Asklemmy

This Old Tony, Abom, Tested (mostly just One Day Builds by Adam Savage), Wirtual, Isaac Arthur, CityNerd, Intelligence Squared debates, FloridaMan Diplomacy, Abom79

Okay so I’m a nerd. I didn’t get into YouTube until recently and I just watch storm chasers, airplanes taking off, and power washing/landscaping porn.

My subscriptions feed (food and science) is mostly channels I’ve been subscribed to for years now and they’ve all maintained their high quality or improved.

For food, Carla Lalli Music is an entertaining chef and recipe developer who shares recipes from her books. She takes inspiration from all sorts of cuisines and blends them into delicious, adaptable recipes. Crispy gingery ground beef like lime and herbs earned an instant spot in my regular meal rotation.

Claire Saffitz and her team bring mostly baking videos with occasion forays into cocktails, dinners, and lifestyle. Expect lots of cat cameos and fun editing easter eggs.

NYT Cooking has a good variety but their stars are Sohla and Ham El-Waylly, a wildly creative culinary power couple who can make a multi course tasting menu out of anything.

For all things science, basically anything out of Complexly Studios is worth your time. My personal favorite is SciShow Tangents. The various MinuteScience channels are great too (minutephysics, minuteearth, and minutefood ), and while the titles/thumbnails can feel a little bit clickbaity at times, the content is solid and informative.

I watch LBRY (I use it directly and bypass odysee btw)

For youtube I proxy it through piped

I would recommend ChrisFix on top of the recommendations already given. Excellent videos on simple car repairs using hand tools. Even if you don't own a car or have the need to fix one, I would still recommend watching some of his videos.

Mostly ASMR - it's how I get to sleep.

Also, Pitch Meeting, which I sometimes watch instead of the film.

I watch a few, but the first worthy one that comes to mind is TBSkyen.

I mostly watch high elo games of LoL, TFT, Chess. like @PekinWoof, @Bebe872, @Frodan and many more.

I don't watch a ton of YouTube anymore, but when I do it's usually the likes of techtubers and gaming creators that incorporate humor with a few "I create dumb stuff for the internet" type channels mixed in.

I'll list few of my favorite channels, with Piped links of course :)

DankPods, Alpharad, Failboat, I did a thing, Bobby Duke Arts, maxmoefoePokemon, Michael Reeves

Probably missed a few but that's most of them.

I mostly just use it to find new music.

There's a couple of cooking channels I keep an eye on, a bit of tom scott and contrapoints/shaun/etc - but mainly just music.

No, I don't have or want spotify. I like music videos, and I like being able to easily skip through and sample fragments of songs, rather than just have them on in the background.

Second Thought, First Thought, Our Changing Climate, Polymatter, Kurzgesagt, The Grayzone, Geopolitical Economy Report, Breakthrough News, Democracy Now.

I do yes as I also have a channel that I do videos for (my only income as I fund my own website without ads or 3rd party trackers). I do make my videos' ads skippable though. And yes my own browser blocks ads.

But the pleasantness, or lack thereof, comes down to a site's rules and moderation. The vast majority of people don't want to be aggravated, and they also don't really want to pay to use a website.

But scammers and clickbait are everywhere. I think a lot depends on whether they can game the algorithm to force their way into your home feed or not. Many news media sites also use clickbait, and the same goes for politicians wanting to get attention through fear and anger. But I agree very often clickbait crosses the line - it is really irritating when you see a thumbnail of something, and that image literally appears nowhere inside the content.

I mostly follow technology channels though.