YMMV / Tom Scott

• Funny Moments: In Tom's video about the Gävle goat, which concerns a giant straw Christmas goat that frequently gets burned to the ground, one of the things he says is "as I record this, it's still there". Highlighting the "almost sitcom-like plot" of the goat getting burned to a crisp on an annual basis, Tom glances backwards mid-sentence just to make sure it hasn't burned down while he wasn't looking. And then in The Stinger, he announces that mere hours after he left Sweden, it got burned down.
• God Never Said That: In his video on misleading VPN adverts, Tom runs down and debunks the claims made by various VPN companies that often scared people into using their services; claims such as saying a users' data is insecure and susceptible to hackers. What some audience members took away from the video however, is that all VPN's are bad, not worth using, or are a scam, which is not what Tom had said. Tom laments in a follow-up video that the point was not that VPN's were bad or had no use (in fact, he'd even listed a few examples: a person questioning their faith in a fundamentalist college, torrenting illegal shows and movies, and ordering a hit on someone; or "gay pirate assassins" as he put it), but that there's a goldilocks area containing what people often use a VPN for, and what's actually allowed in adverts (like encryption, which isn't actually unique to VPN's), and was misleading to those not in the know — that's what Tom took issue with. They also mention that his video actually did change the industry. No VPN company makes these claims anymore.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In April 2020, his This Video has X Views (where "X" being the number of views it has), he mentions in the intro that you won't be able to see the view count tick up second-by second, and stresses it doesn't update in real time. A change in late-November 2023 added precisely this feature, where groups of views are counted and added to the viewing total in real time.
• In "The Fetch-Execute Cycle: What's Your Computer Actually Doing?", Tom erroneously says that you can compile programs between PC's and Mac's, when he actually meant "Phone's and Mac's". While this was wrong, and even listed a correction for it, he mentions in the correction that this might actually be true now due to Apple Silicon (the CPU's used in iPhones and Mac's being ARM-based).
• Harsher in Hindsight: In 2017, Tom said in Why The YouTube Algorithm Will Always Be A Mystery "[the YouTube algorithm] can't tell the difference between videos suitable for children made with education in mind, and creepy, trademark-infringing unofficial efforts. It just knows what kids click on and what they watch." Later in 2019, YouTube would have an algorithm make that very distinction to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and some mistakes were made.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I'm here at [Insert name of interesting location attraction] in [Insert country here]".^ExplanationMany of his interesting location videos start off in this manner. One particular collection of Tom starting his videos has been adapted to introduce other fictional locations, such as these.
    • "I am putting myself at risk of being sued"^ExplanationWhenever the above meme gets adapted, usually this line gets demonstrated in a way that would actually put the creator at risk of getting into trouble, such as this
  • "If you accept the definition that a word is some letters surrounded by a gap, then 'Xnopyt', 'AAAAAAAJJJJJJJ', and 'hrrkrkrkrwpfrbrbrbrlablblblblblblwhitoo'ap' are all words, despite being pretty much meaningless." ^ExplanationIn his video about what a word really is, he uses this as an example of what makes a bad word definition. It's notable for being quite sudden and out of place, earning it a memetic status.
  • Tom violently choking on a vape. ^ExplanationMany video edits were made when Tom accidentally inhaled vape smoke (which had no nicotine or flavoring and was more akin to a fog machine) and spluttered for a good ten seconds. For example, editing him to fade out of the picture, or autotuning the sounds he makes.
  • "That was a problem for future me, and now I am future me, and this sucks." ^ExplanationTom's regret is a sentiment shared by many.
  • Tom flying in the sky. ^ExplanationIn his final goodbye video, Tom flies off into the sunset and isd lifted up via a winch and a helicopter. One edit removes the harness to make it look like he's floating in the air, which spawned memes about Tom noclipping in Garrys Mod, among other things.
• Moment of Awesome: Just the fact that many of his videos are The Oner; he speaks in one long, single take. Tom not only has to learn his entire script, but also has to recite it entirely from memory, flawlessly. The end result is something most videomakers could only dream to replicate.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century, essentially a new take on the paperclip maximizer AI scenario. Presented as a video from a future (not the future, just a future) in which an AI called Earworm has erased basically all modern human culture and stopped all research on other AI to prevent the only thing that could potentially rival it from being created. And don't expect any resistance against it, as it used Nano Technology to rewrite human minds to find this totally normal. It was already rewriting them to remove all their memory of modern culture, after all. It's so confident in this brainwashing that this video was created by it: it's perfectly okay with letting humanity know about it because it knows they still won't do anything about it. And why did it do all this? Was it created to take over the world, or was it some military AI that went rogue? Nope. It was just an experiment for an automated system to detect and delete copyrighted videos on a video sharing website (which is definitely not YouTube) which was left unattended over a Christmas break and in that time it became vastly more intelligent than they thought possible and decided that "our system" meant the entire world rather than simply their website. Were it not for the fortunate wording of its specific instructions stating that it should minimize disruption, it's likely it would have simply wiped out humanity entirely rather than bother to ensure their minds still function and civilization doesn't collapse.
  • Stealing Our Friend's Brain Backup PRANK (GONE WRONG!!!) 🤯🤯🤯, another video from a potential future that revolves around a prank channel star getting revenge on a rather mundane prank by his roomate by stealing his expensive brain backup, loading it into a virtual environment and subjecting the backup of his roommate to Cold-Blooded Torture. Said torture includes trapping him with his worst fears, causing several mental breakdowns, and making it impossible for him to breathe. All while the prank channel star finds this absolutely hilarious, mentioning that he's planning to get his roommate to react to the footage. Then he reveals that he's publicly releasing a copy of the backup without his knowledge so all his followers can "mess with him" too. After all, What Measure Is a Non-Human?
  • Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers puts you in the position of a person who has died, but been revived as a computer simulation. Your mental state is calmed by the machine as you start to panic, before you are asked to agree to a Long List of terms and services (rejecting them means you will be immediately terminated). At first, it sounds pretty great. You'll get to keep living life with tons of activities available, the ability to modify your simulated body as you wish, and can communicate with your living family. Except many of those features aren't available unless you're rich enough to afford them... and it turns out you can only afford tier three, an ad-supported version in which ads will appear to you throughout the simulation, and your own mind may be changed to prefer products from sponsors. Complicated mental processes (such as subconscious thought, creativity and self-awareness) can be rate limited or disabled when the server load is too high. Furthermore, any mental patterns that contradict certain legal rulings will be... adjusted. Finally, any copyrighted works you remember require you to pay a licensing fee, or they will be deleted (naturally, you can't afford this either). Welcome to your new life!
  • Oversight: Thank you for volunteering, citizen. A training video for volunteers for Oversight, which runs an automated filter that monitors every bit of internet data in the UK, sending anything it flags as potentially suspicious to volunteers such as yourself for further investigation. This allows the volunteer to not only see the flagged content, but virtually EVERYTHING that exists online related to the suspect, to assist in their investigation. Many people have already given away their rights to privacy of any content, but even for those who haven't, you can simply request a search warrant which is usually granted in under a minute. There are also many sister companies in most nations, and the internet activity of citizens of said countries is also available to you, so long as you speak the appropriate language. Of course, you're expected to report breaches of said nation's laws, even if that means rather than getting people arrested for terrorism, it's for promotion of homosexuality. Oh, and anyone and everyone is being monitored, including the volunteers, who are not allowed to discuss their work. It's a dystopia to put Nineteen Eighty-Four to shame.

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