This morning I’ve been reading a well-written post by Sevy over on the Tiny Painted Heroes blog on the topic of “Why Does Everything Suck?” The post largely deals with hobby content on YouTube, and the majority of comments are by people in our little gang – go read the post now if you haven’t yet – then come back here! I also attempted to add a comment but WordPress decided to eat both my comment and then my attempt to rewrite it. So I’m turning it into a little bonus post here.

I personally watch a lot of YouTube. Like, a LOT. When I’m pottering around on my PC – which is a lot of the time, I’ve often got a video running on my second monitor. I watch stuff from a wide variety of content types, but the relevent stuff for this post is the gaming hobby stuff, so I’m just going to discuss that here.

The thing I find with YouTube specifically, is that it’s actually pretty easy to curate your feed. Despite how annoying it is to hear it from every content creator all of the time, clicking like and even a subscribe not only helps their channels, but it also means you’re more likely to be fed more of their stuff as well as stuff YT thinks is like their stuff – which doesn’t mean “they liked a Star Wars Legion video – feed them Warhammer” – the algorithm also looks at what people who liked that video also liked. So yes, you’ll obviously still inevitably get Warhammer fed to you, but you’ll also get more stuff of whatever niche you’ve been looking at.

So in order to cull the stuff you’re not enjoying, a thumbs-down – especially without watching the whole thing apparently works well. Another thing that helps a lot is something that appears to only work when using YouTube on a computer web browser – the “Don’t Recommend Channel” button found via the “three dots” menu.

Below you’ll find some great channels worth your time to at least check out. Some often have a GW focus but a lot are for other games or wider. This is aside from the “painting tutorial” channels like Duncan, Sorastro, Vince Venturella and Sonic Sledgehammer (which can have interesting videos as well, but aren’t really in the “hobby news/discussion” genre – or hobby-adjacent modelling channels like Night Shift.

So while TPH definitely isn’t wrong that there’s a ton of negative content out there farming angry clicks (because that’s how making money on social media works) – I’m not going to bother doing a name-and-shame here of negative channels or the ones that piss me off – they’re easy to find and this post is wanting to be a bit more positive here –

Here’s a bunch of links here that you might find interesting to dip in and out of and hopefully improve some YouTube feeds out there. Obviously not an exhaustive list, and while you’ve probably heard of a couple of these channels, they’re mostly smaller and/or niche channels that deal with more than GW/Warhammer (not Auspex, though!) I’m sure I’ve even missed a bunch of channels I personally enjoy here:

https://www.youtube.com/@The.Game.Cave.

https://www.youtube.com/@MSPaints

https://www.youtube.com/@Miniscape-wh40k

https://www.youtube.com/@OldenDemon

https://www.youtube.com/@SnipeandWib

https://www.youtube.com/@PeachyTips

https://www.youtube.com/@EonsOfBattle

https://www.youtube.com/@AllMiniaturesGreatandSmall

https://www.youtube.com/@graysquadrongaming8670

https://www.youtube.com/@ArbitorIan

https://www.youtube.com/@GuerrillaMiniatureGames

https://www.youtube.com/@LittleWarsTV

https://www.youtube.com/@ModellingforAdvantage

https://www.youtube.com/@auspextactics

https://www.youtube.com/@tabletopminions

https://www.youtube.com/@TheLegionCantina

https://www.youtube.com/@Crabbok

https://www.youtube.com/@Ninjon

https://www.youtube.com/@stahly_taleofpainters

Anyway, check out some of the channels above and see if any interest you and hopefully some of them can help to improve your hobby feed!

Did I miss any positive hobby channels that you guys recommend? If so, feel free to drop them in the comments and I’ll potentially check them out myself.