this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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For people wanting the answer this was the subject of a Veritasium video.
for people who don't want to click the link
It's B.Don’t support Veritasium
What's the story? What'd they do?
I hate this so much,
Someone is mentioned on Lemmy and there is always a drive by comment saying don't support X or X is a bad person with no context whatsoever. No mention of what specifically they are accused of doing/saying, no way to figure out if that clashes with your values or not, no documentation etc.
And subjectively it feels like half the time I research why this might be true it's debatable at best, I assume because if there was compelling evidence the person doing the drive by would have linked it.
Don't support u/Agent641
Lemmy sometimes feels like one big ball of barely seething social outrage.
That's most of the internet these days
So many didn't grow out of their "I'm so special and unique, I don't follow the mainstream" teenage phase and it really shows.
I should start replying to random shit with "don't support X" with no context or followup
Also, create a thousand accounts in advance at random days, never use them and make this comment their only, but when account is not fresh. That way it would look like it's a legitimate reader that was just once so outraged they decided to comment and then shut up forever
Don't support Djahngo.
(Kidding. Kidding.)
Sold out to some venture capital firm.
I didn’t know he did that. He was shit long before that. Here’s my comment:
So what? If he gets a good offer for what he built, why shouldn't he be allowed to sell his own channel. His content is still good. I prefer independent creators but he's in full right to sell of what he made. He doesn't owe the community content or to stay independent
Personally I've noticed topics covered by smaller content creators, explaining almost the exact same thing (minus maybe a few details like some random guy's age), uploaded a few weeks before, and then suddenly Veritasium decides to cover the topic with basically the exact same info over a longer time span.
Not to mention the clickbait titles and thumbnails, less focus on the technical side of topics and more on the emotional/personal side, and the whole selling out to private equity thing.
Aren't they also bought out by private equity?
Veritasium themselves has a video on the topic, they've indeed sold parts to investors
He created fake science experiments to sell products and slipped them into normal videos, like the video where he claimed wet wipes are flushable, then created a fake experiment “proving” they were flushable. He’s incredibly untrustworthy and also, not a scientist! He’s an art major or business, can’t remember which.
According to Wikipedia
To be fair some wet wipes are flushable (as in they disintegrate when flushed), the problem is that not all of them are and there's no standard they have to adhere to, so even the ones that shouldn't be flushed are allowed to advertise themselves as flushable.
No that’s literally the experiment that Derek did. He “showed” that the wet wipes “disintegrated”. What they actually did was break apart under a large weight he put on top of them. That’s not what happens in a sewage system. Along with that, unless they completely dissolve they will still cause issues as the broken up strands.
Unless you are a civil engineer you should not be deciding what goes in a sewer. And no one making wet wipes are civil engineers.
I haven't seen his experiment and don't really care what he did. Other independent experiments have shown that some wet wipes do disintegrate. The reason authorities recommend against their use is what I said: there is no standard for what constitutes "flushable" and the industry is rife with false advertising.
Here's some plumbing YouTube guy testing a bunch of them and finding some that do disintegrate while others do not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVijZZ2yAtc
Of course the best option is a bidet, but this is as of yet unknown technology to most Americans.
So I just watched that video and I’m sorry, but that dude is just as bad as Veritasium.
Let’s cover some of the bad science:
And here’s where we find out what he’s looking for: 12:20. He’s seeing whether these will make it through a house plumbing system. NOT a city sewer system.
Guess what. That same guy has this video from 4 months ago: https://youtu.be/6CQ5rMRvn8I. The title: “The Lie of Flushable Wipes”. He proceeds to say no flushable wipe is safe…wait for it…except the brand he’s selling. And he directly refutes all the bits of the exact tests he ran two years ago. He even says “your sewer system doesn’t agitate the wipes, it’s like a lazy river, slowly turning”.
Think of it this way. The wipes are wet in the package they’re sold to you in. If they haven’t disintegrated in the packaging, they’re not disintegrating in the sewage system. Else they would just sell you wet toilet paper.
Based fact-checker
Thanks lol. People being wrong on the internet sucks, but people deliberately spreading misinformation that all experts agree is misinformation is infuriating to me. Just cause some fucking YouTuber said something doesn’t make it true. I’ve stopped watching so many YouTubers because of the bullshit like they make up.
On a topic similar to this though, is plastics recycling, which experts agree that plastics manufacturing hid how difficult it was to recycle for years. But experts say it’s infeasible, while there are companies like Trash Panda disc golf recycling things into disc golf discs hundreds of times. So really the moral is, think critically.
Yeah usually it's a question of does this pass the smell test, "every expert and sanitation workers who actually see it firsthand are saying one thing, but we tested it and they're all wrong!" is like hmmm....
I would be wary of things that purport to be plastics recycling, as the two main issues are 1. It's still cheaper to make new things rather than recycle 2. The recycled plastic is generally less versatile, which is why you'll see it in things like Frisbees and knick-knacks.
Not to say it isn't something we should be doing when it's feasible, but it's sort of like going from ICE cars to electric cars, where we're putting a band-aid on the problem instead of switching to something that isn't as destructive.
Exactly
It completely depends on the product. For example aluminum is vastly easier to recycle than to make new. For plastics it depends on the plastic, but there is always a way. For example, trash panda managed to recycle Crocs, which are an expanded foam plastic. It was not recyclable on its own, it wouldn’t melt down into an injection moldeable plastic, but they managed to use it as an aggregate, kinda like concrete. I don’t agree that it’s less versatile. It’s just more work that companies don’t want to do so they say it’s not possible.
The thing is, plastic isn’t going anywhere. It’s embedded into every part of our lives, both bad uses and good uses. We need to find a way to stop making more of it. It’s wild that we bury so much trash instead of trying to recover it.
There's no standard they have to adhere to, but there are certifications you can look for that guarantee they break up properly.
Dont know if theres anything else, but I've seen the criticism covered in this Tom Nicholas video. I still watch Veritasium though.
I know they've been wrong a couple times. Take anything the channel says with some salt.
like you hopefully do with all things you see online, right?
Right right. Point being they've been proven wrong.
Now its company owned the quality has picked up a lot. Recent videos are much more likely to be correct
Nothing like a good old corporation to make sure everything is tip-top, right.
And why would that be?
Personally, I just don't like the guy and his vibes. But I wouldn't tell random people online to avoid him, he's not that bad.
There was also that self-driving car video which turned out to be really scummy.
He created fake science experiments to sell products and slipped them into normal videos, like the video where he claimed wet wipes are flushable, then created a fake experiment “proving” they were flushable. He’s incredibly untrustworthy and also, not a scientist! He’s an art major or business, can’t remember which.
It's a meme.
there are 2 answers depicted under the option you claim to be correct. one of those answers is indeed correct, but it is not really clear which one from your comment.
clear answer
it is the straight diagonal.