#Unsolved

[livrelady]

#shane madej#we had to google if these were poisonous flowers after this#still not sure but he's still here ain't he#watcher entertainment (X)

And lest we forget on this Ghost Files Friday…a very happy 51st birthday to our weird, wonderful Shane Madej!

[relaxedstyles]

[terr-hedgehog]

Pshhh… Who needs a mind palace?

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

ghost files will play the most dramatic music and then cut to dead silence and absolutely fuck all will happen. amazing. yes queen give us nothing.

[eloise-t-g]

i think for me, the watcher situation comes down to this:

it's absolutely respectable that the watcher team wants to grow and produce better quality content. it's respectable that they don't want to stagnate and end up pushing the same content out over and over again. that's not satisfying for them creatively, i get that.

however, if higher quality, more heavily produced content is not what your fans are asking for, then you can't ask them to fund it.

this all-or-nothing method they've gone for is frankly bizarre. it feels like they leap-frogged all other alternatives to improving their finances and ended up here, alienating and frustrating the majority of their fanbase (the fanbase they thanked for getting them to where they are).

i think this could have gone a lot better if they:

Hadn't hyped up this video for a week.

Hadn't announced the worth it successor just beforehand.

Hadn't put out a wishy-washy, "boo hoo we're so sad about this", over-produced video.

Hadn't made it $6/month (more in a lot of countries given exchange rates).

Had considered that this means fans in specific countries literally cannot pay for the subscription due to geo/region-locking.

my ideas for improving their funds, aka things they could have tried before blowing their brand up: create their own website with two options - a free version with ads and a paid version without ads, OR make better use of their patreon/make their website extra content, not all their content, for example:

Put the ghost file debriefs on there.

Put shows like survival mode on there (or even shift that show from pre-recorded video to live-stream - live stream access to patrons and VOD access to everyone, maybe).

Put episode commentaries there.

Do reaction videos to their old buzzfeed content, talk about memories and BTS, and put that there.

Put one/two episodes of each show, per season on there (and ONLY there).

Put the episodes up there a few days early.

Make specific, website only content (that's not your main and most popular series aka ghost files and puppet history).

Record the live, in-person shows and put those VODs up there.

EDIT (thought of something else lmao): put extended or even uncut versions of ghost files on there. Paranormal Detour on Detune's twitch channel has shown that people will willingly sit through 6+ hours of a ghost investigation.

EDIT: idk, do livestreams once a week where you watch scary movies with fans on discord or twitch.

(side note: the fact that they're not taking down their patreon and instead shifting all of their podcast content on there, something the patreons who have been loyally giving them money for years didn't ask for, is ridiculous and greedy. add to this the fact that they don't even get a free sub to the new website, instead get 40% off - a measly 10% more than anyone else who subs before the official launch).

the thing for me is that they're claiming they want to make "television" and "television-grade content". that's completely fine. what's not completely fine is acting like your four episodes a month is equal to netflix's entire catalogue.

this really felt like it should have been something they told us they were progressing towards, not something they revealed to be on the imminent horizon. idk, it just feels out of nowhere. no, they don't owe us all of the info about their company. but something had to be better than this.

final thought - it's okay and valid to be upset at the team for this. for a lot of people, it's a complete betrayal (especially the comment that $6 a month is something "anyone and everyone can afford", i mean yikes). i do think some people's anger got the best of them, and some of the comments i've seen across youtube, twitter, and tumblr are plain bullying, racism, and harassment. until we have the whole story, we can't decide that one founder (aka steven in a lot of people's minds) is solely responsible. i know a lot of these awful things are only coming from a small minority of the fandom, but they still get seen.

at the end of the day, all three of them got up in front of a camera and made this video, together. that can only lead us to the conclusion that they made this decision together. acting like these men in their 30s couldn't stand up against it if they truly wanted to, is so strange and parasocial lmao.

tl;dr there were much better ways of going about this announcement, if it even needed to be made at all. however, that doesn't excuse the hateful shit being spewed at the team. for now, all we know is the three founders decided they were done with youtube, and done with their loyal youtube audience.

(i have so many more thoughts on this but i need to stop lmao. however i do wonder how different things could have been if 1. they had hired someone with actual business experience as their CEO from the jump, and 2. this video was more of a "hey we're broke! this is a last-ditch effort to save our company!". guess those questions will remain ... well ... you know ...).

[imaplatypus-art]

Before spooky month is over, have some ghoul boys fanart 👻 @wearewatcher Happy Halloween 🎃!

[trashworldblog]

when normal tv programming/youtube uses one of the unsolved or ghost files or puppet history music

[thatsbelievable]

[vessilin]

i am just as distraught about Watcher being put behind a paywall as the rest of you but if you put a goddamn FRACTION of the energy you use gifting subscriptions to those who don’t have access to buy them to… oh i don’t know.. buying e-sims for gaza, raising awareness about Palestine or Congo, or literally supporting Palestinians/those in Congo in anyway, it would make a significant difference.

[agenthendersons]

I needed everyone to know that these

were side by side in my pinterest board .

[weareinastormoffuck]

From Ryan’s reaction on the most recent podcast finding out that one place they went to back in the unsolved days might have faked something makes me even more sad that it seems like a few places they’ve been to recently have been doing similar things or worse. Like he truly believes none of these places would fake evidence when in reality they have no reason not to. Especially with ghost hunters who get a million or more views a video. That’s just more attention and money in their pocket if they can make it look really scary and haunted and get more people to pay to come. That hill house episode was a prime example for me, that doll on the rocking horse that randomly went off but it wasn’t motion sensor or made to go off by touching it, seemed like a timer or maybe the owners were controlling it remotely since they said they were on the property just in a trailer I’m sure near by and with security cameras on the place most likely watching them. Also that growl which is cool evidence on face value but could also be faked in 100 different ways with today’s technology and with enough determination. I wish these places had as much authenticity that Ryan and Shane do but they don’t and have no real reason to.

[patheticpomegranite]

unsolved true crime can be accidentally funny and sad because they always point out that it might have been murder or ghosts and then they show footage of a person who is likely to experience psychosis, who is either trying new meds or off their meds, facing a period of extreme change in their lives, without a support system. i don't experience psychosis but that would fuck me up and have me talking to the wall and waving my hands around easily. like that girl is not getting murdered she is clearly just having a really rough time and nobody is helping her.

[holycatsandrabbits]

Want to write a mystery based on history? Check out my blog for posts about the unsolved past, with writing prompts!

Roopkund Lake Skeletons: unexplained remains of at least 300 people found at an isolated lake in the Indian Himalayas, from 800 and 1800 CE

The Beast of Gevaudan: History’s most well-documented werewolf, France, 1764

The Mystery of the Moving Coffins: tales of supposed unexplained movement of heavy coffins in burial vaults, most well-known in Barbados, 1808-19

The Female Stranger: unidentified decedent, Virginia (US), 1816

Spring-Heeled Jack: well-documented apparition or cryptid, England 1837-1904

The ghost ships Mary Celeste (1872) and Carroll A. Deering (1920)

Lizzie Borden: unsolved double murder, Massachusetts (US), 1892

The Flannan Isles Vanishing: disappearance of three lighthouse keepers, Scotland, 1900

Disappearance of Everett Ruess: missing person in the Utah (US) desert, 1934

Planes lost in the Bermuda Triangle: Flight 19 (1945) and The Star Tiger and Star Ariel, (1948-49)

Dyatlov Pass: mysterious deaths of 9 hikers, Ural Mountains, 1959

A werewolf prompt:

Escapist fiction. It’s possible the Beast of Gevaudan was not a wolf or dog, but another large creature, like a hyena or lion. Local zoos would have been private, so who knows what people were keeping? Obviously, once the killing started, the owner would have taken down the lost pet posters, so nobody owned up to owning the beast. People were not expecting to see anything other than local creatures in the woods, and they might not have had much familiarity with lions anyway, so it would probably make sense for them to call it a “wolf.” As for plots, there’s room for a sweeping historical novel starting in the place where the wild beast was captured, on the ship sending it to France, in the private zoo, and then out into the woods to become the Beast. Or what if it was not one lion that escaped, but a breeding pair? How would the locals cope with a growing population of big cats in the woods?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

[trashworldblog]

ghoul brothers return: august 25th

[thatonegeekygirl]

Shark Arm Murders - Q+A