I’ll be real—I’m a huge sucker for a good video essay. I have an entire playlist on YouTube of my favorite video essays that is currently 161 videos long (with the most recent one being hbomberguy’s video on plagiarism). Video essays are right up my alley: they’re long, so I don’t need to worry about clicking off and finding another video sooner than I have to; they’re often informational and/or entertaining; and most importantly, they’re just something I can have on in the background while I work when I’m bored of music and rewatching Grey’s Anatomy for the third time.
Most of the video essays in my playlist are made by YouTubers who engage in long form content, which according to Google’s “Google Ads Help” support article is a video that’s longer than 10 minutes. I usually personally define it as longer than half an hour, since Google’s definition pertains to ads on videos and how they define long or short videos.
Video essays can be about anything: drama in certain communities, specific themes in TV shows, summary videos for shows or movies, theory videos, iceberg videos, historical videos, videos focused on specific phenomena and so on. I tend to lean more towards videos focused on media, but I’ve delved into the others as well before.
Today, I want to give my recommendations for some of my favorite long form content creators (in no particular order)! I love the videos these YouTubers release, and I hope you all give them a chance!
Sarah Z
Sarah Z (pronounced “Sarah Zed”) is a Canadian YouTuber who I discovered through the video essay “What Went Wrong with Dear Evan Hansen” (I watched a good deal of videos on the subject, haha). Most often, Sarah does videos on various fandom subjects, such as “The Rise and Fall of Teen Dystopia,” “An Exhaustive Defense of Fanfiction” and my personal favorite, “The ‘Author’ of My Immortal Emailed Me, And Then It got Worse.” She’s also done videos on less fandom-focused subjects, too, such as “The Rise and Fall of Replika,” though these are fewer and far-between.
Her older videos from around five years ago are usually in the 10-30 minute range, though her most recent videos are generally 40 minutes or longer, with the longest capping out at two hours and 12 minutes. To me, her videos always seem to be incredibly well-researched, and include a good amount of her opinions on the subjects as well instead of just a summary of whatever the video’s about.
Mike’s Mic
Mike is an Australian YouTuber, mostly focused on recap and review videos. I’m pretty sure I found him through his Glee recap videos (appropriately named “An appropriately unhinged recap of Glee”) since I was bored one day and was looking for videos summarizing shows I was never going to watch on my own. That’s why I also loved his recaps for Pretty Little Liars and his ongoing recap of Gossip Girl.
Mike also does shorter videos on various subjects, ranging from K-pop to meme collections to shorter movie and show reviews. I really like the kind of wit and charm he has, as well as the detail he goes into with the videos he makes on media that I’ll never watch on my own. Especially with his Pretty Little Liars recaps, since I did read the books, so I could pinpoint what made the show different from the books just through the details he provided. We also stan the pinboard he uses in this series!
Also, side note, but I somehow forgot to subscribe to his channel until just now.
Quinton Reviews
I have no clue how I haven’t talked about Quinton Reviews before. He’s probably one of the first YouTubers people think of when they think of media-focused video essays with his famous video essays on the Nickelodeon shows FRED, iCarly, Victorious and now Sam & Cat. I started watching his videos with “The Failure of Victorious” before going back to watch the others in the series, and honestly, I was hooked from the start.
His videos in this series are infamously long, and yes, I have watched all of them at least twice each. For the Victorious ones, at least five. Each video goes incredibly in-depth with both the show, the culture surrounding the shows, online media (such as icarly.com and theslap.com), video games, other merch, music and so on and so forth. I’m always blown away by the details he notices and brings together in the shows and between the shows in the Nickelodeon Cinematic Universe (AKA the NCU). These videos have single-handedly made Victorious trend when they released, as well as actually created memes in the still-lingering fandom.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t watched any of his videos beyond this series, but he does have a lot of them on various subjects, his most well-known ones being related to Garfield. Yes, the cat. I love that for him.
My only gripe with him is incredibly minor: there are sections in his videos known as “Things I Forgot,” in which he recounts, well, things he forgot to talk about either in earlier videos or earlier segments that were already fully recorded and edited. In his video “The Decay of Sam & Cat” we arrive at Thing I Forgot #21 (section 1:53:24-1:57:49), which goes over jumpscare/screamer content and wasn’t warned for. It’s not the most egregious thing ever, but it was frustrating for me since I don’t do well with jumpscares or screamers, though I was thankfully able to figure out that was what the section was because the section started with an easter egg to an old YouTube horror video—a subject that I recently watched a video on despite it terrifying me, but that’s an article for another day. That’s literally the only issue I’ve had with any of his videos, at least that I recall.
Keyan Carlile
Keyan Carlile describes himself as a “20-something white guy commentary YouTuber #17,489,842 (both in chronological order and order of cultural relevance).” I discovered his channel after watching Quinton’s videos over and over enough times that I could quote them, and found that he makes similar content, but for Disney shows. I’m still in the process of watching a lot of his videos, but he has similar depth to his videos as Quinton, which I of course appreciate.
Though, he’s also made videos outside of Disney shows, since my favorite of his so far is “The Rise and Fall of Nickelodeon’s Greatest Series,” which is about the show The Penguins of Madagascar. He also has some shorter videos as well, clocking in at about a half hour each, though again, I’m not as familiar with his works as I am with some of the other YouTubers on this list. With that said, several of his videos are in my watch later list, so I’m looking forward to watching more!
blameitonjorge
I’ve talked about blameitonjorge before in my article about lost media, since that’s the majority of what he focuses on with his videos. Most of his videos are on the shorter end of the long form spectrum, though he does have longer videos as well, such as his video on the lost media iceberg.
His most famous videos, at least by my standard of I heard them outside of the lost media community, are “The Search For Clockman: Nickelodeon’s Mysterious Lost Short” and “The Bizarre Search For Cracks: Sesame Street’s Lost Nightmarish Short.” He also does videos on lost media found each year, specific lost media case files, and things like that.
In addition to lost media, Jorge has videos on internet mysteries, true crime and real-life mysteries, mini documentaries and more. These videos are creepy in all the right ways, if you ask me.
Athena P
Athena is my most recent addition to my favorite long form content creators. She’s best described by what’s in her channel’s description: “WHAT’S UP, BUTT LOVERS? I explore the lore of media people are too afraid to look into (special agent oso, higglytown heroes, etc.) I also watch movies drunk, rank your favorite things, book reports (yeehaw), arts and craps and more commentary NONSENSE!”
I first found her channel when I was recommended her lore video on Word Girl months ago when it was first released by a friend of mine. I’m a sucker for lore videos, and I loved Word Girl as a kid, so I quickly watched through the rest of her videos, and I’ve been a loyal viewer ever since! Also, I find it pretty cool that once she liked one of my posts on tumblr. :)
In addition to lore videos, Athena also does ranking videos, nostalgia videos, book reports and commentary, and one of my new favorite series of hers, “Camp or Cringe,” in which she watches shows and determines if they are camp, cringe, both or neither. As of writing this, I just watched her video on 2018 Heathers last night and thoroughly enjoyed her commentary.
Her videos are a goofy silly time a lot of the time, which I can really appreciate in contrast to some of the more heavy topics some of my other favorite video essays might cover, and I really like her makeup for each individual video. Plus, she writes some of her own music!
Two Hot Takes
Two Hot Takes (abbreviated THT) is more of a podcast than anything, hosted by Morgan and one or two cohosts per episode. Morgan and her cohosts go over posts from Reddit threads such as r/AmITheAsshole and r/relationship_advice, giving their own advice or just sharing some of the funny stories Redditors have shared.
THT is officially a podcast, but I always have the video on, since I tend to lose focus when I’m listening to just audio while working on something. Morgan and her cohosts give some interesting perspectives and share stories of their own, too. I’ll be honest, I’m mostly here for the AITA drama, but I still find myself at ease with Morgan’s hosting.
This is probably the only channel I don’t have a super lot to say about, but please know that I still love this channel.
Midnight Theories
Midnight Theories is kind of iconic to me. I think I’ve seen every single one of their videos by now. While Midnight Theories focuses on a lot of different topics within K-pop, including a review of VIVIZ’s recent comeback, I find a lot of their longer videos most interesting.
Most of their long videos are histories of certain groups, with the most recent addition being the two-part history of After School (three if you include the video on their subgroup Orange Caramel). I really like getting into these deep dives—and they often are pretty deep dives.
Midnight Theories also has videos about controversial groups (with “controversial” being used kind of loosely, mostly defined by the reactions of the Korean public when those groups debuted), K-spiracies, survival shows and some current topics in K-pop like AI groups and scandals. It’s so clear how much research is put into these videos, and I love learning about all of the different topics they cover!
switch1e
Finally, we have switch1e (pronounced switch-ee). I know the least about his channel out of the others, since I’ve only seen a handful of his videos. The videos I have seen of his are almost all Total Drama related, the same way I watch Disney content from Keyan and Nickelodeon content from Quinton.
switch1e’s Total Drama series is something I always look forward to updating, all of them titled along the lines of “A Comprehensive Roast of ___” and certainly delivering on that title. He goes into plenty of detail, which I of course love, and I love the kind of humor he includes in his videos. He also recently released “A Comprehensive Roast of Lemonade Mouth” which was incredibly ironic to me since the literal night before it was released, one of the people in Creative Writing Club said that my short story that we were workshopping reminded him of Lemonade Mouth. So, of course, I immediately watched the roast of it.
So those are some of my favorite long form YouTubers! There are others that I’ve watched that are in my video essays playlist, but these are just the ones that I’m subscribed to. I hope you take the chance to check some of them out!