Friends, I am looking for your youtuber/streamer/podcaster recommendations.
I like long videos, video game esoterica, speedrunning, variety streamers (especially indie/niche games), people who play genres outside of my usual wheelhouse (e.g. JRPGs, adventure games, etc), and to be honest, I'm a sucker for people just talking over cursed media too.
I prefer if they're not too high-energy (at least, not all of the time), and not too heavy on the essay/script/high-production side—I'm looking for something that can fade into background noise if need be. Dead air is fine. People just going on a bullshit tangent for twenty minutes is also fine. I'll listen to the right people talk about essentially anything. If I learn something along the way, that's even better.
EDIT: Crikey, I was not expecting this much of a response. Thank you all very much—it's going to take me months just to try all of these people out.
tinahacks is a super cozy RPG speedrunner who has cultivated a chat of Experts in all sorts of fields and conversations can go places in fun ways. She's been running the new Momodora game recently, but is getting back to the WILD new tech in FF6 soon.
Amethyst_Rocks does work curating and moderating SMW romhacks - some of which are deeply cursed. Also, she plays Link To The Past randomizer on Fridays which are always super fun.
Kaguya Nicky does truly long form RPG speedruns - I rarely see her run categories shorter than 3 hours. She's a top tier runner in more Final Fantasy games than I've even played, and across multiple categories of several.
And, if you'll forgive my indiscretion, leggystarscream is me; also an RPG speedrunner / player of games with Too Much RNG in them - my current project is retaking the SLARPG world record, but I want to start learning some new games or playing randos soon.
Supergreatfriend does a lot of weird games and a lot of horror games. He's also impossible to describe. Start with his MODE lp.
ThaRixer does some incredible videos on some PS1 and PS2 era platformers, including a superb (currently still in-progress) multi-part series on Jak 3. A first-hand source and a member of several of the speedrunning communities built around the game he covers, he knows how to create a compelling story around the games I spent a lot of my own childhood playing.

