Simon Roper: the 23-year-old reconstructing the past for millions of viewers
This guy appeared in my YouTube recommendations a few months before the pandemic. They were there for weeks before I actually clicked on one, strangely persistent given the titles and screencaps on the videos: "What did middle English sound like?" next to this grubby college kid's face. What about my viewing habits to date triggered this recommendation?<p>When I finally relented and clicked on one, it was kind of hypnotic. It's hard to put to words: the content is really interesting for all the reasons laid out in the article, but there's something else, too, an atmospheric thing. The guy's voice is almost a whisper, the ambient sounds from the garden or the forest or the road are oddly pleasant, and he's speaking pretty slowly, with none of these glitchy quick cuts you see in a lot of YT content. It's also unusually personal-feeling, like he's just talking to you.<p>It's all pretty dreamlike, I guess. Especially when I stand back and realize I've been watching videos about Cumbrian accents for like two hours. I'm not even interested in this stuff.<p>Kudos to this guy, he's clearly hit upon something, even if he is some kind of witch.