The Best Video Essays of 2023

Posted 29 Dec 2023

Film and Television

• ★ The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter by verilybitchie. Criticism of Harry Potter is widespread these days, but this video approached it from an angle that I’ve never seen before, discussing how the world-building of the series made it uniquely well positioned to becoming the merchandising juggernaut that it is. (0:38)
• I Watched Ancient Apocalypse So You Don’t Have To by Miniminuteman. An actual archaeologist discusses the silliness of a new “Ancient Aliens” type show. (In four parts!) (0:54)
• What Cop Shows Get Wrong About Fentanyl by Skip Intro. There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about fentanyl and how dangerous it is to innocent bystanders. We can thank cop shows for spreading and reinforcing a lot of this, as Mr. Intro explains in this very special episode of Copaganda. (0:53)
• The Plastic Feminism of Barbie by verilybitchie. If Barbie is a feminist film, exactly what kind of feminism is it preaching? (0:27)
• The Lion King 1 1/2: Judaism, White Pride, and Paranoia by The Sin Squad. “Good lord,” I hear you asking, “hasn’t the video essay outgrown the genre of ‘looking for problematic subtexts in C-tier Disney movies’?” Well, that’s kind of what this video is about, actually. It does discuss how this direct-to-video Lion King sequel explores Jewish themes, but it also reflects on the point of making these kinds of videos in 2023. (0:53)
• “NO CGI” is really just INVISIBLE CGI by The Movie Rabbit Hole. A series documenting the phenomenon of big movie releases widely advertised as using “no CGI”, when in fact all of them use a lot of CGI, including in the scenes that are claimed to be 100% real. First two episodes are out as of this writing. (10:50)
• The Future of Cinema is in the Past by Moviewise. Moviewise created several good videos this year about moviemaking techniques of the past and how today’s techniques differ (and in many cases, are worse for it). This video is about how film aspect ratios have changed over time, and how those changes have influenced composition. (0:19)

Video Games

• ★ Pay to Win: Gambling and the Desire Machine by Jimmy McGee. The first video in a short series that explores how video games (all video games) share ancestry with the gambling industry, and how that legacy continues to affect how they are designed to this day. While many exploitative games have been compared to slot machines recently, McGee shows that the influence runs far deeper and is more insidious than you might have thought. Technically these videos came out in 2022 but I didn’t see them then, so they’re on the 2023 list. Second entry in the series is here. (1:09)
• MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom’s Most Terrifying Mod A detailed examination and analysis of a weird, complicated, and touchingly personal art project built inside Doom. (1:42)
• Who is Chell? Analysing Portal’s Protagonist by Ossy Flawol. Few canonical details are known about Portal’s player character, Chell. Flawol here collects whatever stray information they can locate to attempt to form a picture of the mysterious Test Subject: who she is, where she came from, and how she ended up in Aperture in the first place. (0:21)
• Jurassic Park: Trespasser and the Art of Jank by Monster Closets. “Some games are good. Some games are bad. And some games are Trespasser.” A look at the notoriously strange and broken game Jurassic Park: Trespasser, which tried to do a lot of innovative new things, failed at nearly all of them, and ended up being strangely fascinating as a result. Monster Closets is new to YouTube (24 subscribers as of this writing) so if this sounds intriguing to you please give him a watch! (0:30)

Cyberpunk 2077

Broken on arrival, for the first couple years of its existence Cyberpunk 2077 was discussed primarily in the context of its disastrous launch. In 2023, the game had been stabilized long enough that we finally started to see some discussion of its actual content rather than its context.

• Cyberpunk 2077 and loving a world that hates you by Thane Bishop. “I love this world… it’s just… I don’t know if I was supposed to.” A discussion of the paradoxical position of being completely engrossed by the game’s world, despite the fact that it’s clearly depicted as a horrible dystopia. I can relate. (0:15)
• ★ Cyberpunk 2077 in a World of Ads by Adam Srayi. One of my favorite videos of the year, a chastening look at the ubiquitous (fictional) in-game advertising in Cyberpunk 2077 and what it says about the ubiquitous advertising in our real-world cyberpunk dystopia. (0:13)
• The Rollercoaster Trans Rep of Cyberpunk 2077 by Lily Simpson. Before Cyberpunk was even released there was a small controversy about whether it was misusing trans imagery. But how are trans issues actually represented in the game? And did yours truly manage to completely overlook the game’s explicitly trans character because she’s the one who runs the street races? (Yes.) (0:31)

Science and Technology

• ★ The Future is a Dead Mall: Decentraland and the Metaverse by Folding Ideas. Dan Olsen investigates the stupid, depressing world of virtual reality ghost towns that seem to exist primarily to show advertising to their nonexistant users. (1:49)
• ★ The Man Who Faked Human Cloning by BobbyBroccoli. From the creator of last year’s terrific story of physics fraud, a story about genetics fraud! Learn how one scientist attempted to put South Korea’s scientific prowess on the map by cloning a human being… except he didn’t. (In two parts.) (1:04)
• Oceangate Titan: analysis of an insultingly predictable failure by Alexander the ok. So why did that Titanic sub fail? Learn the facts from someone who actually understands underwater physics, and don’t miss his followup video on the Alvin (the submerisble that found the Titanic in the first place) for an explanation of how a good underwater vehicle is designed and built. (0:21)
• Quick Start: The Unholy Saga of Phoenix Hyperspace by Cathode Ray Dude. CRD’s “Quick Start” was a highlight of the year for me, a series of videos about laptops of the Windows Vista era that attempted to solve the problem of slow bootup by shipping with a second, more limited OS. No one cared about these at the time and few people today remember they existed… so naturally it’s something we need to examine in exhaustive detail! This particular episode was my favorite, showing off a truly depraved solution to this problem that had me laughing with utter disbelief. (1:14)

AI

Inevitably AI was a topic of much discussion this year. Here are a few highlights.

• ★ Doomed To Be Replaced: Is AI Art Theft? by Solar Sands. The first of Solar Sands’s very insightful look at AI image generators from an artist’s perspective, and also includes the best explanation I’ve seen for how they actually work. (0:34)
• Doomed To Be Replaced: What Will AI Replace? by Solar Sands. Despite protests to the contrary, it’s clear that AI will inevitably replace some forms of creative work, whether we want it to or not. In this installment, Mr. Sands attempts to predict what (and who) will likely be in the crosshairs, and takes apart several metaphors applied to AI to determine which is most accurate.
• A.I. Filmmaking is Not the Future. It’s a Grift by Patrick (H) Willems. Willems is possibly the most annoying man in video essays, with a sense of humor that calls to mind 90s educational programs, but he does know his stuff and this is a pretty cogent examination of AI trends in filmmaking and what they mean, paying particular attention to AI-produced parodies of filmmakers like Wes Anderson. (0:45)
• I Used AI in a video. There was backlash. by AustinMcConnell. A counterpoint to the anti-AI hardlining that’s common among creative people, this video asks whether there aren’t some situations where it can be used ethically, and without harm. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says here, but it’s an interesting perspective shift. (0:39)

Art

• Why Clip Art Was Everywhere… Until it Wasn’t by Linus Boman. A nice history of clip art, particularly the type prevalent in the 90s and 00s, but also reaching back to its pre-computer origins. Did this video tempt me to spend silly amounts of money acquiring old clip art books from eBay? Yes it did. But I resisted. (0:28)
• The Lost Art of the World Trade Center The unfathomable amounts of death that occurred on September 11th have rightfully overshadowed any material losses that occurred that day. But they can still be interesting to consider, and this video provides an accounting of the public artworks that were destroyed along with the World Trade Center. (0:31)
• Keith Haring: When Capitalist Consumerism Fails an Artist by lines in motion. How Keith Haring’s legacy in art and activism has been distorted and obscured by corporate interests who have reduced him to a cute aesthetic. (0:13)
• Immersive Van Gogh: Why Art is in Crisis by Broey Deschanel.
• ★ Plagiarism and You(Tube) by hbomberguy. I probably don’t need to highlight this blockbuster of a video but it would be remiss not to mention it. Hbomberguy has turned his attention to his fellow video essayists and revealed widespread plagiarism and lack of respect for others’ creative work. Probably the closest that they Guy has ever come or will ever come to unleashing a metaphorical H-Bomb, this video more or less ended the career of one video essayist who was in fact previously an alumnus of my own yearly list. (3:51)

History and Social Issues

• The Dark Side of Antarctica by Barely Sociable. Antarctica is a horrible place where no one ought to live. Some people live there anyway, and this video documents the ways in which the frozen continent seems to have a knack for driving its inhabitants to commit violence against each other. (0:24)
• The Kennedy Assassination: Inside the Book Depository Probably no other event in human history has been so thoroughly documented and deconstructed as the Kennedy assassination, and this video provides an extremely detailed and beautifully realized explanation of all the people, places, and moments. (1:38)
• The Enlightenment Fraud of Zen Master Rama by Atrocity Guide. You want to learn about a new age huckster, right? Of course you do! Don’t argue, it’s an Atrocity Guide video, guaranteed to be a winner. (1:16)
• This is Financial Advice by Folding Ideas. Dan Olson has once again come for financial grifters, and this time his subject is the GameStop market manipulation scheme from a little while ago. I will admit that even after watching this I still don’t entirely understand what that was all about, but it’s interesting nevertheless. (2:31)
• The Meaning of the Titanic by Sean Munger. Despite the Titanic’s hold on the popular consciousness, it’s not seen as a particularly significant event by most historians. Munger here takes an unusual approach to the sinking, framing it as a manifestation of many cultural transformations going on at the time, from industrialization to the looming outbreak of WWI. (1:44)
• The Brainwashing of America’s Children by Climate Town. A look at how large energy companies are influencing school curriculum in order to insert messages diminishing the importance of climate change. (0:28)
• Planned Obsolescence Will Kill Us All by Unlearning Economics. A thorough examination of the concept of planned obsolescence that also serves as a critique of the specific brand of anti-capitalist rhetoric that appears in many video essays. (1:07)
• Manson: A Geographic History by Sean Munger. The first in what Munger apparently intends to be a series, this video details the history of Charles Manson’s crimes from a geographic perspective, showing the places that figure into the story, where they are in relation to each other, and in what form they exist today. Munger also created a Geographic History about Watergate later in the year. (2:30)

Previous Years

• 2022
• 2021

© by Ivy Lynn Allie.

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