I’ve always strongly disliked Tom, and I don’t really know why.
I love many channels with the same kind of videos, it’s right up my alley, and I should be a fan. But every time I try to watch any of his videos, I stop after a few seconds and think “nah, I can’t stand this guy”.
I’ve forced myself several times throughout the years to watch through whole videos with hope that it’ll pass, but it never does.
Everything else that I don’t like, I can explain why, but not with Tom and his videos.
The closest I can find is that he just seems like such a smug asshole.
I respect him as a creator and know that his videos are good. There’s just something in my brain that strongly reacts to him in a bad way. It so weird. He has covered many topics I’d love to know more about, and I’ve tried to watch those videos and just focus on the information, but I just can’t get past my mental and physical reaction of “stop, get away from this ASAP”.
For me it’s that he likes to go around asking people physics questions that he knows they will fail to answer correctly, only to smugly explain how they’re wrong.
It’s like those videos where they ask Americans to point to countries on a map so we can laugh at how bad they are at geography… if it was made by Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. Thing is I usually know the answers to the questions so I get a kind of second-hand shame because I would totally feel like an arrogant prick if I did people dirty like that.
Yep, same for me. It’s hard to explain. It’s unfair, because it’s so arbitrary, but something about him feels somehow insincere, and it makes me uncomfortable.
For me it was how he would start his videos with asking people what he thought about something them basically going, I’m so much smarter than you here a video of why you are wrong you. Never included people getting it right because it wouldn’t fit his self centered narrative. I heard he’s stopped doing that but I won’t watch to find out.
Vsauce is like that for me. Ever since he tricked people into believing they had actually mutilated and killed people with a train for an experiment possibly giving them real ptsd…
Vsauce for me as well, I like veritasium, because I feel like the questions being asked/answered are legitimately interesting questions/answers. With Vsauce I feel like the whole thing is just about him constructing unnecessarily “out of the box” answers in order to look smart.
For me it’s the way he talks. Like he talks just like the smarmy British presenters and narrators that sound borderline condescending whether that’s their intention or not.
My mate told me that he seems very smug and not very English. I found that quite funny. I don’t particularly dislike Tom but I don’t go out of my way to watch him like others. I still remember his OnlyConnect appearances from way back. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s fine.
It’s interesting how different people interpret attitude in vastly different ways. Because where you (and others I’ve seen in other threads) find him smug and an asshole, I only ever found him to be extremely sincere and excited to learn and educate.
Although, I’d love to know what channels you watch that cover similar topics! Wasting time on YouTube doesn’t feel as unproductive if the videos are educational…
The closest I can find is that he just seems like such a smug asshole.
Check out Tom Scott Plus! He challenges himself a lot on that channel and pushes himself out of his comfort zone! I think it’s a great display of his humility and shows him outside of his usual role as more of a narrator on his main channel.
Some of my favorites from the plus channel are the episodes where he gives his producer a tattoo, overcomes his fear of rollercoasters, and tries to learn wrestling.
Tom Scott, very wholesome guy who has been making weekly ~10 min videos about all sorts of interesting topics for many years. He is one of the og youtube channels
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