#CJ the X

[nachosforfree]

I like to think they're counting down to something sinister

[oof-i-did-it-agaaiiin]

^what they said

[evertomorrowart]

Best of YouTube 2023

Yes, I did spend the first week and change of January on this. I wish I could have had it done for New Years, but too many people came out with incredible work in December, so waiting turned out for the best.

What these creators do are a huge influence on my life, I would honestly have difficulty doing what I do without them. That isn't to say that my favorites of the year are *only* on this image--It was almost impossible to narrow down my favorites. Many creators I wanted to include couldn't fit on a single page, and too many of them made more than one video I wished I could draw too!

But, to all of you, thank you for what you do. You're an inspiration.

For those who don't know, further is an explanation.

At the bottom center is an artistic masterpiece by Defunctland: "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History." Over the last several years, Defunctland has risen from delightfully-entertaining commentary on decommissioned theme park attractions to occasionally dropping profound statements on the creation of art itself. "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History" is worth treating like the cinematic experience it is: No second screen, you sit your ass down in front of a TV, set down the phone, and then you *watch it.* Any Disney, theme park, or independent film fan needs to pay attention to this one.

Bottom left is Caelan Conrad with their piece "Drop the T - The Deadly Consequences of Gay Respectability Politics." While I do think they've done more visually or artistically-daring pieces before, "Drop the T" is one of the most important videos released on YouTube in today's current climate of hate. We as queer folk (and our allies) need to understand how integral every identity of the queer experience has been since the start of the Civil Rights movement (and before!). While we are not identical, we *are* inseparable, and we deserve having our real history easily accessible.

TERFs and other conservative mouthpieces need not reply. Your opinions are trash. 😘

I cannot stop watching and rewatching this video by @patricia-taxxon, "On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People." It's not just a defense of furry fandom and its eccentricities, it's a thoughtful and passionate analysis of what the artform achieves that purely human representation can't. Patricia goes outside of her usual essay format to directly speak to the viewer about the elements that define furry media (the most succinct definition I've ever heard) and just how *human* an act loving animal cartoons really is.

As an artist who can draw furry characters, but never really got into erotic furry art, this video is a treasure. Why did I choose to have her drawn as a Ghibli character, hanging out with one of the tanukis from "Pom Poko?" Guess you'll have to watch, bruh.

Philosophy Tube continuously puts out videos that I would put on this list--I'm not even sure that "A Man Plagiarised my Work: Women, Money, and the Nation" is the best work she released in 2023. However, this video got many conversations going between myself and my partner, and the twist on the tail end of the video shocked us both to such a degree that I had no choice.

At the very tail end of the year, Big Joel released "Fear of Death." On his Little Joel channel, he described it as the singularly best video he's ever done, and I'm inclined to agree. However, for this illustration, I ended up repeatedly going back to a mini-series he did earlier in the year: "Three Stories at the End of the World." All three videos are deeply moving and haunting, and I was brought to tears by "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot." While it may be relatively-common knowledge that the original Gojira (Godzilla) film is horror grappling with the devastation America's rush to atomic dominance inflicted on Japan, Big Joel still manages to bring new words to the discussion. Please watch all three of the videos, but if, for some reason, you must have only one, let it be "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot."

Y'all. Let me confess something. I hate football. I hate watching it, I associate seeing it from the stadiums with some of my worst childhood experiences, I despise collegiate and professional football (as institutions that destroy bodies and offer up children at the feet of its alter as a pillar of American culture)--

I. L o a t h e. Football.

But.

F.D. Signifier could get me to watch an entire hour-plus essay on why I should at least give a passing care. AND HE DID IT. I might think "F*ck the Police," the two-parter on Black conservatism, or his essay on Black men's connection to anime might be "better" videos, but this writer did the impossible and held my limited attention span towards football long enough to make a sincere case for NFL players--and reminds us that millionaires can *in fact* be workers. That alone is testament to his skill.

Sit down and watch "The REAL Reason NFL Running Backs Aren't Getting Paid." Any good anti-capitalist owes it to themselves.

CJ the X continuously puts out stunning, emotional videos, and can do it with the most seemingly-inconsequential starting points. A 30 second song? An incestuous commercial? Five minutes of Tangled? Sure, why not. Go destroy yourself emotionally by watching them. I'm serious. Do it.

Their video Stranger Things and the Meaning of Life manages to to remind us all why the way we react to media does, in fact, matter. Yes, even nostalgia-driven, mass-media schlock. Yes, how we interact with media matters, what it says about us matters, and we all deserve to seek out the whys.

Folding Ideas has spent the last few years articulating exactly why so much of our modern world feels broken, and because of that his voice continuously lives rent-free in my brain. While the tricks that scam artists and grifters use to try to swindle us are never new, the advancement of technology changes the aesthetics of their performances. Portions of Folding Ideas' explanations might seem dry when going into detail of how stocks work in This is Financial Advice, but every bit of it is necessary to peel back the layers of techno-babble and jargon and make sense of the results of "Meme Stocks."

Jessie Gender puts out nothing but bangers, her absolute unit of a video about Star Wars might be my new favorite thing ever, but none of her work hit so profoundly in 2023 than the two-parter "The Myth of 'Male Socialization'" and "The Trauma of Masculinity." There's so much about modern life that isolates and traumatizes us, and so much of it is just shrugged off as "normal." We owe it to ourselves to see the world in more vivid a color palette than we're initially given.

Panels drawn after Kate Beaton and "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands."

"This is Not a Video Essay" is one of the most intense and beautiful pieces of art I've ever put into my eyeballs. Why do we create? What drives us to connect?

I don't even know what else to say about the Leftist Cooks' work, it repeatedly transcends the medium and platform. Watch every single one of their videos, but especially this one.

The likelihood you are terminally online and yet haven't heard of Hbomberguy's yearly forrays into destroying the careers of awful people is pretty slim. Just because it has millions of views doesn't mean that Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" isn't worth the hype. Too long? Shut up, it has chapters and YouTube holds your place, anyway. You think a deep dive into a handful of creators is only meaningless drama? Well, you're wrong, you wrong-opinion-haver. Plagiarism is an *everyone* problem because of the actual harm it creates--the history it erases, the labor it devalues, the art it marginalizes--which you would know if you watched "Plagiarism and You(Tube)".

Watch. The damn. Video.

In fact, watch all of them!

Thanks for reading this if you did.

[genderqueeradrien]

[meraarts]

I love you Jenny Nicholson I love you Sarah Z I love you Contrapoints I love you hbomberguy I love you Quinton Reviews I love you Quinn Curio I love you CJ the X

[simplepotatofarmer]

i feel like tumblr would really like this one

[dova-70]

[doomdoomofdoom]

Apparently there's currently discussion in science (humanities in particular) about whether video essays could be accepted as academic writing on par with the academic papers we currently have

I think that's awesome as fuck tbh

[kinowoah]

Hoodie Niji 41

{Overgrowth by cjthex on her hoodie)

[mjlor-chan]

who are your top 5 favorite YouTubers ?

I linked some videos that I like from them

⭐FUNKe⭐ ⭐Shenpai⭐

⭐Noodle⭐ ⭐CJtheX⭐ ⭐MistySparkles⭐

[mishamike]

Life went on.

[cometiny]

I completely forgot to post this one cuz I wasn't super happy with it, but I'm not working on it anymore so I'm done. here you go

[juniusgirl]

Someone talking about their interests: "sorry, you probably don't want to hear all this."

Me, who has 42 video essays on subjects i have literally never thought of before saved to watch later: "you don't know my mind!"

[mothdoesnothing]

sometimes the really cool aesthetic photos come from Pinterest and sometimes JREG and CJ the X eat so hard that you yelp. this is the photo of all time

[jack-fruit]

Slides in

So in light of everything happening, I've seen people reccomending their favorite independent creators (especially queer creators) on YouTube. I'd like to join a few other people in reccomending CJ the X, an artist, musician, and video analyst who focuses a lot on art and its relationship with the entertainment industry in their videos. In fact, I think if you're looking for a fine cheese to pair with the wine of of your Hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows videos you should check out CJ's video "The Kronk Effect"

But op, I hear you ask, what does Kronk have to do with independent art and creation in the face of plagiarism and the exploitation of passionate creators? Well. Watch the video and find out dummy!

[the-bramble--patch]

“What are the aesthetics, what are the actual subcultures that generated these aesthetics—what were they interested in? Like, who were they, you know? And this really icky thing occurred—I’m not here to fight about whether AI is like, intrinsically evil—however, something that made me feel sick to my stomach is now when you look up ‘70s New York Fashion’ you get tons of AI slop, of these smooth fake faces. The idea of the aesthetic and the fashion is presented as this kind of detached aesthetic, like that’s just kind of what it is. So, when you look up 70s New York fashion, they don’t show you the human beings that define that fashion. They don’t bother to show you actual images of humans, they show you the abstracted idea. It’s just this aesthetic, as if it’s just like, you know, one thing on this lazy Susan of random things that things can look like, and the only thing that matters is like, you know, picking it—arbitrarily. Like it doesn’t matter who or where it came from, like who was the originator of that style, or like, what that aesthetic might have represented to them.” -CJ the X, on AI images of history. (49:00)