Your insomniac/bored/anxious Youtube video choices

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

There’s a couple of competing “tribal people try western stuff” channels, “Reactistan” and “Tribal People Try” that I like to watch. Videos are usually only 5-10 minutes long, and feature various “tribal people” (who they are and where they’re from is never really specified) trying western things for the first time, like they give them KFC or burgers or pizza or Takis or whatever. Mostly food related, but sometimes they’ll have them watch American TV commercials or Harry Potter and get their thoughts. I think Reactistan is slightly older and is the better of the two IMO.

22

Postmodern Jukebox does beautiful remixes of songs I love.

I also watch reaction videos. Seeing today’s kids watching Abbot & Costello routines is great fun for me.

“YouTube Sensation” Laurence Brown’s Lost in the Pond videos are an interesting look at the differences between the US and the UK. Brown is a native Brit who recently became a US citizen after living here for around 14 years.

23

Did you see the episodes where they went to Dubai?

24

Yeah. Good stuff. I love how happy they are about everything.

25

For a soothing voice and interesting topics, you need to check out atomic shrimp if you haven’t already. It is @Mangetout’s youtube channel, btw.

26

I came back in to mention them. You’ve got good taste there.

27

The beginning the Facts channel’s video “Irish People Try Surströmming” is the funniest fifteen seconds on the Internet, I firmly believe. (For those who don’t want to watch the video, a group of young Irish folks opens a can of Swedish fermented herring called surströmming, and immediately flee, retching, from the stench. One actually hides under a desk.)

I came across a video of two metalheads watching the video for Billie Eilish’s “You Should See Me In A Crown”. Hilarious to see these tough-looking metal dudes freak out over a slight seventeen year-old girl letting spiders crawl all over her face.

28

Recently have become obsesses with this show. Creative problems and creative problem solving.

And David Mitchell (although I think he’s turned them down).

29

His wife probably told him, “It’s a trap! Don’t do it, David!”.

I’ve noticed that really intelligent, cerebral people like Mark Watson, David Baddiel, and Victoria Coren Mitchell tend to flounder around and ultimately crater. With the exception of Sally Phillips (Oxon, BA with first class honors); but she showed a strong level of comedic sociopathy, which works well for the show.

30

For soothing voices and pleasant, interesting places, I love Tabieats. Two Japanese guys travel everywhere, especially within Japan, and look at local landmarks and go into mom and pop restaurants and show you the dishes that they eat. They have two related channels, I Will Always Travel For Food and Shinichi’s World.

I like Curiosity Incorporated because digging in other people’s piles of antiques/collectibles/junk is fun to watch, especially when he unearths something unexpectedly cool. And the host is a pleasantly goofy, personable guy with a nice voice.

Kand Heyati is a channel about Azerbaijanian farm life, centering on a middle-aged woman who cooks up large quantities of traditional peasant dishes. There’s no talking or music, just ambient sound and lots of soothing shots of a pretty rustic farm, complete with dogs, chickens, cats, cattle, and lots of flowers.

It’s not youtube, but I can’t do without old cartoons, so I have bookmarked Supercartoons.net. There are gobs of Loony Tunes, Tom & Jerrys, Mickey Mouse and gang, etc. It’s a bit iffy to find full cartoons consistently on youtube, so I had to go elsewhere.

ETA: Oh, yeah, and I also love Just A Few Acres Farms. A small-time farmer takes you around his workday as he feeds cattle, pigs, and chickens, maintains his fences, collects eggs, trucks the big animals off to the butcher, and sells his meats and eggs at a local farmers market. He also explains the economics and science of farming in a way that we city folks can understand. It’s a real education.

31

If you’re a foodie, then I recommend the Best Ever Food Review Show: https://www.youtube.com/@BestEverFoodReviewShow

…and its side-channel, which is more casual, with shorter videos that are usually just street food: https://www.youtube.com/@MoreBestEverFoodReviewShow

The titles are obnoxious, the thumbnails can be unpleasant, but the show itself is great, IMO. He travels all over the world and tries to eat what the locals eat; similar to Anthony Bourdain’s old shows except the focus is ONLY on the food.

32

Two more upvotes for “Atomic Shrimp” and Josh Turner Guitar. I’ll have to check out 9 out of 10 Cats. Thanks!

Some of my insomniac favs:

The “Missing Persons Mysteries” channel about all the awful things that can happen to you hiking in the woods. Despite the subject matter, the narrator, Steve Stockton, has a rich soothing voice.

“Camping with Steve” wherein Steve Wallis, the Bob Ross of stealth camping, sets up his hammock behind police stations, in freeway medians and other unlikely spots. He stopped doing videos for a while after the untimely death of his wife Jess, whom he obviously dearly loved. Steve seems like one of the nicest people on the planet (of course, he is Canadian) and I broke down and cried when he revealed that she had died.

Various Sherlock Holmes audiobooks. In addition to British-accented narration, most also feature “dark screens” to help you nod off.

ETA I almost forgot Wisdomphile’s paintings playlists (espec Edward Hopper) and Solo Travel Japan, in which the host rides the incredibly luxurious, well-run and cheap Japanese ferry system from port to port.

33

Did you catch his multipart series on The Potter’s House? The owner was a renowned Canadian potter who could no longer live on her own. Her relatives were ready to bulldoze the place – it was a pretty bad hoarding situation – and Alex was invited to come in and salvage some of the antiques. Instead he bought it all, cleaned it out, rennovated the house, saved many of her pottery pieces, and at the end sold the house and auctioned the contents. I binge watched the whole thing when I had Covid, and it was the perfect antidote.

34

I like travel videos, so “Downie Live” is high on my list. Mike Downie takes trains, and even British canal boats, on his travels.

“Noel Phillips” takes aircraft, usually in first class, so we peons can see what it would be like. He’s done trains too. And you can’t miss the “Noel Phillips Loo Review.”

35

Animal rescues

Geopolitical history (eg: why is [name of country] [oddity associated with that country] like, “Why is Corsica owned by France?”

Anything to do with Alan Watts

Music theory

Bird videos

Language videos

Guitar tutorials

Maximili (does funny stuff on omegle)

Videos on things I write songs about (2 examples at the moment are Dubai and Andromeda).

36

Kuga’s Travel is more focused on trains, but similar content to Solo Travel Japan.

Other than those two, for me:

Virtual Railfan - specifically weekly compilation videos (their live streams are more just waiting for trains to pass by)

Simply Railway does train reports from around the world.

37

Videos from History Matters. Short videos on historical subjects. Informative and funny. I especially like the little thump when a historical figure keeps over and died.

38

Yep, that’s what got me started on his channel. Alex has since bought the contents of two or three places and, with assistance, cleaned them all out and sold all the valuable things he found. But the last one looked like it wiped him out physically, even though he had a burly guy to help him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t do any more hoarder house projects. Looks like he’s more into old car restoration now.

Youtube channels which are live birdfeeder streams are very soothing to watch. The downside is that (if they’re truly live) you can’t watch them if you’re awake at night looking for an insomniac channel. Maybe I should look to see if they have any such channels in Madagascar!

39

Someone needs to start a Taskmaster thread. In fact, I wouldn’t mind a thread that included Taskmaster along with all the other quiz/game/panel shows that include that same general group of people. The various Big Fat Quiz shows, 8OO10CDC, Would I Lie To You* and whatever else I’m not thinking of. QI maybe, but that show’s never really done it for me.

Another one that I think flies under people’s radars, maybe because it the contestants aren’t celebrities is I Literally Just Told You. The have people writing questions in real time based on conversations they literally just had. It would be like if this was an IRL conversation and the first question in the next round is “I mentioned 4 shows that we could discuss in a new thread, name two of them”.

This is a great example of the show. It goes off the rails so quickly Jimmy doesn’t know what to do, he’s caught so off guard he forgets to, or can’t, do his stupid laugh. Then it gets even worse.

*If anyone hasn’t seen that one yet, check it out. Watching Bob Mortimer tell stories of his youth is always entertaining, especially when they’re true.
Quick background if you haven’t seen the show. The contestant reads a statement from the card. They’ve never seen it before but it’ll either be something true (but bizarre) about their lives or it’s entirely made up and they have to come up with supporting lies on the spot.

40

Excellent idea. I’m at work right now, so really can’t spend a lot of time making a new thread, but I might this evening, if you haven’t beaten me to the punch. Although it might be better to wait until the next season of Taskmaster begins, in March. They’ve announced the cast, but the only one I’ve ever heard of is Frankie Boyle; but then, being introduced to new comedians and actors is part of what I like about the show.