The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome
-
Ten years ago, when Youtube/online video content creation was still a new thing and people were fumbling around trying to figure this whole new market, a guy named Doug Walker reaches success with his character/show The Nostalgia Critic. He also forms the website That Guy With The Glasses (later renamed Channel Awesome), which was one of the early content aggregators, picking up other upcoming talents like Linkara (Atop the Fourth Wall), Brad Jones (The Cinema Snob), Lindsay Ellis (ex-Nostalgia Chick), Spoony and many others. In the early years, one of the best ways for any budding new creator to reach a larger audience and it was the dream of many to be picked up by them and joining these big, famous names.
Now, Doug Walker knows nothing about running a business and does not actually want to do it, so when Channel Awesome is founded he hands over control to Mike Michaud. A guy who wants to be a manager but has absolutely zero management skills and is very interested in making demands (and money), but with no interest in making any actual work. Doug also hands over the rights to the main cashcow of the site, his character of the Nostalgia Critic, to him (big
there).Also, while at the start they from the outside looked like this big, slightly dysfunctional family of creators, who seemed to have a good time together making content, some hints had started leaking through the cracks that things were not as they were. The anniversary movies, involving most of the big names, went from a fun thing to a chore and a vessel for Doug's ego, with Doug imagining himself like the next Spielberg while the reality was closer to Tommy Wiseau. The Dunning-Kruger effect in full force.
Also, things started breaking down. Mental breakdown, suicide, sexual harassment, big names started to leave, people fired for bullshit reasons, their entire gaming website shut down without informing any of the creators that it was happening, the canceling of the Nostalgia Critic (without informing any creators again), etc... But still the site kept going. Some big names still there. It still had a reputation as the site you wanted to be picked up by as a new content creator wanting to make it. But all of the drama have just kept piling on, festering behind the nice image, until now when it's all coming tumbling down, with pretty much all the remaining big names leaving as they and the other ex-CA creators are now bringing all the shit that's gathered over the years to light.
Here's a compilation of what's been coming out the past couple weeks:
The long drama of Channel Awesome, Doug and Rob Walker, and CEO...
The Noah/Spoony twitter account being passed around is supposedly a fake as are the rumors he's transitioning and using Patreon funds to do it. Please keep this in mind when you see it and before...
The big document of stories from the former contributors (which had reached 40 pages on the last status notice) is slated to be released to the public next monday, april 2nd. I am following the developments with interest as Channel Awesome was, for a time, my main source of video-based entertainment so it does hold some nostalgia to me, even if I stopped using the site a couple years ago.
-
So, in effect, the sorry tale of a bunch of people failing to remember (or, indeed, actively trying to forget) that the key thing that a "content creator" must do is, er, um, well, create content.
-
Eh, what? Are you saying someone has actually watched all this rubbish that is on youtube? Why would anyone do that?
-
@steve_the_cynic The actual creation of content wasn't the problem here. CA actually fired content creators that were putting out content daily for "not putting up enough content". Or for missing their deadline with two hours, even if the fault was on CA's end. And there's the fact that they were taking revenue and/or not paying their lesser content creators that were making them money. Like asking one creator to make a short movie for them for free, then putting it as bonus content on a DVD they were selling for money, not giving the creator a single dime in return.
But that was all fine, because they were getting paid in exposure. Although at the same time they were not allowed to advertise their Patreons or similar, because that could take revenue away from CA. So, yeah, very scumbag strategies.
-
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
But that was all fine, because they were getting paid in exposure.
Time to wheel this out again:
-
The document is up. It is a long and damning read, consisting of 69 pages in its entirety. They also made a tldr version for easier reading:
There is a lot of fail. Abusive, demanding and absent management. Misogyny and homophobia. Sexual harassment being allowed to go on for long periods of time. Dunning-Kruger filmmaking, where people who knew filmmaking would be shot down as "elitist" while the "professionals" had to be informed about basics. Firing people over bullshit reasons, like being a day late due to emergency despite not missing a single deadline for 5 years. Management not being happy about producers trying to make their own ends meet by adding an extra ad to their videos or linking to their Patreons. Producers leaving the site nowadays being completely purged from it within hours without a single goodbye, even those who been there for 9 years. The HR person being forced to work every single evening every single day of the year and then let go because she had a surgery, and then additionally being forced to sign a contract forbidding her from working in the entertainment industry for 3 years.
So, yeah, any bets on how much longer CA will be around? Although with Nostalgia Critic still being a cashcow it would be hard to kill off CA unless that show would start tanking hard.
-
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
So, yeah, any bets on how much longer CA will be around? Although with Nostalgia Critic still being a cashcow it would be hard to kill off CA unless that show would start tanking hard.
That depends on whether this ends up with an adverse judgement against CA in court, or with some other bottom-feeder buying CA out.
-
@dkf said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
So, yeah, any bets on how much longer CA will be around? Although with Nostalgia Critic still being a cashcow it would be hard to kill off CA unless that show would start tanking hard.
That depends on whether this ends up with an adverse judgement against CA in court, or with some other bottom-feeder buying CA out.
Some of these stories should have ended up with CA in court several times, But the combination of young and naive creators vs money-grabbing scumbags tend to lead to the creators not daring/affording to go into court, so they do get screwed over hard as a result. Hopefully this will lead to new creators daring to be more critical and stand up for themselves so they wont get abused by their MCN or similar.
-
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
So, yeah, any bets on how much longer CA will be around? Although with Nostalgia Critic still being a cashcow it would be hard to kill off CA unless that show would start tanking hard.
I'm still kinda surprised NC is still doing so well since they moved towards the skit-based format instead of using footage. I understand why (most are more recent movies, which attract takedown notices like
attracts flies), but they're just not as good. Nothing against Malcolm and Tamara, they work with what they've gotta, but it's still not the same as critiquing something you can actually SEE and HEAR as they're talking about it.
-
Wow, this sounds worse than the ILoveKimpossibleALot thing that happened a few years ago....
-
@tsaukpaetra What was that incident about? I don't think I heard of it.
-
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
@tsaukpaetra What was that incident about? I don't think I heard of it.
Essentially kinda the same but milder and with a much younger woman. Here, a sensationalized article from that period
-
Well, CA's PR seems to just be as ass as expected based on the grievances. This was posted as a photo to the ChannelAwesome Facebook page about 2 hours ago:
So, basically, "Sorry you felt that way, but we're not paying attention to people who aren't part of us now".
-
@e4tmyl33t said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
"Sorry you felt that way, but we're not paying attention to people who aren't part of us now".
"PS: We're not actually NAMING who the 'troublemaker' was, but this should be enough of a dogwhistle for all you True Fans out there. You just decide which ex-producer you already have a grudge against, and start sending death threats to her*. Love CA!"
(* and of course it will be a 'her' who gets harassed, natch)
-
@e4tmyl33t So they haven't read and/or don't care to actually address the concerns raised. Good job, CA. If they did nothing about these issues for the past 6+ years, what makes anyone think they're gonna start now?
-
Well, it seems their non-apology posted to their social medias is now causing the Streisand Effect as a lot of fans who were out of the loop are now getting the full story. Bravo!
-
But criticism that isn't a means to a productive end does little for either the party criticizing or those in the line of fire.
'You really shouldn't be making those accusations of murder. How does that help anything?'
-
@atazhaia Apparently now Film Brain has left CA as well.
-
-
Found elsewhere:
They considered conventions a waste of time ... hated that we went to MAGfest because of a bad experience Doug had there once
Long story short my friend Derek did a 18+ panel at a con and he was literally sponsored by Bad Dragon and they gave him a free dragon dildo and he used it to frost a cinnamon roll and the nostalgia critic had a panel in the same room after his panel and the nostalgia critic walked in without knowing what had transpired and said "hey! Free Cinnabon!" And ate it
If that is true, that is amazing!
-
-
FYI: if any of you dumbfucks are on Something Awful, there's a thread for all this.
Well, it's a Internet Critic (and Drama) thread in general, but needless to say, this has been a topic of discussion.
-
And just as the fires were dying down, Channel Awesome decided that the best storage place fo all their highly flammable goods was the still burning ruins. This evening has been... special.
It started with CA accusing the ex-producers (well, the female ones at least) of being vindictive liars.
Now, that post made things worse. Much worse. Not only did they confirm all the stuff they tried to debunk. Their piss-poor job at blacking out the screenshots also showed which ex-contributor was guilty of grooming and raping not just one, but two fans. Someone very belowed by the community: JewWario.
This is something that CA management knew. They also told him he could not stay with CA because of this and allowed him to leave on his own accord. They never informed anyone else about what was up, so they just sat on this information. Go one year forward and JewWario commited suicide. All big producers do heartfelt tribute videos (and smaller ones are told to fuck off for wanting to do anything). CA still keeps quiet about the truth.
MarzGurl said in her confirmation of this that she only realized who it was right as they were assembling the Change the Channel document and realizing from the timeline of events, although difficult for anyone else to speculate from just the information made public. Until CA now posted these chat logs with timestamps, making it easy for anyone to also realize who was implicated.
So... Instead of doing the smart thing and just waiting this out, as it was very much dying, Mike Michaud just couldn't let those pesky women get away with pointing out what a horrible person he is, he had to bite back and it backfired even more than his non-apology. It caused CA to lose their two major sponsors. It revealed this bombshell of who had done unspeakable things. This has turned into something wholly unreal at this point. Just... just wow.
Rob deleted his Facebook. Malcolm and Tamara suddenly spoke up in defense of the management after a week of silence. Lindsay mentioned having the material for a class-action lawsuit now. Even more producers have left, meaning we're soon down to being able to count the remaining ones on a single hand. Considering all that's happened, will they even be able to survive for another month at this rate?
-
@atazhaia said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
Rob deleted his Facebook.
Well, there's something good happened right there.
-
@dkf The best response to all of this from CA management this far.
-
I mentioned this ages ago.
Mr Metokur basically did a 6 part series on it.
They aren't that hard to find on google.
This is one of the reasons why I don associate with other devs outside of work because the Austism is just too strong. I can at least log off from this forum when I've had enough of you cunts.
-
@lucas1 said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
Austism
Is that what afflicts the government of Texas?
-
@lucas1 said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
Mr Metokur
Metokur is a shitstain of a human-being who has been personally responsible for stalking and harassing several female producers, to the point where one former female producer pulled all videos off the internet when Metokur announced he was doing a retrospective.
Do not support this shitstain.
-
On the other hand, Fredrik Knudsen (aka: down the rabbit hole) did a reading of the document on a livestream. Lots of commentary with minimal "in my opinion". Pro watch. It's 5 hours. The last half hour is just him reading out the SuperChats.
-
And it's all dying out...
Brad Jones is stuck and cannot leave easily, if rumors are anything to go by. Guru Larry is just sticking around for shits and giggles at this point, trying to outlast every other affiliated producer despite being highly anonymous for most of his time there.
The forums finally got nuked, after being spammed to hell with gore pics due to zero moderation happening. Along with the forums being taken down, the blogs are also gone. The store went down a few days ago.
Nearing its 10th anniversary, it's all come undone in just a couple weeks. And if CA does make a third response it's just gonna explode further, as they can say nothing at this point without adding more fuel to the fire.
Although, for those who want to keep supporting their fav ex-CA producers a handy document was compiled:
-
I'm still waiting for another shoe to drop. I don't know why, but I have a feeling that within a couple days something else major will come along that'll be another nail in the coffin. More than likely it'll be another fail from CA's management themselves...
-
@e4tmyl33t Malcolm and Tamara have let slip that there is a video response coming, so yeah, everyone is waiting for that to add fuel to the fire.
-
@atazhaia Especially since they're keeping on CA's side (which I kind of expect, given that they're actual employees instead of contributors)
-
@atazhaia How did people unblacked out the screenshots? I tried and couldn't
-
@magnusmaster I haven't seen these particular screenshots, but one common technique is to invert the image. Did you try that?
-
@magnusmaster said in The Rise and Fall of Channel Awesome:
How did people unblacked out the screenshots? I tried and couldn't
I wager they figured out the font used and measured the exact length in pixels of the blacked-out names, and that narrowed it down enough.
-
@magnusmaster If you're talking about the ones that, from what I understand, basically confirmed they were talking about JewWario, it wasn't that they unblacked them but that they managed to line up the timestamps with being immediately before JewWario "left" the site.
-
@e4tmyl33t Yeah, that's how it went down. People were able to figure things from the dates, with some extra help from that the poor blacking out didn't conceal an initial 'J' properly. So then it ended up producers starting with J who left around that time. (Although the dates was all they needed anyway, as the ones who edited the Change the Channel document figured it from just the dates.)
Also, then there was the fact that the indicent discussed in the screenshots wasn't the one revealed in the document so CA managed to out that there was a second victim in their eagerness to show they were doing swift action. (The first incident was a year before, as stated in the document. CA uses second incident from right before the firing to disprove the point of them not acting swiftly.)
-
@atazhaia It sounds like a classicโฆ
โWe have a problem here.โ
โYeah, we do.โ
โWhat shall we do about it?โ
โTurn it into a disaster! That'll distract everyone from the problem.โ
-
Sounds like Doug has walked off now too, since Facebook now says 'worked at Channel Awesome'
-
@thebread Eh, a lot of people have discounted that since that appears to be on a second Facebook page for Doug Walker that seems to be a fan-made or third-party made page and not his own.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7UTXkL5HqywUqNMXwL5nVG4R84Hr1GX7Phagi15mUo/edit
http://channelawesome.com/our-response
