Is SCP Explained any good?
I'd like to see some SCP animations, but I've heard some bad things about that channel.
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Is SCP Explained any good?
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» Is SCP Explained any good?
A lot of its older videos are well-informed and, I think, done well enough to get good enough summary on a number of SCPS. However, their more recent videos have gone downhill, and they focus on crossovers and scenarios they make up much more often.
At one point, I would have suggested Dr. Bob, but they've started doing clickbait, and they quality has also dipped. Again older videos good to go through. They don't just work off the article, they craft scenarios based around the SCPs.
Personally, I would say while not technically animation, the Volgun is the way to go. I would suggest checking out his "Field Trip" video first.
Thanks! I would've responded earlier, but there was some kind of glitch and it wouldn't let me post.
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WARNING: THIS IS MY OPINION, MAKE SURE TO TAKE THE FEEDBACK OF OTHERS AND YORSELF INTO ACCOUNT!!! (I also am kinda biased as I dislike the channel to put it mildly.)
1): Is SCP Explained Good?
In my opinion SCP Explained is among some of the worst SCP channels on Youtube. I would recommend only watching them if you have ran out of other much higher quality work. Places like SCP Illustrated and The Volgun both produce higher quality work and I'd recommend checking them out first.
2): What's so bad about SCP Explained?
A: Low Quality Animations
This channel has a repeat of overused low effort (Compared to other channels.) characters that they use over and over again for every video they make. (If you don't believe me just watch two or three of their videos and you'll see what I mean.) Often this same low quality makes its way into SCP's. While not a problem for some I feel this type of animation does not do justice to the SCP's and characters they are supposed to represent. It shows them in an often cartoonish light which I feel make them seem like a joke when more often they should make us feel happy, scared, sad, or whatever the author intended us to feel.
B: Recycled/Low Quality Thumbnails
I know this might sound like something that is unimportant to this critique of the channel, but let me tell you something. A few weeks ago I suggested to one of my friends to watch some SCP videos on Youtube to see if he was interested in the subject. Next time we met him I asked him if he had checked out some of the content. (Hoping he had seen one of the better channels.) He said he had checked it out but was just turned off by the low quality thumbnails he saw. He said they just made him think it was clickbait and he never ended up watching anything. Guess what channel he had checked out? SCP Explained. Their low quality, re-used, clickbait thumbnails caused him to disengage immediately dismissing the entire universe as low quality. So while you might think thumbnails are unimportant, they actually play a big part in representing the content to the world. Because of these low quality thumbnails we often lose people who might have been an important part of this community otherwise just because they thought this universe is a clickbait low quality fantasy as the thumbnails often imply. (Again some people might find these well done and that is their opinion, but me personaly and those I know IRL agree that for the most part they are pretty spammy.)
C: So Much Clickbait
I have seen so much clickbait they post that takes the SCP universe and pins it against some sort of popular video game/movie/TV Show character for views. Here are just a few I can think of off the top of my head, SCP Foundation Vs Homelander, SCP Foundation Vs Amazon, SCP-096 Vs Doom Guy, SC- you get the deal. All this clickbait I feel is just raking in views and therefore cash to the channel. While this isn't really too bad as a WIP SCP author I for sure would never want my SCP to be in one of their videos pit up against like some urban legend ghost ship. (WIP SCP is basically the Ark.) I cannot speak for those who have had this happen to their SCP's represented this way. I am at the moment casting my feelings onto the other authors so if they are all ok with this then fine. Then this part isn't a big deal.
D: Doesn't do Justice to The Article
Often I watch their videos and see how various things are done, I then come out and analyze my feelings. I then will read the article and compare my feelings that I felt during and after the article to those during and after the video. The result is that the article always invoked much stronger feelings of dread, happiness, or whatever the author was aiming for. While I understand this is difficult for pretty much all channels the difference between channel and Article is in my opinion a lot larger here than it is for other articles. I suspect this comes back to storytelling and animation.
3): That Being Said, Why Should I Watch SCP Explained?
Don't get me wrong I still dislike the channel and haven't watched any of their content in at least a few months or so, but there are still some reasons why you should watch it.
A: They Produce A Ton of Content
This channel for at least a while posted new content every day. While this definitely was/is a contributor to the low quality/effort that we see in the work it allows us with fresh new content on a regular basis. many of the other SCP channels take time to produce their works and the consistent and frequent uploads made by them are an ok source of entertainment until more content is released by other channels. This also gets more works (No matter how bad.) out to the public which will hopefully attract some to the site where we can get a few people who see what it is really like and choose to stay and contribute.
B: They Highlight Unknown SCP's
Mainly as a result of their absurd amount of uploads this channel often makes videos pertaining to the much less well known SCP's. While they do still often fall victim to many of the negatives I pointed out earlier it at least gives them the recognition that I feel many of these less well known SCP's deserve.
C: Older Videos Were Better
Many of the older videos which contained the more popular and older SCP's (Such as 682,035,939,etc.) were a far higher quality than the ones we see today and as such if you are to watch their videos I would recommend checking out many of the older ones first.
TLDR!
In summary SCP Explained has some upsides and some downsides. In my personal opinion you are better off going to support other channels (I would highly recommend SCP Illustrated as they are in need of more views/subscribers and they I feel produce good content.) first and then moving on to SCP Explained.
If you want me to edit this or for any reason you find this content offensive (I do harbor negative feelings so there was definitely a hostile tone taken during much of this.) just PM me with a request and I will see what I can do. Thanks! -AGrimChild
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I have spent well over 6 hours writing this DAMN RESPONSE. TWICE IT DID NOT SAVE AND FROZE. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH PAIN I'M IN AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS. IT IS 1AM RIGHT NOW AND I HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THIS SCREEN FOR AT LEAST 2 HOURS. So if you don't mind I'm off to go suffer from the inevitable migraine that is coming my way because of my insistence to get this done as soon as possible. And thanks for reading it, was a pain in my ass. :D
I think I agree with you. I decided to try watching their video about SCP-2085, because it's my favorite. The title of the video was something like "Most dangerous female criminals!! You won't BELIVE what these bad kitties do! Oh MEKHANE, I feel sick from typing that.
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God. Just see what they did to MalO/1471. All the information you need is in the thumbnails.
Just looked. May he be cast into the Red Reality, with only hungry rats Tumorvores for company.
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SCP on YouTube is a rather heated topic here on the actual SCP Foundation site. My opinion on SCP Explained is that they're…ambiguous at best. I do not want to trash them to much, as their videos did attract me to this site in mid-2020, but I'll look beyond that early time capsule of mid-pandemic videos.
I would not go as far as to say they are one of the worst channels (if you think that, then I would not recommend going looking for the worst; trust me), but I feel as if they are epitome of the 'quantity over quality' ethos. I feel like they manufacture content to the point where it becomes hard to digest comfortably, show a sign of passion or effort, or paying homage to the source material (our articles).
This has always been my take on fan material/fan work or whatever you want to call it. I am all for people beyond the original creators adopting the source material, so long as the original creators are okay with it (in the case of SCP; we give our consent as soon as we post an article to the site, due to our CC license), they do it within legal bounds (respect said license), and they pay respect to the source material, even if they heavily remix it. An example of what not to do is Paramounts adoption of the Halo games, in the Halo TV series (you don't even need to watch the show to grasp that point). When it comes to these points, SCP Explained has landed in hot water, which is always a bad sign when it comes to adapting source material. I looked up some of their newer videos as I'm typing this, and those thumbnails and titles are rather dubious (e: SCP-096 in the Backrooms, or SCP-096 in Minecraft). Again, I have not watched the videos; maybe they are stellar, or maybe they're abysmal; so I won't make any final judgments on them specifically, but I am not exactly intrigued by the videos.
One final point I like to touch on is that they're of the same place as The Infographics Show, which is notorious on this site for their first 'You vs. SCP' video. I have frequently brushed them off for using the same 'quantity over quality' formula, and including misinformation in their videos (sensitive topic; the last time I remember watching them was in March of 2022, with their videos about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which were not well made IMO). With the reputation of that channel, and the SCP content they made there, I cannot help but question the quality of SCP Explained.
Overall, the channel has its good sides, and its bad sides. It's worth mentioning that several people on here have condemned the channel or specific videos of it, usually for the aforementioned issue of poorly adapting work. I cannot tell you what to think, or what to watch, but in my opinion, I would definitely take SCP Explained with a grain of salt at the bare minimum. That being said, they're not necessarily rock bottom of the SCP YouTube iceberg.
where we landing? not tilted! ッ
Yeah fair. I understand there are much worse channels out there. But there are two main reasons I highlighted this one as one of the worst during my post.
Firstly they are quite popular. Many of the worst ones aren’t actually seen but this channel is quite popular with the internet. So what I meant is that they are one of the worst channels that is actually popular enough to give people a false impression of the SCP universe.
The second reason which I mentioned but never really went into detail out of fear that I would be seen as self promoting is that I am making an SCP. Now I am not sure about you or the other authors, but personally I am terrified of what they might do to my SCP if they ever make a video on it. It is supposed to be a kind and sympathetic anomaly. I can just imagine them taking its powers to another level so that it can protect humanity or something. (Which is not the intent of the anomaly at all and would be a gross interpretation of the message I’m trying to get across.) I understand this is what happens when we publish an article, I just feel they abuse this rule and know full well what they are doing.
- I’ll collapse it in a while just can’t get the code to work right now.
Now I am not sure about you or the other authors, but personally I am terrified of what they might do to my SCP if they ever make a video on it. It is supposed to be a kind and sympathetic anomaly. I can just imagine them taking its powers to another level so that it can protect humanity or something
For me, they can do whatever they want with my SCPs, should they choose to make a video on them. Admittedly, they have not done a video on any of my skips, so I don't know how this would actually feel, but their adaptation of my skips doesn't matter to me. If they put out a bad product, or twisted and turned my story into something it was not intended to be, I personally wouldn't care, unless they did not credit me properly (which is more of a legal issue than a personal issue).
Of course, bonus points to SCP Explained if they did adapt it fairly, and even more props if they extracted something from them that I never saw when writing them, but (and arguably more likely than not) if they adopted my work into something I did not want it to be…whatever.
That being said though, I cannot speak for everyone, and I completely understand people who are frustrated when their work is adopted by YouTube channels in distasteful ways.
where we landing? not tilted! ッ
Something I've found out after months of watching SCP related content when I was younger. SCP explained is fine, but they don't represent how the SCP's look very well. I agree with the other responses that SCP explained has some REALLY clickbait thumbnails. We're talking sexualized SCPs, etc. SCP explained is also run(I think)by the same people over at the infographic show(at least the same narrator), so take that as you will. Overall don't watch them, watch something else SCP related.
Do you remember the last 48 hours? Of course you don't, they never happened.
/forum/t-15789786/is-scp-explained-any-good#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
