Whatever day of self-quarantine today marks for you, we congratulate you for your humble restraint and bold inward reflection in these strange times we find ourselves in. But, if you’re going stir crazy, we can’t blame you! While staying in and practicing social distancing is our civic duty at the moment, it leaves us with a lot of time on our hands. So we, the ECG staff, have come up with a list of our favorite video content at the moment. Some of it helps us cope with the uncertainty that prevails right now and some of it is just welcome distraction. Whatever content flavor you’re in need of, read on to find out our recommendations.
Our YouTube Picks
We can’t help ourselves either. We f***ing love YouTube around here. Our favorites range the gamut from beauty to gaming to mommy vlogs. Below is the current roundup of our favorite channels to binge at the moment.
Good Mythical Morning
This rec comes from David Hixon, ECG’s 3D animator. Good Mythical Morning’s creators Rhett and Link, are absolute YouTube staples. They’ve been around for almost as long as the platform and their current daily show is absolutely silly, lighthearted and wonderfully distracting. Their daily uploads are still going up amid the craziness, so here’s one thing you can look forward to each morning.
Foo the Flowerhorn
YouTuber Foo the Flowerhorn loves flowerhorn fish and hand builds natural aquariums. The official term for his art form/hobby is planted aquariums, which are freshwater tanks that operate like a natural ecosystem without pumps, filters, CO2 injections, expensive lighting, and other high-tech gadgets. Wilson Drake, ECG Editor and Foo fan, calls it an art form because the resulting aquariums, rich with plant life, are legit beautiful. His videos include time lapses and footage of his unique underwater creatures among other things and are set to the most chill, certified anti-anxiety music. Actually, we really can’t imagine a calmer YouTuber for turbulent times like these.
Primitive Technology
Mary, ECG’s Head Producer, is a huge fan of this incredibly resourceful YouTube channel. Now, you don’t have to admit that you very recently Googled how to survive a zombie apocalypse. We know you did. No judgement. In fact, we’re telling you now, go watch as many of Primitive Technology’s videos as you can. This YouTuber makes fully functioning items ranging from a bow and arrow to a freaking wood-burning furnace without using modern tools or technology. Basically anything he needs, including tools, to get from point a to point b, he builds from scratch with what he finds in the New Zealand bush lands. Yeah, there’s a few things to learn here. Just in case, right?
Exploring Alternatives
This channel has been a long-time favorite of ECG Producer, Muriel Lee. Each video showcases a person living in anything considered an alternative from the normal apartments or suburban homes most of us reside in. That can mean an off-grid tiny house in the Canadian wilderness or inside a serene earthship built from recycled tires and cob (a natural building material made from soil, water and straw). There’s something so comforting about seeing just what alternatives exist when we decide to quit the stress and the passive ease handed down to us by default. Perhaps that’s an especially nice thought now, when all of our societal shortcomings are glaringly obvious.
The Fabric of the Cosmos
Okay, now onto movie and television shows. Let’s start with the mini-series, The Fabric of the Cosmos, now bingeable on Amazon Prime. The four part series is based on physicist and author Brian Greene’s book of the same name. The book famously made incredibly complex theoretical physics and scientific concepts somewhat accessible to the normal human. And the show does it even better. I know, a lot of us hated high school physics and vowed to never revisit the topic ever again. But this series translates complex physics into language that underscores the poignancy of the concepts while also making it accessible.
If anything, the show wants to let us know just how extraordinary the universe is. We can judge that even by the minuscule amount of understanding we have about it. And, hear us out, understanding more the tiny, tiny role we play among the cosmos can be a strangely comforting thought at the moment. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day struggles when that’s all we can experience. Reminders of the vastness and strangeness of the things we can’t see are welcome speculations that, at least we think, take some of the pressure off.
Love is Blind
Okay, for the few of you who haven’t seen Love is Blind yet, let us make our argument for shitty reality TV. The new Netfllix show is based on the concept of loving someone for who they are rather than what they look like. Throughout the season, couples pair up without knowing what the other person looks like and at the end, they have to decide whether they will split up or stay together forever. You can only imagine the drama. Oh, and did I mention it’s all helmed by hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey? Talk about an early 2000s TRL flashback…
There are a few arguments for this one. Maybe heightened drama will make our own daily dramas seem puny and insignificant? Just imagine, if Lauren and Cameron break up, does our struggle to keep the coronavirus at bay even matter?? But, personally, we like Mary’s take better: mindless reality TV just reminds us that eventually, we will have to rejoin the outside world and we can expect it to be as much of a trash heap as it was before this mini apocalypse.
In conclusion, stay home!
There you have it, some content things to get you started on your next few nights in. As trying as these times may be, it is an awesome thing to see so many of us band together to try to flatten that curve.
So, stay safe, stay in and let us know what you think of our of recs in the comments below. And, help us out with some of your own too!