I’m talking YouTube channels with a few thousand views, streamers with single digit viewers, writers who only get a few reads on their submissions.
Since the fediverse is all about boosting connection to smaller voices, let’s share the love!
You know how modern semiconductor components are made in billion-dollar fabs? Well, you can actually make them in a garage, at least simple ones.
Damn, he’s got a lot of equipment though. I was hoping I could just setup a jig with 2x4s and melt sand with a blowtorch
Most of it isn’t strictly necessary. Like, he has sputtering equipment for making layers that can’t be chemically deposited for example. The one where he makes a MOSFET on camera involves just spin coating with tape and some random motor, a little tube furnace to bake impurities in and chemical etching IIRC.
He uses commercially available blank wafers; you’d need a small arc furnace (or at least a blast furnace and patience when your product is mostly iron) to make silicon from sand and something resembling a meth lab to clean it (and then you’d grow and cut your wafer, but that could be done on a desk I’m sure).
Wait this is incredible.
I don’t even know how to hold a hammer correctly let alone solder a chip, but I might have to try a new hobby.
It didn’t look that hard in the transistor video, actually. His layers were in no way straight or pretty, all that matters is the topology and timing on the baking steps.
Vzedshows is a video game content creator I really enjoy.
Strong Towns is a channel about city planning and urban centres.
Shifter is about urban cycling and focussed on Canadian cities.
Robert Hoskin finds and restores old films. Mostly Japanese ones.
Olden Demon creates cool videos about old Warhammer 40k
Mars Guy does a weekly dive into what is going on with Perseverance on mars. Super interesting.
James Channel is all about retro games and messing around with them.
Grouse House is an Australian absurd comedy group. They make fucked stuff.
Face Full of Eyes does absolutely incredible breakdowns on the aesthetics of games.
Canadiana makes some of the best documentaries about Canada.
Every channel here I believe is under 100k subscribers. So much great stuff waiting to be found.
*Edit: Fixed URLs, if they still don’t work let me know.
Think your links might be broken?
Yeah sorry about that. I just went through and fixed them on desktop. I think I got them all.
Technology Connections for deep dives on seemingly mundane things
Knowing Better and Kaz Rowe for history
Alpha Phoenix for Science
I like how Knowing Better went from “general history” to the “slavery and cults” guy. Dude has found his calling.
The Space Quest Historian does YouTube videos about classic adventure games with full playthroughs, historical deep dives, and creator interviews. He also actually hangs out here in the Fediverse: he’s on Lemmy as @SQHistorian@lemm.ee and on Mastodon as @sqhistorian@dosgame.club.
Also, SQH’s band Error 47 does industrial rock covers of retro game music and is criminally under-subscribed. They’re currently working on an album covering The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, which I’m really looking forward to.
I’ve also been really digging Quake Speedruns Explained lately, which is a really chill dude talking about one of the oldest and most competitive speedrunning scenes around.
I’ve recently started to go through the videos from jauwn. Really funny dives into terrible NFT games and their communities.
My wife told me to put my channel here, but I won’t plug :)
But seriously though, I love the content from 4hardy! For AOE fans he’s a legend: https://www.youtube.com/@4Hardy
Be your own favorite small time creator and plug away!
Don’t mind if I do! Also, feel free to suggest more ideas + feedbacks. https://www.youtube.com/@FancyGUI
Very pertinent to my current field- lots of version control issues where I work that containerizing could solve more elegantly.
I’ll check out the videos and see if I can learn something!
Hey Great to hear it could be relevant! Let me know how it goes, and feel free to reach out here!
It isn’t exactly low thousands, but I followed it since they had about 2000 subscribers.
Magcarjoe does Pokémon videos. His animation, (purposefully) shitty photoshop, humour, all of it I find hilarious. He’s definitely extremely talented.
Crackermilk has gotten bigger, but with the quality and quantity of hilarious absurd little sketches they put out, I feel like they are still insanely underrated. Much too high for this question, but I still want to mention them.
I’m surprised that Penny Pixel’s YouTube channel isn’t more popular. They create pixel-perfect parodies of old 8-bit games.
My favourite is a video of the ‘Sierra’ adventure game Joker, based on the Batman movie of the same name. But there’s also California Games 2018 (where you compete in events like fidget spinning and drone flying) and Mamma Mia! Kart Racer (which is actually worse than it sounds – don’t say I didn’t warn you!).
The Elden Ring Tiger Electronics LCD game is pretty fun.
Blame Society Films: https://youtube.com/@blamesocietyfilms
Their “Welcome to the Basement” videos have really awoken my passion for older films. They’re hilarious.
Um… so idk if you heard of this game called FTL: Faster than Light, basically its a rogue-like, real time strategy game involving space exploration.
So one of the the youtube channels that plays FTL that I’ve been watching is Rand118. Well he’s more of a streamer rather than a youtuber, but he reuploads his twitch content to youtube (I like pausing a lot so I never watch livestreams). Idk why I watch this dude, like it’s not very “high quality” but I guess when I first played FTL, I watched 2 channels, and one of them was LethalFrag and the other is Rand118, so I kinda just occasionally watch Rand118 for the nostalgia.
Also, the other channel is Andrew Colunga, which has this 40-episode youtube series that tells a story of a Kestrel ship and it’s called:
FTL Kestrel Adventures, if you’re a FTL fan you should check it out.
But I’m not sure if anyone on Lemmy is an FTL fan, the reddit sub kinds went back to normal. I missed those niche subs.
Love FTL- one of the most unique takes on rogue-lites I’ve ever seen.
Nothing was more frustrating than trying to win hard with Stealth C
Joe’s Classic Video Games, two brothers who repair old arcade machines. Their videos are usually in a long format so you’ll see the whole process. They explain what they’re doing and talk about the history. Really good to watch when you have a spare couple of hours.
I’m a big fan of Reel Knewz on YouTube. They only have about 1.5k subscribers, but they’re the closest thing I’ve found to All Gas No Breaks/Channel 5 since the news came out about Andrew Callaghan.
Shameless self plug incoming!
I know this post said YouTube, but throwing this small twitch streamer. He’s done GTA RP, but has been streaming horror games. Check him out. https://www.twitch.tv/somewayz?sr=a