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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I remember asking at some point what seemed to make Tom Scott so successful compared to the thousands of others who have probably tried to make it big on Youtube/social media. Was it the format/length/style, the topics, the camera work, the commentary/research, etc?

I think the consensus was that he came out with generally interesting content, but most of all, predictably and sustained, which generated viewership. Interesting how that can be the main factor -- maybe both in keeping people's interest, but also developing the skills to create content that was improving each time and becoming more engaging. And I guess he points to that explicitly in this last video, where he says he challenged himself to make it his real job. For 10 years.

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There’s something grounded in a very particular kind of 1980s/90s BBC Television content in the values Tom Scott’s videos embody. It’s sort of like he managed to give himself a job roleplaying as a Blue Peter/Tomorrow’s World presenter. He basically carried forward the kind of Reithian ‘mission to inform’ BBC values that largely disappeared in the John Birt era and somehow brought them onto YouTube.

IIRC in one of his videos, he explicitly said he was modelling himself on the Blue Peter style he grew up with. If I had to guess, somewhere in this video, but I'm not watching 17 minutes again even at double speed just to make a comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUF4afxMpQk

He tried and AFAICT failed to do TV in the past — this is probably not a bad thing given how the tides have changed.

I have always found his patterns of speech interesting. Quite measured but untrained.

I've never met him but I know a few people who have and I'm told that he's exactly the same in person (at least at a formal dinner!) which probably tracks.

Which is interesting because he graduated with a degree in linguistics, so it's something he understands quite well.

Yeah this makes sense to me. He covered interesting and unique topics, and posted about them on a regular basis. That's extremely difficult to do in any medium, let alone something like video where filming and editing demands are significantly higher and a well researched piece just takes far longer to put together.

I'd imagine he hasn't been editing the bulk of his content for a while.

Consistency in quality and other metrics is the key, I think.

People like McDonald's because it's filled with sugars, salts and fats but also because they know what they're getting and it's (mostly) consistent from visit to visit.

I think Tom was also one of the earlier "cool/casual science & technology" channels and was probably actually one of the main drivers of this type of content. The only downside is that as other people have mentioned in comments, this type of content has gotten more popular, which seems great at first but it ends up being treated as entertainment rather than provoking thought and really being absorbed (not Tom's fault, just the way the average person consumes).

It really took me a surprising amount of time to notice the difference between his channel (and similar other actual content creators like Veritasium) and the many many other channels where some guy pretty much regurgitates information he did with only desk research, showing about 200 short stock footage clips while voicing over from some bedroom.

I suppose it just goes to show how easily you can be on autopilot and not appreciating or being able to tell actual journalism or original content from junk.

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