I like science, tech, retro, gaming

You’ll find a lot of that on Nebula. Though the “gaming” in particular is mostly limited to more video essays about gaming, analysis of gaming culture/game development, game design, etc. You’re unlikely to find game tutorials, let’s plays, etc. See channels like Extra Credits, People Make Games, and Razbuten for example. Or the gaming category. One thing I really like about Nebula as compared to Netflix-style “traditional” content streaming platforms is that you can browse their entire library without an account, exactly the same as you would with one.

VLDL

You’ll find much less of that. Dropout might appeal to you though, if Viva does. Dropout is mostly improv comedy, often with a nerdy bent to it. “Um, Actually” is particularly good. I think there’s probably some scripted content on Dropout too, more akin to Viva’s stuff.

but prefer substance over screaming and outrage

You will definitely get this on Nebula. While some of their creators do use rather clickbaity titles and thumbnails, that’s predominantly because they just use the same title & thumbnail that they have on YouTube, and the unfortunate reality is that that’s necessary to get clicks to satisfy the YouTube algorithm. The actual content though is always more considered. It’s one of the defining things about the platform, and it’s part of why they’re invite-only for creators.

The service is half the monthly price of Netflix

It’s $60 annually for a naked sign-up, but $36 annually if you go through a creator’s code. Any creator. There’s literally no reason to ever pay the higher number. That’s $3 per month, though at that price I find it easier to talk about the annual cost than monthly.

Plus, when they last increased prices in September 2024, they also guaranteed existing customers could keep their older prices. They didn’t guarantee that will be true for future new signups on future price increases, but that seems likely.

I’ll be honest, if you’ve looked at their catalogue already and it didn’t appeal to you, that’s unlikely to change after a free trial. If you do end up signing up though, make sure to go through one of the creators’ URLs. You get a much better price that way.

For me, when I first signed up for it 2 or 3 years ago, the thing that finally made me pull the trigger was Tom Scott’s Money, the social game show that was, at the time, Nebula-exclusive. But there were probably 5 or 6 other channels I already regularly watched on YouTube too, like Wendover/HAI, Lindsay Ellis (who has since basically left YouTube and exclusively uses Nebula), and Patrick H Willems. And in the time since, they’ve added like 10 or more channels that I already watched on YouTube, such as Not Just Bikes, Angela Collier, TLDR News, Legal Eagle, and Tantacrul. It’s also helped me rediscover creators I once watched but stopped for no particular reason, like Cult Tennis (which is fantastic even though I have no real interest in the sport of tennis otherwise) and Medlife Crisis; and new channels I first discovered thanks to Nebula, like CityNerd, Linus Boman, and ReligionForBreakfast; and channels I had seen once or twice on YouTube but never regularly watched, but Nebula made me realise are regularly putting out good stuff, like People Make Games (if you haven’t seen it already, I assume their two videos about the Rockstar union busting are on YouTube and highly recommend those) and Razbuten.

I think their biggest problem is lacking a free trial

They have a 3 day free trial by default. And members can also give out a limited number of “guest passes” which act as a 1 week free trial.

I suspect their closed model is because it’s very expensive to host that data, and they want to make sure that whoever they put up there is worth spending the money on

That’s probably part of it. It’s also a marketing tactic. They’re positioning themselves as a premium service. They want customers to know that if something is on Nebula it’s going to be good. Similar to the way Apple positions themselves as premium by not selling a $200 smartphone, or Mercedez-Benz, or Louis-Vuitton.

It’s also about trust. One of the things they’re trying to do with Nebula is to provide creators a space to safely discuss controversial topics without censorship. But with that, along with the fact that they have a coop-type structure, comes the need to be able to trust that the people uploading on their platform aren’t gonna be Nazis.

The advantage of the fediverse is how well it should be able to scale, thanks to its federated nature. A big part of the problem with YouTube is that its large scale but centralised nature means that they just throw AI at the moderation problem, and it is infamously terrible. Censoring important conversations and sensitive subjects, while letting through actual child abuse. And because it’s centralised, users (both viewers and creators) don’t have an easy option to turn somewhere else without losing the whole network effect.

It’s compounded by the fact that the majority of monetisation on there is driven by advertising. Direct funding via a Patreon-like model (optional payment to receive some minor bonuses, primarily for supporting the creator), a Nebula-style model (subscription to access content), or a BATish model (forget most of the actual details of BAT, especially the crypto, but imagine a system—which could be voluntary or mandatory depending on the individual system, creator, or piece of content—in which users stick a bunch of money into a wallet, and it is automatically shared with the creators whose content they are viewing in some fair manner). Not having actual advertisements, combined with better, more local moderation decisions, would help stave off the biggest problems with YouTube.

The “making money” bit doesn’t need to be imported, necessarily. It’s not an end unto itself. But if we want a large amount of high-quality content, while society is capitalistic, then it does. Because high-quality content takes a lot of time to produce, and not many people can afford to do it as a hobby. The scenario you’re describing means that who have the skills to do it could do it while making money on YouTube or Patreon, or they could do it for free on the fediverse while not making money (or making money in a more conventional job, creating the stuff that we love them for only in their spare time—limiting the quantity they can produce).

Honestly the best YouTube alternative at the moment is Nebula. The problem is that it’s a closed system. You can’t just make an account and start uploading, you have to be invited. So the range of content is fairly limited compared to YouTube. But unlike many other platforms, it is designed to be fairly general-purpose. There are some excellent individual creators’ platforms, like Dropout, Viva+, Club TWiT, etc. But you only get a single creator/team’s videos on those. Dropout is improv comedy. Viva+ is sketch comedy. Club TWiT is tech news. Whereas Nebula is more of a coop owned by tens of different creators with content including news, media analysis (including film, games, and music), politics, science, short films, game shows, and more. It’s not federated, but it’s independent and worker owned-ish.

The former DDR is actually shockingly visible in a lot of maps of Germany. Electoral voting preferences (especially looking at AfD, die Grunen, and die Linke), various economic indicators, average size of farms, vaccine rates (data I’m seeing is from 2009, may or may not still be true today. This is actually one of the few indicators where the east wins), religion (particularly non-Christian).

This article shows a bunch of factors.

As does this video.

You can even get it within a single city. Sydney’s “Red Rooster line” is a well-known example here in Aus.

I’m sorry, but “he described the people with no mouths as having no mouths” is a bullshit reason. Just…don’t make accusations like that. It’s a shitty thing to do.

If you want to ask a polite question, that’s one thing, but going on and on through a thread trying to persuade someone else of a completely baseless and unfair accusation is really low behaviour.

And if you had been right, what then? What would you have gained? Weigh the consequences of your actions. When the potential upside is almost-nil, and the probability you’re right is a complete toss-up, it’s not worth it.

You’re right, it’s just me 😊

I actually tend to do these less verbose than what I’ve seen is common with others. I concentrate first on getting across the specific message of the post, and second on describing details that help get across the mood.

The wide shot is an important detail, because it explains why we didn’t see the other subjects in the first frame. The lack of visible mouth felt important to me because it contrasts with the smile in the first frame, the lack of smile (or indeed any mouth) gives it a weirder feeling.

Your initial comment seemed like a fairly innocent question and I was happy to answer it, but seeing the thread continue, it’s looking more like a baseless accusation. And that’s dickhead behaviour. Don’t do that. To me, or to others. It’s extremely rude, and honestly provides nothing of value. It’s especially galling to be accused when I’m spending my effort trying to make this a more inclusive space.

Nope, just me! 😊

Back on Reddit, I was a co-mod of a sub with the guy who founded the “transcribers of Reddit”, and that helped instill in me an appreciation for the value of accessibility.

It’s not too hard to do and I’d encourage anyone to give it a go. There’s no need for perfection, and you get a better sense of it as you get used to doing it.

Mastodon and Pixelfed both yell at users to provide alt text for their own posts, but unfortunately Lemmy’s devs don’t seem to have quite the same care for accessibility.

Interesting. What client are you using? It displays fine for me in lemmy-ui (the default Lemmy web app).

I hope this helps rather than being pedantic & annoying?

Absolutely it does! Unfortunately Lemmy and Piefed clients are…inconsistent, at best, when it comes to how some of the finer points of syntax get parsed. Spoiler text is among the worst contenders, because of how non-standard the syntax is (second-worst contender: superscript & subscript). I’ll try adding in the newlines and hopefully it won’t cause any extra problems, but I can’t guarantee it’ll help.

No, I was originally comparing two scenes in one episode of a TV show to a four-panel comic. But in retrospect, I only really needed to compare the first of those two scenes to the four-panel comic. The rest of Troy’s arc is an added bonus, but only the first scene of it is needed to establish the Good Will Hunting comparison.

Yes, and so is this comic. I just think Community did it much better.

Yeah, this comic is just a worse version of Troy’s plot from English as a Second Language.

edit: the whole arc, starting in ESL, ending in Introduction to Finality