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“Maybe the horrors would be less daunting if we were holding hands?”

“With each other or with the horrors?”

“I've got two hands!”

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so we agree that post gf alone Shane and Ryan spent a lot of time together cuddling yes or yes

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footage of them kissing next pls

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Ryans commitment to making a good show though. Like yeah the idea might be stupid and foolish and why is he doing it to himself but also. He's not gonna quit one he decides to do a thing. His creative vision and absolute perfectionism to edit the show himself and not show the footage to anyone before the final version. I really really admire him for his dedication to his craft. And you think its about ghost hunting but the real ghosts were the fears you had to face along the way.

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ghost files alone best series that Ryan did honestly. It's got everything and the finale is great. It really is something that i will think about for a long time.

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And then to the heart.

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Ryan Bergara is the best and most bravest ghost hunter who ever lived.

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So no making watcher this year

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Part 2! of the Haunted Infirmary Advent Calendar!

Each day up until the 24th December there will be a new fic posted by our talented writers at the Haunted Infirmary.

Here is the AO3 Collection for your perusal. Now to the newest fics posted!

Life's a Dance by Impala_Chick

While on vacation, Shane worries that Ryan might be getting bored. Turns out Ryan already has the day covered.

Wonderful, maybe even weird by tasty_littl_snack

The gates are old and the lock is rusty. “Oh.” Says the old man “It seems like this isn’t working. I gotta get the key.” And he leaves them there, alone. Ryan is looking at Shane. “I know this was your idea but maybe this is going too far.” What if they were (accidentally) locked in a cell together and had to deal with it?

You Filling My Cup, Sun Coming Up by sequence_fairy

“Power out at your place?” “Yeah,” Shane replies, running her hand along Obi’s spine, listening to the deep rumble of his purr. “You?” There’s a rustling on the other end of the phone that Shane reads as Ryan nodding. “Yeah, my mom and dad have the generator running though, you wanna come out to Arcadia?” “Can’t,” Shane says, immediately. “Obi—” “Shit, that’s right,” Ryan interrupts. “Fuck. Okay. Give me an hour?” There’s no time for Shane to say anything, let alone disagree or suggest that Ryan not do something stupid, before Ryan disconnects the call.

Want to learn more about The Haunted Infirmary? Check out our pinned post!

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Still thinking of the "remember when we listened to this album together late at night... while driving in Ohio" from this weeks pod watcher. Why did Shane say it like that.

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shyan + text memes [1/?]

─ •✦• ─

sorry, not sorry I think text memes are still fun. my last version was all bfu, so I wanted to make some more recent watcher edits

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same anon as before; thank you for your thoughtful answer and analysis, i hope you don't mind if i give some additional thoughts

for background, i was one of the fans that was soured by the announcement of the streamer. i didn't go and spam hate, though, it just felt like a kind of blow which slowed down my support from them. it never wavered though, and i still watch their things on youtube from time to time (i can't afford a subsription or any subscription, for that matter, i only have a spotify student discount). i guess what upset me so much is knowing how many people were in the same situation as me.

obviously the discourse was blown out of proportion (if you can even call it discourse, at times it was pure venom) and things changed for the worse (in my personal opinion). they were enclosed in a decision which was supposed to be freeing from them and backtracking to youtube meant increased dependency on performance-analysis when making content-based decisions (as their overall audience on youtube became smaller and people left, so did other fans like you and me, who prefer non-spooky shows - ultimately leaving the large percentage of horror fans to "dictate" the performance of their content). I think this aligns with what you said in your reply; that GF, MF and AYS are the best performing; but they are also the most "conventional" shows that Watcher makes, appealing to the widest audience. It doesn't leave a big space for fans who prefer niche topics (i'm sorry, but i don't see ghosthunting or telling ghost stories as niche at all, even when they do it in their special ways :/)

i agree with what you said about making different channels for different types of content. i will admit that i am one of those rare (?) fans who doesn't care for horror OR food content. i recognize that this isn't their fault, because it's my personal preference, but again we come back to the fact that OTHER shows will get pushed back, which again, upsets me. this is obviously largely on me, though.

i kind of disagree with your point about the podcast. i certainly feel as if watcherpod started as something different than being about the goings-on and current things in watcher ent. just look at their earlier episodes, something like from ep. 1 to ep. 15 (?), when they all had to come up with a one-word topic and chat shit the whole podcast about random stuff. i loved those episodes as they provided us with a different view of all three of them and gave us some great anecdotes and running jokes. the podcast has become worse, in my opinion, because now it feels like an (unnecessary?) extention of content they already have put out (the ghost files debrief s3 episodes were an hour long? and more? basically a podcast ep). sure they provide some good insight, but how much more can they talk about ghosts? i have also noticed the influx of new fans who send them questions on the pod, which is great, but i find myself listening to stories and answers which i, and many other long time fans, have heard thousands of times over, and are well-known in the fandom space. i'll admit here too that this one is more of a personal grievance and relates back to the fact that i dislike horror content.

sorry for the word vomit but i am looking forward to your reply :)

Thank you for your thoughts. I didn't consider that there are actually fans who came back after having been soured by them, I admit in the last half year I became more of in a bubble of being on the streamer since it is something I am fortunate enough to afford. But as you mentioned many fans couldn't, and thus watcher needed to focus on youtube again and make adjustements.

I find it interesting that you said that both of us left in a way, and that might skew the amount of views they get on non-spooky content. I didn't think of it that way, but indeed putting things on the streamer diminishes the youtube views, this is even true for the podcast which went up yesterday. And I did the thing they expect me to and didn't give a view to the youtube version because I could already watch it earlier. I think the same is for the shows. Fans of spooky content will always come back for it, while fans who might have watched and enjoyed www didn't because they still had feelings about not wanting to support them. (I'm not saying it's you but I've seen some opinions that skew that way).

This is also an insteresting year because Puppet History didn't premiere so we don't know how that would have preformed. Maybe if they did premiere it, some fans would come back earlier and they'd see that they don't need to change into spooky content in everything they do. But we'll never know at this point. I hope the new season preforms well enough that they'll keep it on the main channel, because while not performing as well as ghost files I feel like it has many dedicated fans and is one of the staple watcher shows, wether they planned for that or not.

Yes ghost hunting content might not seem like a niche one but I meant it in comparison to other youtube channels, or if you were to explain watcher to a new person who hadn't heard of ghost hunting before. If youtubers read stories then they just pull them from reddit and not think about it, ays is more of a unique way to do it than just people reading a story and laughing about it.

That's the tricky thing about having a production company as a business but doing personality driven content. It all hinges on people wanting to watch and trust that the shows will be good and the content will not change. Therefore implementing changes is always a risk.

It seems that the main criticisms that they took to heart was that they don't listen to their fans. This is why they made a way for them to contact them, and I didn't get the impression that they answer the same questions all the time - only when people call in live, which happened twice or maybe three times at this point. This puts them on the spot and they have to answer a question that would be usually filtered out by Matt, the producer of the podcast.

When you mentioned that the first fifteen eps seemed different I went back and saw that they didn't have Matt Real in them yet (In a speaking role or otherwise as a producer, the camera angles and lights are different). Therefore the shows are less structured than in the later eps, and they go on a tangent a lot in a way they don't later because mr Real heards them like a pack of sheep to topics and segments that he comes up with. It might be a personal preference wether that's good or bad, personally I love him and I like the vibe that they all get along. But that might lead to the impression that these are friends hanging out and they have topics between themselves that a listener is not a part of. You can always tell them that, if you plan on listening later. I know that when they started taking in the viewer questions many people said that they prefer the off the cuff topics they come up with and they seem to have one or two questions per ep now. (They take last 15 minutes of a one hour podcast and they sometimes also go on tangents from them.)

That change happened in June I think and that's when they let go of their patreon and another show that was basically answering questions my absolute beloved wife, watcher weekly +. (rip sweet prince I miss you every day). Of course these shows were shorter (up to 30 mins every week), but they did go into the behind the scenes content of watcher in a way it is now continued in pod watcher and I really appreciate. But yeah if you started to listen to the podcast for them I get how it might be dissatisfying. (WW+ also went under major overhaul somewhere in the middle of 2023 and became more of a structured show, for the ease of them batch shooting the episodes, and I think that's one of the things - if they shoot say two podcast eps per day, then they can't really have current topics, or talk about what happened last week because it's still the same day and they are people at the end of the day. It is more convenient for them to shoot the eps this way and ultimately they have to produce content in a sustainable way for them.).

About the debriefs, well I think that since they plan on probably keeping the alternating week schedule, they need to justify the content by length. It also probably has to do with youtube algorythm because as I said earlier - uploading content similar in nature around one hour, or 40 minutes is good for it, even if it might make less sense for the structure of the episode (and in the last one they answered the same question twice, and that also has to do with catering to the youtube audience. One part of questions is from the streamer people, the other is from youtube viewers, which sometimes makes for interesting corrections they wouldn't have made, but sometimes they answer questions they already did weeks ago. My personal theory is that they didn't plan on having them that long but then realized that not answering questions from youtube might once again bring the haters in and people saying that they don't care about their audience. So debriefs are a way to compromise and satisfy both audiences. (This is pure speculation on my part though).

So yeah in the end they need to carter to many people and they're at least trying to give the people what they want. I'm very interested to see how they will respond to the comments that people gave them. It's great that most of them are positive and people aren't afraid to tell them what they think. I hope it can only get better from here :D

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guess which old meme reference I found on my hard drive

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how do you feel about them leaning into the horror genre in the future of watcher? i've been chatting to people who still support them after that podcast episode came out, and mostly people are disappointed with that decision, as am i. idk, i feel like i'm too old to enjoy paranormal horror and what attracts me to watcher most are their other shows, i'm less interested in seeing more horror content from them (the podcast also seems to be going in that direction)

Very good question, I hope you don't mind the answer being very long and going into details that not many people care about.

The TLDR version would be to tell Watcher that you feel like this. Tell them that you're here for your favorite shows that aren't the files. They seem to listen to the feedback, and I noticed in the comments of that podcast ep that many people feel like you. (Top 5 beatdown being the dark horse of a favorite show for some, Many Puppet History fans wanting to keep the professor on watcher despite the spooky pivot. I think they will listen to that because this episode opened up the discussion of what people really want, so we'll see.)

Also important thing is that if you're on the streamer then nothing will change. Steven's shows will be uploaded there, and Puppet History will air in January. My guess is that they want to see how it preforms to decide what to do with it later, but now that they started to even upload podcast eps ad-free I think everything will still be on the streamer. So if you're the subscriber to that then not much will change.

If you also want my personal feelings then they are that WWW is their best show, along with Travel season, and I still think those are the best shows that watcher has. Besides Ghost Files which I also really like so if I'm getting more ghost files in 2025 and it will be as good as season 3 then I have more positive feelings towards the change into spooky content.

But I'm a dedicated fan who signed up for the streamer, and I still think that goodbye youtube video is not that bad and is a fun making watcher finale. My opinion doesn't allign with majority of watcherinas, and I don't have all the facts. This is pure speculation based on what happened before but I'm also sometimes wrong so don't take this too seriously I just love being analytical about how people think.

And the facts are that Mystery files and Ghost files are their best preforming shows.

And also that the content they're makng is content that they want to make. I think that is a detail that flew over people's head, they are listening to the audience but they also lean into their little niches of interests. If there are videos that they don't want to make then they simply will not. (Rip MF debrief)

You can see that many casual fans are there for Ghost Files with the criticism for the streamer being "They only make 6 eps a year I'm not paying for that". For most people watcher is synonymous with the files and it's those people who bring in views and therefore money. (I'm not a youtube expert but I believe if you have sponsors in an episode then you're like "This video will get x many views, and thus a precentage of that are potential clients"). I think this is why some sponsored videos are pinned in the channel, and this is why travel season spicy ep has more views than the rest of the season, it was pinned there for some weeks, before their next sponsored video appeared. The fact that people are there for GF also shows by some people saying "I subscribed just for that", or most telling when the trailer dropped suddenly many people were in the comments on watcher tv sharing their enthusiasm.

Also if we look at the channel in 2023 compared to 2022, we can already see a very slow shift towards the spooky content.

(In bold are what counts as spooky shows, in italics shows that got over 1M views as of writing this post)

In 2022 their slate was:

Top 5 Beatdown -> Worth A Shot -> Eat like Me -> Berry Boy's one off -> Are you scared -> Too Many Spirits -> Pretty Historic -> Dish Granted -> Ghost Files + Debrief -> Puppet History -> Making Watcher

Out of these shows, only Ghost files, Are you Scared and Puppet History got more than 1M views (as of writing this post) and some episodes of top 5 betadown depending on the topic I suppose.

In 2023 the shows that premiered were:

Top 5 beatdown -> Are you scared + Survival Mode (same week) -> Too Many Spirits + Worth a Shot (aired wednesdays) -> Mystery Files -> GF one off -> Puppet History -> Ghost files + debrief (alternating weeks) -> top 5 specials -> Santa TMS -> Making Watcher.

Versus in 2024:

Survival Mode+ Top 5 beatdown (same week) -> Mystery Files -> Streamer announcement -> Survival Mode s3 -> Travel Season + Are you scared 3 eps in -> WWW + TMS one off -> Jokerfied TMS -> Are you scared one off -> Ghost files + Debrief (alternating weeks) + Are you Scared x Rusty quill collab (the lost tapes).

I marked the shows considered spooky in bold to show you that the slow increase of them happened over the last three years, and that even if they premiere their "variety" shows that are not considered spooky they still need a spooky show to equal out the views. The simple truth is that shows without Ryan and Shane doing spooky stuff don't get the views even if they are beloved by some watcherinas.

Now what is the spooky content they're leaning towards? Let's see what they're saying.

"More Ghost files, More Mystery Files, more episodes of those and Are you scared, and also Ghost Files Alone which is not a series yet but one-off for now."

They're "doubling down" on making them which is also something they wanted to do, but perhaps didn't know how. I think this is an opportunity for them to see what works (And as Katie Leblanc said, it's also easier for their crew to not go from editing one show and then a whole different show. We know how much effort ghost files required so I think if they focus their energies into making the files verse then they're gonna be better for that. It is better to have one good show instead of many cheaper ones. My hope is that they know what they're doing in that regard, because if they're going to lower the quality of Ghost files to make more of the episodes then that's not something I'm interested in. But I don't think they will go that far)

As for the food shows going for another channel, this is sadly the reality of youtube. Just like the thumbnails for ghost files s3 on Youtube are Very Clickbaity, so is the almighty algorythm, not liking the variety that watcher produces. What do you mean one week you can have long hour video and the other only half hour? Why only one month is there food stuff, and the other some spooky stuff? This might be confusing to new audiences but also to youtube algho which is like "Produce more of the same thing, always". This is a thing that every youtuber talks about sooner or later, and why every youtuber has a second channel for more experimental stuff. Food and Spooky content doesn't mix well, so if watcher wants to make a second channel for food I do think it's for the best. Steven's shows deserve to be watched by people who like them, not hatebombed (and we can all agree that Travel Season got the short end of the stick this year. As much as I love that show, it wasn't fun to go into comments and see people disliking what they're seeing.)

I think also this is the basis on which they're making that pivot, and in the end this decision doesn't surprise me. They already made a separate travel season instagram account, to give a chance for fans to have something more fun, so I think this was a decision they came to quickly. Perhaps they wanted to see how everything performs, and had to wait half a year to see how things are. I think the reason they waited with announcing this change is because they had to have a plan and see what would work. As much as I think they should make a separate more concise way to announce the changes (I doubt many fans even know of the podcast ep, or were listening to the end), aside from their own feelings about it they had to come up with a plan on how to go from here. I also think that they haven't decided what to do until the end. Shane mentions that Puppet History MIGHT go somewhere else IF it doesn't fit. Those are hypotheticals, and nothing is set in stone. This is why I think it's important to let them know what you feel about their content going forward.

I also think the strategy of them going into more spooky content is underway in small ways we don't notice. Besides the slow increase in shows, this explains the bfu collab (follow us on watcher for more of the ghost hunts), even if Ryan admitted that they wanted to do this for a long time, and the crossover with a tv show that focuses on ghost files. So they are doing this but in the end it is more content for us.

As for Pod Watcher leaning into the spooky things.... well this is pod watcher and it's about what's airing on watcher. Their last episodes are themed like this because ghost files is airing, so they keep with the theme. I'm very interested to see how they will change the content once something else will be airing. Also they are film buffs and like scary movies. So no wonder they talk about horror films, that is their interest and they talk about "whatever is on our mind every week".

Lastly I also think that it's fine to not like or vibe with the change if you feel like that. People change, content changes, our interest comes and goes. Just because you were a fan of watcher in 2020 doesn't mean you have to like everything they do in 2025. I'm myself not sure how much this will remain my main interest, if I will be here for the next five years or maybe decide that the changes are bad and I've outgrown their content in the next half year. (I highly doubt it because it doesn't feel like it for now and I am excited to see where they go from here.) If it's a good idea or not, remains to be seen, but none of us have a crystal ball and can now in December 2024 say that this is good idea or ultimately bad. There are some people who think that the pivot is a great idea, and the nature of creators is that they want to evolve and grow and change. It seems that their goal is to make what people want to see and reach new audiences by making their most popular shows, and at the end of the day they are a business and need to make money from this. If they feel like this is what's gonna work then I can only believe that they know what they're doing.

I hope this makes sense and that it explains some things for you, thanks for asking :D

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Shyan Video Poll

I've been compiling video clips and making lists of my fave Shyan moments from the past few years and they loosely boil into a few categories - so vote on which one you'd like to posted first! and the others will (hopefully) follow

If you can think of a moment you'd like to make sure I add, drop me a line and let me know! Even if you think I might already have it, maybe I missed it somehow!

WW+ is especially a blind spot for me so ep numbers/timestamps are helpful

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once again asking them to stop discussing their kinks on camera

request from @tasty-littl-snack

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Photo that watcher shared on their socials as an example for challenges, and yeah it's still "<3 Shane". Somehow seeing this in something other than candlelight makes me realize that it's real.

Ghost files s3e5 "Blair Street Underground Vaults"

(The first letter ends with heart the other one is with love, but Ryan of course knows better what Shane means by that.)