Tom Scott indefinitely ends decade-long YouTube series

By Zoe Wu
Arts and Entertainment
Tom Scott indefinitely ends decade-long YouTube series

Tom Scott discusses his retirement from his main YouTube channel. TOM SCOTT/Video

Jan. 14 (ZFJ) — Sixteen hours into 2024, informational YouTuber Tom Scott uploaded the final video of his Things You Might Not Know series, which spanned exactly ten years with weekly uploads after its start in 2014.

From his first video—“Breakfast: Fortified With Iron,” posted on June 6, 2006—to his first (and likely last) video of the new year, Tom Scott has taken his place in YouTube as an educational entertainer, introducing new facts and experiences to an audience now consisting of more than six million subscribers.

“This isn’t the standard YouTuber burnout-apology video,” Scott begins, walking across a sunny field with solar panels in the background. “And it’s not ‘Oh, woe is me, I’m leaving forever.’”

　

Scott goes on to recall his career on the internet, which he first started in 1999. He eventually began his Things You Might Not Know series, which became a weekly video about a variety of subjects: architecture, computer science, and linguistics are just a few of the topics Scott—and collaborators—touched base on over the decade. Scott had a simple format: “Monday, 4pm, something interesting.” He also had one goal: to keep the series going for ten years.

“Now,” Scott says, “it’s time to take a breather.” He describes content creation as a career that cannot slow down and must keep on growing. Having consulted others, he came to the conclusion that there were two potential paths he could take: either keep expanding his name and open a business, or take a step back.

His decision: to take that step back. “I could keep making bigger and better things,” Scott muses, “Build a business, hire full-time employees… and end up as a manager. And that would be great for someone who isn’t me, but I know I’m bad at that, and I’d hate every second of it.”

I don’t know when or if I come back, but when I do, it won’t be weekly. At least, not in this format, not here.

— Tom Scott

Still, Scott reassures his viewers that his indefinite hiatus does not mean he will stop producing content. His weekly podcast, Lateral, centers around “interesting questions and even more interesting answers,” and will still continue. So will his Monday newsletters. Scott also suggests returning to his second channel, Tom Scott plus, which has not seen an upload in over a year, as well as releasing new episodes of The Technical Difficulties, found on a third channel.

There will probably be all-new projects here or somewhere else, projects that are experimental and weird and can fail, because I miss doing stuff like that.

— Tom Scott

Scott explains that his focus has never been on the statistics of his channel, but the spread of information—and now, his focus will be on his own life. “I need there to be things in my life that are not work, and it’s been years since that’s been true,” he explains.

This is my dream job, and I have a lot of fun doing it. I know I’m incredibly lucky. But a dream job is still a job.

— Tom Scott

He thanks his audience and everyone who helped him on his journey in content creation, and ends the video with a montage as he heads off into the sunset, carried by a helicopter. Racking nearly 10 million views in two weeks, the video has garnered many responses: fellow creator MumboJumbo summarized the general response of the public well in a comment applauding Scott’s incredible “dedication to the craft of obscure oddities,” and another YouTuber, MatPat, followed up with his own retirement.

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