I Made a Graph From My Subscribers to Prove You’re Nerds

If you'd like to support these videos:

Made using #blender as well as Davinci Resolve and Gephi.

DISCLAIMER: My channel is not endorsed by nor associated with any individuals, creators, or organizations featured in this video.
But also I hope that anyone that was included interprates their inclusion as a sign of my appriciation for their content.

Creators included (whose names were not explicitly written on screen):
Jenny Nicholson, Summoning Salt, Matthewmatosis, Technology Connections, Drawfee Show, Super Eyepatch Wolf, Jacob Geller, Hbomberguy, Folding Ideas, Legal Eagle, Polygon, Brian David Gilbert, Karolina Żebrowska, Bernadette Banner.

Content Featured:
The speedruning video was featuring Darbian, but it was from the Summoning Salt channel:

Chapters:
0:00 I need a hobby lol
1:38 Building the network
4:26 Who do you subscribe to?
6:46 co-subscribers and bots
9:29 Proving you're nerds
11:37 The Youtube network
14:20 The Youtube communities

Music (in order):
Killer Vacation - Chris Doerksen (see previous link)
Atlas - HOME (see previous link)

Notes:
-Regarding the degree distribution and cutting it off abruptly - in actuality the fact that it is a straight line in log-log is really interesting, but that could be a video on its own so rather than going into it, I just decided to leave it as a joke because this is actually one of the things you would do first in a real network analysis.

-I didn't specify this but when I removed the weakest links from the co-citation network, I also removed any nodes that became disconnected from the network.

-In order to make the youtube network I had to play a bit of a trick. You see, the API does not (as far as I know) let me just randomly pick a user from youtube. Because of this, what I did was to get a random list of my subscribers. Then I get a random list of people that they subscribe to. Then I ask who do these people subscribe to, and that is how I build the network. Essentially I'm adding extra steps to the original method to "get away" from my subscribers. Because of this, it is also possible to get channels that do not subscribe to anyone, leading to an isolated node - these were discarded from the analysis.

- For the community detection the Louvain algorithm returns something like 140 communties. However, many of these are very small and while I didn't do additional testing, I doubt they would be statistically significant. These channels were removed from the animation so that I was left with only something like 8 fairly large communities. They were included in all the other analysis however, they just aren't rendered.

- I've put the co-subscriber network gephi file on github

[not_David]

How many channels do you subscribe to?

[justinwatson]

"... *I* might be a nerd" he said, looking up from the math homework he asssigned himself.

[gvarph]

If you had to use network theory to realize you too are a nerd, you definitely are a nerd

[acenio]

People generally tend not to unsubscribe and rather just gradually watch the channel way less over time. This paired with the fact that some people have had their YouTube accounts for a *long* time would result in a lot of subscriptions

[CarterPatterson]

As a dishwashing powder user, "through the magic of rendering two of them" killed me lmao

[davidelodovichetti]

When you called me a bot, at first i felt offended.
Then you described the problems that bots caused, and i realised that i am, in fact, a bot to most videos i watch

[carafurry]

15:09
James is the name of the odd ones out. He is our animation overlord. Without him you don't have story telling, or wacky entertaining animations.

[knpark]

I am a grad student who used to crunch numbers with millions of patent-to-patent citations. This kind of network looks like what I was asked to ultimately work for. With the result you've made with just 2, 000 of us, I can finally have a closure about it and be confident to say that my advisor was an absolute asshole for asking me to do something like this with hundreds of thousands of patent documentations.

[Commenter]

Not David: _spends hours upon hours doing a ton of data analysis, research, rendering, visual representation, writing and editing and forms it all into a visually and audially pleasing very long video_

also Not David: ... I think I might be a nerd 😳

[Mezza_Luca]

"Through the magic of rendering two of them" Okay you got me, I laughed way too hard at that. I've absolutely binged watched that snarky toaster guy.

[Eutrofication]

Im so floored by how when you reference something that feels weird and specific. It feels unbearably niche in real life, but we really are all weird youtube addicts

And id love to add, all the things i learnt about networks is so sick

[GreatNini]

Wait - I wrongly assumed that my taste in YouTube videos is kind of unique, because I know no other person in real life who shares my wide spreaded interest of nerdy videos, and in this video I must learn that I am not only not unique but am in fact probably watching the same videos with the same people all the time but we don't know about each other?? Insane!

Glad you broadened my perspective, I feel less alone now.

And site note to being subscribed to many channels: I have "collected" channels I like over the years from changing interests but never bothered to unsubscribe to people I am not actively following anymore.

Keep up the great content <3

[secret]

15:25 Is is driving anyone else up the wall that he missed green?

[EKUL]

As someone who subscribes to 912 channels (now 913) and uses powder to wash items, I can assure you I am not a bot. But this is the first time watching a video of yours, so congrats on making it into my very exclusive network.

[likebot.]

"You are not representative of the wider YouTube audience" is probably the best compliment I've ever received - and the most reassuring! Thanks, bru.

BTW, has this project resulted in you finding a channel or two to add to your subscriptions? I bet there were a few temptations out there.

[kevincsellak]

I'm one of those people who are subscribed to 1000 channels. It's because I want to be able to find a channel again if I think of a particular video again after months or years have passed, and because a lot of channels only upload very sparingly (and I'd forget their names otherwise), and because there are a bunch of channels whose genre of content I don't consistently like, but that I do like visiting when I'm in the right mood once every few months. Scootertrix Studios, Nemean, and Biblaridion are examples of these three types.

[pielover]

Oh no, I'm gonna be bothered by never finding out who that one very weird channel is or what the most common word was for a long time lol. I was expecting the word to be revealed in the description, or comments or end of the video or something. My guess is "tube" being used as a suffix, rather than a standalone word, or maybe "Vevo" but I don't know if that's a word or an acronym

[Lotsiron]

I felt so targeted it's scary in an awesome way. Popular science channels was expected but the more niche stuff I've been watching being exposed felt like watching a magic trick. Like a magician asking "is this your card" you are asking me if these are my interests.

[bagelgeuse]

5:55 My educated guess to account for channel size would be to compare the probability of a random user being subbed to a given channel vs your audience's probability of being subbed to that same channel.

[eccentricity]

Everyone else has successfully conveyed how lovely the topic of this video is, but you deserve an insane amount of appreciation for how visually stunning this is. I especially liked the blur effect to focus on Youtube communities in the last portion. I hope this channel gets a lot more attention in the future – you certainly deserve it!