Anyone who clocks serious time on YouTube knows it’s a full-blown cosmos, housing everything from Vine compilations to weird algorithm-generated kids videos and fascists talking about phrenology. But the site also hosts a strong crop of creators engaging with politics, philosophy, culture, and more in thoughtful, critical ways.

Video essays have flourished in recent times, and the best ones can even eclipse a lot of traditional documentaries in their production and intelligence. On top of recommending Polygon’s own staff of video craftspeople, here are 10 of the best video essays of 2018, a shortcut down the rabbit hole of intriguing work on YouTube.

“David Lynch: The Treachery of Language”

By What’s So Great About That?

This is simply the most well-made, intelligently laid-out video on a single filmmaker this year. Through some masterful editing, Grace Lee explores the use (or more accurately, consistent warping) of language in the films of David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, TV’s Twin Peaks). Film criticism generally gravitates toward discussion of visuals, whether that’s in terms of cinematography, editing, acting, mise-en-scene, and the like. The actual construction and implementation of dialogue is less studied, and by drilling down into the specific use, Lee’s video gets at a defining element of why Lynch’s films are so off.

“CTRL+ALT+DEL”

By hbomberguy

Taking on one of the biggest punching bags in both webcomics and gaming is no small task, but H. Bomberguy proves more than up to it. But rather than make yet another piece on all the ways Tim Buckley’s Ctrl+Alt+Del is supposedly terrible, the video essayist instead draws out all the ways it’s similar to popular, even beloved, properties. The unsettling conclusion is that works like these become whipping boys not because of their actual quality (or lack of it), but because they provide a reflection that too many within a subculture find unflattering. That it’s all delivered via an increasingly unhinged parody of traditional YouTube critic tropes is a huge bonus.

The Hobbit Trilogy

By Lindsay Ellis

Lindsay Ellis defies the paradigm of movie criticism through nuanced, researched nitpicking. Her in-depth series on Hobbit films goes beyond a dismantlement, instead connecting the dots between what happened during the series’ production, Peter Jackson’s entire approach to the adaptation, and by her estimation, the film’s critical failures. The third part of the “duology” even incorporates reporting, with Ellis talking to actors and filmmakers in New Zealand about the effect that foreign film production had on the country. It all culminates in a powerful rumination on how “no ethical consumption under capitalism” applies to entertainment, and the different ways people grapple after learning how beloved art was made.

“Designing for Disability”

By Game Maker’s Toolkit

Mark Brown is one of the most measured and meticulous people working in games criticism today. As the name of the channel suggests, Game Maker’s Toolkit approaches video game analysis from the angle of helping developers improve their work. Any one of his videos is invaluable on this front, and this ongoing series about keeping differently abled people in mind when making games is a great showcase of his perspective. Besides providing a survey of what games already do to accommodate players who can’t necessarily interact with them in the standard ways, these videos subtly call attention to how so much of the basic ways in which we interact with games are taken for granted.

“Lady Eboshi is Wrong”

By Innuendo Studios

If this were just a video on how masterful Hayao Miyazaki is at making movies without clear good-and-evil conflicts, in which no character is two-dimensional and everyone’s point of view is expressed, then it would be notable. But what pushes the essay (made for FilmJoy’s “Lessons Animation Taught Us” series) into greatness is how uses Princess Mononoke’s central conflict to basically pick apart the idea of centrism as a political position. Ian Danskin knows culture and politics; he also happens to be producing an incisive series on the rhetorical foundations and strategies of the far right. Wielding the knowledge, the essayist finds echoes of the man-vs-nature peril at the heart of Miyazaki’s period fantasy to today’s current political climate without being so blunt as to become an entirely different type of video.

“FAKE FRIENDS EPISODE TWO: parasocial hell”

By StrucciMovies

You may balk at the two-hour running time, but Shannon Strucci more than earns the runtime as she exhaustively dissects the social landscape of the modern age. The second part of her ongoing series on parasocial relationships (when a person develops a “relationship” with someone or something that cannot reciprocate, like a celebrity) continually finds new stories to develop its ideas.

Strucci will let a clip of a Twitch streamer making an emotional confession play out in full length, all to hammer home the kind of closeness the internet fosters between people with no actual connection. She also brings up examples one might not expect, such as a robotic seal doll made to calm the elderly, or the famous story of Grape-kun, the penguin who fell in love with an anime standee. “Fake Friends” will make you reconsider your own relationships with your favorite writers, podcasters, actors… and possibly video essayists.

“Incels”

By ContraPoints

Natalie Wynn, who dropped out of Northwestern’s Ph.D philosophy program and now applies her knowledge to the headache of contemporary American discourse, specializes in responding to talking points from modern conservatism. It helps that, besides being smart as hell, she also employs some extraordinarily elaborate costuming and spectacular (usually horny) punchlines into her work. In her most impressive video to date, it would be all too easy to go for easy jabs at those who identify as incels, but Wynn approaches the subject with empathy without ever making excuses for their toxic rhetoric.

“DOOM: The Fake Outrage”

By Shaun

Shaun is quite possibly the most droll human on the internet, and has carved out a niche in poking holes in the hole-poking antics of channels like CinemaSins. Here, he demonstrates the common internet strategy of cherry-picking a few tweets or comments to trump up a non-issue like “The SJWs are angry.”

“Disney - The Magic of Animation”

By kaptainkristian

There was much rejoicing with Kristian Williams returned to YouTube after a year’s hiatus, and his first new video proved well worth the wait. Disney is a tremendously popular subject for video essays, and there are plenty about the studio’s revered 12 principles of animation. But none of them tackle the subject with the visual and editing skill that Williams brings to the table.

“Nostalghia Critique”

by KyleKallgrenBHH

This essay is simultaneously and seamlessly many things: an exegesis on a single scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film Nostalghia, playing it without any cuts; a look at how video creators work around content copyright rules with various editing and presentational tricks; and a meditation on creator Kyle Kallgren’s time with a company that frequently struggled with the strictures of YouTube’s copyright rules, and how it eventually fell apart under the malfeasance of the people running it. “Nostalghia Critique” is an unshowy but wonderful union of personal, aesthetic, and corporate concerns.