There's no doubt the Primeagen has a popular channel (459K subs at last count), but his videos are super annoying to me. Many of them are just him reading a blog post and adding some light clowning to it. To me it feels like a waste of time...I can just read the article myself a lot faster and the clowning doesn't add any value to me.
I feel the same way. I don’t think you and I are the target audience for him. My read is that his content is actually pitched to a very junior audience - or an audience who don’t really want to read or engage with the blog post themselves. They want to feel smart and entertained without doing any actual thinking.
That sounds like I’m a snob - but I really get it. I’ve been watching Inkmaster lately with my gf - which is a reality tv show about tattooing. It’s super fun sitting on the couch judging all the tattoos they do. It would be nowhere near as much fun if I had to actually think, or do work while watching the show.
I think primagen is like that. It’s kinda like a trashy reality tv show about programming. If you don’t know any programming, you’ll probably learn a thing or two along the way. But you aren’t going to become a great software engineer by watching his channel. Not any more than I’m going to become a great tattoo artist by sitting on my arse, eating chocolate and watching ink master. I still do it. But I wouldn’t call it educational.
Yeah, I really do think "edutainment" is the correct classification for this type of content. A lot of tech influencers have figured out the formula for success on YouTube. In order to hit the sweet spot, the content has to be a mile wide and an inch deep to get the engagement metrics necessary to make the channel profitable.
