#watchergate

Like there is nothing wrong with either of these two companies starting their own private subscription service in an attempt to have more control over their videos and not be so beholden to YouTube and their advertisers. The main problem with how Watcher handled it was always taking a model that used to provide viewers with something free (YouTube) and making them have to pay for it. And that’s a problem that they fixed, pretty swiftly, when they saw the backlash.

The mere existence of the streaming service is not an inherent problem. They’re had a Patreon for ages, and y’all didn’t have a problem with that as far as I’m aware. The “streaming service” is just a better-looking, more organized, more customizable Patreon that’s optimized for video performance. That’s it. I’m sure that like Watcher, they’ve been looking at how companies like Dropout have managed this transition, and seen how Dropout has been able to grow and support their company through having this type of service. Whether the Try Guys were planning on doing it this way all along, or if they pivoted after they saw the backlash to Watcher, we may never know. But that’s also kind of beside the point.

Some of you just seem to get mad about the concept of a streaming service. I get it, but I think that anger is misplaced. I’ve been watching YouTube for a long time, and there has been a huge downturn on the platform recently. There’s a reason Nebula exists, there’s a reason Dropout exists, and now the individual platform streaming services. It sucks because it goes against the whole beauty of YouTube, which is that anyone can upload anything from anywhere and anyone anywhere can see it.

But that’s YouTube’s doing. They’re the ones who changed their search engine to make it impossible to find new creators. They’re the ones who instituted the internet’s worst algorithm (“Hey you watched all these videos before, don’t you want to watch them again and again and again? No? Too bad, that’s all your recommended and search pages are going to be!”) They’re the ones who started pushing shorts in a desperate attempt to compete with TikTok. They’re the ones who started rewarding and promoting the laziest content like people sitting in a chair reacting to TikTok videos.

YouTube has become unfriendly to people who actually give a shit about what they’re making. I’ve even seen this on a smaller scale — I used to make and watch fan edits and upload them to YouTube, and you could search a ship or character name and sort by most recent. And I could actually watch the recent videos that people uploaded about certain ships or characters. You literally can’t do that anymore. The search function is broken, and it’s just one part of a larger issue that the platform has purposefully created. It is so much harder to discover things organically because the platform doesn’t want you to. It wants you to watch the things it tells you to, because that’s what makes it the most money.

So while I think it’s natural to be upset that more of these channels you’re used to watching all on one place for free are moving in this a la carte, pay-to-view direction, I think that is more of a consequence to YouTube as a platform circling the drain. It isn’t what it used to be. And the approach that Watcher course-corrected to and the Try Guys are now doing is the right one in my opinion. Keeping their presence on YouTube to make sure their videos are available to the widest audience, but shifting their home base to a platform they have more control over. Maybe YouTube will fix their shit and make the platform more friendly to creators again. Or maybe another site will rise up to give them some competition, in a way that actually gives people the service they want and whose main goal isn’t just trying to keep you glued to your phone by pushing the most low-effort, addictive content possible. One can only dream.

And even if someone is just a casual viewer and have only watched some of the viral BFU episodes, I can probably(?) see how someone can perceive Shane as a stoic or whatever, because this is their ongoing joke after all. But Ryan? Ryan has been vulnerable since day one. He’s always wearing his heart on his sleeve. So, not to see that? Is a racist bias, tbh. For certain people, and April 2k24 has shown that this fandom was full of them, people of color are not real people and thus don’t have emotions. So, yeah, I guess, we can’t be vulnerable, from this point of view.

NONNIE! <3 thank you for reading my tags and leaving this message!

honestly I'd already considered making a post about this a couple times because when I read through the comments for GFA on yt nothing makes me wish more that the platform had a 'block user' feature -_- I wish some people a very poor internet connection

it feels like so many people don't UNDERSTAND what Ryan was trying to do with GFA. he wasn't trying to return to his bfu roots (though he said making it more vlog style was something he had in mind, but he was also constrained by what he could film alone)

GFA was a personal challenge to himself after he's been trying to get a handle on his mental health for the past few years. Ryan wanted to go completely on his own to see if removing the crew would change anything and if he was mentally capable of doing all of it on his own, and that meant running camera and sound and everything else alone too

I won't spoil the debrief in case you didn't see it nonnie, but Ryan was really insistent that he do this show 100% on his own. I can't imagine knowing the physical and mental toll this took on him and then telling him "make all your shows like this"

and yeah, it makes me wonder on the general public's media comprehension because I know overall PH is their most popular series, and one of their most expensive and high quality too. maybe there's not much overlap of the two audiences?? idk I think it's also possible that people see PH as just Shane making some sock puppets and waving his hands around a cardboard theater - but it hasn't ever been that and the closest we had was s1 if anything (I'll stop myself going off on a PH crew tangent here, but there is SO MUCH that goes into making this show as good as it is)

I keep thinking back to the December Pod Watcher episode where they talked about how they're not going to focus on making "tv-caliber content" going forward (timestamp included but I'm paraphrasing Steven here, so watch that ep if you haven't) and that makes me sad because I've always liked and appreciated Watcher for making high quality content - for having well thought out series with nice sets, great camera work, phenomenal editing, and always making sure to give credit to the people who worked on their shows