behold. A multi-purpose youtube thread. Got recs? Post them here! Have opinions on someone's video essay? Post them here? Really fucking hate some trend that is showing up your video recommendations because the algorithm is a cruel and unknowable god of chaos? Post about it here!
The post I put in the tv thread is being put here too because we need youtube now: Ok so I'm not sure where else to put this so I am going to put it here for right now. So Sealed Only Yugioh is a youtube series by Nhymnim where he plays Yugioh with a few basic rules. First rule? Only sealed product. Can't buy singles. Second rule? No trades. It'd be too easy to trade for stuff he needs. Third rule? 40 dollar budget for each week. His end goal? To top YCS. Aka one of the big boy tournaments. The problem is he's limited to just sealed product and he's starting off how a lot of kids started off with Yugioh: Buying three copies of a structure deck. The series has some pretty nice production values on it. Nice editing and cinematography, good music. But like the big appeal of it is like...It's the heart of the cards. Like he's going out there playing Yugioh like how a lot of kids played the game. Buying sealed product and praying that they get the cool shit they wanted. And there's an extra sort of excitement to the pack opening aspect of it because holy shit that's the only way he can get stuff. The videos themselves consist of pack opening, deck rearrangement and talking about the general gameplan, going to locals and taking it for a spin, and a final talk about how the deck's doing right now based off the locals results. Overall it's a really cool series with like a narrative and stuff and it's just kind of harrowing to see. Like holy shit dude you pulled off a win with a deck that's just three structure decks stapled together? DUDE.
I just gotta stan MedBopz right here for a moment. If you want popular songs rewritten to be about stuff med students are trying to memorize, they have Several. Spoiler: videos of particular note An all time favorite, Endocarditis! Lyrics in the description. Early-seasonal pick for the fall, Coal Miner Mash Honorable mentions to This Haldol is for You for teaching me things I've actually needed to know about diagnostics and medications for schizophrenia, and Rabies because, rabies. Just, rabies.
Also, I'm currently all about the Rap Critic. I found him because I really needed to know who did the brilliant spoof 90's style rap "Orc Cop" for Lindsay Ellis' review of Bright, and it was him. It's fucking hilarious, check it out. I feel like I've genuinely learned a lot about rap from his reviews. I've found some musicians and songs I love that I probably never would have heard of otherwise. The individual song reviews and best of lists are very much worth a listen, I'd definitely recommend just clicking around on some of his videos if you're interested. There's not really any important watch order. But if you're just looking for something you can consume like candy for those low energy days, his worst lyrics videos are a treasure. There's plenty of deeply troubling themes that are discussed, like rampant misogyny, homophobia, the sexualization of underage girls in at least one case, just a lot of stuff. But I find that watching someone critique it sparks joy.
This blew my damn mind and I still haven’t recovered: “The use of terror tactics [...], while engaged in by the minority, creates an environment of fear that all members enjoy the privilege of, whether they engage in them or not.” There’s a lot of other stuff too in this video. A good amount could apply to things from TERFs to people who hate immigrants to aroace exclusionists. Real pain, reframed with the narrative, “Those people are trying to take your stuff,” so that people who have always been there are seen as enemy invaders.
I actually really like videos of people not familiar with makeup interacting with makeup. It’s harmless fun that’s especially funny because it’s pretty notable when you make a minor mistake with something visual on someone’s face. I had to stop watching this a few times because I was scream-laughing and it kinda hurt. When your wife has red hair and brown eyes and you go for the teal, you are making a bold life choice.
Most things Jun and Rachel put out are really good for when you just want to watch something nice. Lots of fancy cooking videos where he presents everything to his cats for inspection. That super-satisfying knife-sharpening video that went viral a while back was Jun, too. also this
I love Rachel and Jun’s content. They’re just such a nice family with three beautiful cat sons to vicariously relax with. They have good vibes. Jun’s videos about how he learned English are really engaging personal stories and sincerely helpful with advice for how to actually get better at a second language. I highly recommend it if that’s relevant to your interests. They’re in Japanese but they have English captions available. Here’s the first. I think there may be three? It’s probably not too very difficult to find others from the first one.
So Identifying Luck is a series about how the RNG and what not in Mario Party 1-7 actually works. What is RNG and what is manipulatable. It also involves tips for if you are the sort of person who wants to play competitively. Because yes. It's a fascinating series. There's only three videos out right. A short one that introduces the series and concept, as well as mentions some of the RNG that holds throughout the entire series for entries 1-7. Then there is a video about Mario Party 1 and Mario Party 2. They're both very indepth and cover every minigame, map, dice block and so on. Ever wonder how the hidden blocks in 2 work? You will find your answers here. Here's the first video in the series:
I have no idea how I ended up here, but since I'm watching someone have very strong and well-informed opinions on media I've barely heard of, I can't say I'm not entertained.
This video is about two hours long minus credits, and it took me much longer to watch because I did actually pause constantly and read every bit of dialogue on the screen. Like, all of it, even if it meant backing up and pausing repeatedly to catch bits that were only onscreen for an instant. You can’t really adjust the progress bar meaningfully for that purpose in a video that’s over two hours long. Hbomberguy presents an extensive description and discussion of the game Pathologic, for all of us who probably aren’t gonna play it: I love the way the dialogue is written. It reminds me of the opening of... I think it was The Master and Margarita? Probably in part just because it’s Russian. My field of comparison is not wide. I haven’t read that many Russian novels, and this one is no exception. I never got through very much because what is an attention span, but I seem to remember it had kind of a sideways, subjective sense of reality that wasn’t necessarily the same between characters. It had prose that felt... whatever the good version of flowery is, incisive, philosophically kinda damn bleak but not incurious, and also gentle and a bit mischievous in its way. (I will introduce you to turmoil but look, do you see? Do you understand? Go on, look again.) Reading the game dialogue felt like that. I’m not at all surprised that it won so many awards. Hats off to the developers and also the translator(s). I don’t think I would enjoy playing the game, or even find it unenjoyable but in a good way. I’d probably rather enjoy perusing the game files if the text was in somewhat readable condition within. But this will do just fine.
Unfortunately I was watching on my phone, so I had to make do with double tap skipping. That’s good to know, though! Thank you!
