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Thomas Scott (born 1984 or 1985) is an English YouTuber and web developer. On his self-titled YouTube channel, Scott creates educational videos across a range of topics including history, geography, linguistics, science, and technology. As of August 2024,[update] his five YouTube channels have collectively gained over 7.8 million subscribers[a] and 1.87 billion views.[b][2]
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_2.jpg){kind=avatar} Scott in 2016 | ||||||||||
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| Born | Thomas Scott 1984 or 1985 (age 38–39) Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England | |||||||||
| Education | University of York | |||||||||
| Occupation | YouTuber | |||||||||
| Website | tomscott | |||||||||
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| Years active | 2006–present | |||||||||
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Last updated: 14 October 2024 | ||||||||||
Born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, Scott first came to media attention as a student, creating a parody of a governmental website. He created his channel in 2006, but only began to enjoy mainstream popularity after 2014, when he began his education series "Things You Might Not Know". Scott produces and uploads educational videos to the channel across a range of topics including linguistics, technology, geography, history and science. His output has included series such as Language Files (which focuses on linguistics and languages), The Basics (computing and IT), Amazing Places (geographical locations), and Things You Might Not Know. Typically his videos take the form of relatively short videos on interesting items, with many having received external coverage including colours unable to be recorded accurately on video,[3] compact hovercraft,[4] and how bear-resistant infrastructure is tested.[5]
Scott has also collaborated with other YouTubers.[6] He announced that he was taking a break from his YouTube work starting January 2024, after a decade of consistent weekly uploads.[7]
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Thomas Scott[8][9][10] was born in 1984 or 1985[8][11] in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire,[8] and graduated from the University of York with a degree in linguistics and the English language.[8][12] He later earned a Master of Arts in educational studies.[13]
In 2004, when Scott was 19 and at university, he produced a website parodying the British government's "Preparing for Emergencies" website,[14] including a section explaining what to do in case of a zombie apocalypse. This resulted in the Cabinet Office demanding the site be deleted, to which Scott sent a "polite response declining to take down the site".[9][10][15]
In 2009, Scott became the official UK organiser of International Talk Like a Pirate Day,[16] and was subsequently nominated by his friends to run for student president at the University of York Students' Union, under the guise of his Talk Like a Pirate Day persona, "Mad Cap'n Tom Scott". Despite running as a joke, he gained almost 3,000 votes, won the election, and served as the organisation's 48th president.[17] When running for Parliament in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency as a joke candidate in 2010, Scott used the character – at the time, he described his chances of winning in the safe Conservative seat of Westminster as "Somewhere 'twixt a snowball's chance in hell an' zero."[18] He received 84 votes (0.2% of the total), finishing in last place behind Pirate Party UK.[19]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | Mark Field | 19,264 | 52.2 | +3.9 | |
| Labour | Dave Rowntree | 8,188 | 22.2 | −3.1 | |
| Liberal Democrats | Naomi Smith | 7,574 | 20.5 | +2.0 | |
| Green | Derek Chase | 778 | 2.1 | −2.2 | |
| UKIP | Paul Weston | 664 | 1.8 | +0.7 | |
| English Democrat | Frank Roseman | 191 | 0.5 | New | |
| Independent | Dennis Delderfield | 98 | 0.3 | New | |
| Pirate | Jack Nunn | 90 | 0.2 | New | |
| Independent | Mad Cap'n Tom (Scott)[21] | 84 | 0.2 | New | |
| Majority | 11,076 | 30.0 | +7.8 | ||
| Turnout | 36,931 | 55.5 | +4.4 | ||
| Registered electors | 66,849 | ||||
| Conservative hold | Swing | +3.5 | |||
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Early career
In 2012 Scott was a presenter in the Sky 1 series Gadget Geeks alongside Colin Furze and Creative Technologist Charles Yarnold, where he was responsible for the creation of software solutions.[22] He also worked creating Flash games for the Daily Mirror's UsVsTh3m website. These included a viral "North-O-Meter" which judged its players' northernness.[23]
Scott received coverage in 2013 for "Actual Facebook Graph Searches", a Tumblr site which exposed a potentially embarrassing and dangerous collection of public Facebook data using Facebook's Graph Search, such as showing men in Tehran who have said that they were "interested in men" or "single women who live nearby and are interested in men and like getting drunk".[24]
YouTube career
Scott produces and uploads educational videos to the channel across a range of topics including linguistics, technology, geography, history and science. His work has included series including the languages and linguistics focussed Language Files, computing and information technology based The Basics, Amazing Places, and Things You Might Not Know. Typically his videos take the form of relatively[vague] short videos on interesting items, with many having received external coverage[dubious – discuss] including colours unable to be recorded accurately on video,[3] compact hovercraft,[4] and how bear-resistant infrastructure is tested.[5] Scott has also collaborated with other YouTubers, including challenging YouTuber Jordan Harrod to create a deepfake version of him for $100.[6]
Scott announced that he was taking a break from his YouTube work starting 1 January 2024, after a decade of consistent weekly uploads. "I am so tired. There's nothing in my life right now except work" he explained, although it was his "dream job". Scott believed YouTube made it impossible to reduce the quality of his videos. Thus he saw his only other option as expanding further and hiring staff, forcing him to "become a manager", which he deemed beyond his skills. Soon after, he noted that other YouTubers with similar long-form content were also reducing or stepping away as views and ad-revenue fall. Scott predicted "difficult years" ahead given the rise of "junk zero-effort generative AI channels" and competing video options.[7][25][26]
In 2022, Scott won the Streamy Award for Learning and Education.[27] He was nominated in the same category in 2023.[28]
The Technical Difficulties
Scott is a member of the four-person comedy troupe, The Technical Difficulties, with whom he hosted a radio show of the same name on University Radio York which won the Kevin Greening award at the Student Radio Awards in 2008.[29] The group consists of Scott, Matt Gray, Gary Brannan and Chris Joel.[30] The group has created several podcasts and video series over the years, including:[31]
Lateral with Tom Scott
A weekly comedy podcast taking the format of a game show where Scott and three contestants take turns asking each other difficult questions that require lateral thinking to answer, which was adapted from a 2018 six-episode game show on Scott's main YouTube channel that was also co-developed with David Bodycombe.[37][38]
Scott has continued the podcast into 2024 despite indefinitely pausing his weekly YouTube release schedule.[39]
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Singles
| Title | Artist(s) | Year | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| "On a Pirate Ship" | Jay Foreman featuring Mad Cap'n Tom | 2007 | [40] |
| "Shelter Me from the Rain" | Beardyman featuring MC HyperScott | 2022 | [41][42] |
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In 2014, Scott co-founded Emojli along with Matt Gray. It was a parody emoji-only social network inspired by Yo. Emojli was described by Salon as "an inside joke turned into reality".[43][44] It closed in July 2015 after it became too expensive to maintain.[45] In September 2015, Scott created a full-size emoji keyboard out of fourteen standard keyboards to type every standard Unicode emoji.[46]
Other web apps Scott has created include "Evil", a web app that revealed the phone numbers of Facebook users;[47][48] "Tweleted", which showed posts deleted from Twitter;[49] "What's Osama bin Watchin?", which mashed together an image of Osama bin Laden with YouTube Internet memes;[50] "Parliament WikiEdits", a Twitter bot that tweets whenever an IP address from the Houses of Parliament edited Wikipedia, which inspired a wave of similar accounts including CongressEdits;[51] and "Klouchebag", a satire of the social media rankings site Klout.[52][53]
In December 2022, Scott appeared in two episodes of Christmas University Challenge as captain of the University of York team.[54]
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