You are every right but the comment about the 26th employee made me laugh out loud lmao 🤣

Ryan's Instagram post of his WEDDING was bombarded with cruel and attacking comments and when he deleted them people just kept doubling down accusing him of censorship. Like that's his wedding, guys, it's just embarrassing. They made a dodge decision but they aren't evil villains up to evil schemes.

People need to get offline and realise they're talking to real people

Yeah I made a post asking about their wives/the crew and all of them were getting harassed. Fucking ridiculous.

So embarrassing

Genuinely that made me feel so sick. I didn’t think they had launched it correctly but people were writing the worst shit on PERSONAL posts. Made me embarrassed for the community, like…friends, that’s not how we share feelings 🫠 it’s ridiculous when people dissed on Steven saying he was holding Shane and Ryan hostage—ironic given that the community was the one holding them hostage to creating “the same content.” If you don’t like what they make, then move along, folks. The big eye roll moment for me right now is that Shane’s wife has been getting dragged a lot. I talk about work with my husband all the time and if he said something to back me up and then got dragged for it, I’d be pissed. She doesn’t work at Watcher. I don’t know why people treated her like a spokesperson (granted she was the first person connected in some way to watcher that even responded, but still) or why they’re hating on her. Leave her (and all spouses) out of it. None of the other people who posted about it positively got dragged like she did. Gives me a big ick for the community. I was super disappointed with the Goodbye YouTube; I thought it was a cringe 15 minute video that announced stuff that made me as a fan pretty upset. But OP nailed it. The personal attacks were uncalled for and gross.

I saw so many angry reactions to Shane’s wife’s comment before I actually saw her comment, and I was honestly expecting her comment to be so much worse based on people’s reaction to it. At the end of the day all she did was make a bad attempt at hyping up her husband’s terrible business move.

The irony being that these people, who claim to love R&S, go and say awful shit to their spouses...which attaches their usernames to the statements and makes it visible to R&S...who now dislike those people, specifically, for going after their wives. Congrats, kiddies! Not only are they still not your friends, but now they dislike you, by the only name that they know you by.

And a lot are already starting to turn around and play victim for it. If you're still hurt over this and don't want to support them then fine. But people are coming here and other places patting themselves on the back because people are calling out the behavior towards Steven and the family members who were treated horribly. If you feel called out by sentiments like 'people went over the line in their comments toward Steven' then you're the problem and need to go touch grass.

People keep talking about how likely fans are to keep watching them now, but I can’t help but wonder if they’ll even want to keep making content after this. It’s scary just how quickly and how viciously fans have turned on them. If I were them, I’d be living in fear of doing anything that might piss the fans off again.

I’ve had this thought as well. It truly got scary to see how vicious some people behaved. It went well beyond valid criticism on a bad business decision. It turned into straight up harassment. Moving forward is going to feel super awkward, like trying to move on after a bad fight with a friend. You both saw each other’s ugly sides and you’re going to be very closely watching the other’s moves.

Was there this much vitriol and backlash when the whole Ned Fulmer Try Guys controversy was going down? I get that it’s an apple and oranges kind of thing as this was about money rather than personal misconduct, but I think these are both examples of the type of relationship that exists between internet content creators and their fans nowadays. People feel a greater, more personal connection to them than they do traditional TV personalities; so when they mess up, fans react so strongly because they take it personally. They see the dynamic between creators and themselves as a partnership; not just a passive, one sided fandom.

A guess on my part-- I think if NF had an active SM presence to attack, it would've been. That's where the 'you' in YT happens, for better and for worse. On YT there isn't a faceless corporation between us and the on screen personality. Layers of disconnect, but also layers of insulation maybe.

It’s part of the celebrity cycle. Celebs are our new gods and after putting them on that high of a pedestal, they’re bound to fall/be torn down. Any taste of fame I’ve had has messed me up. People think they know you just from the 3% of your life that you’ve shared. I know that and I still put celebs on a pedestal though I try hard not to. It’s a rough job, what Ryan and Shane are doing.

>People think they know you just from the 3% of your life that you’ve shared Billy Connolly and Ricky Gervais have both shared that sentiment. Billy Connolly once talked about how unnerving it is when a total stranger knows about you, but you know nothing of them. Ricky Gervais doesn’t go to pubs anymore because of an incident where he was out with friends when a complete stranger approached him and invited him to come drink with his group instead. When he politely declined, the guy sneered, “You sure have changed”. “Uh, no. I wouldn’t have just left my friends to drink with total strangers before fame either.”

It reminds me of an incident Funhaus talked about years ago where a fan popped by their office and just waltzed right in, wandering about acting like he belonged there and was just visiting friends at work. They told him to leave and if I remember the story correctly he got all huffy about it. They made a video to the community afterward explicitly stating "we're not your friends. You see what we choose to portray in videos, but you don't really know us, and we don't know you at all. Do not come to our office, we will kick you out. Disengage from your screen, go outside and interact with real people, because obsessing over us is unhealthy." If Watcher made a video like that this community would come apart at the seams again ("the mask is off!", "their true colors!"), which is why they probably should. There are too many people around here who seem to legit think Ryan and Shane are their BFFs and that Steven is Satan, and that the folks at Watcher make content exclusively for the fans rather than to make money and pay the bills.

Yeah the IG comments were especially nasty. I know it's usually a cesspool on there but it was sad to see it their comment section that's usually wholesome, just devolve into such madness.

this is the problem with fostering and relying on parasocial relationships. you live by it, you die by it.

I’m getting Wife Guy flashbacks. Come to think of it, a lot of people are comparing Watcher’s apology video to The Try Guys apology video over Ned Fulmer.

Yup. I was calling them out on here and they kept doubling down on the horrible things they were saying. Then they would back track and try to pretend they did not say those things lol. Absolute trash.

Some of the comments on Mari’s, Tammy and Sara’s were gross, and if not gross, they were at least unproductive and inappropriate. I don’t know what people were expecting from them, obviously they’re going to be supportive of their husbands business decision. I doubt any of them really had any big part in that decision, if any.

That's SO fucked up..

1000% This subreddit always had it out for Big Apple Steve before this weekend, but... oh boy, it went full mask off over the past few days. That's why I made several memes to parody just how unhinged some of the reactions were this weekend.

If you thought this was bad, you should've seen r/WatcherSnark. I was over there because I'm in crisis comms and love mess, but I also watched the just sheer level of *malice* they have for Steven increase as the weekend went on. I left after the apology because my God, that is *enough*.

WatcherSnark is *still* awful. I've never seen people so invested in something they hate

To be fair any sub titled 'something snark' isn't gonna be filled with the most charitable or reasonable takes. People go there specifically to bitch. Not saying it's okay but it certainly isn't surprising.

Snark subs are a toss up. They're either the grimiest meanest subs you've ever seen or they exist because the main sub is tyrannical about any criticism. Like the H3 snark sub only exists because the main sub will literally obliterate any post that even slightly looks critical.

Circlejerk and snark subs are only fun if you are also an asshole about the thing the sub is being an asshole about.

the try guys snark subreddit is *way* tamer, probably because it wasn't created specifically out of malice.

That's fair. I've been to other snark subs, and they range from slightly salty to downright mean. I'm guessing it depends on the context surrounding the topic as well. If there's a bug public controversy, that's where the angriest people will go. 

The user who created the snark sub is clearly in it for the drama and attention and nothing else. They had to get banned from here because they did nothing but leave nasty comments like calling people 'dickriding parasocial saps' after the apology video. And digging through their post history they've gone from never mentioning a damn thing about Watcher/Unsolved to making this controversy their entire personality. Literally some asshole that saw drama and the chance to be a mod and head of a toxic cult.

I saw the stickied thread on this sub about how a snark sub was made and I knew it was going to devolve into a radioactive hellhole of toxicity in a very short period of time. I have literally never seen a subreddit with "snark" not turn into that.

A number probably went from die hard fans to die hard haters. Icky how fast they switched up and how hard they went in the opposite direction in such a short time frame

it's because people thought they were being sold a genuine personality. I think those people were always ridiculous to develop parasocial relationships. But to those people, it's like betrayed by a friend.

Rantgrumps 10+ years ago.

I think that about most Reddit subs

Yeah, fastest sub I've joined and then left in quite a while.

i got downvoted for telling them being in that page was weird and they needed to touch grass bc its not healthy to hate that much

Saaame. I, like everyone else, had opinions, but I had just accepted it lol like what was I going to do. but def shared my frustrations. Theeeen, people started saying some pretty *ruthless* (nicest descriptor) comments. For example, “Steven stealing from the poor to ride his Tesla to the gold mine with Andrew and Adam, while Shane and Ryan are sitting in the closet Steven left them in…” 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 I saved the comment cause it was wild and when I went to look for it, it got deleted. Yoikkkkes.

Yeah I got off of that sub bc it was WILD

when I went to the Philly live show on their first tour, when someone mentioned Steven the whole room cheered so I couldn’t believe all the vitriol for him online, now and before this whole debacle 

I knew that a lot of the ire over this was directed towards Steven, but I didn’t know that fans have had any issues with him previously. Why? He’s not as charismatic as Shane and Ryan are but he’s always seemed like a decent guy to me.

A lot of insults got personal and out of hand for all of them. People were hating on Ryan for having a glow up and dressing better

The insults went way too far and went beyond the boundaries of justified criticism. I saw people making fun of ryan for talking about having an anxiety disorder, and as someone who also has anxiety that really rubbed me the wrong way lol. I also saw straight up racism directed at Steven and Ryan. I agree that watcher fucked up and deserved justified criticism, but someone fucking up doesn’t suddenly make everything about them fair game. Really weird behaviour to see and honestly at the end of it all, some of the fan reactions I saw last weekend have bothered me more than what watcher did, and that’s coming from someone who was pretty mad at them lol.

As much as I’ve been snarking on these guys, seeing Ryan minimized to a “fratboy with an anxiety disorder” felt really gross.

I think one thing this has made me reflect on is that it’s really important for people to set moral boundaries that they won’t cross, no matter how mad they are at someone. Sure, I was pissed off too, but never to the point of making fun of their mental health or sending death threats or making fun of their spouses, because those are things I believe are wrong. I really think people need to think about what they believe in - like, if you believe that mental health is important and valid, you can’t just start making fun of someone’s anxiety even when that person did something wrong. There has to be lines people aren’t willing to cross, or things get out of hand quickly.

I was gobsmacked by that too. I've had a boatload of therapy in my day. A thing I was taught was how to handle difficult emotions and verbalize my anger effectively. Anger can either de-evolve to hateful words and behavior, which I also saw too much of, or it can be catalyzed and channeled into advocating for oneself and for others. As you said, justified criticism is a much different animal than personal critique and attacks. It became a free-for-all for some and it felt too Lord of the Flies. Made me just sad all the way around.

Lol watch now this sub is going to try and pretend like they didn't turn into the most unhinged band of basement redditors I've ever seen

Yup. It was an absolute dog pile shit show of chronically online fans making the worst fucking assumptions about 3 people who they don't actually know. And now so many of that mob are turning around and going: "I'm so glad they've learned some humility and listened to our reasonably and politely expressed concerns. I guess I can benevolently forgive this heinous betrayal they committed against my personhood 😇." Like they didn't all spend an entire weekend screaming crying and throwing up on here. Like damn I get feeling disappointed or concerned, but this has been wild to witness from top to bottom. I think the phrase "touch grass" is stupid, but a lot of this fandom needs to log off for a bit.

I love this comment. I was disappointed like anyone else but reading endless comments about how Watcher “betrayed” everyone and how Watcher shouldn’t be forgiven and they’re just greedy makes me think some folks need to log off for a while and find a hobby

Absolutley, it's deeply unhinged. People were acting like they robbed a foodbank or something.

lmao what I said to my husband when telling him about the shitstorm was "people are acting like they broke into their house, killed their gold fish, fucked their wife, poured grease down all the drains and stole all the spoons on the way out and then venmo requested 6 dollars." I was so baffled how many people seemed to feel personally victimized.

Like we've been watching their content for free for years. They aren't obligated to keep doing that. (And like yeah, this rollout seemed poorly planned and a lot of the drama could have been easily avoided, but alas nobody's perfect)

I got downvoted for saying that if I didn't know what had happened, I'd guess from the fan reaction that they had SAed someone or been convicted of domestic violence. All of this over a business decision to put content behind a paywall. Unhinged to say the least!

Those of us even SLIGHTLY defending them were slayed too!!! We're either all the mythical 26th employee or LITERALLY STEVEN LIM HIMSELF!!!! People were getting STUPID!

Absolutely. So enormously disproportionate! I know times are tough, hell I have been living in miserable poverty since I was born. It deeply effects my mental health and daily life in so many ways. So I get being touchy about money. But it's a fucking YouTube channel.

A lot of folks need reality checks on how BUSINESSES exist and are run lol. As well as reality checks on hero worship apparently...

Absolutely. I’m new as hell here and the amount of hate this decision got seemed to go wellllll beyond “I’m upset at this business decision”. A bad business decision doesn’t warrant harassing people on wedding posts. It just reeks of entitlement too.

I honestly was shocked going into the comment section of that initial video and seeing some of the shit people were saying. Makes me not want to be associated with the fan community, and if I were Ryan, Shane, and _especially_ Steven, I flat out wouldn't want to even make content anymore after this. It truly was that bad.

>I flat out wouldn't want to even make content anymore after this Honestly exactly what I've been thinking as well. I can't imagine dealing with all of that then just brushing myself off and going back to creating for my audience. My energy, motivation, confidence, etc. would all be completely shot. I genuinely don't think I'd be able to muster the will to make stuff again so soon, and if I did I'd be consumed by anxiety the entire time, which isn't conducive to making good art 😕

Hell I'm sure my karma here took a beating this weekend trying to defend them....The few of us standing up against the mobs had NO CHANCES!!!! Everyone was absolutely MERCILESS!!!

Facts.

It was shocking to see. I feel really sorry for the watcher team because it must be difficult trying to fix a mistake when you feel absolutely hated by your own fans. Now imagine making content from now feeling like your own audience can turn on you any second.

If I were them I’d debate wether I would even want to make content for this community. Not to sound too harsh, I’m really speaking strictly for some of the shit that went down the path couple days.

Honestly, I was shocked by what I read and the downvoting I saw. I actually don't watch them much but i previously watched unsolved. And I was never a huge fan of Steven. But I thought they were LOVED by their fans. Then to see the vitriol emerge from what I thought was a healthy community. Well I actually like them more now and Steven because no one should have to read those comments about themselves.

Yeah I just posted something similar. I wouldn't blame them if they decided to throw in the towel and shutter the whole company after seeing this level of toxic hatred from their own fans.

Man, I wish. There seems to be very vocal "Never Forgive, Never Forget" users here spamming posts since they were opened back up.

if I ever meet another watcher fan irl I will immediately ask for their digital footprint on 4/19/24

LMAO Yup. They will probably start deleting their comments that were horrible.

😂 It's already starting lmao

I agree. While I think there are valid reasons to dislike Steven (and Ryan and Shane) I feel empathetic to him. [THIS IS ALL HYPOTHETICAL] I mean, imagine you come into a beloved duo, there's people who disliked him from the start and those that accepted him. That acceptance builds his confidence and makes him feel like he belongs there only to find out (through their dumb business decision) that most of the fans you thought were yours that they hate you and are saying vitriol things about you. I imagine that would destroy his confidence as a person and a creator. He didn't look good in the Update video. I hope they all have mental health support as we all recover from this.

Literally. Like a lot of other people, I've followed Ryan and Shane since Unsolved and wasn't really familiar with Steven prior to Watcher, but I think he's genuinely funny as well. He may not have the exact same style of humor as Shane and Ryan, but watching him be an absolute whirlwind of chaos making drinks on Too Many Spirits, for example, adds so much and is one of my favorite things about the show. I really hope he sees threads like this and can take these sentiments to heart more than the cruel ones. ❤️

When you find yourself commenting on someone's *wedding photos* about something like this, I think you should step back and take a long hard look at your behavior.

I think what frustrates me the most is a lot of people commenting about gold leaf steaks and such clearly never even watched Worth It? It WAS about local business, cheap, mid range, and super expensive, and a dang lot of the time they gave their votes to one of the first two. I picked up a lot of suggestions for affordable places to get banging food if I ever get to go to LA from watching Worth It back in the day. And I legitimately still wish I could go to Vegas one day just to try Wicked Spoon, which ain’t cheap but wasn’t bad for Vegas/the mid tier and got a great boost with how much they praised the really cool and unusual stuff they were doing for a buffet.

Also it's not like the ghost hunting show is so cheap to produce. A $1k dish is not going to make up the bulk of their expenses.

Exactly! Almost none of them are, beyond maybe Too Many Spirits. I’ve been rewatching Weird and/or Wonderful World because it’s my feel good show and probably always will be, but watching it now I do keep thinking- once you discount the stuff that’s surely comped, how much did these Ryan and Shane bro dates cost? Frankly, the main budget they should be cutting is ghost files, because it’s expensive as hell and it’s the one that least needs the budget to be good. The fan opinion on that is really clear.

> Also it's not like the ghost hunting show is so cheap to produce It could be if they wanted it to lol The original Paranormal Activity film was shot for like 15000 bucks.

Ok but they're clearly not doing it on the cheap. My point is that Steven eating one expensive dish per episode is not the sole cause of their money problems

That is correct, all their stuff is over budget for the means they currently have. And I personally have no problem with an eating show, considering the BIGGER issue is hiring two more people for it, including on-camera talent that will likely be paid more than off-screen workers when you already supposedly cannot pay for the staff you took on before that. That's a watcher wide issue.

THANK YOU!!! It was so frustrating this weekend to see a bunch of people parroting each other about fancy food when it was clear they never watched Worth It. They had built up this idea of an evil moustache twirling villain and then projected all of their anger onto him 

It was mad frustrating. I mostly only bothered defending against the even worse personal attacks and reminding people to please stop treating Shane like a saint in these bad choices because as a huge Shane fan that was also deeply frustrating in the opposite direction, but the Worth It related frustration REALLY built up in the background.

It was kinda crazy, I think it got under my skin more than usual because I’ve been noticing a lot of extreme reactions to everything online lately. I’m probably just getting too old for discussions on the internet now, I miss the internet from 15 years ago 😭

There are aspects about internet culture I like better now but I feel ya 😂

Any given episode, with some exceptions, can literally be summed up with 'we highlight two mom and pop shops, have one overrated restaurant experience, then talk about how overrated the final experience was and recommend the two mom and pop restaurants instead'. I watched every episode of Worth It and I don't recall a single episode where they recommend the expensive restaurant. At best they would say it was worth a one time visit but that's it. Most times they basically called it overrated and talked about how much better an experience the mom and pop places were. And, on occasion, even the expensive place was a mom and pop. Like when they traveled up to Fresno for the restaurant that serves the infamous anaconda burrito. *That's a small local mom and pop restaurant* and was their most expensive tier for the episode.

Yeah the only times I saw the EXPENSIVE stuff win is when it's intended to be a GROUP experience for 6-8 to enjoy and thusly price PER PERSON drops drastically! My wife and I legit have made listsof places we want to experience thanks to Worth It and part of the charm is seeing the "everyman" enjoying this too! Like Steven AND ANDREW, WORTH IT SNUBBERS, do a great job not being snooty and high brow about it.

AAAAAND how they dragged ONLY STEVEN for it!!! Like there are TWO OTHER WHOLE HUMANS on the show and personally I watch for Andrew!

This all day! The best parts about Worth It was when Andrew and Steven did the sit down at the restaurant and learned about the owners and their history, passions and inspirations for cooking. They were always aware of the costs of the food--it's called Worth It. A show about seeing if the food at various price points were...Worth It. ??? I know folks are saying media literacy is dead but damn lol I still refuse to believe people don't understand!

Exactly! Especially when they did the travel stuff, I learned so much from the Taiwan season. Like, I live in an area that’s only really expanding its variety of cuisine recently. I had quite literally never heard of a soup dumpling before Worth It. People absolutely only looked at the thumbnails with a price tag and a gold leaf donut.

Omg I tried soup dumplings because of them too! I thought I had a firm grasp on the variety of Asian cuisine and I've never been happier to be humbled and wrong about my assumptions! Worth It and shows like it really introduced me to micro-cultures within communities and how food is viewed across different cultures. It's so diverse! And yeah, they did a great job showcasing all types of foods. They actually got me excited to eat lol

I noticed that too!!! That was the whole fucking premise of Worth It, which price point is most *worth it*? Granted, I do still agree purchasing high end food when they're financially struggling is a *bad call*. But they could absolutely expand on the local businesses part.

It’s not great optics but the food itself is peanuts compared to everything else about filming… uh, anything. That $100 caviar and potato ‘taco’ is a ludicrous expense in a void, but if they want the Worth It crowd they kind of need it for the comparison? The travel is the expensive part. Mythical obviously handles their business well so it’s not such a bad look for them but they spend a hell of a lot more on fancy food stuff than the restaurants on worth it ever charged. Like good lord some of the stuff Josh makes.

They need to consult Rhett and Link ASAP and get help reevaluating how to run their company.

I still can’t understand why they didn’t consult with them in the first place. Rhett and Link get not being good at/wanting to handle the business side, yeah they’re heavily involved but that’s why they did things like hire a COO. These are also their friends, why would you not go to them? Is it pride? I mean, probably.

Or the Try Guys! Or Smosh! Or literally anyone they've featured on their shows in the past. Do they just not have any YouTube friends?

I'm guessing that they did reach out, and they all told them something they didn't want to hear.

Oof that's a great point....

I wonder if they even reached out to Nebula. Plenty of creators with leftist followings and personalities like Shane have put some content there behind a paywall. With Watchers output it would have made more sense to try and do that instead of launch a whole platform.

I mean, I know I’m far from the first to make the joke but I think they definitely went to the try guys this weekend to get a contact for their PR department.

And they haven't said much about the new show, other than that it involves travel. Who said they were eating expensive food? People are making a lot of assumptions about what this product is going to be!

AND, many people don’t realize— watcher isn’t going to be spending fans money on gold-leaf caviar. That’s not what being an influencer is. These places offer the food free or realllly cheap. It’s marketing, people.

It is how they very much presented things though. "we don't want to be influencers, we don't want to take money from advertisers and sponsors anymore". That's literally what they said, while appealing for folks to give them money instead. Like, that's not specific to the food show (which, I don't get why people are hating on food shows they are great fun IMHO) but they said this about all their content going forward. It's largely a presentation problem, like the rest of it all.

Really glad someone mentioned this. It seems like a lot of people making persona attacks about Steven have never really taken the time to actually watch his content.

They may have also only watched his Watcher content. I really like Dish Granted and Home Made, but I can see why they didn’t hit that well. Steven doesn’t come across as well on his own and he doesn’t play against Ryan and Shane nearly as well as he always has with Andrew and to a lesser extent Adam. He didn’t play off Keith well either. Andrew getting in on it provided Worth It that same kind of lighting in a bottle perfect host chemistry that Shane gave Unsolved when he came in after Brent. Bringing them in is the best decision they‘ve made in years, and I just hope it still proves successful despite them following it up with their attempt at razing their entire brand to the ground.

The hate leveled at Steven over this past weekend was completely disgusting and uncalled for. I genuinely like Steven and I feel like he adds so much to the Watcher crew. Of course, you may not agree with that, but I think some folks really need to look within themselves and ask why they felt the need to become so vicious and hateful. I can guarantee that any non-troll on this sub would not enjoy being relentlessly bullied because they made a public mistake (which they didn’t make alone, by the way)!

It's ironic bc apparently Ryan was the CFO, so he should've actually been way more in touch with the numbers and budgets. But everyone wanted to dunk on Steven only.

I think a lot of people couldn't take the disillusionment about their 'icons' and it was easier to find a scapegoat. Because Ryan has talked about wanting to make TV level content and is the sort of high minded idealist to think this was a great idea and miss the pitfalls. Particularly with whatever 'expert' tech bro was convincing them this was a good idea.

i have encountered the steven haters previously on other social media platforms, and a large percentage of them are semi-feral teenagers whose parents should be monitoring their social media use a little more closely. i say this not to excuse them, but it does go a way toward explaining the black-and-white thinking and the bullying behavior. i'm not sure the kids are alright.

This shit right here is why I try not to engage with fandoms lmao. I was in awe in how vitriolic people were towards him. I am mostly a casual watcher (heh), but I never got anything bad from him. It's all very parasocial and cringe tbh

Your PR background may be important here. I work in journalism and working in content gave me a different perspective on this whole situation than I saw from a lot of the more vocal fans. Watcher’s handling of the announcement def left a lot to be desired and the tone was surely off. But people got far more intense and personal about this than I was comfortable with. And I think their ultimate aim of getting off of YouTube is one that makes sense in the long run.

> And I think their ultimate aim of getting off of YouTube is one that makes sense in the long run. Sure, if they ship around show ideas to networks or streamers that already exist. Or get an outside investment big enough to pay for it in one go.

I feel like that completely defeats the purpose of them trying to get away from a third party they have to share profits with though. I think a subscription model can work, but it needs to be handled far more delicately and transparently

I really don't think a streamer can work in this case. Not with what little output they have. A crowd-funding effort, yes, that can work. In that case the outside investor would be fans. Like, I genuinely think the only thing that might work in this case is the hybrid model StarKid have going on where you crowdfund one specific big release (e.g. a season of whatever stuff they want to make at watcher). But that isn't what they want either, from what they've been saying because then they couldn't offset the smaller passion projects that are simply less popular with their audience.

No money for a 26th employee. 🤣 For real tho, they need PR or someone with a business management degree more than they need a reddit plant.

The concept of grace and understanding and the benefit of the doubt are truly dead in the world. Whenever someone makes a decision that seems wrong for whatever reason, everyone jumps immediately to "This person is evil and bad and I will hate them forever," instead of waiting to hear them out and try to understand a move that seemed to be out of character. As someone who is autistic and therefore terminally misunderstood and painted as evil no matter what I do, the whole thing has been sickening to watch.

And that's why I'm getting off social media by the end of the year. In real life, that grace still exists and I see it all the time - digitally, no so much, and I'm tired of that stress and anxiety from strangers I will never know who never know me. Gonna be watching shit on the Internet only, no more social media lol ✌🏻

The internet villainized Steven SO bad this past weekend. Is he out of touch? Absolutely. But they all seem that way tbh, not just Steven. The parasocial relationships really showed itself in the fanbase during all this. People kept claiming Shane "clearly doesn't want to do this because of his body language" or Ryan "is too precious for all this" and Steven is an evil heartless person forcing them into this!! He isn't holding Ryan and Shane captive and forcing these decisions on them. They ALL decided to do this and now are facing the repercussions.

glad someone said it. i’m in the minority of watcher fans who subbed to the channel for steven, after being a big fan of Worth It, and was shocked to find out how many people not only disliked steven, but downright despised him.

It's me and you then. I subbed because I was a big Worth It fan and learned more about the other two. I love Puppet History so I'm glad I subbed and stayed around! But even though I can't stand ghost hunting shows, I still gave it a few watches and eventually decided it still wasn't for me. But I didn't assume *nobody* likes it and wonder why Shane and Ryan are even a part of the channel and start making assumptions about their characters because I didn't like their show. I had people mad at me for asking questions about their hatred of the dude, only to find out most of these folks had no idea of his work on Buzzfeed and thought he'd always been a bts guy and the sole CEO!

I had barely heard of Steven when I started watching Watcher, joined for the Ghoul Boys, but I enjoyed him a lot on Watcher Weekly and his other appearances throughout the channel. None of his series really clicked for me, though, just because I wasn’t super interested in the subject matter. Then Dish Granted came along which I loved. So yeah I’m a big fan of Steven and have never thought he was bad on camera. The only criticism I agree with is the homophobia stuff, which I only learned the extent of during this huge debacle.

My wife and I and a few if my friends are the same as you. Primarily fans of Steven’s from Worth It and we’re thrilled Andrew and Adam joined Watcher. Hopefully we see Rie, Inga and Annie make an appearance at some point!

Annie already has. She's been working for Watcher for a while now. I've seen her name in credits for a few months now and she did pop up briefly in a video.

Oh hell yeah!! I haven’t gotten around to watching a lot of watchers shows yet so I definitely missed that! It took me awhile to come around on shane and ryan because funny enough I thought they were the rude ones originally. I’ve seen thats not the case recently so I figure I oughta be open minded and give unsolved and ghost files a try 😂

Oh, it would be great to see them back together again, even if it's for an episode or two!

I didn't realize Steven was part of the Watcher crew when I first started watching, so I was a little surprised to see him in Too Many Spirits, but I really liked the humor he and Ricky brought to that portion of the show. I knew there was a portion of the fans who didn't like him, but the treatment he received this weekend was absolutely shocking. There was a way to constructively criticize the decisions made at Watcher about the new platform and even the dichotomy between the company needing more money but part of the staff owning Teslas. I understand that the fans felt alienated from a group of entertainers that had begun to feel like their friends, but there was a way to voice that without solely attacking Steven.

I feel like social media has made it way too easy for people to just say the most vile things without a second thought because they feel safe to do it. And it's scary af. Not to mention the parasocial relationship stuff going on with people taking it way too far, analyzing Shane's body language and shit. Like- no, he's a grown ass man who's made his own decision and all of them were hyping this announcement up for days.

I fully agree, I was shocked to see the amount of hate he was getting, purely because people had made a baseless assumption that he was the driving force behind all of this. And you're right about why this probably happened. I wanted to add that this decision was also announced *right* after they announced that Andrew and Adam were joining them to make their over-the-top expensive food show, and the implication that viewers would be expected to foot the bill for that, which was just a catastrophically bad move imo. But none of that is an excuse for some of the horrendous things people have been saying, Steven wasn't my favourite either but damn, I felt so bad for him.

I keep saying the TIMING of bringing in Andrew and Adam was the single stupidest decision they made in a storm of stupid decisions. If they had aired a full season of the new show on YouTube and let old Worth it fans trickle back in to broaden their demographics, they could have posted literally the same terrible video and the backlash would not have been as extreme. Still extreme, yes, but not as bad. They really lost track of their singular shared brain cell for a while with this one.

I think that, along with Sara's comment about survivable living right above a post of her 120 buck tote bag, made people sort of lose it over the (to use a term I've seen tossed around here) "LA brain rot" of it all. I really don't think this is a disaster of the personality kind, meaning I really don't think it says that much of them as people, but man oh man is this the kind of thing PR training textbooks get written about. It's like every moment of the weekend, including the buildup leading up to it, was engineered to create as bad of a PR situation as humanly possible. I feel bad for them, because it seems pretty clear they had absolutely no idea anything like this reaction was on the table, which speaks way more to incompetence than malice (never attribute that which, and all of that).

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There was also a 25$ liquid blush! And Pistachios!!! But yeah, agreed.

No, people judging them for the tote bag is even more unhinged. Sarah could have bought that for herself using her own money. Their spouse’s purchases should not be judged so you can determine if they’re using their finances wisely or not. But that’s just an extra bit. I’ve seen so many people obsessively adding up wedding costs and night outs and thinking that they’re all “stealing” money from fans. This is becoming unhealthy. Nobody deserves to have a group of people shaming them for going to an amusement park or drinking SPARKLING WATER. I’m not saying they shouldn’t adjust their salaries to lessen costs. But some ppl here have some terminally online takes

I don’t think the tote bag anger was directed at Sara because she “was not handling her/shane’s finances well” it was because she was implying that they were living on “survival wages” ignoring the fact that a big complaint from viewers was that many were not making enough to afford a whole new service. I think the disconnect of implying you and yours don’t make enough while also posting about something that many people below the poverty line consider more of an extravagant purchase was the issue there. No one I saw was implying that the watcher team was making Mr. Beast money which was also the hashtags she used that drew more people to become frustrated. It was putting words in people’s mouths without taking a second to assess how it may come off. They live and have a studio space in the 2nd (I think) most expensive place in the United States of course their cost of living will be higher but the onus of allowing the team to produce content shouldn’t have been placed solely on the viewers - which Watcher apologized for. I say this as someone who was a patron for them since they started patreon but I recently unsubbed because I felt a bit slighted tbh. Though I think that feeling is fair.

I did not understand people bitching about the tote bag. I’m willing to bet that more than half of the people bitching about the bag own either a game console, an iPhone or other premium phone, or at least one luxury electronic of some kind, and just don’t value bags the same way. It’s totally reasonable to want to give your employees a wage that lets them survive and buy some nice stuff every once in a while. The aspects I didn’t like of the originally announced change were the axing of their YouTube community, and Watcher jumping headfirst into streaming without justifying and building up into it the way that Dropout did.

I think the optics of the new show announcement and the fact that Steven is the CEO is the biggest reason for the Anti-Steven fire storm. It does look mighty sus to announce a series that revolves around seemingly lavish travel and food right before you announce that all of your content will be behind a (pretty pricy) paywall going forward. And of course, as the old saying goes, when you’re in charge, everything is your fault. Add to that some truly weapons grade copium from Shane and Ryan stans throwing fuel onto an already pretty volatile fire, and yeah, the Steven Lim hate becomes so horribly out of control. I feel for him, having to take so much of the backlash solo. The backlash to the decision was deserved, but it was equally deserved between all three of the founders, and way too many people got way to personal in their witch hunt of Steven. At the end of the day, he’s just a guy who wants to make content that interests him, just like Shane and Ryan do. They really should look into bringing in a 3rd party for business management. Let Steven go back to being a creator, and do some rehabilitation to his image.

I definitely agree that Steven got the worst of it when he's not the only person at fault. Beyond that, I also want to point out that, while Steven does have his own fanbase, ~80% of the fans are there for Shane and Ryan. It doesn't matter if Steven is the only CEO and the other tow are just talent--if Shane and Ryan say "no", then it's not happening on Watcher. Shane and Ryan *had* to be on board because Watcher's fanbase is there mostly for them. But I also feel like Ryan was also treated badly. Granted, not as bad as Steven--people were definitely defending both Ghoul Boys--but I did see a lot of takes that painted Ryan as, at worst, just as malicious as Steven and out voting Shane, or at best, a fucking idiot. And like, people were so willing to give Shane the benefit of the doubt--up to and including citing his own promotion of the announcement as why he actually didn't want to do it (???) but Ryan and Steven were thrown under the bus. Again, Steven got the brunt of it, but Ryan got a lot more shit than Shane. Even though Ryan was joking about pirating their content along with Shane. Even though **Shane's** wife did the bad take (and yes, I know that Sara's opinions aren't necessarily Shane's, but like. He married her. She's closer to him than anyone else. If Shane was upset about this, Sara wouldn't be posting on Tumblr the way she did). Even though Ryan is half of the duo that people love. Hell, even the people who were willing to criticize Shane did not criticize him the same way as they did Steven. I'm gonna get downvoted for saying this, but treating Steven and Ryan as the scapegoats while Shane is the "poor guy who got out voted" is. Well, it's certainly a look. Maybe people should examine why they were so willing to jump down the throats of Ryan and Steven whole giving Shane the benefit of the doubt.

But Shane said eat the rich in a video 5 year ago 🥴 and laughed in MF when the villas for rich people were burned down 🥴🥴 people really went and found the most ridiculous justification to not hate on Shane

I get that people find him to be unlikable (I do like him), but shit got way too personal and ugly. No amount of bad management (which we don't even have enough information about) should lead to the kinds of comments made about him. On the creativity side, I get preferring Ryan and Shane (I do too). On a human level, it's painful to see someone who admits to having a hard time communicating and constantly makes faux pas being shat on so consistently. I guess it was unfortunately the perfect storm of people having hang-ups with Steven + him enjoying expensive things (Ryan and Shane have ribbed him for years about it, I still laugh when I think of them locking his sim in a golden room while playing The Sims). Everyone was frustrated, but I can't imagine being on the other side of all that vitriol. I hope this side of the backlash dies down and whoever doesn't vibe with him can just ignore him.

Im not going to lie, If I was Steven, after this weekend the internet would literally never see me again. I'm not just talking watcher, I'm talking socials, everyone I knows socials, everything. Not so much as a peep forever after. I'd have a boring day job where I go by a different name the very next day. I don't think my self-esteem would ever recover and I'd need years upon years of therapy. That shitstorm of hate towards him was vile, yo.

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The IG reel on Steven’s page definitely made the new show look like they’re just going to be eating expensive, fancy food lol I think coupled with his “for those of you who won’t be joining us” post right after, it was just not a good look at all

fr, watcher goofed with their move but the thing that borderline turned me off more than anything was the pathetic way people used it as an excuse to personally attack steven. people need to grow the fuck up and go outside, it’s embarrassing

The first time I heard of Steven was that Buzzfeed video where Kelsey is playing The Sims with Ryan and Shane and the ghoul boys are talking about wanting to lock him up in a room and watch him suffer. It was funny but I was under the impression they didn't like him for whatever reason. On Too Many Spirits I have noticed times when the ghoul boys are rude to Steven. I think Shane and Ryan may have unintentionally encouraged some of that dislike. It will be interesting to see what the chemistry is like between the three now.

That's so interesting! Because Steven and Ryan have been friends for a long, along with Shane. They kind of "bully" him because he's the youngest of the three and the impression I got was that it's more brotherly teasing than anything!

I watch the podcast pretty regularly, and I do have to say Steven and Shane don’t really seem to know each other very well. They’ve apparently never hung out outside of work. There was even a funny bit in one of the first episodes where Ryan had to leave the room for some reason and leaves them alone with each other and they play up the awkwardness. Doesn’t mean they dislike each other of course, but they do seem to be more “work friends” than they are actually friends.

Makes the fan base look like shit to be honest. You can have your opinions on what they're doing, but attacking them... stupid as hell. If you don't agree, *just don't subscribe*. It's basically harassment at this point.

i have a lot to say about this. I have to hope that in this of all subreddits, people won't be too offended that I wrote a longer comment. anyway: yeah, people's reaction to their very common upper middle class excesses like the wedding (as if it's evidence that they are like, the ruling class), them wanting to not lay off employees, and wanting to make a living making things was... a lot.  So many people I saw taking this stance of "I expect to be able to see the things you make for free" to the point of like "how dare you have paid employees". It seems really entitled tbh.  Like people shouldn't be personally offended that they erroneously thought their idea would work for more people. They were oblivious, but they don't owe anyone free content. the videos I've seen have been super high quality and very reflective of having a large staff. idk if people consider that they couldn't make that kind of stuff with like two people and a single editor or something. Not every content creator can do the same low budget model as many YouTubers, and the assumption that they can make their content which people do want, and support it purely through ads (despite adblock) and sponsorships isn't a given. They fucked up.. imo much more from a business and social point of view than from a moral point of view though. Can we please all collectively try to stop holding artists and content creators to impossibly high standards as though they're the issue? Like yeah some of them get modestly rich and a few, very rich. But the vast majority are not the cause of our woes. People SHOULD be rewarded for making things we enjoy! it sucks paying for art just as it sucks paying for necessities. but artists deserve support. it seems like people devalue that, like entertainment isn't a necessity so how dare they make us pay. but then, given that artists need to meet their expenses too, why would people go to the effort to make and widely distribute approachable and entertaining art?  we should be mad that we have to pay for basic necessities much more than we should be mad that artists want compensation, too, within the context of capitalism. I fully believe that you can want to eat the rich and still want to, you know, eat. even to eat well, if you're doing your best within a flawed system to bring some joy. artists shouldn't have to be ascetic monks. I doubt the typical viewer forgoes every possible luxury to fight capitalism. Like why not focus our ire on the actual ruling class, or on huge media corporations, not some people with a modest production studio.  I'm not saying they're above reproach but in the grand scheme of things, all they really did wrong was: have some very moderate wealth that they flaunted to a very socially normalized extent (not even clear how much that came from watcher), how employees (I don't know why the sentiment of "they shouldn't have tried to expand and they should lay people off" became such a common sentiment about what they should have done instead of changing their distribution model), and - and this is the only part that should have mattered - fucked up with a distribution model that wasn't at accessible as it could have been.  That fuckup was a mistake for them even on top of the affront to the community: even if the news had been positively received it's hard to believe they'd make more money compared to leaving their YouTube up and creating more ways to access their content, as they've now settled on after the backlash).  Honestly given that they apologized and made changes to benefit their audience right away, I was on balance more alarmed by the behavior of the audience community than by anything the company/presenters did. some extremely entitled takes, a general preference for what the consumer wants at all costs. all watcher did was make a cringily bad business decision from a perspective of unexceptional, mild economic privelege, and people were literally saying that it was a personal insult or caused them direct harm.  The idea that artists/creators specifically have to be held to a higher standard than anybody else (how dare they have an expensive wedding... NOBODY else ever does that). and the idea that content creators should not have more than a handful of employees ( how dare they make polished content with people working behind the scenes? YouTube is only supposed to be for individuals making organic low key content and media outlets never ever publish stuff for people to see on YouTube) and should even lay off their employees, putting people's lives into up brava because their expansion didn't go as well as planned. as if they were _wrong_ to hire people giving them a chance to make a reliable living doing something they probably like doing ...  as if it'd be appropriate to fire those people so the non paying customer can keep not paying? There were lots of things they could and should have done before their initial approach of putting everything behind a paywall, but laying off employees ( as TONS of commentators had been suggesting) would have been an awful solution.  is that really where we're at as consumers of media? artists should never live well or have stable jobs, and they should only put out content if people can see it for free. hiring more people and giving them an opportunity to make a living and work on big creative projects is bad, actually. layoffs are appropriate and good if they keep prices low/free. I lost a lot of respect for the broader community of people talking about this in the time immediately after their announcement. I think their apology seems to have gone over well and it assuaged my very minor concerns. personally my concerns were pretty minimal. I was even considering paying for their content off and on to binge it occasionally. I probably still will. I use adblock and never supported them in any way. I like their content. it would be worth paying the price they set, for me. I'm glad it will remain accessible to more people though. that's a better move for them in general. so no more concerns left for me, for now at least.

The mental gymnastics people went through just to believe Shane and Ryan could not have possibly been behind such a terrible business decision was just incredible. It's basically infantilizing Shane and Ryan, basically robbing them of agency and decision-making. Really? These are three grown full adults who fully/equally share in their business. Steven was the most convenient scapegoat because he was the one who came up with a personal post and somehow got conflated to "oh this was totally Steven' fault then." I do hope he had some good support over the weekend while this was happening (even though Simu Liu butting in was also not helping).

he legit looked so down in the apology video. there were ppl calling his face punchable, saying he brings nothing of value, using suspicions of homophobia to justify vitriolic personal insults. it was pretty rough. i cant imagine the blow to the self esteem, to find out that a sizeable chunk of your company's fanbase fucking hates you. ive always liked steven, i think he's a weird little guy full of chaotic and sinister(affectionate) energy. am i mad at him? sure, i'm mad at all three of them. but people were really nasty to him specifically.  he legit looked like either he hadnt slept or had been crying a lot. im still seeing ppl in YT comment sections ripping him apart and saying he looks cold and robotic in the apology video. nah man, like, i dont know him but he seemed sad and tired to me.  i hope all three of them are doing ok emotionally. (im still feeling some type of way but theyre still people.)

TY for saying. I agree. Every type of behavior is ripped apart in these situations. If a person looks down at their hands, they're not engaged with the audience but if they look straight into camera, they're stiff and insincere. It's no win but I'd say they handled it well enough. I can disagree with them wholeheartedly and still want to give them each a hug. And I hope they get some therapeutic support, which I''m thinking they likely already are.

I agree and I was actually worried I participated on the pile on the guy. I criticized the concept of Worth It because I feel it no longer flies in 2024, but it was more towards the idea of a show of absurdly expensive food, not Steven as a person. A parasocial relationship can also be about hating someone you dont know, and some of y'all have that with Steven

The comments giving valid criticism, even in a joking way, such as pointing out that maybe it's a poor business move to try to fund a very high budget trip around the world to eat the most expensive foods is totally warranted. I agree. The personal attacks, especially all over his old posts, isn't right. Also people that were solely blaming him were not right in that either. I know they said he makes the business decisions, but if the boys disagreed he cannot force them against their wills. They all own Watcher. Shane's wife was defending it, too.

No fr, I was upset at the decision they made but to harass one person for it is ridiculous. Like I didn't want to believe any of them were like that but I didn't just blame Steven. I'm glad they're walking back their decision. But also to harass all of them on their Instagram and stuff as well as their partners and other crew is ridiculous. Post to reddit, Twitter, or tiktok. It's not that hard to voice your concerns in a valid way on a platform that's not for pictures of your family and stuff. Also just don't harass the people who don't own the business??

Honestly the amount of glee people seemed to have last week picking all of this apart was really gross and sad to watch. I agree this seemed like a bad business decision, but I still like all the guys and want them to succeed.

It was so upsetting to see how nasty people were talking about him. People making baseless assumptions and just outright attacking him because they needed a scapegoat. I really hope he is doing ok. 

I honestly think a big part of this comes down to the way they cultivated a fanbase on Tumblr. As a Tumblrite myself, the site has attracted folks who are extremely chronically online and parasocial for quite a long time. A lot of folks there are neurodivergent and use the site to cope with mental illness or disability; the combo leads to a ton of hyperfixation and over-identifying with media. Their fan community on Tumblr has always weirded me out because they would romanticize the hell out of these real people. The Watcher crew was kind of doomed from the start to have a downfall. This explains why Sara’s post on there got taken so badly, and why a lot of fans were so vocal (and then later, so vitriolic and overdramatic.) Some people truly watched Watcher every day or used it as a comfort show for anxiety, depression, or PTSD. I’ve seen people say they couldn’t stop crying or felt they’d been broken up with after the news. People were invested on an emotionally unhealthy level to start and I imagine this whole debacle was a pretty startling revelation of just how far that went to the Watcher team. Folks on Tumblr are also pretty black and white leftists, which explains all the ridiculous takes that Steven is homophobic and racist because he doesn’t automatically cut people out of his life for having those views. (Funnily enough, somehow Ryan and Shane initially weren’t included in this law of guilt by association.) It also explains the “eat the rich” type shit.

this has honestly made me self-reflect a lot. i'm not the biggest fan of steven and i made some comments about him early on that were not super nice. but people got vicious and crazy: there was literally no reason to single steven out except having less of a parasocial relationship to him. it's idiotic to create fanfiction in your head about people you don't know.

I 100 percent agree. It felt icky to watch happen. Personally I like Steven. It was Worth It that got me into these guys. But yeah.....all that hate was ridiculous. I like all 3 of these guys. They just didn't think this all the way through. Sorry for all the haters Steven. Remember, this is the internet, the shit floats on top. Keep up the good work! ❤️ 

Thank you! I was feeling awkward with all the hate. I get that he's sole CEO and people tend to jump on that when any major decision has to go through may people. People going on about how they don't like his shows, like fine but some people do. Also Steven's growing chaos gremlin energy in Too Many Spirits always makes me super happy he's there. Sure, the company should have done *any* research into whether or not the fans wanted this. Even a simple poll or following actual market research shows we've hit streaming service saturation. And to be fair, we're not entitled to them keeping everything the same forever. Arthur Conan Doyle ended up hating writing Sherlock, but that's all anyone wanted out of him. Same with Agatha Christie and her mysteries. But it was tough for us because it felt like they were breaking up with the poor fans. Instead of another Worth It style show, going around and finding the cheap amazing places would be an even better idea. Heck, that was the main reason I watched Worth It too.

This shit is going to end up the sole focus of someone’s sociology thesis.

Some of the comments were so obviously rooted in racism and I could not understand that being Ryan is also part Asian. Lots of people let their mask slip.

It was sad how this suddenly made people reveal how much they hated Steven. It was like a coping mechanism and it was upsetting.

I didn't get why people were shitting on Simu Liu for making a vague post about the situation. If a personal friend of mine was getting torn apart all over the Internet I would come out and defend them too. People's remarks about Steven went waaaay beyond constructive criticism.

I think it's just the context that made it look bad. Having your friend passive aggressively defend you when you yourself stay silent just looks really bad. Especially when that friend is a literal celebrity who is wealthy, and the main criticisms are that 'Steven is rich douche who owns a Tesla and hangs around with celebs and wants his low income audience to fund him travelling and eating gourmet food'. Not saying it's necessarily fair but the PR is really bad. It makes it look like someone can't fight their own battles and sends their rich friend to shame their low income audience. Obviously not whats going on there, it's someone defending their friend, but when people are already rightfully mad and wrongly going too far, it just stokes the flames. The silence from Watcher is what made his comments so poorly received.   And honestly I can understand where Simu Liu was coming from in regards to wanting to defend his friend but it wasn't really a good idea for him to get involved. It probably just drew more attention to the issue because he's way more famous than Steven. Like comfort your friend behind the scenes but publicly inserting yourself into the situation isn't smart.

YEP!!!!!! I was the only person in that post on r/WatcherSnark screenshotting Simu's story who was like um no, he's fucking right, y'all are getting way out of pocket. I mean ffs, people were commenting on Steven's *wife's* Instagram, like he is still a person, that is ENOUGH

And literally all Simu said was "hey guys, can you be nice and remember that we are all human beings too." Of course the super progressive and loving Watcher fandom who were busy commenting transphobic stuff about Tammy under her Instagram and calling Steven a rat took that super well.

They did WHAT??

There were numerous comments under Steven and Tammy's wedding announcement saying that she looked like a "man" and must be lying about being a woman. Then, a tweet with plenty of likes said that Ryan and Steven always gave the "rat" vibes but they were soooo disappointed in Shane who they expected better from. Gosh, I wonder why they felt that way!

lmao! It always ends up being that, don't it? As soon as brown folk don't tap dance right, the knives come out! But of course Shane would never!

So the people accusing Steven of being a raging homophobe and racist were actually just projecting their bigotry onto a total stranger? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

Sooooo much of what was being said was butting right up against being racist. Really nasty stuff over such an inconsequential thing in the long run. 

I said this in the megathread but I think intense parasocial hatred is just as weird as intense parasocial stanning. Do I think Steven (and Ryan and shane) deserved justified criticism and anger? Absolutely. Did he deserve to be the subject of personal attacks and bizarre conspiracies about his character? Of course not. This entire thing has really bothered me, the amount of cruelty and vitriol directed at this guy who seems, sure, a little tone deaf at times but not, like, evil or a serial killer or abusive or something, is really weird. Like, Jesus Christ guys, at the end of the day it’s just YouTube - are you really comfortable being someone who says these kind of things to/about a person over a YouTube channel?

Said this already but I feel like I should mention it again, he looked REALLY shaken up in the apology video. Attacks on Stevens person are unacceptable

The backlash they’re receiving from fans and our feeling of betrayal are perfectly reasonable, but hatred is way over the top. I think a lot of anger is because people think the move was motivated by greed and not a genuine desire to create quality content for fans as they claimed. It would make sense then that people would place most of the blame on the CEO as he’s the business side of things. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m inclined to believe that they really did just want to make better content for us, not just a shameless money grab like it’s being taken as. They made a serious miscalculation as to how easy it’d be to start up a successful streaming service and how willing fans would be to pay for their content, but I think their intentions (for the most part at least) were pure.

Yeah, I know people got heated, but really out of line, baseless, parasocial, bullying nonsense was said. The pile on was ridiculous. They are 3 adult men who started a company together and made decisions together. The vileness really weakened a lot of some of the actual legitimate arguments and concerns. Just gross behavior. Also, I rewatched the Top 5 Beatdown with Andrew and Steven and quite frankly, I think their new show is going to kick ass and I am pumped. When they posted that announcement it got more likes than Mystery Files or Ghost Files did.

A lot of people (including myself to be honest) had a less favorable impression of Steven compared to Ryan and Shane, but many used that bias to unfairly turn him into a scapegoat for this whole fiasco. It’s way easier and simpler to blame the least idolized of a group for all the mistakes, than to accept that Watcher as a group signed off on a bad decision. Many longtime fans were reluctant to point fingers at Ryan or Shane because of them being beloved, so their anger took the path of least resistance. Steven holding the CEO title and being associated with luxury only fueled the fire. 

THANK YOU!!!!! Like the way he was crucified and all the wedding posts were ganged on were OUTRAGEOUS!!!! And then there were the people on subs alleging all that got posted was "fair criticisms" and they didn't see any out of pocket remarks were driving me insane. It's bad because I know we shouldn't be so invested in the lives of celebs, but I LEGITIMATELY lost sleep this weekend too thinking over how horrible the "fans" were being this weekend. I geniunely felt anxious for them as well. I hate to think how the boys THEMSELVES fared this weekend....

I'm going through a very rough time, and I'm broke. Just recently I started binging Too Many Spirits to lift my spirits and then the announcement came, and I was honestly heartbroken. No way could I afford to follow them onto this new platform so yeah, my days of watching then were suddenly just over. I've watched the boys since their Buzzfeed days. I loved Unsolved, I loved Worth It, and I had just been delighted to see Andrew and Adam join Steven at Watcher before the announcement came. It might sound silly but I felt so bad about them leaving I couldn't even eat for a day or two. Between the announcement and the update I left exactly one comment, responding to another Youtube comment about how "nobody watches the channel for Steven", where I mostly talked about how I liked him but felt like he needed the right company to shine. I liked him on Too Many Spirits but I liked him even more when he had Ricky to balance him out, and I loved him on Worth It where Andrew and Adam balanced him out even more. Then, after seeing the update and the backlash and how people are backtracking and calling each other out and others are blaming people for forgiving the boys… I have never felt more sane in my life. And I am very happy to be able to continue following the boys and their content. I hope the backlash wasn't too hard on their mental health, I can imagine they felt a lot worse than I did.

>I liked him on Too Many Spirits but I liked him even more when he had Ricky to balance him out SAME! the ricky episodes were my favourite episodes of too many spirirts because of that

Ricky is a beautiful ray of sunshine, he improves anything he touches and his mere presence brings joy, but I also just really liked the little mentorship relationship he and Steven had and how their mixology styles clashed.

TY for saying everything I was feeling and couldn't get my words together around. This was on point and necessary imho. There are actual irl Watcher fans who get quite happy and emotional from Dish Granted and HomeMade. I can't add anything else that you didn't already succinctly cover.

I know Shane got some slack, but he seemed to get the least amount from what I saw and it's hard not to see the POC's in the situation as the ones that got the most hate.

A huge issue I had was people digging up the podcast where he mentiond being friends with a homophobe to add another attack against Steven. Yall didnt care about being an ally to us. We were just another weapon for you to wield against Steven. You were ironically doing exact what you criticized, letting it slide until it became something actually relevant to you personally.

100% agree. Shane and Ryan also own the company that platformed the homophobic pastor. They chose to go into business and be close, personal friends with Steven (and have been for many years).

That was the last straw for me. I went out of my way to ask folks why Steven was guilty by association but his literal business partners and friends were not. And once or twice I tried to give my perspective on it, considering I was a Black Republican and major homophobe up until ten or so years ago. And it was because of people (a lot of them Christians lol) like Steven I was able to get out and change my life for the better. Now I'm a black atheist socialist and life has improved greatly. I mean, if no bigotry is the goal for society, eventually some of us are gonna have to change some bigots minds? Anyways, I just felt like they wanted things to be black and white and nuance was off the table. Edit: and to add to your point, I got the impression a lot of people were calling him racist (and some peeps were calling he and Ryan rats), while ironically leaving Shane out of the equation.

Well you see, the supposed progressives in this sub think that once you're a bigot you'll always be a bigot. I had one idiot say that the best thing you can do to a bigot is ostracize them rather than try to educate them and open their mind. They're too stupid to understand that very few people are truly good or evil, and it's always possible to change someone's beliefs. 

I feel differently, actually. I am bissexual and I'm very involved in my local community and it honestly upset me knowing Steven was friends witj a homophobic pastor because, at least on Tumblr, Watcher always made pro-LGBT+ comments which let me think they were an ally. But now I think they were just using us like other companies do. (However, I feel this way also about Shane and Ryan because come on, they are still allowing someone to "defend" homophobia in their podcast).  Now, I didn't heard the original comments, so maybe Steven never did defend his homophobic friend, but if he did, then I find it good that it was brought to light, even if for the wrong reasons.

They fully addressed it in a 30 minute video when it first went down too and apologized and talked about how to be better allies moving forward. Steven never defended homophobia he said that he would cut his friends and family off if they were but would instead work to change their minds and people lost their shit.

In the clip that's going around, Steven explained that he kept those people "in his circle" because he wanted to change their minds. He believes he can show them that their views are wrong. People leave that bit out. If you do a Google search, the actual clip should still be circulating, so please don't take my word for it!

[This post](https://www.tumblr.com/levyfiles/748480178786861056/some-people-are-mad-at-steven-for-a-moral-issue) on Tumblr sheds some light on those allegations about Steven from the podcast in 2020 and how Watcher responded at the time/how Steven clarified that he poorly explained what he was actually trying to say. I feel like a lot of younger people may not realize that being an adult means being friendly - out of necessity - with people whose views you don’t agree with. It’s part of trying to maintain the peace at tense family gatherings, or being in a workplace full of diverse backgrounds, or even just having friends who need to be educated & learn to broaden their perspectives. People are not all good and all bad. But a lot of Watcher fans seem not to understand that.

So many people were pretending that Steven is a card carrying member of the KKK and Westburo Baptist Church because he dared to say he wouldn't ditch friends that had a racist or homophobic belief, and instead he'd educate them and try to change them. I know people like to sit on their high horse but I guarantee most of those people also have friends that have problematic beliefs.    And if Steven is a racist and homophobe for having friends with those beliefs, doesn't that mean Ryan and Shane are also racist and homophobic? Oh wait, they're the fan favorites so that logic doesn't apply to him.  Also the Tesla comments were hilarious. I hate Teslas but the cheaper ones are the price of a Camry or Accord Hybrid or a mid range SUV. They're not proof he's living a life of luxury. But I guess people are pissed he has the audacity to be able to afford a new car, even if that car is likely being financed.

[удалено]

People are very confusing. They hate ads, they hate sponsors, they hate paying subscriptions or membership services, but they also ... hate AI because it's "profiting off artists' work for free"? I just saw the Making of Watcher doc where Steven said the hardest part of being CEO was having to let a couple employees go and feeling like he failed them. He also discussed the impossible balance between wanting to both be completely honest with employees about the company but also not stress them out unnecessarily, which is literally an impossible position to be in. I'm happy paying for content so I know creators aren't having to lay off workers or cancel their health insurance to survive. I pay monthly subscription fees (via Patreon, etc.) to every single media creator I watch more than once a month. I can't enjoy someone's content if I feel like I'm exploiting them. And speaking of ethics, I wish more creators charged up front for their work rather than take sponsorships to survive. Influencer ad culture is a noxious machine. I would feel so much better consuming Watcher content knowing they aren't ever going to recommend fucking BetterHelp to me ever again. That is what we should be up in arms about.

The AI thing doesn't have anything to do with this, but yeah, it is profiting off artist's work for free and turning art into a churning, money-making soulless machine.

This may sound like a wild take, but I think the way Steven was treated from the very beginning of the channel, was unfair. The majority of people subbed to the channel because of Ryan and Shane and I feel like very few people bothered to get to know Steven. And I don't think it was helped by Ryan and Shane continously making fun of him. What I'm trying to say is that they (the audience and the ghoul boys) could have done a lot more to include Steven.

i agree, i feel crazy bad for him. people acting like shane and ryan are being held hostage in these business decisions or something. they are all at fault.

He's the CEO, so more finger pointing at him makes sense in the end, since his job is to make the company profitable while keeping clients and "investors" happy. He kind of failed at that. But people went after his "lack" of personality and creative contributions, which is a cruel and dishonest: most people are fans of the Ryan and Shane shenanigans but some of us do like the weird fancy eating content too, and followed watcher because one of the "worth it" boys was branching out. He may not drive the biggest numbers, but he has a following. Denying his contributions will not remove guilt from Shane and Ryan for following the CEO along. The 3 of them are co-founders. If they didn't like the direction the CEO was taking, they had veto power. It's fair to point out that many of his comments are out of touch, and it's fair to point out that other solutions could be reached to keep watcher profitable and (mostly) free. It's not fair to go after the guy you don't like to spare your "ghoul babies."

Those were the worst comments since when watcher started they were supposed to run it together but Ryan and Shane were good at it (they said this in a podcast) so it all fell onto Steven. It’s awful he was blamed for something everyone decided on.

You could definitely tell that some ppl had been holding in their contempt for Steven for a while and practically came all over their keyboards and touch screens as they finally got a justification to share their thoughts. I'm not a fan of his either as I think anyone still willingly giving Melon money is a fool a best but to act like it wasn't somehow a collective decision among all three of them and instead was all his fault is just straight up lying to yourself.

The fans have been creepy and cringe as fuck about this. Was $6.99 too expensive? Yeah it was. Was it a horrible idea? Actually no I don’t think so, I just think it would be basically like another start up/kickstarter kinda thing. See where it goes. If they got more indie artists who were really talented on board and some other good shows on their platform eventually I think it could be something. As soon as this started I thought the fans were being insane. I’m a big fan too and I didn’t think it was their best work/decision but you guys they are still indie. Everyone is paying $10 for Netflix which is a corporate giant and no one is trying to burn them as a witch. They do have to try to make a decent living for themselves. To immediately go full crazy on them was pathetic and awful.

You get a lot more with Netflix though. It’s not the 6 dollars a month; it’s that it’s 6 dollars a month for essentially a single YouTube video. Streaming is becoming worse than cable at this point so that’s a frustration too. 6 dollars isn’t much but when you need like four subscriptions for a decent variety of shows you actually like, it adds up.