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?

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.

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.

Kudos to this guy, he's clearly hit upon something, even if he is some kind of witch.