FWIW, after a few videos I found Mark Rober insufferable, he seems too full of himself. I did enjoy his first glitter vs anti-package-thieves video, but not his later videos
Oh, his latest videos and the package-thieves are way less entertaining than his previous ones. There are interesting hesitations when he ponders the ethics and legality, but it’s otherwise (unfunny) schadenfreude.
I think that’s the influence of other YouTubers: he’s hanging out with the Safety Third guys, who are (as their name implies) trying to fast-run a Darwin prize. They make entertaining science-y stuff. He’s also hanging out with Mr. Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, which I suspect is why Mark is less fun: Jimmy has this extreme discipline of optimizing videos for views that carve the authentic excitement out to stuff cliffhangers every second instead.
For example, Mark Rober’s previous projects, like the always-on-target dart board, are much better. He’s quite smug on this one, too, but that’s his screen persona: an over-confident Californian frat-ish dude turning into “the best” uncle. He talks about this offline; it’s his way of making childish pranks fit his adult frame.
If you like the dart-board one more but thought it was too prankish, you might like Shane Wighton of Stuff Made Here in the Pacific North West: he’s more earnest about how hard it is to make hardware. There are still the occasional pranks (and the over-confidence because he’s using a robot), but there are a lot more technical details. His on-screen persona with his wife (who claims, on screen, to hate all his ideas) is not very credible, but more grown-up than Mark Rober’s Nerf gun fights.
Otherwise, Destin Sandlin of Smarter Everyday is the actual fun uncle, a Southern engineer to the core and a lot more earnest on screen. Alec Watson of Technology Connections is a MidWestern fix-it-all, who cares far too much about old tech. And finally, Tech Ingredients is the real deal: New Englander, no messing around, projects that are genuinely breakthroughs, with enough detail to reproduce in your garage.
Well, to derail this to a review of YouTubers I've seen, Destin is okay, his happy optimistic about everything attitude annoys the dark-hearted cynic in me a bit.
Technology Connections: interesting content, sometimes the humor is cringeworthy. He knows he's making a cringe joke or a very very lame pun, so he leans into it, "I know this joke isn't funny but the fact that you're aware that I'm aware that I'm making a lame joke makes it funny again ha ha ha" while my eyes roll hard, but hey maybe some people find the meta-joke (or is it a meta-meta-joke? Or am I missing his meta-meta-jokes?) hilarious and clever. Tech Ingredients is so serious and great!
Other YouTubers I enjoy are Matthias Wandel and Electroboom.
100% with you. Shane Wighton (Stuff Made Here) might be the cynic you want. He makes some cringy self-referential jokes, but he’s genuinely that one magical engineer everyone wants on his team.
He’s the only one who is an engineer first, and an entertainer… maybe?
There are a handful who I haven’t mentioned with the same personality—mostly around niche topics, like RC vehicles, though.
I’m curious what you’d think of Jay from the Plasma Channel: he clearly very personable, but his content is to the point, and he might find something major on the way.
