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For the past decade I've been waking up to a new Tom Scott video every Monday. The positivity and curiosity helped me start my week. I'm really going to miss it.

It feels like a bit of 'old internet' died with him, where he's always been an internet optimist and someone who has lived through basically all of it. He stuck to his principles through all of it. And I guess that has become a rarified breed.

Him taking a step back feels like a bit of that old internet of the curiosity, community and creativity of the early days of the internet go with him. Mind you he's not going anywhere except the people he cares about and I completely understand the choice he made, and I only wish the best for him, so this is just me attempting to explain why it feels so confronting and kind of sad. For me it goes beyond 'oh there just won't be anymore of those videos then', which I can live with although it would be sad to see those go. It's his personality that has, through the entire history of youtube and the many, many changes it went through, stuck to the principles of its first ever users. Be curious, be authentic, and generally just try shit out and see if it works.

I'm sure that core of the personality he showed on screen will never really go away, other people will carry that torch. But it's ok to be a little sad to see someone wave off like this. It shows us all how much we enjoyed it all these years.

Also as a MINOR sidenote on the meme, he never refused to explain, you couldn't stop this man from explaining if you tried lol

Which is..?

I was thinking about this earlier. I'm not sure the OBE would consider his achievements to be noteworthy. If you look at other notable recipients, they all had careers spanning many decades, and the ones in entertainment all have backgrounds in more "classy" vocations (theater, film, music). I'm not sure they'd consider "some guy posting videos on the Internet" (from their perspective) to be of sufficient pedigree. That, and occasionally poking fun at the government and royalty probably hasn't put him very high on the list.

However, i think that even if he was offered knighthood, he'd probably decline it, either because he thinks he doesn't deserve it or because he would be too nervous or embarrassed to accept it.

What's he doing?

I hear this gif

Mostly short form explainers about interesting subjects, presented in a sort of breathless British TV presenter style. Like a young Attenborough but less posh. Pretty good channel.

Hard to pin Down. Most of his stuff is going to unique and unusual places and customs and why they end up like that. But he also does some pretty great videos on linguistics and computer science.

I would say the best to describe his content is that he is a journalist doing those old school "general interest" style news stories.

My best answer would be for you to go to his YouTube channel, find a video that even mildly piques your interest, and watch him. Like the other person said, he's hard to pin down because he doesn't cover one specific field of interest, but he does make sure to research everything he's talking about. He can even make talking about poorly designed road intersections interesting.

I bet they have. Tom Scott is just too pure.

Hell, he even said as much. That he'll most likely make some more videos. It's basically just a departure from the feeling of obligation to keep up a weekly schedule.

Though, he's not even leaving content creation. He's still got plenty of other projects running. That makes him less likely to hop back on than most, since he's actually got real other plans

It's not about viewership at all imo. It's extremely hard to completely change your lifestyle after 10 years of exact same work. I bet he'll be back very soon, perhaps on random schedule, but still doing the same stuff