There's been a few where I was listening and then they went on to say something like, "and what this suggests is that..." And what they said made little sense. They just took a liberty to add an extra detail to better paint the picture they were painting.

I wish I could remember what it was. It just immediately made me notice that it was extra speculation that they couldn't have gotten just from that one item description.

the youtube shorts i see are sooooo sooo soo content mill

I don't watch him often, but I do love the passion that oozes from Vaati's videos. He's the only soulslike content creator I follow, though. I used to follow Iron Pineapple for a spell, but he would instead highlight little known soulslikes off Steam. A valuable service, I just found his content kind of boring.

After the bizarrely in depth sinclaire lore vids on bloodborne, rattling off item descriptions and inserting fluff just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Not to mention the incessant need to insist everything is connected to the gloam eyed queen (the gloam eyed queen isn't that important guys, please stop shoe horning her into your fanfiction lore vid.) Actually just recently saw a vid from some tiny channel calling Vaatividya out for just making shit up and presenting it as canon, and he's popular so people just believe him now...

Anyways, I do think it's a step up from the days of Demon's Souls where any genuine interest in the story of these games was met unilaterally with "there is no story." I also think it's more interesting to play through and piece together the narrative on your own. I remember when I felt so damn smart a few hours in when I realized "OH!!! That thing on the cover is the Elden Ring!"

It's a real cottage industry at this point. Personally, I'm more annoyed that a lot of guides are so shit.