YouTube – The ADog Blog

The Analytical Aspie #1 – In Defence of VHS Archives

I love Content Archives. And I think they should continue to exist, regardless of what YouTube says. Here’s why I think so!

Welcome to The Analytical Aspie at long last! I’m mostly here to give my two cents on anything that interests me. And in my Aspie post on YouTubers I do like, I mentioned a fourth category of content I consume on the regular but felt was worthy of its own post: The VHS Archivers. Why? Well, did you ever come across channels called jflitter, KillianM2 or the JMX TV Archive? I certainly did. And I use the past tense for a deliberate reason. They don’t exist as individual channels today. And I blame that on YouTube’s VHS Vexation. Today, I want to explain why I find that utterly frustrating, the main reasons why I think this genre should keep on existing, as well as my own views of the issues that cannot be avoided if you’ve ever wanted to jump into this niche hobby. Which might soon find itself on life support unless appropriate action is taken.

Before I get all apocalyptic, let’s start by explaining who I think qualifies as a VHS Archive Channel. In order to attract my attention, a channel like this needs to be run by someone who discovers VHS Tapes, digitises the content recorded on them and uploads either the full tape or appropriately edited fragments onto YouTube. I’m not interested in channels who simply re-upload clips from existing TV Continuity Archive Websites but I’m okay for things that obviously don’t come from places like that to be put onto YouTube for reasons I’ll expand on later. And I’ll let The Curious Aspie take care of the technical side of archiving if people want to open my eyes to it. In terms of what I often look for, it’s an abridged list of the following and then some:

Continuity and Adverts from Rádió Telifís Éireann (RTÉ) and UTV, especially the latter which I frequented the most growing up as a backdoor to programmes from ITV1. Although I might consider adding Sky One, at least during the mid-to-late noughties because of it being the go-to channel for new episodes of The Simpsons and other things that caught my eye.
UK News and Continuity from the 1990s and 2000s because I find watching the news from yesteryear in 2025 fascinating. And my favourite styles of on-screen presentation were in place, especially from ITV.
Any National Lottery Draws and Result Slides, especially during the midweek since I was never able to catch most of them, primarily because of School Nights.
Any TV Shows, big or small that I watched (sometimes for ungodly reasons!), as a kid! The vast majority that I could list here have been discovered and uploaded onto YouTube in some form, but there are others that I have heard of that could be lost media. Forever.
And Idents of TV Channels that I watched in passing, my mother watched idlily or enjoyed the most growing up. Especially those produced by UTV and Sky One.

Now, as far as I’m aware, there are three types of channels that co-exist (or at least try to). The first type are channels that have a clear design in their presentation, and a rhyme and reason for their accumulation of content. Two perfect examples of this (for me at least) are the VHS Archiver and the TV Curator. Their respective cover photos give a very clear picture of what content they have on their tapes and thus, what a viewer like me should expect, although there may be the odd surprise along the way.

Which brings me to the second type, what I call The Potluck Archives. Basically, these channels clearly state in their bio that they have no firm idea what they might find in the tapes they have collected and that viewers should expect surprises. Which is quite true in practice! For example, take The Ted Taylor Files. Who would have expected him to discover bits and pieces of Fame Academy’s second series, which someone should really try to piece together in a few neat packages if possible. In fact, if I were to break down the list of VHS Archive Channels I’m subscribed to by category, I would say Potluck Archives make up the largest slice by some distance.

And the third and final type of archive channel that I know of are what I would call DCAs: Deactivated Channel Archives. Basically, their goal is the preservation of as much of a deleted Archive Channel as possible to keep the content alive and accessible. The main example is It’s so Archivious (UK), who has preserved some videos from two of the channels that I definitely watched that are now in the VHS Graveyard. And I think that despite many challenges that inevitably come with trying to be a DCA, they have an important part to play in making sure this whole ecosystem is alive and thriving. But before I expand upon what I mean by that particular sentence, let’s talk about why I am personally obsessed with it in the first place.

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The Aspie #12 – Being Uninterested in… Bad YouTubers

I may be a YouTube Binger, but there are certain creators and categories I wouldn’t touch. Even in Incognito Mode.

Previously on… The ADog Blog: But let’s not be complacent. Especially since, truth be told, for every masterpiece of a video that is published, some are at the bottom of the barrel either because they represent everything my favourite channels are not, the creator behind them has a dreadful personality, or the genre they belong to does not appeal to me, personally. That was how I concluded my post on YouTubers I like. Now it’s time to explain who qualifies as YouTubers I don’t like.

I’m not going to rehash who is and isn’t a YouTuber in my eyes. Read my last post to understand where I’m coming from on that point. Instead, I’m just going to get straight into it with the YouTuber of the Moment who exemplifies everything that makes a YouTuber terrible in my eyes. And that’s MrBeast, who needs no introduction, especially if you’ve seen anything he has produced over the last 7 Years at least. And that’s where I’m going to fire my opening shot.

You see, whenever I see the cold opening of any MrBeast video, two words come to mind: Sensory Overload. Instead of a gentle glide into the madness or a snappy but concise explanation of the video’s objective, it’s straight into the action. From there, that action is non-stop and wall-to-wall with no room to absorb, no time to properly understand where the narrative is heading, nor why, and no idea where individual players’ heads are really at in any particular moment. And while this method of presentation may deliver exactly what the title implies, it also makes me wonder if the participants were forced to drink a whole crate of Monster Energy beforehand. Especially since, in reality, most people don’t talk at the speed & pitch MrBeast does for a sustained period of time. They don’t attempt challenges on the scale MrBeast does, especially in the time frames he sets. And they probably wouldn’t even attempt to accomplish those same crazy goals unless the money on offer spoke louder than he does.

Compare this to most Sidemen videos. A prime example that comes to mind is when they played The Chase for the first time. Ethan is asked a Bradley Walsh Question (the kind of question that almost guarantees Bradley will lose the plot for our amusement), namely: What do cows drink? He puts the Milk they produce as his answer! This causes a chain reaction of Harry screaming “YOU FUCKING IDIOT! YOU IDIOT!”, Tobi literally rolling on the floor in hysterics, Vik the Chaser guffawing “You’re joking, you’re joking!”, Josh telling Ethan to stop ‘flexing’, the rest of the Sidemen piling on top of each other in disbelief and Vik adding the cherry on top with the line “That has to be the best way anyone has lost 50 grand in their entire life!” After several minutes, order is restored, and Vik reveals the correct answer he needed to catch and exclude Ethan from the Final Chase. My point is that in this example, it was an over-the-top reaction that was allowed to flow like lava and give everyone watching a good laugh in between some mediocre quizzing. With a MrBeast challenge, the opposite is the case. And I think the YouTuber Donna said it best in her video about the genre where she identified what MrBeast videos lack:

“As I watched upload after upload [from OGs like Casey Neistat and Emma Chamberlain], it became clear that the MrBeast genre feels empty because they are missing two components that allowed YouTube to break into the market in the first place: Vulnerability and Authenticity. … If all we really cared about was spectacle and being entertained, television and film would have gone parabolic.”

And when I think back to the Sidemen in general, even if you don’t like the current direction they are heading in, she’s not wrong. Yes, some of their videos are a spectacle of sorts in terms of location and execution, but the general runtime appears to be sufficient so that a lot of things that a MrBeast video does not carry can exist. This, to me, includes chaos, whether intended or not, being absorbed by the audience in a decent amount of time before the next wave hits. The characters they play for the purpose of a video being consistent and only breaking whenever someone (usually W2S) drops a one-line howler you have to be literally stone-faced not to laugh at! And each individual Sideman having a base personality that distinguishes them from each other.

Can you honestly think of a MrBeast video where any of the above applies? Probably not. Unless you were consuming his content around the time that some narrative arcs, as pointed out by some commentators, did persist. But I think that was more in an era when MrBeast and those that featured regularly seemed like genuine friends pushing concepts beyond practical limits. Nowadays, it looks to me like it’s just Jimmy making the top lines (views and retention) get bigger and bigger with each upload while trying to fulfil his ultimate dream of dying with practically nothing in his Bank Account. But at least he is pursuing it ethically, right?

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The Aspie #11 – Being Keen about… YouTubers

I describe myself as a YouTube Binger. But only if the content is right for me.

Right then… Welcome to 2025 here on The ADog Blog! It may be a new year but I’m in the middle of a season focusing on my tastes as an autistic person. And the next item on this particular agenda is YouTube. We all know what the platform is and no doubt use it for a wide variety of purposes. Me? I use it to listen to music, binge mainstream TV shows that have published their back catalogue of content there, watch clips of what I grew up watching on TV in between those programmes and, in today’s post, watch content published by YouTubers. Today, and in the next post in two weeks’ time, I’m going to talk about those that I like and those that I hate and explain why so.

Before I do, I think I need to explain who qualifies as a YouTuber in my head and is therefore eligible to be talked about in this post. A YouTuber, as far as I’m concerned, is an individual or small group of people that publishes original, usually long-form content on the platform on a frequent basis. That first part therefore excludes existing corporations who just so happen to have a YouTube Channel, such as any mainstream newspaper or rolling news channel. As well as T-Series, the music conglomerate that overtook PewDiePie since, to me, it is just a platform within a platform hosting a huge catalogue of India’s newest music. Whether or not that music is any good I’ll let Indians decide themselves. I’d also argue any artist with a music note next to their name is part of this list too since all those channels are doing is publishing the works they have created over the years in whatever P the industry is able to stretch audio quality to. As well as song remixes, variations and live performances for our viewing pleasure.

However, exempt from this part of the definition are, for example, The Theorist Channels who may have a company structure behind them, but are still four individual channels hosted by four individual hosts (at least since MatPat called it quits) publishing original content on a semi-weekly basis. I’d also include anyone who is the face of a Channel but seeks out others for assistance in things like editing, researching, writing, voiceovers, etc, which is fine since you’re not always going to be good at everything this job entails and technically covers the ‘small group of people’ wording. Examples will be provided as soon as I start talking about my favourite channels.

Before that, all Channels I’ll be highlighting publish content that usually they’ve written, researched and edited by themselves or with some help. VHS Archive Channels (which have their own self-contained post waiting in the wings on The Analytical Aspie) do not. Apart from the processes of digitising, adding in a Watermark, and maybe trying to reconstruct bits and pieces damaged by attic mould, these Channels are simply goldmines of TV and News from years gone by. You never know what you might rediscover or find original copies of day-to-day! I’ll be assessing some of the issues they wrestle with on a regular basis on the aforementioned sister section in March.

Finally, the term frequent basis is basically ‘How long is a piece of string?’. But, again, to use VHS Archive Channels as a comparison, they basically upload content as they find tapes and do whatever they need to do to get them onto YouTube safe and sound using their free time. Proper YouTubers, however, do it full time because it’s their main source of income. Schedules vary greatly from creator to creator and while most try to discipline themselves and stick to a set schedule, from my experience as a viewer, it’s a case of content becomes available when the creator has finished that video and pressed ‘Publish’. Especially when real life gets in the way.

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