#no thoughts just Ryan and Shane

[xyzmp3]

This is so silly!! This is so silly!!

[queenofthearchipelago]

Long Rant about the Watcher Thing

The thing about what's happening with Watcher is that I'm a musician. I understand deeply the difficulties that come with an artist making their art and needing money and the relationship with the people that art is for. So I understand that Watcher needs money to pay their employees and maintain their business.

That said, they revealed that they have 25 employees (half of which are nepotism hires and friends from BuzzFeed) and that one episode of Ghost Files costs "hundreds of thousands of dollars." (Ghost Files being their most expensive show by bar, not their average spending habits per Watcher episode)

I understand from a few people I've seen who are in their Patreon that they make at least 100k per month from the patreon. And then there's the money they get from youtube itself from the views. And then there's the money they get from the ads.

Now I understand that Ryan said this decision came down to primarily 2 things: the ad companies were making them feel stifled with what they could do (which they don't explain how), and they want more money to be able to keep up a higher production quality.

I'm going to skip past the thing about the ads. They never specified how the ad companies were making them change their content in a way that made them feel unsatisfied. I can't speak or provide any opinions on why they want so badly to escape needing ad deals.

But I can talk about the higher production quality they speak of and that's specifically because Ryan said that they wanted to pay for a higher production quality FOR US. "For you guys."

We... we didn't ask for higher production. This is NOT a decision they need to make on our account. I understand and respect if they aren't creating on they level they want. But it's odd that they're speaking towards not being able to afford their current spending habits, as if this is something we asked them to do.

I've read a lot of comments about this and I agree with a lot of you that it's odd that this decision to switch to streaming coincides with the return of Worth It, a show that when produced by Steven, seems like it could easily cost just as much as Ghost Files to produce.

I understand why it feels like this is all Steven's fault. His vibes in the video today, compared to Ryan and Shane, made it seem like he was the most excited about it. It's Steven that has been highlighted multiple times as the business man, the one who makes the financial decisions. It's Steven's shows on Watcher that get canceled after one or two seasons, meanwhile Ryan and Shane's shows just keep going to 5 seasons and beyond.

Shane even said it explicitly, that there are "shows that didn't do as well on youtube, that might do better on a streaming service."

But most of the fans DO watch Watcher for Ryan and Shane, they always have. Steven's shows don't do as well. When Watcher brings in a new host and makes a new show for them, those shows do even worse.

I know this upsets Ryan, he's been very vocal about wanting Watcher to expand beyond himself and Shane. He wants his company to be successful regardless of whether he's in front of the camera or not.

But I feel like this step is trying to force it. Right now, this is still Ryan and Shane's channel. This is why we're here. The people haven't latched onto Steven as much, and the attempts to bring in new hosts have been unsuccessful.

There are lots of comments floating around about why Watcher didn't do what Rhett and Link did and open up youtube membership. Or why didn't they host more live events. Or why didn't they do more livestreams. These all could have been fantastic ideas that wouldn't betray the fans.

Because I do think they forgot that their fanbase is largely women in their 20s. People are right in bringing up the cost of living crisis, in bringing up how many subscription services we're already subscribed to. And my heart goes out to the international viewers who can't access the website at all in their country and the ones who can't afford it because Watcher forgot to consider the currency difference.

I feel that they have betrayed their fanbase. I remember when Watcher started and Ryan admitted he was scared no one would watch. And then we showed up for them because we loved them and what they did.

But now most of the fans can't or won't follow them where they're going. And I think Ryan might know this too from the way he said If this is goodbye, it's been fun.

I wish they would have tried other things before hard launching a streaming service. I wish they would have had a long game plan to get to the place they wanted to be as a company and as creatives.

I feel betrayed but I also don't want this company going bankrupt. If they go bankrupt, then we truly have lost them forever. I hope they take a look at the overwhelming backlash, at their falling subscriber numbers, and I hope they reconsider doing this.

[theghoulboysblog]

saw ryan bergara be interviewed tonight at a college and OMG. IT WAS AMAZING. SO ANYWAY, I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE SOME VERY BRIEF HIGHLIGHTS FROM THAT NIGHT:

- he restated that he believes that shane is a robot in the way that he simply does not process emotion.

- according to ryan: “we [him and shane] actually are friends! … unfortunately! 😭”

- he said that he sees shane the most out of everyone else in his life. second only to maybe his wife.

- he told the story about how he and shane met and become friends! <3

- ryan wants his last words to be “keep rolling!” ? 😟

- ryan wants to be swallowed by aliens ??? 😟

- ryan wants to be killed by an alien in front of all his loved ones ????? 😟

- ryan brings up the fact that shane always says that if aliens exist, they should be smart enough not to let themselves be seen. to that, ryan asks the very awesome question of, “WHY CAN’T THERE BE DIPSHIT ALIENS?” 😭

- his favorite moment with shane is when they almost died! (as they were on a boat in an extremely dangerous situation, they watched a thunderstorm together while staring at the skyline and stars. shane said, “nice night.” and ryan said, “yeah.” and they stood in silence.)

- ryan was asked how shane convinced him to be a guest in puppet history, and ryan said that shane didn’t have to convince him at all. ryan said that he genuinely loves puppet history, even if he has to pretend that he doesn’t! :)

- apparently, shane never actually has the songs done during their recording, so most of the time he’s playing some voice memo rough draft (which is why ryan is so distressed every time a song is played in puppet history) and the actual finished song is added in post 😭

- ryan said that if anything happened to shane, he would probably be the one going to prison because of all the threatening jokes he’s made towards him 😭 he thinks people will just assume it’s him 💀 LMAOOO

anyway the show was great, ryan threw t-shirts into the crowd, was asked about his sneakers, and talked about his dog for a while!

very fun! AND i met a very kind girl who was nice enough to airdrop me some pictures of ryan because mine were trash! (the 2nd photo in this post was taken by her btw so full credit to her for that!) 💛

[p-eachbeam]

what i can't comprehend about the whole watcher fiasco is why they're in a rush to completely pull away from youtube when it's very clear that their company isn't a position to do so yet.

this is a four-year-old company who should be building more value to the watcher entertainment name. at this stage of their careers, they should be honed in on building a bigger and more consistent content library, reeling in more viewers, and finding ways to make watcher a household name.

but right now, they don't make enough content to justify a completely separate, paywalled streaming platform. they pump out new shows and new seasons every month, but their upload schedule is so sparse they can't even afford to upload new content for a full week.

and as much as this hurts to say, they don't even have a big enough audience to justify this decision. to the general public, they're still better known by the work they've done under a famous media conglomerate rather than the work they do now. that's not a good thing when you want to pull away from the biggest video sharing platform.

as someone who has been content creation adjacent for most of my professional career, the desire to be less reliant on sponsorships and make high-caliber content in a way that's sustainable is valid. i'm with them on this one. i want my favorite creators to be able to create the content they love without worrying about how they're going to pay their staff and how they're putting food on their table.

i'm just failing to understand how this is going to work out for them when a good chunk of their audience isn't in a position to shell out money for a streaming service. i don't know how they're going to find people who want to pay for watcher tv when their existing fanbase can't even see the value of their streaming service.

people more knowledgeable than i have pointed out that there are many ways for them to find people who are willing to pay to see the television caliber content they've wanted to make from the day they launched without pushing out the people who've also been there from the very start but don't have the financial means to follow them into this new stage of their company.

idk. i think i'm just more upset at how it seems like they didn't even try to find a middle ground between their vision and their audience.

[alionnamedcobra]

[serious-goose]

there's a subsection of the internet where upping the production value actually makes your content worse. like a lot of us are actually nostalgic for the simplicity of the early internet. trying to make content that's 'tv quality' doesn't make it better

[thatonegeekygirl]

was rewatching ghost files looking for reference photos and stumbled across a meme template

[bergoop]

He meant this positively, by the way.

(x)

[kuzcos-poision]

Just my thoughts and stuff on the watcher situation. And update. Ramblings.

Watcher did something bad. all three of them made the decision. They have now dealt with and responded to the backlash regarding this decision.

The backlash was justified. People aren’t saying they shouldn’t be paid. We all believe they should be paid fairly. They should also learn how to run a business and spend wisely especially in this time where money is sparse.

It wasn’t bullying as people have said. Sure there was some but the majority of the things said about this was genuinely criticism regarding their decision and regarding how people felt like they weren’t valued as fans in any capacity because this was done without consultation and consideration for the fans.

The backlash was also valid in that they hyped it up and announced new hires and a new show displaying expensive food and frivolous spending on food that a majority of their audience isn’t able to afford in the first place. This is where I believe people brought up that they don’t want to just pay for Steven to eat “$1000 burgers” is because that was the last thing they had posted about doing which doesn’t appeal to a majority of the audience.

They are definitely more disconnected from their audience then we had previously believed which is now very apparent. While I believe they should be able to create what they desire on their own platform I think they also need to take in consideration what their audience wants.

I think this was also a bad decision because they lost a considerable amount of viewers when they went to watcher in the first place they thought putting up a paywall would be good way to make their audience larger and happy.

The update they provided was good in that they addressed most of the concerns the audience was expressing however people feel betrayed over this and some won’t gain that trust back with them.

As for the Steven lim hate. I think he was/is just not as connected to the audience as Ryan and Shane were within the content created. A good example of this is the live shows. It’s Ryan and Shane and Steven isn’t a big part of it. The banter between the three of them is fun however a lot of people are after the bfu banter. It’s like the Ryan and shane show with a side of Steven. Which is a big reason as to him getting a lot of blame through this. As well as the public display of what appeared to be the morals that shane specifically abided by which are very different then what was shown with the making and execution of this decision. The opposing morals are what I believe made people weary in blaming all three of them in this. However it was a decision made by all of them. And now dealt with by all of them.

They ALL deserved the criticism and backlash for this decision and I’m glad they have addressed this and made the changes to their decision. They have lost trust and still need to reevaluate spending within production costs but I’m glad they dealt with the content distribution aspect of this issue.

[s0fter-sin]

last thing i’ll say; people aren’t owed free content but creatives aren’t owed financial compensation either

[sergle]

all the posts ive seen in the past few hours are making me wonder if people have been secretly holding a grudge against steven this entire time 😭

this is gonna be one of those things where ppl go "I never liked that guy" and other ppl go "I literally don't believe you" but I will tell you right now what all my Unwatched vids on the Watcher channel have in common

[anotherbummer]

this wasn’t the big announcement i was hoping for

[sncwonthebeach]

hey, um.. @wearewatcher (Shane in particular)

I'm so sorry for this but it's all I could think of after seeing that damn headline 😭😭😅

[codyoclock]

Quick little sketch of the reunion :,D

[thatonegeekygirl]

Unsolved Supernatural Season 6 - Bloopers, Goofs, And Outtakes handpicked for our favourite local cryptid @jupitersspot