“When you’re bored, what are your favorite videos to watch on YouTube?” asked by Junior Kelsey Yutan.

Allow me to introduce myself… I am a master procrastinator. Besides school work of course my number one priority in life I frequent the many social medias such as Tik Tok and YouTube. Most notably, YouTube has been a longtime tool of procrastination for me because when it comes down to doing homework or spending a couple precious hours watching YouTube, I will always choose the latter.

My magnum opus spread of YouTube content, I suppose, can only be comprised of the Gods and Goddesses that are; the chefs from Bon Appetit Test Kitchen, Joana Ceddia and Mike from Mike’s Mic. All of these may not be the biggest tubers, or even the brightest, but nonetheless they are my favorite to enjoy at all seasons and times of day, even if that be Sunday night when my homework has not done itself. These channels and content makers are doubly hilarious and entertaining, just with their endearing, questionable and all-outright strange personalities and characters that they make themselves out to be.

Firstly, the BA Test Kitchen staff. What’s amazing about this cast of chefs is the diversity, charisma and transitive nature as one of the only companies on the platform. Before now, there was no kind of food channel of its kind, operating like a TV show with its high editing quality and beautiful array of wingdingy gadgets seen in a truly professional kitchen (because, well, it is).

The show is not special because of its production value, it is special because of the people it features and highlights. The all star team is comprised of the Holy Trinity that is Claire Saffitz (with her show “Gourmet Makes” where she recreates junk food to be gourmet), Brad Leone (with his show “It’s Alive” where he explores how food becomes food, such as hunting, live cultures and kombucha) and Chris Morocco (with his show “Reverse Engineering” where he tastes, smells and touches complex meals in order to recreate them in categories of presentation, preparation and flavor profiles). To add, there is Molly, Carla, Andy, Gaby and other pop-up characters that make each episode worthwhile. These people are some of the most wholesome humans on the face of the earth and have nothing but love to offer to their food and their audience.

Just to give a spotlight to my personal favorite, Claire Saffitz is the gem to the entire channel. Her show, “Gourmet Makes,” is a sacrificial ceremony of the human will. In each, she takes a junk food such as Lucky Charms or Pringles and uses real ingredients to remake them, trying to match the look, texture, taste, etcetera etcetera. Usually taking several days, and many more mental breakdowns, the process is a harrowing, but rewarding one in the end.

Second and third come two of my favorite living memes; Joana Ceddia and Mike from Mike’s Mic. These two reference classic memes like whiteface James Charles and Crocs being high fashion, but are distinct in their own respects with the quality of niche memes.

For one, Joana Ceddia is an 18 year-old Canadian girl who makes very unstructured vlog style videos for a similar-aged audience, always opening with the one-liner “What is up my dudes?” and referring to herself as “John Cena.” For sure, she’s a character. She loves avocados, exercises like it’s a religion, makes a “million” cookies when she gets a million more subscribers, is a masterclass painter and wears stomping glitter boots because they’re fashion. She’s a fun spirited teen in the best way and is fully willing to embarrass herself for the sake of her own entertainment. She’s a wonderful content creator because of how she’s uniquely bubbly and confident, happy with herself and content with what she does.

And finally landing on Mike, a pretty small content creator now, but the algorithm is on the way to explode. For the past five years, he’s been regularly uploading quality videos every week on his show “Mike’s Mic.” He explores the most iconic moments from reality TV shows, general spicy meme reviews (but not millennial memes, we’re talking gen Z abstract ones) and even makes his own  wacky videos that rival those from Joana Ceddia. It’s weird that I can relate so closely to this 20 or 30-something year old Australian man, but very cool that I was able to find his channel and enjoy watching. Just to give you a taste of what he does, his videos have titles like “I would die for Claire from the Bon Appetit test kitchen,” “I tried drawing the plot of Riverdale (season 3)” and “Reviewing the Love Island cast with no context.” All the titles, similar to Jana Ceddia’s videos carry the same energy as the RIP Vine compilations everyone used to obsess over and memorize all of them with their titles like “Vines that keep me from ending it all” and “Vines that butter my eggroll.”

Besides these three main creators, I must recommend Jenna Marbles’ meme reviews and crazy art projects, Karsten Runquist’s film and cinema video essays and Binging with Babish’s foods from TV and film brought to life.

If you have a question you’d like to submit for me to answer (as a joke or seriously), please send them it my email [email protected].