#wrestletalk

By the time I was seeing information about the situation, I was already like a third of the way through binging everything the channel had ever made. My real life was going through a particularly rough patch and I was definitely using NRB videos as escapism. I ended up deciding that the videos were a source of joy that I needed at the time and since Adam had left and Carley wasn’t appearing on the channel, no matter who was lying vs. telling the truth, my watching of the videos that already were posted would not greatly benefit or punish any involved party so until more details came out, I just tried to ignore the situation. I basically tried to live in a world where both parties were innocent until proven guilty and it was just a really sad misunderstanding or that it never happened at all.

The word “tried” in all those statements is doing a lot of work. Most of the time it worked and I was able to escape reality for a bit, but sometimes my brain would say something like “Am I a bad feminist for not immediately believing the woman, do I just want her to be wrong subconsciously and that’s what’s making me waver? The rule of thumb is believe victims when they speak out”,

“But the ideal of believing the woman/victim doesn’t apply here, no victim has come forward, Carley is just saying that she heard about it and maybe Carley’s just been misinformed or she could be making up rumours. I want to believe that a person can redeem themself and if he took accountability the first time, surely that deserves some credit? That’s what we want people to do after all, take accountability and grow, so we should reward that behavior with trust”

“Sure, but be realistic here, what does your own life experience say is more common and therefore likely with this sort of thing. Don't be naive” and those voices would go at each other, back and forth until I gave up and went to do work or something. So the silver lining there is that at least this kept me from slacking too much. Isn’t that something? I give all this preface to show that this situation isn’t something I’m taking lightly.

Now that I’m in a better place in my real life, I decided I should actually look at everything that happened and see if I could draw any more conclusions to help satisfy the curious/nosy part of my brain. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t been able to crack the case wide open but one thing is clear, and getting clearer by the day: The rest of the cast are on Adam’s side. From the cast members unfollowing Carley, them liking Adam’s statement proclaiming his innocence and his plan for legal action, to recently Jon’s Kickstarter game having a quote from Adam on the front page. These are forms of public support that would be the safest to use if there was a legal battle happening in private.

What this means to me is: Just from a logical standpoint, whatever I believe about Adam, I have to extend it to the whole cast. I can’t condemn Adam but not condemn the rest of the cast. The rest of the cast either know the what happened or didn’t look into the situation enough before standing by Adam. That means if I believe Adam is guilty, I must therefore believe the rest of the cast is complicit and at the end of the day, I just don’t want to do that unless the evidence makes it impossible not to do so.

I really like watching the channel and I don’t want to force myself to stop watching or feel complicit in supporting bad people unless I have to. So until evidence comes out showing otherwise, I believe Adam is innocent. I have to. And if I am wrong, and I must stop watching/supporting NRB as a whole for ethical reasons, at least I gave myself a little more time to enjoy it before I have to say goodbye. Is that selfish? Yeah probably, at least a little if I’m honest, but it’s an understandable level of selfishness that I could forgive someone else for, so I can forgive myself for it, if it turns out for the worst.

And I want to also say that I still think it’s possible Carley isn’t a liar as well. This is not a “Carley is lying” post. If I’m applying innocent before proven guilty to Adam, it’s only fair that I apply it to Carley as well. I’ve tried my absolute best to keep my reasoning consistent across the board with this. I believe she believes what she said but I think it’s possible she could be wrong. And wouldn’t that be nice, if it turned out both parties were innocent and there was just a big confusion? I’ll admit it’s not the likeliest scenario, but I’m still hoping for it. Basically, the more people involved in this that are revealed to not be huge jerks, the happier I’ll be. That’s what dictating my best to worst case scenarios.

The whole reason I wanted to make this post is to remind everyone, including myself, that we as the public still don’t know much of anything. We have 4 comments on a YouTube video on one side and vague PR statements on the other. That’s pretty much it, officially. The rest is just based on how the people involved are interacting with each other and the like. That leaves a lot still up in the air and that’s really frustrating. Uncertainty is one of the worst feelings and I think it’s easier to just say Adam’s guilty and move on than to keep being uncertain about this for so long. Because if he is guilty after all that, we have to process that, on top of having dealt with the terrible uncertainty for this long so we want to “bite the bullet” now, so to speak. It’s less emotionally risky to just assume the worst now, deal with it, then push it into the past and I think there’s a significant portion of fans that did that or that are trying to anyway. The drawback there I want to point out though, is that it ignores the possibility that there is a happier ending to this. Additionally, condemning Adam but trying to stick by the rest of the cast may feel like the simplest & easiest solution at first, but it’s not a realistic one or one that works with the very few pieces of information we do have: the actions of the other cast members.

hello????

Once again, I am sad that the team didn't post a more public video or community post about it and that I had to dig through many Youtube comments to hear the update was posted.

I find Adam's posts on the subject to be wild to say the least, as it felt like the Patreon post implied that he was going to come clean and he then followed it up with saying It's all lies and people are just mean.

If it's all lies, then why are you stepping down from Everything? You clearly still had supporters in all of your online spaces. Explain why people are wrong instead of claiming people are using your bad reputation against you and nothing else.

But he wont do that.

He's free to step away whether he's innocent or not (I can't say I believe he is) but it would be nice to see him have literally any teeth about this to prove that people were just slandering him.

While what he did in the past isn't illegal/a crime based on the details I heard, it was still questionable and he claimed he knew what he did was inappropriate and manipulative.

Thing is, I was there the first time around in 2017. I gave him a second chance when he came back in 2020/19. A 3rd chance? I don't know about that man.

I tend to believe accusers, guilty until proven innocent type of thing. So I'm basically finding myself between two people I trust, one due to past behaviour and the idea that people CAN change, and the other because, well, you should ALWAYS believe victims.

Please tell me they aren't gonna split Judgment Day up.