Q&A: Being a (somewhat) Edutainment YouTuber

I recently did an interview about operating in the odd space between educational and entertainment content on YouTube, and I though you guys might like to give it a read. There's a lot in here about me personally, as well as my video-making philosophy, and my opinion of what makes for the best educational content. Also, sorry for the content hole being EXTRA dry lately. I promise you, lube is on the way.

Thanks for your continued support!

Q: What caused you to start making content?

A: I have been making YouTube videos for years now, even before my current channels. I have always been inspired by the content that I personally watched. As a kid, I would watch a whole lot of YouTube Poops, and I learned basic editing skills from making my own in Sony Vegas back in the Windows XP days. As my taste in the content that I consumed matured (barely), I would start making videos more and more like what I was watching. None of them ever really took off in any meaningful way until recently. But I've always been a "that's cool, I wanna try" kind of person with everything that interests me, from modding game consoles, to cars, to computers. It's never enough for me to just appreciate cool stuff that other people make, I always feel drawn to test my skills and creative expression and make things myself.

Q: Why did you choose to produce content in the edutainment space?

A: I really have a hard time even thinking of myself as an edutainer. From my POV, I just record the weird experiments that I do with computers, add some stupid effects in post that I think would be funny in the moment, and then throw it on the internet. Even from the very earliest video listed on the Bringus Studios channel, 'Fixing a New 3DS XL's Circle Pad/Joystick', I have never thought of the content I was making as educational, and I've actually tried to avoid the label pretty often, as you can tell from the way I titled that video. I'm not showing you how to fix a 3DS joystick, I'm just showing you me fixing a 3DS joystick. To me there is a HUGE difference in what two different videos with those two different titles should be. If I was making a guide/educational video, I would expect clear explanations, a listing of prerequisite tools, links to resources, attention given to teaching and guiding above all else, etc.

I try not to label myself that way for a few reasons. For one, I don't want to carry the burden of responsibility to do a good job with all of the things that I just mentioned. One, because that's a lot of work and the internet is cruel to those who fall short, and two, because of the video-making philosophy that Linus of LTT follows that I have always taken to heart. I don't know the exact quote, but at some point he said something along the lines of this: YouTube is a free platform. It costs the viewer nothing to watch anybody's videos. So if I am making a similar video to what someone else is making, but my video is worse, why would the viewer not just go watch that person's better video? They would be rewarded for clicking off of my video by getting a better video at no cost to them. And to me, the purely educational/tutorial/guide-oriented tech space on YouTube is completely saturated by players with more experience, better production quality, and better skills than myself. Not to mention that it's also saturated all the way down. For every 'ETA Prime' or 'Modded Warfare', there are 20 other little guys trying to punch up and compete with their own content that's worse (relative to bigger players' content), and most of them are getting nowhere.

And two, I think my strength lies in humor, and exploring humor through the application of technology. I have definitely felt a draw towards wanting to share how I'm doing what I'm doing in an educational sense, but in order to even have people to educate, you have to pique people's interest, a video has to be packaged as something that interests them. Nobody will click on "How To Refurbish And Upgrade A Pacsgear Medical Display Unit With Modern Computer Hardware", but 1.5M people will click on "Gaming on a Medical Display Computer". And that philosophy doesn't just stop at the title and thumbnail. I believe heavily in goal-directed learning. If we want to game on a medical display computer, we have to attack every little thing stopping us on our way to getting there. Each of those steps is an opportunity to learn something, but when packaged as an opportunity to have fun, suddenly people start learning things that they might not have sought out otherwise. For me, those opportunities usually manifest themselves as doing things in the most ridiculous way possible. Half the reason I go into detail explaining things is just so the audience can better understand just how ridiculous something actually is.

And the tech space takes itself waaaaaaay too seriously! The fact that I am willing to play around in a space that takes itself so seriously is a huge boon to my channel, and it massively helps me stand out in my opinion. It's way more fun to run a Minecraft server on a McDonalds ordering kiosk that's running a copy of Linux that I installed with a Homer Simpson flash drive, vs doing it via any of the more effective ways. Something that a motorcycle dealer once told me when I was buying a bike has also stuck with me: "Nobody that comes in here to buy something from me HAS to be here. If you have to go to a car dealership to buy a crappy car at a bad interest rate so that you can drive to your crappy job that you hate, you probably want to get in and out of there and do what you have to do as quickly as possible. But people are always buying a bike to have fun. So we try and have some fun while you're here!". YouTube is no different to me. There's a million other things that you could be doing right now, but you're here watching me on YouTube. YouTube is where I have fun, and having fun is my favorite way to both learn, and teach.

Q: Did you consume edutainment content in your younger years? (e.g. Bill Nye, MythBusters) If so what content?

A: I was really into edutainment stuff when I was younger. You guessed the obvious ones, but in addition to them I watched a lot of PBS Kids. Cyber Chase, Arthur, Magic School Bus, Fetch, Zoboomafoo, pretty much everything that was on from the 90s to 2000s. I also played a handful of educational PC games like the Jumpstart series. My parents put a massive emphasis on exposing me to stuff like that early, and I think that was a really good idea on their part. Every "but why?" I had had some kind of explanation available in the house, from visual encyclopedias to documentaries to Discovery Channel and National Geographic magazines. I would consume up to the limit of whatever my mind was capable of understanding at the time, so I actually had a good mix of edutainment and straight-up educational content that I would consume. I really liked How It's Made, that was my absolute favorite despite being extraordinarily boring to most people and definitely not entertainment!

Q: Do you still consume edutainment content today? If so what content?

A: I do tend to watch some edutainment stuff today. Some of it is topical to what I make videos about, but I actually have a decent spread of interests that I explore, mostly through YouTube. Here are some of the channels that you could consider modern edutainment that I like to watch the most:

Linus Tech Tips - Tech through humor
Any Austin - Public infrastructure in video games
Captain Disillusion - Cinematography & VFX in viral videos
Chubbyemu - Medicine & physiology through mystery
Corridor Crew - Cinematography & VFX through challenges
ElectroBOOM - Electronics and science through humor
f4mi - Tech through humor
Good Work - News and politics through humor
Internet Historian - history through humor
Kyle Hill - Science through humor
Mighty Car Mods - Cars through challenges and humor
Ordinary Things - History and politics through humor

Q: How did your style of content come about?

A: My style arose from taking my initial idea of just recording myself doing whatever I happened to be doing, like fixing a 3DS joystick, and combining it with the only editing skills I had experience with: making YouTube Poops. That's where the visual and auditory gags come from. I also like the low-budget unsophisticated vibe of YouTube videos that I grew up watching, where people were just using whatever skills they had and made whatever videos they could with them. The overhead camera + hands camera setup that most of my videos are filmed in mainly happened by necessity, since I had never had the room to be able to properly film myself. Plus, I have always thought that the attention should be on the subject of the video, which I have always thought of as the device, not myself. I only put myself on camera more often these days because I'm trying to stay competitive in the YouTube algorithm, and it helps with brand recognition. I much prefer either a script + animation, or filming at my workbench.

Q: Who or what were the significant influences on your style of content?

A: My biggest influences by far have been other creators on YouTube. In no particular order:

Mighty Car Mods, NakeyJakey, JonTron, Scott The Woz, LTT, DankPods, Dawid Does Tech Stuff, DougDoug, EmpLemon, I did a thing, Internet Historian, Modern Vintage Gamer, Kurtis Conner, Michael Reeves, William Osman, Ordinary Things, Regular Car Reviews

Q: Did you have experience in the entertainment or education industry before you started making your own content?

A: I don't really have any formal experience in entertainment or education. The closest thing I can think of is acting in shows at a theater when I was growing up at this place that did pretty high-end productions. that probably counts for something. Before doing YouTube I worked in e-waste, and that's where most of my computer experience is from apart from building my own PC to game on in high school.