APOPHENY

Yet another 2025 post, and it’s not the last one! I watch more YouTube than any other kind of AV media, and my YouTube Recap finally arrived on Xmas Eve, after I’d given up on ever seeing it. It was… interesting. I wasn’t happy with the fact that the channels I watch that debunk conspiracies were lumped under ‘urban legends’ as if I were a believer, but oh well. I couldn’t argue with the overall summary.

Amusingly, I’ve never played the top three games it lists for me, although it’s completely true in its assessment of what I’ve watched. The GTAV and BeamNG listings are almost entirely due to Failrace and the associated channel Leathercap (the only YT channel I’m actually a member of). Failrace specialises in wacky races and other improvised games played with vehicles inside games. Alex (the channel owner) and his filming crew are very British, very banterific and unusually LGBTQ friendly (if you can take the banter. It’s a British thing).

(OK, I have played GTA5 briefly. Very briefly. My dyspraxic in-game driving is so comically bad that sometimes I think I should start a YT channel just to share the hilarity.)

YT can only judge my interests by hours spent ‘watching’. It can have no idea which channels I actually watch, and which I just have on in the background for a friendly voice/s while I get on with other things. Failrace is actually a good example of both. Some regular streams/vids have me glued to every moment, but others, like the live racing, I tend to just let play for Alex’s voice while I work on my other screens.

It also doesn’t take into account that several of my favourite channels only release a few vids each year. So I thought I’d do my own little list of my top ten channels (that aren’t Failrace, which is really in a category of its own) that have had the most impact on me in 2025.

1. Fall of Civilisations is of astonishingly high quality for free entertainment. Created by Paul Cooper, together with voice actors, translators and locally sourced re-enactors/actors, the Fall of Civilisations releases 2-3 productions a year, first as podcasts and then, a few months later, as videos. Each episode tells the story of a historical culture, empire or nation, from before it even began to its inevitable end. The videos are long, and I mean loooong. Earlier episodes were over an hour, but as the years have passed, the average length of episodes has increased significantly, and the most recent, The Mongols, was approaching seven hours! I advise watching it in sections as you would a TV series.
   
2. Philosophy Tube is Abigail Thorn – actress, trans-activist, playwright and, of course, philosopher. Using her considerable knowledge of philosophy, she tackles a series of modern day concerns, employing dramatic pieces, elaborate costumes and celebrity guest voices to do so.
   
3. Crecganford explores ancient stories from around the world with particular emphasis on ‘mythemes’, the (almost) universal components of these ancient tales that spread and adapt as cultures move, communicate and develop.
   
4. Useful Charts really appeals to my not so inner autist. Matt Baker explores a range of historical, scientific or more abstract subjects via meticulous, well thought out charts.
   
5. I’m lumping together David Kelly’s channels History of the Universe and History of Humankind. Both are high quality explorations of scientific topics. Watched en masse, they can be a bit repetitive, but that’s because each is presented as a stand alone, and sometimes the same base knowledge needs to be introduced before the actual topic can be fully explained and explored.
   
6. I mentioned Leathercap earlier as a kind of spin-off of Failrace, but Amy, the channel owner, is much more than that. While I started watching the channel for the recordings of Failrace events with the whole crew’s audio included, I now watch her streams for, well, the company. She has a relaxing voice and tends towards streaming quieter content – lego building, puzzle games and so on. This is a very small channel in terms of subs, and no longer her primary means of making money, but I hope she never stops making content. Her community is cool too, and when I’m feeling less misanthropic, I enjoy following chat, though I rarely join in. I’m way too old to not feel like some kind of invader.
   
7. Talking of which, only more so, DanAndPhil is a definite guilty pleasure of mine. I started watching them years ago to show an interest in what was, at the time, an important fandom of my daughter’s. Their return after hiatus (after coming out) has been enjoyable from the start, but since coming out again, this time as the lovers/partners they’ve always been, and their ‘Hard Launch’, their content has been superbly entertaining. I guess I’m allowed to enjoy watching them now they’re in their thirties, and it’s not like I was ever into them in that way, or part of their fandom, but somehow I still feel guilty.
   
8. Isaac Arthur makes long rambles exploring possible futures for mankind or alien civilisations. He goes so far into futurism and possibility that many episodes are pure, mind-expanding science fiction, often deliberately so. But there’s always a taproot of real world science, even in the most out-there explorations.
   
9. Trash Theory makes vids about music, often British music and only rarely recent music. He often takes one seminal song and uses it as a focal point to explore a much wider circle of tracks around it, its influences and those tracks it influenced in turn. While often stymied by YouTube’s stupid copyright restrictions, these documentaries are always well made and well thought out.
   
10. I love to watch Nerdforge recreate their house and extended property one room at a time into things of high fantasy and beauty.

Honourable mentions: Matt Baume (film and other media through a queer eye), Sorted Food (food and British banter), Antichef (food and frequent disasters), the Newsagents (news analysis), Rob Words (logophilia), Bellular News (games news).