Its interesting you mention Destin from Smarter Every Day, because he always came off as a very earnest learner in his videos. Yeah, he's still putting on a show, but it does seem like he genuinely enjoys and revels in the things that he does. It seems to me like Veritasium has a more contrarian thread of: "Oh, you thought the world worked like that? Well you were wrong, and here's a 15 minute video all about how you were wrong." There's an Onion video making fun of Vox that touches on this perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18

I guess to summarize, with Destin it feels like you are learning with him and Veritasium feels like you are being lectured.

Funny. Veritasium actually has some videos talking about why he has this approach :)

I saw something similar all the time as a dance teacher: explaining stuff and showing over and over made the students feel like they learned a lot. But they just didn't. It was mostly a total waste of time. I switched to showing ONCE then they had to try. Then I showed again. The speed of learning went up dramatically. The problem I had then was that the students didn't like it!

"Make people believe they're thinking and they'll love you. Make them actually think, and they will hate you."

See, I’ve heard that, but I like being challenged. I like to have to “pause and ponder” as the excellent Youtuber 3Blue1Brown puts it, but Vertiassium is just annoying.

Challenged? Or feel like you're being challenged?

It'd be nice with a real scientific test! There's a lot of subjective feeling here and not anything very solid. Veritasium at least backs up his position with his own thesis research. I find that more compelling as an argument than having a position not backed up by anything at all.

Hey, I also don't like chocolate all that much, and I seem to be some kind of inexplicable alien because of that. So, it's very possible "it's just me" that I don't like good things because curmudgeon. :)

I see the distinction you make there now that you point it out.

To me the videos feel like a sustained form of clickbait. I keep expecting a payoff at the end of the video, but instead he sort of weaves together a grand narrative that nevertheless feel unfulfilling to my analytical mind. Take this video for instance. In the beginning he talks about analog computers and how they differ from digital computers. Then he talks about how neural networks work. Then he explains how neural networks could be better if they used analog values. But he doesn't ever get around to proving the title of the video ("we're building computers wrong"). He doesn't even convincingly show that we could build an analog neural network given current technology. His video format is just a lofty premise, a middle full of glossed-over science, and a disappointing conclusion with no hard takeaways.

I did like the impossible to measure the speed of light one, even though it has Smarter Every Day.

Ok that one has something I can identify clearly: The way Justin (Smarter Every Day) seems to be just badly hamming up the whole "this is so weird and hard to visualize" as though to pander to the audience who are expected to be baffled by the idea being presented. That was Justin though not Veritassium.

I agree with what you point out about this one.

Destin not Justin sorry. Derpyderpderp.