#WatcherTV

[mando-lore]

[a-rude-elven-mage]

I just really don't get how you're going to have a show where Steven flies around first class explicitly to eat the world's most expensive food.... And then say you can't make ends meet and you HAVE to put all of your videos (approx. 5 videos a month) behind a paywall just to survive.

This is the candles budget meme irl

Also trying to double dip from the Patrons. Lol.

[the-worst-person-u-know]

i get people not being happy about the watcher move. i get people mourning that they can't afford to follow the guys rn. but actually wishing they would fail? hoping watcher employees are stressed and anxious? i don't think you actually like them, i think you just like having your whims catered to and you just see the guys as your funny little puppet friends.

i get that parasocial relationships are a...complex topic, particularly when a specific kind of content pretty much requires fostering that vibe. even when you know it's a real phenomenon, it's really easy to fall into the trap of, "these people are really cool/funny! i wish we were friends" (and tbf, i think a "friend crush" is still a *little* different bc i think most parasocial relationships make you think, "we ARE friends...or would be if we met.")

BUT. the flip side is forgetting that these guys are people, too. people who gotta make ends meet, particularly if they want to keep providing great content. people with families, bills, expenses, and yes even little treats. like, shit costs money and we can't accuse someone of greed or hope they fail and then pat ourselves on the back for being anti-capitalist or something. this move is a risk but also surely not an impulsive one, and the guys feel this is the right move both financially and creatively then you should hope they succeed!

and, ftr—i already signed up, and i've already sent out my login info to friends who aren't in a place rn to pay. support the guys if you can, but i think the bare minimum is not hoping they crash and burn.

[laneofpennies]

btw

[maquet591]

We need to talk about the Watcher "fans".

These are the top comments on Shane’s IG post. Just look at the number of likes.

“Steven Lim is a greedy, manipulative evil CEO that twists his white co-founder's hands and forces the said co-founder into his will!!!” – this narrative is being prevalent in this fandom since April 19. People harassed him all across social media on every platform. People wrote nasty comments not only to his social media accounts but also to his wife and friends.

People made a Change.org hilariously dumb petitions to have him leave the CEO post.

People gleefully demonize and tear down his reputation. Twist his words out of context in to something vile. Weaponize the years old inside jokes his friends made on camera.

“This is not racism!!!” they say. “These are just the facts!!!”

No they aren’t. And here’s why:

because this

is the same as this:

Covert racism in language, or coded racism, is the deployment of common stereotypes or tropes to elucidate a racially charged idea. Rather than expressly perpetuating racist tropes, covert linguistic racism is seen as rational or "common sense", and many are not aware of its impact.

Racial stereotypes. Racial or cultural stereotyping refers to generalizing a group based on a simplified set of norms, behaviors, or characteristics.

The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror, the Yellow Menace and the Yellow Specter) is a racist color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia[a] as an existential danger to the Western world.

Fu Manchu is a fictional character created by Arthur Ward, a music hall writer and journalist in London in the early 1900s. Writing under the pseudonym Sax Rohmer, Ward had absolutely no knowledge of Chinese culture or Chinese people – but his invention of a Chinese supervillain struck a chord in Victorian Britain and became a smash hit.

Fu Manchu was the original fictional Asian villain, a trope which became embedded in popular culture and Western psyche spawning spin-offs, spoofs, pop songs, video games and even consumer goods. But how damaging is Fu Manchu and how much can he tell us about modern Asian racism?

Ward wrote Fu Manchu as the personification of the so-called Yellow Peril threat: exotic, alien and inhuman, a mastermind boasting degrees from top universities. Using sinister powers to control minds, he aimed to undermine Western civilisation.

"This led to the idea that the Chinese were deceiving – they weren't being honest, they weren't revealing who they really are as people. This spawned into stories of Chinese as cheats and liars and deceitful – never giving you the truth, always fabricating."

Seven Lim being labeled as “greedy” “evil” and “manipulative” (of his white co-founder) is rooted in Anti-Asian racism. Whether people admit it or not.

Racism is not always derogatory slurs or white hoods. Racism is also casual micro-aggressions and putting people of color in the metaphorical boxes of harmful stereotypes. Racism is twisting the narrative and shaping it into a vile stereotype straight from the 19th century.

Also, let's not forget that people are happy to jump on Ryan in the similar way for the same reasons.

[noa-nightingale]

Despite, well, everything - I am still really excited about the new content. I want to see what it looks like when they don't have to change it for sponsors or youtube. I hope it gets a lot more unhinged. I hope it will be a lot more creatively fulfilling for them. I hope they have success with WatcherTV. I really hope things will turn out okay.

[levyfiles]

Have you considered that maybe Steven Lim just sucks. He’s not immune from criticism just because he’s POC. He’s the CEO, so he’s responsible for this. And notice how Ryan, also POC, hasn’t gotten the same amount of flack.

I think there's something so funny to me that happens when people fall victim to conspiracy theory. It's where they apply malicious intent to everything about a situation where it really is just incompetence.

The thing is, I am and have been in camp: this is scary but let's see what happens because I trust Watcher who make the creative content I enjoy to protect the creative content I enjoy. I've openly criticize them for being sloppy about things on livestream and in comments on discord in the past and I have left fanspaces where there's someone at the helm who truly just sucks just by virtue of being an apologetic bigot or worse. However, never and not a single time have a felt that there is malicious intent in the stuff they get wrong and it's why I follow them.

This ongoing sentiment that Steven has some kind of unknowable evil hold over Shane is so toxic and reads so flat-earther when the truth of it is that all three of them did not go to business school, have almost zero experience in marketing but one of them had to step away from the creative field and shoulder the brunt of the business-side workflow.

Attitudes like this?

and this

I would be a little less irate about it if it weren't for the outpour of comparisons and the adamant belief that somehow Shane could never be involved. Even the tiktok comments going full body language analysis saying Shane was furious. Like guys, come on. Let's try a little hand at reality.

I love them but have you ever considered that they--all three of them, not just Steven-- just might be bad at admin and marketing?

And in terms of Ryan, the babifying of him; the sheer lack of agency the narrative applies to him is also bad.

Exhausting behaviour overall.

[ellomello3]

Watcher are not struggling artists being forced to make a drastic move so they can keep creating. They are people, who don't want to be YouTubers anymore, moving to Vimeo because they believe they can become a "real" TV Studio from there more easily than from YouTube.

They do not care about making content the YT audiences want because they do not want to be YouTubers. They don't care that you prefer the low budget videos, or don't like one series over another, they care about making the TV shows that they want to make. That's all this is.

Watcher went into this fully ready to lose a good portion of their audience because they don't want a YT audience. They only want an audience whos creative vision aligns with theirs - Watcher becoming a TV studio.

This is fine. It's okay to want to pivot your business. The issue is that they decided to attempt this pivot in the most abrupt, insulting way possible - through a video that puts a lot of corporate lip service around making this move "for the fans" while their actions clearly show this has nothing to do with what the fans want. It's disingenuous and condescending.

YouTube audiences not wanting to pay $6 a month for Watcher videos isn't "not wanting to pay artists fairly". Watcher was already being paid (and their apparent mishandling of money in pursuit of projects outside of their budget isn't on the fans). People not wanting to pay them is a direct response to Watcher no longer wanting them as an audience. Very few people want to support a company that takes its audience fans customers for granted, even if they can afford it.

[storybookstr4nge]

i am seeing all of the criticism of watchertv (and agreeing of course - it's entirely tone deaf and un-conducive among other things) but i feel as though the attitude i am seeing from a lot of people online involve absolving shane entirely, saying things like, "shane blink twice if they made you do this!" "shane "eat the rich" would never allow this!" "he was forced into this!" and redirecting all of the blame unto ryan and steven - mostly steven - saying that steven is the "ned fulmer of watcher" (wild thing to say) and delegating the responsibility of this decision entirely onto the two of them, and i cannot help but feel like there is an undeniable racial undertone to this rather vitrolic pivot. i understand being a fan of shane - i myself was a proud shaniac! - but i plead that we be conscious about woobifying an adult man who - though could have very well opposed the decision - was still one of the three ceos who okayed it! nothing is gained from scapegoating the two asian men and relinquishing the white one for the hate that this business venture is garnering. please, by all means, continue to criticize, but if you are, do it tastefully, and be careful with insinuations - especially without knowing the intricacies of the situation (and even if/when we do know something. criticism should never come from veiled bigotry) ! just because the property itself is shifting rather horribly doesn't mean we as watcherinas need to turn our community toxic <33

[yaytheboop]

I absolutely support paying artists and supporting creators, and seeing the quality of Watcher's videos especially lately I've understood that it wouldn't be sustainable for a while now. I will never say that I expect anyone to come out with so much high-quality content so regularly without being financially compensated for it.

That being said, I think the way they've gone about this has just not been the smartest. First off by doing this so suddenly with no warning, and also having a big countdown to it when it's actually quite a sad thing to see them go. Like it felt like they were counting down to a party but then it was a funeral that took place instead, and even the mood of the video they put out was quite somber. I think it put the wrong expectations in fans (me included), which just made the shock even bigger than it needed to be (especially for this sort of announcement).

I think they actually were quite respectful of the fact that people wouldn't be able to continue to follow them over to WatcherTV, but the comment about "making it affordable so everyone could subscribe to their plan" and then it being $60 a year was kind of insulting. It would have been better if they'd been realistic about it and said that they understood that it might be a steep price for some, but that they hoped it would be affordable for some of their subscribers while still giving them the chance to produce high-quality content or something along those lines.

What I don't understand however is how this is supposed to be sustainable in the long run? Because if I'm someone who's scrolling Youtube and comes across one of their old videos, I'll watch them all there. If I'm scrolling and come across one of their newer videos, and see that the rest of those videos are behind a paywall, then I'm gonna continue to scroll, I won't pay $60 to watch someone I previously didn't really know.

I don't know businesses, especially businesses in creative fields, and definitely not USAmerican businesses in creative fields, so I'm not sure how this would work financially. However, I think there's one of two things they could have done to make it easier for us as fans to transition, as well as still earn them some of that extra revenue (to start with):

They could add a free subscription with ads on their streaming service. I don't know how easy that is, getting sponsors and incorporating pop-up ads on a service, but that's an option.

They could have started out by putting some of their bigger projects on the service, but still regularly making content on Youtube that was not as produced or financially

I think having their own streaming platform is a good idea because then they won't be bound by Youtube's restrictions and have more creative freedom, as well as the whole economic side of this. The way they're executing it however is just alienating and frankly a bit insulting to the fans who have been with them for so long and supported them through so much and now suddenly can't watch anything new anymore with barely any warning.

Yeah, this became very long but I had some thoughts that I just needed to air.

[ashisinsuperhell]

"what about supporting independent/small creators?"

fisrt of all they paint themselves as "a digital media studio that creates television-caliber series" (qoute from the site) so theres that

second no one would say anything if they had no other means of earning money, but watcher has a patreon, expensive merch (especially for fans outside of the us), they get big sponsorships and had tours.

if you watch the video its clear the most emphasis is being put on the whole streamer funding stevens expensive shows where he gets to eat expensive food which in current climate is just very tone deaf, because a lot of regular folk struggle to have money for food. even when u go to the watchertv site on the subscribe page the first things in a description of the site are "travel season" and "food, travel". this whole project isnt for fans, its very much steven centered thats why we dont want to support it even if we could

as an european fan 6 dollars a month is a lot especially for a service that rn only hosts content we had for free.

[a-rude-elven-mage]

The thing that's pissing me off the most about the watcher situation is that I am in a lucky enough place to pay $6 a month for content I enjoy, I could and would love to support Ryan and Shane's content creation. I have twitch subs for this exact reason.

But I refuse to pay for content I flat out do not enjoy. Why the hell would I?

I would pay for Ghost Files, I would pay for Mystery Files, I'd pay immediately and unabashedly for Puppet History.

I don't watch Steven's content, I don't enjoy it, I won't pay for it. Especially not when that content's whole purpose is to be fucking expensive. The description for Dish Granted literally brags that Steven spares no expense. It's not a good look

Ryan and Shane have made MANY jokes about Steven having gotten a taste of expensive blood from Worth It and wanting more. And with the launch of this new show, it's clear that's true.

I'm not funding this weird palette that Steven has developed, I won't. And with the new streaming service pretty clearly being launched to fund this nonsense, I won't be supporting it either. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[j-femmescoli]

WATCHER APOLOGY

first sentence: "we messed up."

next: "we're sorry for the way we handled it and the way we communicated it, and we're making immediate changes...we're sorry for how we originally delivered our goodbye message to youtube. it was insensitive."

steven lim: "we want to deeply apologize for our ignorance about the cost. we regret stating and implying that it was a price that 'anyone can afford' and we are taking this as a serious learning experience."

new plan: Watcher Platform will be for the same videos, but uploaded 1 month early and ad-free. after that, videos will still be uploaded to youtube. if you have already subscribed to the platform but now changed your mind, you can get a refund.

[alanaisalive]

For what it's worth, I think the key flaw in the Watcher announcement is that their new streaming site doesn't have a free membership tier.

Offer a free tier. Make content that's a couple years old free. Maybe throw in some banner ads or whatever. And as you release new videos, move more old stuff to the free tier.

This would be a lot less dismissive to people who can't pay. They'll hang around with the promise that eventually they'll be able to watch the new stuff, and sending them to your streaming site to watch old stuff instead of YouTube puts all the new content in front of their face, enticing them to get a paid membership.

I support the idea of getting out of YouTube, but the way it is currently formatted and communicated is not great.

[toomanywatchers]

I tried accessing www.watchertv.com on my work's wifi and well...

... are we for sure it's not an OnlyFans?

[noa-nightingale]

I rewatched the Goodbye Youtube video just now and there is one thing that Steven says that I did not catch the first time but find very interesting:

"More than 50% of our business is run by advertising."

I did not know that it was this much. That's a huge percentage. That probably also means that a big amount of their content is tailored towards sponsored. Like, I get that people are upset and sad about them moving away from youtube, I really do, but of course they don't want to be this dependent on sponsors!

God, I would love to learn more about the business side of things. Not just the decision to start their own streaming service but about the business stuff in general. I really want to know more about this.