Tom Scott retires from YouTube after 10 years on the dot

Silverflame · January 4

Summary

Via a video uploaded on the 1st of January 2024 at 4pm UTC, precisely a decade after his first upload at 4pm UTC on the 1st of January 2014, Tom Scott has announced that he is stepping back from his YouTube channel indefinitely. This marks the end of a 10-year, one-video-per-week streak for his channel. He will still be producing his newsletter and podcast, but the main channel will no longer be updated (unless Tom sporadically decides to).

Tom Scott has made videos on various topics from Computer Science, to linguistics, to random experiments and skits, to (more recently) interesting places, feats of engineering, and projects. He has probably been one of the platform's longest and most consistent content creators, and now he's decided that a decade is enough; he kept up the channel uninterrupted for 10 years, and that's a nice point to end on.

Quotes

Quote

I could do less and be happier. So, I'm taking a break.

Quote

This is my dream job and I have a lot of fun doing it, [...] but a dream job is still a job. And it's a job that keeps getting bigger and more complicated [...]

My thoughts

Tom Scott is one of the OG YouTube creators. I have been following him from when the website looked very different, through university and into working, and now all good things must come to an end. I personally think it is good to see someone go "this is making me happy, but I'd also like to relax" and bow out after 10 years of improving their video and production skills, and highlighting a bunch of different, odd, fun, and interesting projects and ideas to people who might never otherwise have heard of them. Tom Scott will be missed, for sure, but better to end on a high note / slightly too soon, than burn out, crash, and/or start something bigger, which he explicitly said he doesn't want to do.

Reading through the comments, it is clear that he has had an impact on many well-known creators as well: electroboom, vlogbrothers, slo-mo guys, Gamer's Nexus, Jay Foreman, SmarterEveryDay, AbroadInJapan, Alan Walker, TEDEd, blenderguru, HowToDad, and many other well-known youtubers have left their comments saying thank you and goodbye.

Sources

GuiltySpark_ · January 4

Going to be weird not seeing a new video every monday. The end of that video was absolutely majestic!

Middcore · January 4

I've never been a regular viewer of his content, but everything I have seen was interesting, thoughtful, and well-done. Good for him for being able to step away on his own terms.