also one real post about this and like, plenty of ink has been spilt on how disconnected watcher entertainment seems to be from its fans but i think the missing piece here is how disconnected watcher is from the rest of youtube. when the catastrophe hit i went to all my terminally online friends, the same way i did after the hbomberguy james somerton video, or after the ned fulmer fiasco, or the creepshowart scandal etc, or every time jenny nicholson dropped a new evermore video, including the ones behind the $2 patreon paywall we all gladly pay for, and for the first time...
no one knew who i was talking about.
these are not insulated people. these are people i can trust to have at least name recognition of almost any youtuber i mention. they know downtherabbithole and strangeaeons and cjthex and kappakaiju and miniminuteman773 and kazrowe and somemorenews etc etc etc
so when i put in the group chat, with no context, 'he wasnt even on cribs' or 'we have no cats kathleen' or 'only humble pagan commune schemes' or whatever, i usually do so with great trust that at least half the group will know what im on about.
this time, crickets.
i backpedaled a little and pulled up the 'ive connected them' meme and the fuzzy blue professor, and i got nothing at all. the only recognition i got was when someone belatedly realized that he had seen the goatman video when it dropped (although he had no idea that they had their own company now), and another person remembered that they had offered to collab with danny gonzalez, a youtuber with twice the subscribers
because she had checked back to see if danny went ghost hunting again, and lost interest because he hadnt.
i also brought it up in my dedicated buzzfeed unsolved group chat but ummmmm i am the only one in that group still watching ever since the shift to watcher oops
the only splash they had made in my again, TERMINALLY ONLINE friend group that watches hours and hours of youtube a day was a buzzfeed video seven years ago, and when they had failed to collab with someone more famous than them. i found myself in the unusual position of having to explain the situation to a bunch of dirty internet gremlins, all of whom heard the whole story and said 'why would they do that'
not 'why would they do that to their fans' but 'why would they do that as youtubers'
even aside from the moneygrubbing, we watcher stans were confused about why they tried to offer us a service we didn't need or want, and i think it obscured the confusion on why they thought it was a good idea at all, when so many other models were available to them. why werent they using their patreon like other youtubers? why weren't they collaborating with other youtubers? why weren't they putting out regular, lower quality content like other youtubers? if they wanted higher quality content, why weren't they partnering with nebula, like lindsay ellis, or netflix, like bo burnham. why didn't they run their ideas past someone like the green brothers, who have jumpstarted scishow and many other similar projects successfully, and are famously good to work with/consult with? why would they try to pull a roosterteeth? don't they know what happened?
and i think the answer is no. i think they just don't know those things. and they didnt bother to check, because they think all those things are beneath them. because they think corporate content is the only worthwhile kind there is.
why else would they think they have to have an office building, keep dozens of people on staff, buy expensive cameras, and build a streaming platform? why do they only collaborate with actors and singers who have corporate entertainment approval? why are they reinventing the wheel on buzzfeed when thousands of youtubers build perfectly stable careers with a mic and a camera, and sometimes hire an editor?
i guess my takeaway from this is that, at least they didnt break my heart as a fan entirely because they fundamentally misunderstood me. they did it, at least in part, because they do not understand how youtube works, or what part they play in it.
they dont understand how people use youtube. it is not a cinematic event worthy of the big tv, it is line goes up playing in the background for the 400th time as i wash my face and put my laundry away.
that is why they spent months and months planning this without ever noticing it was a bad idea, while millions of youtube viewers knew instantly. thats why they didn't start with a more moderate solution, why they never used their patreon properly, why they cared so much about the production value, why they thought a youtube audience, any audience at all, would jump at the chance to leave youtube.
bc youtube as a creator sucks, and we all know that, but youtube as a viewer is extremely comfortable. all i ask of youtube is to be mildly interesting in the background while i do other stuff. it is filler. some of the filler is extremely good, yes, but there is no room or reason in my life to give more of my money and attention to my filler, let alone to get a bigger screen for it.
and honestly, this is why i and others stayed on with the ghoul boys even though their quality dropped. because it's filler. im not even looking at the screen you apparently spent 100k on. im flipping my eggs. im washing my hair. im waiting for the bus with my headphones in and my phone in my pocket. thank you for being my background music. in return i will sit through your ads and push your view counter up by one. i may even hit the like button by accident bc my phone is in my pocket.
this is not to say i dont enjoy my filler. i would absolutely die without it. but it is not and never will be exchanged for the instances when i make popcorn in The Big Bowl and turn on a Real Movie on the Big Screen (my old laptop that is 15 whole inches) with my phone turned over so nothing can distract me.
my filler can't be my movie, and vice versa. nor should it be. but watcher doesnt understand that, apparently. they think youtube is cruelly preventing them from being netflix, and they think we want netflix, and they don't understand that, even with that half-assed apology that they didn't explain their dream correctly and they are jsut so destitute they had to take extreme measures after they went to europe 6 too many times...
there is a fundamental misunderstanding about how people use youtube , both as creators and as consumers. they didn't just misunderstand their fanbase. they continue to misunderstand the entire ecosystem. idk guys. maybe you should have learned something from those youtubers that you apparently think you are too good for.
and as for me, welp. i've booted people from my filler line-up for less. and there are soooooooooooooo many other fish in the sea, and they are not asking me to pay them 27 corporation salaries from my own pocket. they are asking for me to bump their view counter up by one.
goodbye boys. i really hope you find a way to fulfill yourselves artistically or whatever. but you have burned this particular bridge, like. forever. and i don't think i'm the only one who feels that way.
and not because i dont support people getting a living wage, you guilt-tripping vultures, or because i dont believe in following dreams and wishing on stars and whatnot.
but because i prefer to consume content from people who know what they're doing, and i simply no longer trust that includes you.
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I know I haven’t been on in a while, but that’s because I was busy getting ready to launch this!
Introducing Chaotic Curious! I'm leaving academia and launching a whole new business. New channel trailer is up on YT.
If you want easy-to-understand deep dives into any and all topics under the sun, you’re in the right place. Welcome! My first video is about academia as a whole, its darkside, and why I quit. Then we’ll be off to talk about cartographers gone wild, yes that’s real. And THEN, if you thought you were going to get by without a dose of linguistics, you’d be wrong. Because the next video is about invented languages. It’s about more than sci-fi and fantasy, don’t you know? And as a treat, in all three planned videos, you get colonialism and racism for free. Did you know that’s responsible for… well… everything? NEAT!
I hope you’ll stay. It should be fun! Embrace that chaos, friends. We’ll learn something along the way.
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Career RPG designer and project lead on the original Fallout game, Tim Cain, has released a near-17 minute video on his YouTube channel to talk about the Hollywood premiere of the Fallout TV show. Cain had a lot of praise for the new series, but also expressed frustration with how fans project onto and treat many of the people who have worked on Fallout.
Cain was invited by Bethesda's Todd Howard to the premiere event at the Chinese Theater in LA, and seemed to enjoy the big budget celebration of the Fallout series. As for the show itself, Cain had nothing but praise for the premiere, which consisted of the season's first two episodes. "I was literally at the edge of my seat," he said.
Cain appreciated the performances and storytelling, but singled out how the show nailed the Fallout "vibe" as its biggest achievement. "I was just looking at all the props," he said of one scene. "I realized after a few minutes went by that I had not followed the dialogue at all, because I was so engrossed by it visually."
On a more sour note, Cain took time to address the way fans of the series can behave poorly online, particularly regarding any perceived rivalry between Fallout entries developed by Bethesda (3, 4, and 76), and those from Interplay, Black Isle, and Obsidian (1, 2, and New Vegas). Cain spoke positively of Todd Howard, and said that "Some of the stuff you [series fans] say online is so off." See also: the debate about whether the show somehow overrode or ignored the events of those non-Bethesda games, which has since been denied by a senior developer at the studio.
At the premiere Cain also caught up with Brian Fargo, founder of original Fallout publisher Interplay and currently the head of RPG studio inXile. In the past, Cain criticized Fargo when explaining why he left development on Fallout 2 to found his own studio, but Cain made it clear that their relationship is amicable, and that the development of Fallout 2 was a complicated situation from over 20 years ago: "People remember things differently, things happen differently, things affected people differently."
Unfortunately, Fargo seems to have experienced abuse online from fans reacting poorly to Cain's story, reactions which the developer strongly disavowed. "If we can get along, you guys can get along," Cain insisted.
"You guys can be really destructive," Cain said, "Which is odd, because you do it to people who are trying to make things."
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