I don't think it's "the end", but for sure they were negatively affected by the corporate BS that ruined everything nowadays. Content creators have to spend more time working on things that not actually add to the quality of their content. From the top of my head here is one: Youtube is fully designed to protect the poor billionaires from having their IPs from being stolen by us peasants. Content creators must make an extra effort to make sure not a single tiny piece of copyrighted material is in their content, otherwise some algorithm will automatically forbid them to upload it, forcing you to edit your video all over again and pray for the bot to accept it next time.
Even if the claim is unfair, it doesn't matter because there is no way to explain that to a computer program. So, instead of putting the burden of enforcing copyright laws on some big ass company with an army of lawyers, the burden is now on some average Joe trying to make funny videos from their basement. This doesn't just take valuable time away from the content creator, but also limits the content itself. Creators became scared of adding stuff to their videos to avoid copyright issues even if they know for sure it's fair use.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-26, 18:15:

TheMobRules wrote on 2024-01-26, 17:41:

The appeal of YouTube was that it was a place where people would share their videos with others FOR FREE, no one asked for obscene amounts of disgusting ads or monthly subscriptions

One big change has been the ever increasing resolution of videos combined with increasing platform usage. This has resulted in an exponential increase in both server storage requirements and bandwidth to deliver content.

We're not in the early days of 240p or 480p video any more.

This is a valid point for justifying why youtube is becoming more "aggressive" with monetization.
But if you think about it, how is that our problem as consumers? Why should we accept reducing in quality just to keep youtube alive? Does youtube deserves to be kept alive in the first place?
Don't forget that while youtube by itself may not be profitable it's still is a huge pool for collecting usage data from people, not to mention it can be used for mass manipulation, too. Both things considered very valuable nowadays.

SpectriaForce wrote on 2024-01-30, 00:21:

Personally I don't like most of those retro computing Youtubers. They are being perceived as all knowing gods by their subscribers, while in reality they share a lot of misinformation, tutorials/repair/DIY videos are often very amateurish (they don't show you what for tools they use, how they use them, where they got their information from, they expect you to have an electronics engineering degree etc.),

is that 'most' ret computer youtubers really? of so many listed in this thread (and this one: Less popular Youtube channels ) most are good and few really match the description you gave

one thing i'd agree with is that most of the knowledge being shared is a click or two away - but only if you want to find it, so it can be nice surprise to learn something new that would never have been searched for, even if it could have been

there are a couple of popular electronics channels that i find irritating, overblown attempts as 'personality' that comes across entirely inauthentic and lots of teardowns of common items with sneering elitist commentary about how terrible it is (despite there often being millions in reliable use around the world passing all kinds of safety and other standards). they are popular channels though (well, were when i last looked years ago) and get lots of comments in agreement and admiration

After years in this space I strongly believe that the majority of vintage computer enthusiasts are actually people who want to invest their savings in nice nostalgic stuff to flip for profit at a later time. Lots of IT guys with way too much money who simply don't know what to do with it. The other group are hoarders (or tinkerers as they like to call themselves), basically broke folks who want as much as possible for as little as possible to fill their emptyness, kill time and possibly to also flip their stuff for profit at a later time. People on this forum probably don't like these truths. Call me a conspiracy nut.

Yeah, certainly, thrift stores / second hand stores need to earn money to pay their bills. They can't afford to sell the stuff they get for free for a couple pennies. That ain't enough.

i'd guess there are more than two types, and within those two types are softer versions, e.g. buying old stuff to kinda enjoy but want to sell for more later and those enjoying a hobby on a budget, maybe to stave off some boredom or recapture some feeling of the past. milder and less 'sad' versions of the archetypes you gave, plus i'd imagine there to be others into it for unrelated reasons

thrift stores do need to pay bills, but like ebay sellers they sometimes overprice - have something on the shelf for too higher price - cut that price too late and leave it at the lower price for a short time and then give up and throw it away thus losing possible revenue, having meanwhile lost shelf space they could have had something else on and by being 'overstocked' losing opportunities to pass through new contributions; overall doing themselves a disservice through rigid poor price policies! still, i quite like thrifting videos so i guess they get it right often enough!

The 8-bit guy's list of reasons why his views are down are 100% excuses. He made less than half the amount of videos he did the year prior. So of course his views/ad revenue fell off a cliff. There's no mystery here. The dude is obviously burnt out.

I've never understood the LGR fandom. Clint seems like a nice guy and all, but he has very limited hardware knowledge and his repair skills stop at replacing CMOS batteries.

Well part of the reason why LGR is famous is related to the easy to digest content, he's limited but so it's the majority of the retro fandom, there's a ton of channels that offer customization, benchmarks, history and technical explanations, really, but they are watched by a small circle of people, having the major ones retire doesn't mean that something is ending at all.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-02, 17:30:

The 8-bit guy's list of reasons why his views are down are 100% excuses. He made less than half the amount of videos he did the year prior. So of course his views/ad revenue fell off a cliff. There's no mystery here. The dude is obviously burnt out.

I've never understood the LGR fandom. Clint seems like a nice guy and all, but he has very limited hardware knowledge and his repair skills stop at replacing CMOS batteries.

Imo LGR, Clint is good because he has a good production, nice soft jazz. He also talks slow and clearly with his "radio voice". His videos are chill, but not very advanced.

SpectriaForce wrote on 2024-01-30, 00:21:

Personally I don't like most of those retro computing Youtubers. They are being perceived as all knowing gods by their subscribe […]
Show full quote

Personally I don't like most of those retro computing Youtubers. They are being perceived as all knowing gods by their subscribers, while in reality they share a lot of misinformation, tutorials/repair/DIY videos are often very amateurish (they don't show you what for tools they use, how they use them, where they got their information from, they expect you to have an electronics engineering degree etc.), the intros are often way too long (you think that I'm going to listen 20 minutes to your background story?), they hype stuff that's mediocre, they downplay stuff that's actually good, they tell what 'a good price' for a product is or for what they have bought something a million years ago, they are always begging for donations, some advertise stuff (that I'm not interested in) for minutes, and to be fair I just don't like watching old, bald, fat, grey bearded dudes with a soldering iron. Sorry.

Tetrium wrote on 2024-01-28, 19:13:

So I didn't read all of the pages yet, but about LGR he recently did make a new thrifting vid which was fun to watch, but also explains exactly that the reason why he doesn't post a lot of these anymore is because thrift stores barely have anything worthwhile retro-related anymore. I'm experiencing the exact same thing. This has been going on since before covid even.

Depends on what you are looking for. Computer hardware, especially vintage, has been scarce in thrift stores for the last 15 years or so (Netherlands). I think that the chain stores have rules about computer hardware, that could be one of the reasons why so little is being offered on the shelves. Maybe they just sell pretty much anything computer related to a recycler. Maybe people simply don't bring old computers to thrift stores anymore.

Tetrium wrote on 2024-01-28, 19:13:

There's multiple reasons for this afaics, but it boils down to higher demand and less supply.
The gandmas attic finds have been drying out for a long time. The majority of systems I find or see these days are systems that were probably from another hobbist of other PC that had a very specialized task.

Granddad is dying or is dead. Your uncles? They are retired too and have cleared their attics years ago. We are getting older too.

Tetrium wrote on 2024-01-28, 19:13:

And not just customers will scoop up all the nicer stuff (and hope to make a profit off of it) but this includes second hand stores as well to some degree where they will also skimp the cream off of the milk before putting the milk for display.

After years in this space I strongly believe that the majority of vintage computer enthusiasts are actually people who want to invest their savings in nice nostalgic stuff to flip for profit at a later time. Lots of IT guys with way too much money who simply don't know what to do with it. The other group are hoarders (or tinkerers as they like to call themselves), basically broke folks who want as much as possible for as little as possible to fill their emptyness, kill time and possibly to also flip their stuff for profit at a later time. People on this forum probably don't like these truths. Call me a conspiracy nut.

Yeah, certainly, thrift stores / second hand stores need to earn money to pay their bills. They can't afford to sell the stuff they get for free for a couple pennies. That ain't enough.

This gave me a good chuckle. Probably because there are some truths here. I don’t follow any YT channels, but I give credit to anyone who spends a good amount of time on content creation. It’s work. It’s easy to criticize yet so much harder to actually produce a palatable product and build an audience. Regardless, it’s the end of nothing, rather, just that inevitable thing called change.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-02, 17:30:

The 8-bit guy's list of reasons why his views are down are 100% excuses. He made less than half the amount of videos he did the year prior. So of course his views/ad revenue fell off a cliff. There's no mystery here. The dude is obviously burnt out.

I've never understood the LGR fandom. Clint seems like a nice guy and all, but he has very limited hardware knowledge and his repair skills stop at replacing CMOS batteries.

Most of the time having soft skills is more important than technical skills. LGR videos are pleasant to watch for a lot of people because they are more about sharing nostalgic experiences with viewers rather than someone giving you a lecture.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-02, 17:30:

I've never understood the LGR fandom. Clint seems like a nice guy and all, but he has very limited hardware knowledge and his repair skills stop at replacing CMOS batteries.

In fairness, LGR's videos have never been about repairs. His channel started primarily as a games review channel, and gradually morphed in a combination of hardware history + reviews.

liqmat wrote on 2024-02-02, 19:01:

It’s easy to criticize yet so much harder to actually produce a palatable product and build an audience.

Until someone has tried their hand at video production and editing, people have no idea how difficult and time-consuming it really is.

I especially give my hat off to anyone who enjoys the editing process. Having sat and edited hours of video, it's probably one of the least enjoyable things ever.

All the channels are missing out on the obvious moneymaker.... secretly buy up 10 or 20 pieces of some neglected bit of hardware, do a hyped up video on it... sell them on eBay when the price has quadrupled 🤣

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-02, 20:16:

Until someone has tried their hand at video production and editing, people have no idea how difficult and time-consuming it really is.

That sounds like ... A Job for somebody who actually wants to do work.

The "sitting at home and tinkering with Computers" is probably one of the simpler things to film after a lets play.
Imagine you had to do real work like Interviews, filming on remote locations with proper lighting and audio or just proper skilled speaking (a script for example)...

Sure its work... but its not that hard to make low effort retro videos. They dont even cut out the thousands of filler words they use...

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:07:

All the channels are missing out on the obvious moneymaker.... secretly buy up 10 or 20 pieces of some neglected bit of hardware, do a hyped up video on it... sell them on eBay when the price has quadrupled 🤣

Like the NABU craze that a handful of youtubers whipped up?

DerBaum wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:16:

The "sitting at home and tinkering with Computers" is probably one of the simpler things to film after a lets play.
Imagine you had to do real work like Interviews, filming on remote locations with proper lighting and audio or just proper skilled speaking (a script for example)...

This all depends on the level of production. A single camera angle filmed uninterrupted with pure ad-libbing and no editing, sure, that's not that tricky to do .

But the moment you start adding in multiple angles, screen capture, B-roll, voice overs, music, etc., the level of work starts climbing exponentially. Even something like a well-lit shot or clear audio quality is more involved than most people might realize.

Having tried my hand at this sort of thing in the past, I appreciate just how much work and skill is involved and how much people take for granted.

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-02, 18:26:

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-02, 17:30:

The 8-bit guy's list of reasons why his views are down are 100% excuses. He made less than half the amount of videos he did the year prior. So of course his views/ad revenue fell off a cliff. There's no mystery here. The dude is obviously burnt out.

I've never understood the LGR fandom. Clint seems like a nice guy and all, but he has very limited hardware knowledge and his repair skills stop at replacing CMOS batteries.

Imo LGR, Clint is good because he has a good production, nice soft jazz. He also talks slow and clearly with his "radio voice". His videos are chill, but not very advanced.

You can perfectly watch any channel/creator for the content and still not like the creator for whatever aspect/reason, rational or irrational/instinctive. They're not inseparable notions for me. A good video is a good video, and you only watch what you want. It's curious that the two specific ones that fit that description for me are the 8-Bit Guy and LGR.

I didn't follow the 8-Bit Guy's gun controversy at the time, but if I did I wouldn't have cared. Not for a question of principle, agree/disagree perspective, but because I don't like him anyway.
And still I have watched the videos that interested me from his channel. Sure I'm not a subscriber, but he got my clicks and "retention" time or whatever that means to YouTube, so I don't feel obligated to do more, nor do I feel he "owes me" content like he used to make in the past. The specific backlog I liked is there if I ever want to re-watch anything, and there are much better channels around for me to explore if I want to or have some time to spend anyway, lots of them quite small in comparison funny enough. I just don't like him because it's normal for someone with so much camera and speaking time to eventually expose some things that you might pick up and not like, either from themselves or watching them talk/deal with others. It can be minor and you don't even realize, or the opposite. Sometimes it's even instinctive. As superficial as it sounds and probably is, I doubt I'll ever meet him, so I think he can live without my remote approval as an unknown person, and LGR as well.

LGR to me is in the same vein in a way. Has some backlog that I like along with the occasional new video, so he gets those clicks from me. I don't have a problem with his lack of knowledge as I get what his audience is mainly, if anything I would object more to his longstanding habit of masking those "failings" with "quirky humor" and "who cares" attitude. I feel like that attitude comes out much more when that need to hide that lack of knowledge is present, which comes off as artificial and insincere. Many times something that requires a little more knowledge and some skill, even if it's not time consuming, is sentenced with a covering "whatever, I'll deal with it later some other day". I doubt anyone from his main audience would chastise him for admitting he doesn't know how to do something, or anyone else for that matter. Just own it, no one will care. It even got to the point where he purposefully put his hand in front of the camera's view to cover himself applying thermal paste to some modern build he was making.

And speaking of artificial and insincere, that leads me to the way he speaks. It's clear he doesn't speak like that in "real life" with that extremely awkward tone and cadence, first because you can easily find content where he actually speaks normally, and because no one in their right mind would do so to that degree of exaggeration in their daily lives. The "smooth jazz" is basically mainly from Almost Here and Oakwood Station, from the same small group of tracks he uses every time, but still works well for what he wants to achieve. As with the 8-Bit Guy, I quickly picked up a lot of things I didn't like from him which is normal as you watch someone along the years but again who cares. Sure it puzzles me that his audience is completely oblivious to many things, but then again I only watch what I want to from him or anyone else, se he gets the occasional click, and it's all good...

DerBaum wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:16:

The "sitting at home and tinkering with Computers" is probably one of the simpler things to film after a lets play.

Not to beat this horse to death, but Ellen Rose of Outside Xtra just released a personal video (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8eGzI1YL8) of 5 reasons she's not doing personal let's plays again.

Reason #1 is the amount of work that goes into setup and the recording. One interesting point she raises is having to monitor all the recording equipment and software, and having to re-record in the event that something has failed.

Reason #2 is the sheer amount of editing work that goes into them. To quote, "for every hour you spend playing a game, you can spend at least 3 [hours] editing it down".

I can vouch for both of these, given my own (similar) experience doing recorded training streams for work. I had one instance where I failed to set the video capture mode correctly and had to re-record an entire 1.5 hour stream. And editing down live footage from a stream does take about 3 hours to the 1 hour of recording in my experience.

Just scrubbing through an hour of video is time-consuming in-and-of-itself.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-03, 20:40:

Not to beat this horse to death, but Ellen Rose of Outside Xtra just released a personal video (here: https://www.youtube.com/wa […]
Show full quote

DerBaum wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:16:

The "sitting at home and tinkering with Computers" is probably one of the simpler things to film after a lets play.

Not to beat this horse to death, but Ellen Rose of Outside Xtra just released a personal video (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8eGzI1YL8) of 5 reasons she's not doing personal let's plays again.

Reason #1 is the amount of work that goes into setup and the recording. One interesting point she raises is having to monitor all the recording equipment and software, and having to re-record in the event that something has failed.

Reason #2 is the sheer amount of editing work that goes into them. To quote, "for every hour you spend playing a game, you can spend at least 3 [hours] editing it down".

I can vouch for both of these, given my own (similar) experience doing recorded training streams for work. I had one instance where I failed to set the video capture mode correctly and had to re-record an entire 1.5 hour stream. And editing down live footage from a stream does take about 3 hours to the 1 hour of recording in my experience.

Just scrubbing through an hour of video is time-consuming in-and-of-itself.

I've done subtitling work in the past. Even with the help of YouTube's automated subtitling, the ratio of work time to video duration was at least 7 to 1. If the speaker had a strong accent or used a lot of technical jargon, it could even end up being much higher than that.

Out of my own selfishness, I would love to see fewer Let's Plays, at least on the YouTuber's main channel. If I find a good review on an old computer game, I'll check out their channel to see if it's worth subscribing to. If the recent uploads are a bunch of Let's Plays, I'm not going to subscribe to their channel. I don't want my YouTube feed flooded with Let's Plays that I have no interest in watching. I might consider it if their Let's Plays are at least related to old games, but it's usually just some guy streaming something popular, like Fortnite, to a dozen people.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-03, 20:40:

Not to beat this horse to death, but Ellen Rose of Outside Xtra just released a personal video (here: https://www.youtube.com/wa […]
Show full quote

DerBaum wrote on 2024-02-02, 21:16:

The "sitting at home and tinkering with Computers" is probably one of the simpler things to film after a lets play.

Not to beat this horse to death, but Ellen Rose of Outside Xtra just released a personal video (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8eGzI1YL8) of 5 reasons she's not doing personal let's plays again.

Reason #1 is the amount of work that goes into setup and the recording. One interesting point she raises is having to monitor all the recording equipment and software, and having to re-record in the event that something has failed.

Reason #2 is the sheer amount of editing work that goes into them. To quote, "for every hour you spend playing a game, you can spend at least 3 [hours] editing it down".

I can vouch for both of these, given my own (similar) experience doing recorded training streams for work. I had one instance where I failed to set the video capture mode correctly and had to re-record an entire 1.5 hour stream. And editing down live footage from a stream does take about 3 hours to the 1 hour of recording in my experience.

Just scrubbing through an hour of video is time-consuming in-and-of-itself.

Of course you can find the 4 people doing actual work. But thats not the point i wanted to make...

DerBaum wrote on 2024-02-04, 06:43:

Of course you can find the 4 people doing actual work. But thats not the point i wanted to make...

For the record, I agree with your point that a low-effort video is by definition low-effort to make. I would classify that as any video that is single-shot and zero edits.

I just think most if any of the videos we're talking about don't fall into that category. Looking through a lot of the YouTube channels that people have raised in this thread, even the smaller channels, they all seem to be putting effort into their productions. Multiple-shots, edits, etc.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-04, 15:25:

For the record, I agree with your point that a low-effort video is by definition low-effort to make. I would classify that as any video that is single-shot and zero edits.

I've seen several 1-2 minutes video with nothing but a Win9x startup -- no editing, no narration, no captions, not even system specs, yet those videos have tens of thousands view counts. 🙄

andre_6 wrote on 2024-02-02, 22:35:

It even got to the point where he purposefully put his hand in front of the camera's view to cover himself applying thermal paste to some modern build he was making.

I took that to be a joke. I've seen other channels where they cut around the application of thermal compound to forestall the inevitable comments complaining about quantity used and/or method of application.