Sometimes you want to take time to make a nice meal. Sometimes you want to warm up a hot dog in a minute.

I’m an alcoholic and I like putting dumb shit on when I’m drunk

I'm autistic so perhaps I'm more tolerant to repetitive content. I tend to follow reaction and commentary channels because they sorta help me navigate through social situations, and I consider them to be the judges of the situations, especially when they're well trusted. Being comedic is a bonus.

To be honest the only reason I watch moist critical is because his content makes me feel like I’m hanging out with a friend. It’s like when your friend is showing you something funny or stupid.

I think you may be asking to the wrong demographic... I doubt Lemmy's userbase overlaps much with the following these youtubers have.

But, I might be wrong and/or you may get a reply from someone who knows one of these viewers personally

What are unnecessary jokes? Are there such things as necessary jokes? Have you ever been in a situation where you need a joke? What happened if you didn't get it?

It helps people relax and feel good, basically. In a similar vein, there's no informational content in a sitcom and yet they continue to be made. Some people enjoy crocheting or playing guitar hero, even though they might not be learning much from them. Personally I like a good blend of entertainment and education, but I also don't really try to justify to myself why I might enjoy one person's videos over another's, it might even come down to the voice or some other entirely subjective factor really.

Have any names? I’m with you in the fact that I don’t understand watching someone play a game or “react” to videos. I do love a bunch of different creators though like MKBHD, Good Mythical Morning, Hot Ones (first we feast), Cold Ones, Dave2D, Gugafoods, there’s more but you get the idea if you check those out.

I completely agree. I get the most generic version of the homepage most of the time (logged out + clearing cookies often). And I am always wondering with at least half the stuff on the front page: Why did someone put time/effort into this? Why all the low-effort acting out of humor-free skits and pranks? Why tell people about their relationship to some other creator falling apart? Why create excessively long "podcasts" where people just ramble about either nothing or about topics that they did not research?

There are obviously "creators" who have actual topics and a script. I mostly enjoy watching them. They usually still stretch out their content more than necessary and I am still not enjoying the obligatory "and so we banded together to create Nebula!" ad.

I am guilty of occasionally watching phone reviews. The topic is low-brow consumerism and their content can usually be condensed to "black slab now with better camera". But they are at least shot and scripted pretty well and are not excessively long.

And that's not the same for regular TV. The signal/noise level there seems a lot better.

Certain voices make brain release good chemicals.

If I could make those good chemicals be released in another cheap way, I would do that.

I don't watch like react channels, but watch lots of like let's plays and video game content. Some of it is super repetitive and I'll admit nothing noteworthy happened or was said.

Brain still says need to watch for good chemicals.

The only ones I really follow are Game Grumps, but only sometimes and I like how they put it when they addressed some criticism - "We're comedians playing video games, not gamers doing comedy."

A lot of people watch YouTube in the same way your grandparents had the TV on seemingly all day. It makes for a good something when you aren't looking for anything in particular. And for that market, the most popular content is simply going to be whatever casts the widest net and thus rakes in the most people. Like sure, there's a dedicated fan base that just absolutely loves watching one let's player break down because another guessed "the Metropolitan mutant of ark" in wheel of fortune for the Xbox, but most people don't find that content relatable. But generic content? By it's own nature, everyone is going to have whatever entry-level acculturation is necessary to understand the enjoyment of it, and thus, a non-discerning audience eats it up.

You can't get Alan Becker and his team content anywhere else other than his channel. Also, I've followed his works ever since the first Animation vs Animator came out.