YMMV / CGP Grey

• Adorkable: Normally Grey is collective and calm about things, but when he nerds out about stuff like Lord of The Rings and a Tesla, he's definitely very endearing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Queen Lion from the Politics in the Animal Kingdom series for being clever and benevolent as a ruler. She looks out for her citizens (as demonstrated by inventing and changing the voting process to avoid being abdicated and to reflect the representatives). Some even call her wiser than most real-life leaders.
  • While many forms of algorithm bots are used throughout How Machines Learn when the distinction is necessary, the "default" bot—small white body with a big head; nubby stick limbs; big, circular blue eyes on a black eye screen; and red "ears" and antenna—used most commonly in that video, as well as for the single student in the footnote video, invoked Cuteness Proximity in many viewers, to the point where there were many requests to be able to buy a plush toy of it.
• Fridge Horror:
  • His video Humans Need Not Apply harrowingly describes how robots, while we've given into them, they're replacing us. How every job is slowly getting replaced. From physical, professional, white-collar, and even creative. Soon you, us, and the entire human race may become obsolete.
  • It doubles up in conjunction with his later "3 Rules For Rulers" video. A dictatorship has an easier time to become established when there are fewer groups of support needed to gain and maintain power. When an economy is run more and more by robots, that would need smaller numbers of people, thus concentrating the means of production into smaller numbers, this effect compounds.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • "Q&A with Grey: Ten Years Later" has Grey responding to the final question by offering this heartfelt message of thanks to Patreon sponsors and general viewers for allowing him to make videos for over a decade. His voice breaking up on the last few sentences really drives the depth of his gratitude home.
    Grey: It is you who lets each video flow from start to finish, without me needing to pause and tell you about our sponsor in the middle. It is you who supports me, my family, and my team. It's you who allows me to explore the forest of all knowledge and share what I've found. You sponsor my videos. And thank you. Thank you for everything, internet. Thank you for my whole life. It's been a wild ten years.
  • When he announces his Patreon, he goes out of his way to emphasize that anyone who wishes to sign up should first be financially stable themselves, not wanting anyone to donate money they can't afford to part with.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "American Empire", there is a frame viewing the EU with the U.K. saying I'm outie! Two years later, Brexit happened.
  • "Copyright: Forever Less One Day" mentions a hypothetical "Star Wars: Anime Edition". Ten years later, Star Wars: Visions would be released.
  • When ranking the state flags, Grey hates Minnesota's and calls it the worst of all of them. Only a month later, Minnesota appointed a committee to design a new flag and would adopt a new design the following year, which Grey even made a video in response to.
• Magnificent Bastard: The captain from How to be a Pirate Captain! 🌈 ☠️ 🌈 is the Laughably Evil leader of his pirate ship. He disguises the ship as one of the Empire's, before revealing the Jolly Roger and using Pirates' reputation of granting unjolly fates to those who fight back in order to intimidate ships into "presenting their booty," so to speak. Eccentric yet personable, the captain is a rare Magnificent Bastard from an educational web video.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Discussed in his video "This Video Will Make You Angry", which is a pretty good rundown on meme theory and their propagation.
  • As a straight example, "hexagons are no longer the bestagons" has become a frequent response by critical Twitter users towards the site's implementation of purchasable NFT profile pictures that are distinguished through their hexagonal shape.
• Older Than They Think: The New York Times declared the race for Staten Island a legend far before CGP Grey.

---