These Are the Best YouTube Channels on the Internet

Here we are, friends. The end. The final curtain. We stand on the edge of history's canyon and we gaze forward into the sparkling night's sky of the future, marvelling at its limitless possibilities. But to build new things, to make room for progression, we must say goodbye to the old, that which has gathered dust, so it can be sold from the car boot of life to a strange man in a strange coat.

Yes, it's time to bid farewell to YouTube Channel of the Week, my regular opportunity to let you, the readers, in on the secrets of the world's greatest website. Well, some were secret, others had millions of followers, but a lot of them were secret, I swear!

What has this 30-week adventure into the deep belly of the internet's most precious cultural lightning rod taught us? Where have we gone? What have we learned? Who have we met over the course of this phantasmagorical 720p HD journey? Let's have a cute little retrospective before we kill this thing for good.

In the opening edition of YouTube Channel of the Week we observed Jolie Olie, or

CustomGrow420

, the stoner to top all stoners. When we last met Jolie he was operating at an impressive 599,506 subscribers. Now he has 1,027,598 – almost double. This was an inevitability. Jolie was always destined for stardom. He has

it

. Some YouTubers don't quite have it; they don't have the panache.

A week later saw us visit Ted Barrus, who has seemingly let his chilli eating fall by the wayside in favour of a new channel in which he just smokes a lot of weed and puts a lot of effects on his videos. Though it isn't quite the content progression I was personally hoping for, he seems a lot happier now that he has the herb in his life and isn't regularly attacking his own person with spicy meat, which can only be a good thing.

Others with that Jolie Olie star power, however, are also flourishing. When we first met Joey Hernandez, AKA,

JoeysWorldTour

the glutton for hire was steadily climbing with 86,918 subs. He's currently at 140,813, with the majority of his new fans posting explicitly sexual comments below his videos. There is, in my opinion, no way that Joey does not see these, nor do I believe that he doesn't take heed of the criticisms of his gross behaviour when eating. No – I believe Joey does all these things on purpose, as I think he's is attuned to the phenom of the "hate view". People flock back to Joey because the sound of him grunting while he chews, and the sight of the ground up mush being flicked around his mouth by his tongue, enrages them, and people online are suckers for anger.

Young Brittany Venti is also a glutton for punishment. The reverse troll character would pretend to cry on Twitch streams to provoke the ire of women-hating mouth-breathers, but all that abuse ran off her like water from a duck's back. Twitch re-uploads have been important to YouTube's gaming community, from the speedrunning crew accruing millions in donations to their events, to editor extraordinaire CrowbCat who exposes the strangeness of an industry built to sell to adults who act like children.

We've had the impotent rage of men on the series, too.

Cycledub

, the irate Irish Go-Pro cyclist who believes his life is constantly in jeopardy from children walking in cycle lanes, was a particularly fun edition as it encouraged swarms of double-think bike guys to natter away in the comments section, saying mad things like, "Would you write this article if my kids had no dad because I got smashed by a Range Rover?" It's always about their kids having no dad.

On the calmer, yet still irritating, end of the bloke-rage spectrum sat Pat Condell, a decidedly creepy orator who espouses hatred for the "progressives" in this world, demanding his right to be upset at Islam as the sound of his dry, old man mouth acts as a horrifyingly potent dog whistle to your unsuspecting ears.

We've had food, we've had food challenges, we've had other types of challenges, we've had angry vegans, we've had rollercoasters and compilations, violence and death, sadness and death, nerds, zits, cigars, the whole shebang. We've even had a couple of reaction videos, which really makes it all worth it. Mostly, though, it's just been nice to find new ways in which people manage to be really fucking weird. The bizarre things they do exposed wholly of their own volition, their oddities and interests laid bare for the world to see.

Vloggers are the the least interesting part about YouTube culture by a long shot – they're a shit byproduct of a system that rewards endless content production without a great deal of quality control. But the rest of the people on there, the ones who aren't as photogenic or don't want to talk about their hauls from various normal shops, are able to be the small celebrities they never dreamed of being, to a curated audience of people who actually care. What a beautiful thing that is.

@joe_bish

To see the entire complete back catalogue box set of YouTube Channel of the Week, click here.