THREAD: My favorite non-toxic YouTube creators.

As we all know, YouTube can be a cesspool, where watching one seemingly-innocuous video triggers the Algorithm and three autoplays later someone is trying to recruit you into the Klan.

Some creators, though, try extra hard to keep things clean, producing good and wholesome content without feeding the trolls. I find their videos calming, informative, witty, and wholesome.

1) Homemade Wanderlust:

Weird thing about me is that I'm obsessed with memoirs and content about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. @HomemadeWL is a friendly non-judgemental channel about that topic.

If you're interested in camping there's a lot of information on offer, and there are nice long video playlists covering these long trails from beginning to end, great for playing while you're working.

2) Jenny Nicholson:

Jenny is hilarious, smart, and only makes videos when she feels like it. Which means less content overall, but everything she does make has the extra gloss of being something @JennyENicholson really wanted to do:

Fandom, especially movie and TV fandom, can be a horrifying jumping-off point to some of the most reactionary bullshit on the web, so when you find someone who doesn't leave you feeling vaguely greasy after every video, you hold on to that.

3) Many A True Nerd:

If pop culture videos are dodgy, then video game videos are a nightmare. @ManyATrueNerd is known for his positivity and for pulling off ridiculous challenge runs. Here he's pulling off Fallout: New Vegas with one health bar:

He's funny, VERY British, but doesn't use his platform to shit all over everything all the time. I like that. So many channels mine clicks just through hating everything and it's exhausting.

4) Steve1989MREInfo:

This dude collects old, discontinued combat rations from throughout history - and sometimes, he cracks them open and eats them with little regard for his own health. In addition to being historically informative it's also terrifying:

In the above video, he's eating a century-old can of beef from the Boer War. Is he going to be okay?

The channels tell you a lot about the interesting concerns of military rations, which have to keep and travel well, be high-calorie, and taste good enough a soldier will eat it.

Seriously, soldiers on the march burn a lot of calories, like 5,000 or more per day, and if the food doesn't taste at least decent they won't eat it or they'll trade it away and then it doesn't matter how many vitamins you crammed into it.

Also: peanut butter never goes bad.

5) Binging With Babish

Most of you probably know this one by now, since @BingingWBabish is a YouTube rockstar. He started off replicating recipes from movies and TV shows and has expanded to teaching basic techniques, adding more creators to his channel:

Some of his recipes are of the sort that maybe you make once your entire life, if ever. Others, like his sous vide pickle recipe, are ones that I make several times a year as part of my regular stable of cooking.

And most importantly, he is not a dick.

Seriously, he's gotten huge in the last couple of years and every new development just has me say, "good for him."

When Bon Appetit's wholesome YT channel crashed and burned due to allegations of racism, Sohla joined the Babish Culinary Universe, which speaks well of him.

Good to mention here that I don't know any of these people, and outside impressions are incomplete, and that I'm only basing this on how they conduct themselves online.

6) Claire Saffitz, Dessert Person:

Claire is just a very friendly, happy person who is good at baking stuff, and explaining how to bake stuff so that I don't screw it up. Part of the Bon Appetit exodus, I hope she's doing well out there:

Last I checked, Claire's not on Twitter, which is good because I would've accidentally told her I loved her by now.

7) Townsend's

Formerly Townsend & Son, this family business sells tools, clothes, and gear for he dedicated historical re-enactor, and demonstrates how to use it on this channel, 18th Century Cooking:

It's just a friendly, soft-spoken dude in a jaunty tricorn cap making recipes from cookbooks from the 1700s, and it is delightful. The videos are informative, the recipes look delicious, and it's all oozing with the excitement that comes when someone is speaking passionately.

8) LegalEagle

This guy is a real lawyer, providing his lawyerly analysis of both current news items (hello, Capitol rioters!) and pop cultural representations of the law.

Here he is doing Star Trek:

I found him through that Star Trek video, but he's done The Simpsons, My Cousin Vinny, The Sokovia Accords from the MCU, as well as breaking down whether, say, Trump is allowed to impeach himself. It's great shit.

9) Yoga With Adriene

I am not, by any stretch (badum-tssh) a yoga guy, but I'm a very inflexible dude who occasionally hurts himself, and in those times I've needed a way to stretch out sore muscles.

The problem with most YT yoga videos is that they're irritating as shit, crammed with new-agey kind of GOOP stuff, or just way too difficult for a guy who couldn't actually reach the ruler when they did the sit-and-reach test in high school.

Adriene is occasionally a little spiritual, but that's expected in yoga stuff and she doesn't take it to a weird place. She acknowledges when she accidentally says a double entendre, she laughs at herself, and she doesn't make you feel like shit for not doing something right.

Anyway, those are mine. The thing that unites them all is that they're people who are really excited about their subject matter, and don't try to gatekeep out newcomers with a hostile posture or aggressive attitude.

Who are your favorite YouTubers?