Tom Scott and Matpat didn't talk about breaks; they're closing up shop for good in some way: MatPat has said he's handing over creative control of the Theorist channels and assuming a more casual admin role to spend more time with his kid. Tom Scott said that he set a limit for 10 years on his main channel; he may come back to it, but it doesn't seem likely. Others are also quitting, such as Moo from the Vanoss Crew.
ZWho63
From what I've heard on the grapevine (I also don't watch his stuff), his channel really declined in quality past 2019, and it just hasn't been the same.
For those of y'all who don't know: MatPat has announced that he will be stepping down from The Game Theorists to focus on himself and his family; Tom Scott has gone on indefinite hiatus for similar reasons.
I believe this heralds a new era of the internet, where 'old' creators are not as influential as the 'new' crop springing up, given the rise of Tiktok and the general direction of social media as a whole.
Post in the comments additions to my list; I wanted to add more but I missed some.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/16tqihd/settings_updateschanges_to_ad_personalization/
Reddit just decided it was a good idea to REMOVE the option to disable ad personalisation. Good job u/spez. We know what you're doing.
I beg to differ. If there's one thing, even though I only got properly into the Internet around 2020, I have heard about how old social media was FAR better for the internet in general than stuff like Youtube and Twitter from people like Kurzgesagt; it allowed for more IRL-like social interaction through the segregation of communities into different 'cliques', kind of what Reddit and Lemmy are trying to capture. As a consequence, there was far less open and widespread drama, random hate and misinformation, unlike today.