Veritasium. Over time I realized his content is mostly about flashy half baked "sciencey" content like Discovery Channel. It's meant to get an audience and nothing more. It lacks quality control, and fact checking. I only realized how many errors his videos have when he covered a topic I know more about. Also, the whole electricity thing and self driving car debacle only reinforced my views on his content.
LTT and their other channels. I only watch because of Emily/Anthony. Now that she's not active in videos anymore, I just lost interest and realised that Linus and those two hosts of Techquickie annoys the hell out of me.
The 8 bit guy. I loved his retro computing channel and then one day, he acquired a rare IBM computer and promptly destroyed the power supply by sticking a screwdriver into it (if I remember correctly).
For some reason, I googled about this and discovered he's a gun nut. They're videos of him going grocery shopping with his rifle on his back which apparently he does this knowing it will annoy people.
Unsubscribed from the channel and never looked back.
I watched Linus Tech Tips, and NCIX Tech Tips before that. My wife and I were discussing how the level of information was tanking but the production quality was great, then GN released their video a few weeks after we stored watching LTT and I unsubsidized.
At some point they got so popular that I just felt like they sold out. I felt like I was just watching 1 giant ad with all of their videos trying to get me to buy something.
Also, some of their rants that they started going on got annoying. Seemed like at some point they lost the chemistry that they had together. I just enjoyed watching their banter and them doing goofy stuff.
Binging with Babish - the content just drifted away. He started doing a show with another guy and I just didn't watch those episodes. Then, the content went further and I stopped watching.
Joshua Weissman - he just became insufferable at some point. I liked his older content.
Shadiversity, Sabine Hossenfelder - they have positions that cause hurt to people and that I morally do not agree with and won't give watch time or ad/sub money to. There are probably more here, but I don't recall. They're welcome to their opinions, but I'm not entitled to view them or fund them.
First we Feast - mostly watched it for Hot Ones (the Motz's stuff was fantastic!) but I got tired of Hot Ones, didn't know most of the guests for a long stretch (not living in the US or really consuming US media made me lose track of things). I also kinda got burnt out on the format.
Linus Tech Tips - to me, it just became the arrogant, egotistical Linus show. There was some other stuff that kinda put me off as well. Maybe it's better now, but I haven't watched in a long while at this point.
A number of creators I'm not thinking of - I hate when prescription meds are advertised (which isn't even legal in the vast majority of countries) and how they just want to sell dick pills without a real, non-conflict-of-interest doctor involved when the cause may not even be physical. I worked in healthcare for a long time and that just rubbed me the wrong way, particularly when creators in countries where it would be illegal for them on TV do it (and it may not even be legal/available in their country but it is in the country of at least US-based audience members).
Edit: and the 8-bit guy now, based on others mentioning things, checking other sources, and even checking up a follow-up video he made a year ago. I'll pass.
Binging with babish. I am still subscribed but I find myself interested in fewer and fewer videos. The channel started as recreating meals from tv shows and still is that to an extent but naturally he's run low on things to do. They've added other aspects that I just don't care for like anime with Alvin. I just don't watch much anime. I also feel like there is just less content.
Another is Joshua Weissman who used to do fermenting videos and curing etc. Now I feel like I just watch him make some bread buns and then he makes a sandwich. He's made 100 burgers by now. Who cares. I enjoyed some other series he did like "but faster" or "but cheaper" but they always seem to end after a few episodes and he moves onto something else. I feel like I learn stuff from his videos but just when I'm getting a feel for a topic like fermenting he moves on.
Same with Afrotechmods. TOP NOTCH electronics tutorial videos, he just stopped posting.
Pushing Up Roses, as she explained it herself, has pretty much said what she wanted to say about retro video games and largely does TV now with the occasional modern adventure game review thrown in. I wish her well but I'm no longer her audience.
DistroTube. Did Linux related content who might have an 88 tattooed on his neck by now.
Scott Manley. Similar to PUR, the content he makes kind of drifted out from under my interests; I became a fan of his Kerbal Space Program playthroughs and demonstrations of space flight concepts, but as far as I know now he basically does space news stuff now, which is perfectly cool but my attention wandered elsewhere.
Bright Sun Films. Once again there wasn't a "nope not watching this anymore" moment, I think I just had my fill of Abandoned.
(dis)Honorable Mention: The Escapist. I no longer watch that channel but I am still a fan, viewer and patron of the talent themselves. Their new channel Second Wind is the most hilarious instance of owning the means of production I've ever seen.
Boogie2988. I thought he seemed like a reasonable, unbiased person when I was watching around 2016. Kind of just moved on with my life after realising he was just following YouTube drama.
Have checked him out in the last year or so and it's not looking good for him. The really sad thing is that he could have just taken his money and lived a chill life, but he seems to want a spotlight and to feel important even if it's because people are shaming him for being a washed up b list youtuber.
That Canadian tech guy. The channel has some good content, but that whole drama with the ex-employees, even without knowing the whole story, stinks of a toxic workplace, and I don't want to support that. Plenty of other good tech-related content that I still follow - Level One Techs, Gamers Nexus, Hardware Canucks, Hardware Unboxed, JayzTwoCents.
Fro Knows Photo - used to have some good content years ago when I watched it, but started becoming more and more annoying, with clickbait thumbnails on almost every video.
SMoD - a good source for getting to know new/unknown bands in the doom/stoner/sludge metal realms, but unsubbed after the scandal.
Another vote for Binging with Babish - though my interest waned when he started going from "hey, I could try making that!" to episodes requiring ever more complex and expensive niche machines (e.g. dehydrators), I completely lost interest around the time he started doing the "going round buying folk things" series. Never really got back into it, unsubscribed after a while.
Bon Appetit was great, then everything happened, many folk changed (for good reason) and it just lost the appeal for me. I've watched some of the spun off channels, but some of the appeal for me was the interactions.
I used to religiously watch everything Shut Up and Sit Down put out, but found myself watching less and less over the last few years - turns out, they changed primary content creators and editor (if I understand correctly) around that time, and announced that they did so recently. Still watch occasionally, but it's a very subtly different style that hits less reliably for me. May also be related to me managing to play fewer boardgames, lately.
AVGN... Is a corporate now and the guy is just a failed movie director that is stuck in the one thing that made him popular so he just doesn't put the passion on it anymore.
EEVBlog. The guy is a brilliant electrical engineer but his arrogance prevents him from realizing that his electrical engineering intelligence doesn't translate to other unrelated subjects. I tuned into a live-stream of his once and he started to discuss international geopolitics. His views were ill-informed and half-baked at best. When a couple of viewers (not including myself) simply requested he change subjects, he became indignant and started telling people not to tell him what to do on his own YouTube channel. He eventually told his viewers to leave if they don't like what he had to say. So I did. I have not watched one of his videos since. I did watch Adam Something's witty rebuttal to his video that reviewed and criticized one Adam Something's videos.
Lindybeige was a formative part of my early nerd life. Unfortunately he's a conservative and it's a big part of his personality. I do totally agree with him about the British pound being superior to the decimalized euro though. I would literally beat someone to death if it would give me the opportunity to rearrange the values of dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies into something based around a highly composite number like 240 or 360
Contrapoints and PhilosophyTube were two big ones. I'd still watch Carlos Maza if he produced anything, but he hasn't in like two years, so...I'll include him, too.
Dr. Disrespect, there was a couple year period where the insane, over-the-top masculinity shtick was entertaining to me. Eventually I drifted away from the games that brought me to him in the first place.
Very recently, news broke that he had sexually explicit conversations with a minor on twitch.
Tobuscus was goat but then he got accused of something by his ex or whatever, never cared much about it, but he disappeared and now he just writes books or something. He was one of the old school GOATs next to MatPat, Markiplier, ERB. Sadly missed.
I get really close to pressing the button for anyone who is talking of anti-corporate speech or pro-privacy then goes into joining their Discord chatroom to slap you in face with hypocrisy.
Two Best Friends Play / Super Best Friends. Because some of them stopped being best friends and only pushed forward through a professional working relationship until even that became too strained for them to continue. 😥
We used to watch a lot of game theory. Really enjoyed the over analysis. Stopped part way down the 5 nights at Freddie's rabbit hole when all the drama started.
Mrwhosetheboss. Dude seems like he sniffs a line before every video. I'll probably need to watch one of his videos right now to explain more reasons but it's just not something I would like to watch now.
Crazy-Russian-Hacker was one of the first ones I saw. I remember one of the first things I searched on YouTube or the internet was "science experiments" and he had some pretty interesting ones back then. Later though he went on doing product and MRE reviews then I stopped watching him after a while.
Forgotten Weapons: Used to have videos on very cool old guns with interesting historical backgrounds and whatever. Then he made a series of selfish decisions that demonstrated what kind of person he really was, and I no longer had any interest in even helping him through the algorithm.
Something kind of ironic, is that a lot of the YouTube channels I used to watch have at some point had some pretty terrible things come out about them, mostly after I had already stopped watching them. Boogie2988, Mini Ladd, GeePM and Rooster Teeth are some of the ones I can remember.
For Boogie and Mini Ladd, I don't remember the specific reason I stopped watching them but I do know that I stopped watching them well before all of the information about them was released.
For Rooster Teeth, there was only two things I watched them for and that was Fails of the Week, which they silently canceled and never gave a reason why, and the other was RWBY which they decided to move it from YouTube to their own website which was so terrible that the episodes would have severe buffering issues at 240p. I don't remember what the last volume was that I watched but I know I never watched everything.
For GeePM, I watched him pretty much up until the day when he tried to cancel Vinny (Vinesause). In response, people were quick to bring out information about some pretty terrible things that GeePM was doing behind the scenes. I don't think I've ever seen a YouTuber just completely vanish from the internet that quickly.
I know for sure that there are more but those are the ones I remember the most and think they are the most notable.
Used to religiously watch a guy that played the same video game I was into. He was incredibly good at it, well-known in the game's community, did how-to guides, build guides, super nice, just wanted everyone to have a good time, wanted everyone to excel in the game, good-natured, just an all-around awesome dude, etc.
Then I dunno wtf happened, but 9 years later he's become a total fucking elitist asshole who does nothing but complain about the game and the gaming studio, doesn't seem to give a shit about the little guy just trying to learn the game anymore, it's like he did a 180 in personality and now has a "git gud" mentality. He made a video of him declaring that he was leaving the game, and he did, for like a month, then promptly returned once his viewership clearly went down. I unsubscribed at that point. He became a total whinebox bitch and I lost all respect for him.
He made really cool electronics projects and I used to be his patreon. Now he started a company that makes pick and place machines and all of his videos are exclusively about that. No more cool projects.
Alexandre Chappel
He is a very good maker and designer. He used to make videos about different interesting projects until he bought an apartment and started renovating it himself. Similarly to Stephen's, all of his videos are about that now. No more interesting projects.
I watched RocketBoom until suddenly they ran out of money. I don't know what happened but it seemed like they were on the up and up. They even did videos with Sesame Street. If that isn't a solid endorsement...
Northernlion. He's still a cool person in my books, but the moment he started actively trying to maximize revenue is when he began to lose his appeal to me. Nick's - RockLeeSmile's - departure was the first warning bell, but I stuck with him for a long while after that.
I completely get it, though - he wants to ensure a good future for his family.
Jimmy Diresta. I'm a huge fan of makers, and the maker movement in general, and there was a time I just couldn't wait for Jimmy's next video.
Lately, I've come to feel that he no longer lets his work speak for itself. His videos used to just be really well made time lapses of him making a thing. But, for the past couple of years now, he feels the need to narrate just about everything. And there's the faintest whiff of semi-arrogant self promotion about it, which just puts me off every time.
Don't get me wrong. Talking through the making process is 100% OK with me. I watch plenty of makers that talk through their videos (Pask Makes, Wesley Treat, etc) but something has changed in Jimmy's style, and I just don't like him any more.
Shame. Arguably, Jimmy is the one that (re)ignited the movement's popularity on the internet, but it just kinda feels he's let it go to his head somehow.
Ethoslab. Pretty sure he still does quality content (probably) but I just can't watch minecraft content anymore. Also, I don't even have the time to watch/play everything what I really do want.
James Stephanie Sterling after she started doing the stupid "ad spots" in videos for pogs and other memorabilia. They aren't real ads, but they were so damned obnoxious.
Lucy Pyre after she stopped doing FFXIV videos and went full on brainrotted degenerate.
Thinking about it now, it's been a long time since I saw a Goldvision video. I loved that guy and his calming contemplative gameplay, I was even on board when he decided to just never kill anyone or any npc in a video game ever again (but still play stuff like multiplayer shooters and GTA Online).
I miss his stuff, gonna go see if I've been missing out
Kurzgesagt went hugely downhill, I'll still watch the occasional video from them, but most of what they do now is super speculative tenuous science with 5 min of sponsored content.
I remember way back in the day I enjoyed laci green for her sex ed content, but she just suddenly went super right wing.
Hoovie's garage and Tavarish. Both had good channels fixing cars and then they went off the broken supercar deep end, then wound up with the Car Stories channel and decided to rip off the Top Gear format of doing stupid, obviously scripted adventures.
Nobody gives a crap about fixing a completely unattainable car or re-living the demise of Top Gear.
Pretty sure a lot of people could relate, but watching a variety of various game players who years later you lose interest in (mostly because of how cringe they are) or in my case at some point somehow find out some terrible news about them despite avoiding all the real world drama.
People like Bijuu Mike, Gloom, Logdotzip, etcetera.
Can't find another example I wanted to use since I couldn't remember the account name nor does it matter since I'm pretty sure it was found out he was a horrible person.
Also it's pretty interesting to see some people you're following on yt who you don't remember why you subbed to because there are definitely both active and dead channels I'm currently subbed to that I forgot even existed.
No particular reason. FLuffee is a major old schooler that's been pumping out content since the earliest days of YouTube who specializes in pop news and shock-jock content. I used to devour his content when I was like 11-15, and I think I just got overexposed and lost taste for it.
I've gone back occasionally over the years and he's still at it. If his content style works and he can maintain it even some 16-18 years later, I say more power to him.
Sorted Food. Once they started with the Pass It On format they really declined. Now all their videos are pass it on sand Chef Reviews Gadets and no more actual cooking videos, especially not recipe videos.
@zachimusprime44 RelaxAlax and ProJared. Sure, they both came with rather flimsy reasons to state that the allegations against them were apparently false, but I didn't buy them.
Most of the ones I left are already up there. The two I'll add are -
Donut - it wasn't the same after they got bought. I'm rooting for BigTime!
Mental Floss, SciShow- Its been so long, I don't even remember why I watched it in the first place.
I'm unsure about some of the talents at MSM since it was claimed that they may have a blacklist and the CEO, Seth may be power tripping and gaslighting the smaller talents while treating the big ones with kid gloves to keep them in the company.
When the accusations were first brought up, Seth put out a tweet explaining that they don't have a blacklist, but do have a list of other streamers who are considered high risk. Which sounds a hell of a lot like a blacklist and comes across as some logic fallacy I don't know the name up. Basically redefining words to sidestep an accusation. "I haven't done X because that's not what X means."
There's also some problematic tweets the CEO made when he was 21 and probably contributed to f1nn5ter leaving and while he wasn't specific to exactly why, LordAethelstan also left after hearing about the accusations and vetting things on his end. Supposedly Seth was also shit talking Mythic, which his girlfriend works with, so that alone would be enough if he could verify it.
I'm using "safe" language here because this is still an emerging story, but going by the response from MSM supporters, they look guilty as hell of something.
DrLupo. I watched him a bunch when he was on twitch, but he got kinda arrogant and negative over the years. Now I watch the people he used to play with before he changed 🤷♂️