YouTube Deep Dives

2025 in Review: YouTube

by

Good Morning Folks. I am continuing my 2025 in Review series and this morning talking about one of my guilty pleasures. I watch probably a truly excessive amount of YouTube, and in truth it is less that I am actively watching it and more that it is keeping me company while I do other things. This morning I talk going to talk about some of the channels that I regularly watch pretty much anything that they release. There are certain channels that publish something every single day, and others that release on a weekly schedule… but it is super rare that I do not click through and watch the new videos each time one drops. Other than I will likely talk about a few of the folks from different communities that I watch content for when I am in the mood to consume it.

Trent Holbrook aka Miscast

This is probably my channel of 2025, and has been a lot of why I have been interested in getting into a bunch of more creative endeavors. Trent is a bundle of chaotic creative energy, and I feel like we all need him in our lives. Like Ace is not prone to doing any of the things that Trent does, but is still watching him because he is just too pure and inspiring with the nonsense that he does. Essentially this is MOSTLY a Warhammer and kitbashing channel, but he also dabbles in 3d modeling and has been on this entire crusade to figure out how to create his own blisterpacks for the miniatures he creates. The above episode specifically is surrounding him creating reusable temporary characters for people to drop into existing D&D campaigns. His entire channel is operating in permadeath mode where if he misses posting a day, he is going to delete the entire thing and all of the assets that he has created during that time. As someone who did blogging every single day for three and a half years… I regret to inform him that there will be a time when it does happen and I will miss this spot of brightness on the horizon. In theory his original channel will still exist but obviously because of the pressure of a daily channel he has not posted there in six months.

Tia Weston – The One Dollar House Series

Another channel that has been part of my life for the last year, is the One Dollar House series by a vlogger named Tia Weston. Essentially on August 11th of 2024, she purchased a house for $1 from someone that she knew… and over the next year every Sunday morning she dropped a video talking about whatever had happened that week. This continued until November 2nd when she had effectively wrapped that series and was fully moved into and living in the house. I am not necessarily super into home improvement channels, but there was something compelling about the honest nature of how this was shown. Sure the dollar house thing was a clickbaity title, but the content itself was deeply interesting as it dealt with the ups and downs of having to renovate a house that was in quite honestly some pretty lousy shape when she got it. On November 9th of this year, she bought a second abandoned home and is now working through the process of cleaning it out and renovating it, and I am once again happily tuning in every Sunday morning for htis nonsense.

Laura Kampf

Another channel that I watch pretty much every Sunday morning is that of the self proclaimed Janitor of Los Angeles, Laura Kampf. I think I originally was introduced to her content by Simone Geirtz, which I have been following and watching content from since her shitty robot days. Laura currently is in the middle of renovating a “free” travel trailer from the 70s, but has widely varrying content from picking up trash off the street and making something out of it, to talking about how she makes products that she sells and how she markets them. Just a deeply interesting and creative person, and it pairs nicely with Tia’s House series as I am sitting down on Sunday mornings to edit the two podcasts that I edit every week. While I am eating my breakfast and trying to wake the fuck up, I am listening to these two people and whatever they have gotten up to in the previous week.

Tendo – Daily Thrifting

Tendo is a chaotic mess of a human being and I have been following since the birth of his channel called Duck Duck Blue devoted to a toy store of the same name. That channel was an infectuous mix of the interesting cast of characters working there, frank discussions about stocking and pricing issues of running a toy store, and random creative projects as he attempted to build out different parts of the store. Sadly all of that content is gone, because there was a rather wild sequence of events that led to the store closing, a breakup of Tendo from the person he co-owned the store with, and effectively him becoming a single father as the primary caretaker of their newborn son. Nothing has really been said about ANY of that, but Reid one of the workers in the store released this pretty cool video about the Final 24 Hours of the store. What the Tendo channel now is more than anything is the daily diary of someone trying to take care of a child while stocking multiple vendor malls with merchadise harvested in large part through daily trips to Goodwill and various other thrift stores. I am not sure what it is about this but I find it deeply compelling, snapshot of a day in the life of someone else type content.

Josh Johnson – Tuesday Night Comedy Sets

Josh Johnson might be the single most talented comedian out there right now, full stop. Originally I knew him for his work on The Daily Show as a corespondent, and more recently after the departure of Trevor Noah… he has subbed in as one of the more regular hosts of the show now that they are in this weird no single permanent host kind of mode. Somewhere along that point I stumbled onto his YouTube channel and more specifically his comedy sets once he started the current Flowers Tour that he is on. Most comedians have a set, that they work for awhile, until it becomes stale…. and then move on and create something new. Josh Johnson releases a brand new set every single Tuesday night, as a YouTube premiere event… and it is often times deeply topical and none of it retreads any of the ground he has visited previously. It is wild just how damned creative he is, and how he gives the feeling that what is very obviously a thoroughly polished set… comes off as though he is just talking to the audience. Phenomenally good stuff and if you are not already listening to this each week I highly suggest you tune in.

Sir Gog – Path of Exile Analysis

I am obsessed with Path of Exile. If you have read this blog for any length of time you will know this. One of my favorite content creators in this space is SirGog, and quite honestly I am probably more active in “his” community than I am in any other part of the sphere. There is a specific Global chat channel that his folks use, and I shifted to making that my home ages ago, and never doubted that decision because it tends to be a group of fairly analytical folks who are also extremely helpful. What I like the most about SirGog is his long form videos where he talks about exploring what is happening in the meta of a given league. Rarely are these things that I am necessarily chasing, but I do find it extremely valueable to know what sorts of tech is being used and in what ways. Additionally he does an amazing job of evaluating changes to the game and how it might impact players and more often the economy. All of this is deeply valuable for me when I decide to branch out and start playing that second or third build of a league.

CheckPoint – Loading Ready Run

They are still on holiday hiatus, but I love Loading Ready Run and more specifically Checkpoint. This is a weekly comedy show… and ends up being quite possibly one of the best actual gaming news shows that you can watch. All of the crew are delightful and quite honestly I am pretty much willing to watch anything from them over the years. I don’t necessarily get into the more longform stream content as much, but I do occasionally watch things if something tweaks my spidey senses. I do however watch pretty much every episode of Checkpoint and it often becomes something we reference and talk about each week on the AggroChat podcast because a large number of us do this thing. I am also a big fan of Graham Stark specifically and his solo vidocs that he records when the LRR team is visiting some event . Great group of folks, they all seem delightful, and would love to be friends with them… but I won’t be weird and parasocial about it. LRR specifically is a huge reason why we migrated AggroChat to Kind.social, because it is run by LRR fans who have a deeply compatible set of ethics.

Ashens/NerdCubed Advent Calendars

This one is topical ONLY during the lead up to Christmas but I am going to give it a shout out regardless. It was roughly a decade ago that I stumbled onto this nonsense. I had been following Ashens for awhile and enjoyed his quirky product reviews recorded with a busted brown couch seat as the backdrop. I am even a huge fan of his two Film Projects (Ashens and the Quest for the Game Child, and Ashens and the Polybius Heist). However the capstone of each year is this dumb series where they record effectively dueling Advent Calendars and choose a winner each day. Sometimes there are penalty calendars, other times it is just them making fun of the dumb things that pop out of them. This year was particularly wild because Ashens had a survival calendar that was mostly just a bunch of weapons. Nothing gets me in the holiday spirit quite like tuning in for this nonsense every day, and the videos usually dropped coinciding with my lunch break.

Rogue Hobbies

As I am starting to fall further and further down the Warhammer hobby rabbit hole, another YouTube channel that I really enjoy watching is from Louise Sugden aka Rogue Hobbies. Videos are always charming and I really appreciate the bright and cheerful color schemes that she paints. These are not necessarily the style in which I want to paint things, but I still think they end up really freaking cool. I specifically linked the above video because I thought it was a neat transformation taking an old Mighty Max toy and turning it into something Warhammer themed using Epic scale miniatures. Kind of like Trent this is just a really cool channel to watch that might give you inspirations for other nonsense that you want to do regardless of the hobby that you are into.

Laranity

Now we are going to get into a few general shout outs. Laranity is absolutely my favorite streamer in the Guild Wars 2 space, and any time I need to farm drops I know I am going to be watching her channel. She is delightful, but she also makes a bunch of edited videos that are pretty solid. The above for example is a paid collab by ArenaNet where she taught Annie Fuschia who is mostly known in the World of Warcraft creator space how to play Guild Wars 2. She does a lot of interesting build review type content as well, or various general money making strats on how to get the most out of specific map farms. Its all super pure, and charming. If you were wanting to get into Guild Wars 2 I would probably say her content is your starting space because it straddles that line between pure casual and hardcore, and does a good job of introducing you to some basic concepts to build upon.

Pohx – The Father of Righteous Fire

I also have to get a general shout out to Pohx, who is the father of Righteous Fire in its current form. This build was the build that allowed me to start to enjoy all of the many splendors Path of Exile has to offer, because it is super fucking simple to level and is aggressively tanky at end game. I still play an RF build almost every league, because it gives me a solid base to then branch out and explore whatever weird stuff is happening in the meta with my second and third build of the league. Pohx is so unbelievably patient with the viewers, because there are so many ways you can fuck up a Righteous Fire build and he maintains this painstakingly edited and simple guide site. On top of that he is just a chill dude, who does a thing and does it reliably. I appreciate constants in the digital world.

Strange Aeons – Tumblr Royalty

Something that you probably do not know about me, is that I have a deep and lasting affection for the weird world of Tumblr. I was never as active on it as some, nor did I regularly comment on it… but I have always enjoyed being an outsider looking into that particular fish bowl. When I “doom scroll” something from bed, it is usually weird arts and shit on Tumblr, and I feel better off for doing that instead of Instagram or Facebook. Strange Aeons is super fucking hard to describe, they might post a deep dive into the etimology of Rawr XD, or give us a recouting and tour of the Grover house from SomethingAwful legend. So much of it is dives into the history of the fringe internet that was, that I honestly remember quite well. They also happen to be permanently enshrined in Tumblr Royalty after fighting the Muppet Joker at Dashcon 2.0. This will not be everyone’s cup of tea but I fucking love it.

Sarah Spaceman

Another channel that I have become fond of this year is Sarah Spaceman. Like I cannot give you a rational explanation for why I enjoy her so much. Firstly I am not a sewist, nor do I cosplay, nor am I honestly into most of the shit she seems to be into. However she DID introduce me to Dan Da Dan which I adore now… so I will forever be thankful. Its a channel about the behind the scenes happens with cosplaying and the judging of cosplay at conventions, and also has had this whole side quest recently surrounding the events leading up to the wedding of her and her longtime partner that often gets featured in content. They did this whole wild Game of Thrones meets Zelda thing and it was delightful. I am all for Weirwood Trees with Korok Faces. Anyways her stuff brings me joy and I cannot fully understand why, but also do not care. It is background material to be consumed while I am doing other things.

Toy Federation

Every saturday morning this channel drops a video, and effectively it is a shot and edited show format that is similar to something along the lines of Pawnstars. Toy Federation is vintage toy store in Greer, South Carolina and they are also behind the rather large Retro-Toy Convention in Greenville, South Carolina. Essentially their claim to fame is having a very fair and public process for evaluating the toys and pricing them, essentially giving you half the value in cash and a very “take it or leave it” sort of approach. What they speciallize is complete toys, so it has been interesting as they have delved into the back and shown just how many partial versions of things that they have, and the painful process of waiting for one or two parts to come in the doors so that they can clean it up and put it out on the shelf for someone to buy. I will always have a deep resounding nostalgia for the toys of the 80s and 90s, and specifically the toys that I personally played with. I don’t have the space or the give a fuck to actually collect these toy lines anymore, but I can get my fix by watching others doing it.

So what are your favorite YouTube channels of 2025? What do you put on in the background or what did you happen to stumble across that you think I might be interested in? Drop me a line below.

Duck Duck Blue

by

Good Morning Friends. This morning’s post is going to be a bit meandering, but stick with me and I promise I will wrap things up into a point. One of the things that I have long lamented was the closing of Toys R Us. Sure it generally offered the highest possible price point you could pay for an item, but what I miss is the foundational memory that it provided for me growing up. Getting to go to Toys R Us was a big deal because it was this magical place that had every toy that you knew about and a lot more than you had likely ever seen before. It was an even bigger deal for me because I grew up in a tiny town with Walmart as the only retailer, which meant that I had to make a special trip to the “Big City” in order to go there. This also meant that generally speaking I was on my best behavior in the vague hopes that maybe just maybe my parents would let me go to the magical oasis of toys.

Another piece of this puzzle is that my wife and I have had this weird pipe dream for years. We always wanted to create a store that had a jumble of all of our interests. So there would be a section for used books, teacher stuff, video games, vintage toys, and tabletop games all rolled into a single store. The closest thing to this that really exists is Gardner’s Used Books here in the Tulsa area and I feel like it probably only really exists because it was run at a loss for decades as a bit of a tax dodge for a successful accountant. Now that it has been taken over by his daughter though, the place has even got better and probably actually properly is a successful business. There are tales of warehouses full of stock that he bought throughout the years that have never seen the light of day. Going to Gardner’s at least in some part harkens back to some of that magic of a Toys R Us trip because there are just so many interesting and unexpected things to see.

Because of these combined interests, one of the things that I really enjoy is what I collectively refer to as “Shop Tube”. There is a wide array of channels devoted to running a brick-and-mortar store, specifically in collectible spaces. They generally offer a behind-the-scenes day in the life of a store experience as folks bring in items to sell and they figure out how best to price them. Since my wife and I have never really prioritized our daydream of running that penultimate combo store idea we have… this gives me a bit of a way to live vicariously through the eyes of folks who did go down that road. I’ve talked before about Toy Federation which has become a Sunday morning ritual of watching their new video each week. I’ve also talked a bit about Retro Rick’s Game Point channel which is actually close enough to me to reasonably go there, and at some point, I probably will.

So all of this said… when the YouTube algorithm started suggesting to me this new channel with a weird name, I was primed to click through and see what it was about. Essentially it is a Toy, Video Game, and Children’s Clothing store located in Jasper Indiana, and the channel is devoted to the process of standing up this store and then annexing the other part of the building to expand the business and the assorted growing pains that come with that. What is so cool about the store is that it is purposefully built to be a spectacle giving kids that magical experience of roaming through a place with seemingly endless possibilities. The name is explained… but also does not really matter because it is extremely memorable.

The channel is most often presented through the narration of Dallas the owner and his co-owner girlfriend, and the cast of characters that work at the store. What is so cool about this experience is that it is targeted specifically towards trying some interesting things out. For example, there is a giant bin of Mr/Mrs Potato dolls and parts and kids can effectively build their own custom-made ultimate version to buy. There is a Lego table with cups letting you fill up whatever parts you want to then purchase. There is a free make-your-own bracelet table with tons of assorted beds dumped into a big bin with pipe cleaners letting kids have a little arts and crafts activity for free as part of the total experience. Everything is bright and colorful and specifically designed in a way to be at the eye level for the target demographic… kids… or adults who are kids at heart.

The thing is this channel and store go much further than just a YouTube thing, but are attempting to be a force of interesting activities in their small community. On September 13th they held a Mario Kart Tournament and gave away store credit to the winners. The channel showed off the behind-the-scenes process of getting ready for the event and trying to figure out how to make a very cool and memorable trophy for the winners. It was just generally fun to watch a bunch of kids and a few adults having a blast playing Mario Kart. There are future plans to do something totally different and hold a Hot Wheel race throughout the store as their next big event. It feels like they are genuinely trying to create interesting memories for the kids who frequent the shop, and I am here for it. Like I said before… that is the big thing that the death of Toys R Us robbed us of, is those deep foundational memories from childhood.

Right now the channel is honestly sort of criminally underrated. It only has around 2200 subscribers but is doing some really interesting things. They recently started a live Saturday show from the store and Dallas has wired up a few cameras so that they can swap between the podcasting area in the Video Game store and behind the counter in the Clothing/Toy side of the store. What is sort of infectious is the generally chaotic energy of the store owner which has deep “big kid” vibes to it. More important than that though is that the employees seem genuinely happy there. There are often asides in the videos where one of them has been roaming around with a go-pro and just yammering unscripted about whatever is on their mind. A good number of retail store channels are very clearly staged and at least loosely scripted, and this just has more of a “giving a toddler your camera” vibe.

Dallas aka the face of the Duck Duck Blue channel had/has another channel with nine years worth of content called Tendo’s Trash. Once I started watching the Duck Duck Blue videos, the algorithm of course started recommending various videos from that channel. It was way more focused on Thrift Shopping, Garage Sales, and hitting up the Goodwill Bins to find deals to ultimately then flip on eBay or stock an Antique Mall Booth. It has the same chaos goblin vibes that Duck Duck Blue has but is a bit less focused. However, it also gives a bit of a behind-the-behind-the-scenes view of all of the events that led up to the grand opening of the store. There are over nine hundred videos on that channel dating back nine years, so I doubt I will be getting through all of them, but it has been interesting seeing the process that they went through to stock the store almost entirely through aggressively seeking out garage and estate sales.

If you are a child of the 80s/90s and have deep foundational memories centered around visits to the toy store… then you might legitimately dig all of this. I am legitimately hoping that five years from now we don’t find out that Tendo was a milkshake duck, but so far he seems like a genuinely good dude with a good heart.

Ghost Hunter YouTube

by

Good Morning Friends! I took a much longer than originally anticipated hiatus from posting. When I got up Wednesday morning I just was not really feeling it, and then I was off both Thursday and Friday and did not post then either. For those who follow me because of Blaugust, I would say that it is a good idea to just go with the flow when you are not feeling it. Chances are you probably need a break from creating content and so long as you resume at some point taking a break is extremely therapeutic. I can’t necessarily say that I feel recharged, but I was ready to get back to the blog this morning. Over the weekend a discussion happened over on the “Twitters” about Ghost Hunter channels on YouTube and I said that I should really do a blog post where I dump some of my favorites. This morning is the realization of that statement and if you are thoroughly uninterested in the paranormal, today is likely going to be a hard pass for you.

Overnight Channel / TFIL

The Overnight channel is something that branched off of another channel called TFIL, and the premise is that they go all around the country and world to do ghost-hunting videos. Ghost Hunting YouTube is this spider web that branches out, and there are a number of collaborations that ultimately will lead you to other channels. Since this one was my “first” it will always have a special place in my heart, but as I have developed slightly more refined tastes it does come across as extremely over the top. Corey is a sweetheart though and seems to be a ghost magnet, and there have been a few moments that were genuinely shocking.

The Paranormal Files

This is probably the second channel that the YouTube algorithm sent my way. Overall I like this series but there are certain aspects that bug me. Firstly Colin is a little hyperbolic when it comes to his reactions to things going on. I do kinda dig that he is often out doing stuff with his mom, dad, and now wife so it creates this interesting dynamic. It bugs me that he calls his parents by their first name, but that is just a pet peeve of mine because I had a friend growing up that did that. The only time he called them Mom or Dad was when he wanted something. Anyways there are a lot of interesting places that this channel explores, but there tends to be an excessive amount of padding with background setting content.

Twin Paranormal

It was through Paranormal Files that I was introduced to Twin Paranormal, which is a group operating out of the Las Vegas area. Over time this has become probably my favorite group because they release content reliably and it has sorta become my thing to sit down and watch their latest video while eating lunch on Sunday after I finish editing the two podcasts. They have great energy and I really like the brother’s dynamic and their friend Wyatt. All of these channels indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole at times and this channel’s greatest sin is probably its video title and thumbnail game. The videos are much better than this would denote, but they are absolutely playing the algorithm game.

Paranormal Nightmare

This channel brands itself as a TV Series, which appears to be “broadcast” on Tubi, Apple TV, Prime Video, and Pluto TV. After watching several videos, the algorithm opened the floodgates at recommending channels that I had not encountered organically and this was one of the first. The group does investigations and has a religious aspect to it where their goal is to free the family from whatever “infestation” might be occurring. There have been some interesting situations in their shows of individuals who appear to wildly change their personalities that you would think might indicate possession. One of the more professional groups and unlike a lot of the made for the travel channel type crap, it is weirdly not super over the top.

Paranormal Quest

Another group of four guys more or less follows the formula that all of these groups follow. I think it was through this channel that I first encountered the Estes Method. For those who don’t watch a bunch of these channels, it is a thing where they have one person put on noise-canceling headphones and listen to a “spirit box” while another person often times in another room asks questions. The person who is “under” just shouts out everything that they hear through the spirit box regardless of context. When the questions and the “answers” line up it is really interesting, but oftentimes there is a fair amount of nonsense as well. A “spirit box” is essentially a device that scans through the radio frequencies and it is reported that spirits can stop the scan at specific spots to land on words or phrases.

Exploring with Josh

This is probably the most hyperbolic channel on the list. Josh has done a wide number of collaborations with other channels on this list to this point, and as a result, I periodically get fed his videos through the algorithm. If there is any group that I would accuse of playing things up for the camera, this is absolutely the worst offender. These are sometimes interesting but I absolutely do not watch every episode. One of the interesting things that come through these channels though is that often times different groups will do the same locations. It is interesting how many groups get the same results from the same areas.

Paranormal New England

As hyperbolic as Josh is… it at least led me to find this channel. I guess Paranormal New England is a group that he used to work with regularly, and their channel is a gem in the rough. Basically what you get is a lot of very lightly edited footage of investigations, that more or less feel like raw vlogs. They don’t release videos very often with something new landing every few months, but they are deeply interesting to watch. This is the sort of thing that I really love to see because it is way more serious than the “whacky adventures of ghost hunters” vibe you often get from YouTube channels.

Exploring with Fighters

This is another channel that I stumbled onto through collaborations, specifically with Overnight/TFIL. Dan’s stuff is sort of hit or miss and he seems to do way more urban exploration/abandoned locations stuff than ghost hunting, but there are a handful of really interesting locations in the UK and Europe. Admittedly I don’t watch him that often but still someone I am subbed to that occasionally does something really interesting.

Mackie and Amanda

This is another channel that I stumbled onto due to collaboration. There was a series of videos where Amanda was recording with Twin Paranormal. Amanda is a medium and Mackie is seemingly one of those friends who is just down for any sort of nonsense. There is a massive backlog of stuff that I have not seen, but the few videos I have watched have been interesting. I really like the vibe of this group and they feel extremely relatable and don’t really fall into the over-the-top YouTuber rut as so many channels can over time. There is a deep sincerity with what they are doing and I dig that.

Lomar Mendz

The next couple of channels is recent finds. The algorithm fed me a series of videos that included Lomar and Chelsea as they were doing some Randonautica stuff, then I noticed they also did more than a fair number of ghost-hunting videos as well. Essentially Chelsea is in her words a “baby medium” and she is trying to learn to control it Lomar is just one of those “good dude” types that seem interested in exploring anything. There is a good-natured vibe to the channel, and while I have only watched a few things so far I do plan on diving back into the past content.

Exploring with Angelo

Another “Good Dude” type that I encountered through a series of videos he recorded with Lomar and Chelsea. I’ve not really plumbed much of his solo content, but it seems very interesting. Mostly throwing these channels out there because I think they are going to be ones that I really dig in the future. I don’t have much experience with either of the groups though.

Amy’s Crypt

This one is literally brand new to me. This was suggested by my friend Jae during our conversation this weekend and I have only had a chance to watch a single video. I often have one of these running in the background while I am playing games and then alt-tab over if things sound interesting. This is an Aussie couple that travels broadly and does investigations. So far I dig the vibe of the videos and they also seem to have a deep sincerity to them.

Madd Vladd – Skinwalker series

This one is interesting but also gives off deep “fake” vibes. I am throwing it in there just in case it eventually turns into something. The setup is that this dude is a gaming YouTuber with another channel and started having weird happenings in his backyard that open up onto an undeveloped area. Since Skinwalkers are the new hotness this video series for which there are only two currently, uses that titling. There were three months between the first and second video, which seems deeply suspect and makes me think there is maybe some “after effects” editing time happening. There are some fairly interesting things that go on. If you have an hour to sit down and watch with a deeply skeptical eye… it might be interesting.

[EDIT] – 4pm 10/17

Jasko

I so very rarely edit my own blog posts to add content after the fact, but I am going to do so today. Over lunch, I was looking for something to watch and stumbled onto this channel. I know nothing about it, but this video is interesting enough to make me subscribe. There is a point where there is this insane blood-curdling scream from out of nowhere, while they are deep in the woods seemingly alone. I opted to go ahead and edit it in because lord knows if or when I will make another post like this in the future.