So the recent controversy about Channel Awesome mismanagement
- Thread starter Drathnoxis
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Youtube has so many management issues (#WTFU) that it is legitimately easier to have your own web presence, especially if you're super popular. I watch NC and Tamara's Never Seen on Youtube just because the CA layout is a navigational cluster-f. I watch Linkara on his website, and I watch everyone else on their own Youtube channels. I've really been into La'Ron Readus lately.maninahat said:
I think this misses the point about the HORRENDOUS MISMANAGEMENT that both these sites have been subject to. The Escapist has been very poorly run for many years, and made a great deal of mistakes in handling and promoting the majority of their content. Especially moving Zero Punctuation to Youtube with zero back promotion to their main site. I could go on at length about this issue, but I've already done so quite a few times so I'll just link to that here.maninahat said:
Correction:Rain Gass said:
Spoony has had "health issues" that have been preventing him from doing his normal stuff for a long, long, long, long, long time now. (But not from accepting money for it)
Well, like a lot of mental health issues, bipolar disorder can be quite "productive" in certain ways. If your job is getting angry and weirdly intense about geek culture on the internet, it's not necessarily going to be an impediment provided you only write and perform in manic phase, which Spoony clearly did.Drathnoxis said:
I think it's a misnomer that everyone who has mental health issues is always miserable and worthless and always comes off as depressed or delusional. The intensity, emotion and spontaneity that borderline or bipolar people exhibit, for example, can make them living nightmares to be around on a bad day, but it can also make them fun and hyper-productive on a good day. I was never a massive fan of Spoony's content, but I can definitely see why people were and why he fitted in so well in the whole online media commentary environment of the time where everything was based on being cartoonishly over the top and angry.
None of this is to play down that he was clearly a nightmare to work with, and the signs were definately there if anyone had bothered to look, but the deterioration has been.. extremely noticeable.
Well Channel Awesome posted... not an apology, but this [http://channelawesome.com/our-response/]. Yikes.
Doing a flippant point-by-point rebuttal ala forum banter is about the worst strat they could've gone for.
Doing a flippant point-by-point rebuttal ala forum banter is about the worst strat they could've gone for.
I don't agree that it's the worst. They're in an odd spot considering the accusations are bundled in a 73 page document. I don't think a generic "we're really sorry about what happened, we were new to it all, we deeply apologize and hope to make amends in the future" would really help considering people have accused them of some illegal/harmful stuff.Johnny Novgorod said:
Granted the presentation is really poor. But at the same time so is the google document, it's absolutely riddled with unnecessary shit.There are accusations, if proven true, absolutely damning; but the message gets muddled because there's so much irrelevant stuff in there.
In the end it boils down to how much of this will people actually read? Odds are most people interested in the story didn't read the entire document or the entire response. Instead they read a page or two, read a few tweets, and just formed an opinion. Having read both entirely, although presented poorly I do think that it does to some way (not entirely) discredit some heinous accusations in the google doc. Having chat logs instead of just "he said, she said" accusations goes a long way.
Don't get me wrong I fully believe that the company and everything about it was a shit show, but some of the google doc tries to paint a lot of the stuff as malicious, where I think a lot of this stuff was sheer incompetence.
Honestly, I don't think there is a way that they could have gotten out of this. The public has made up it's mind and there is no changing it, no matter how much evidence there is or is not against the allegations or how much they apologize. I mean, these are still only allegations, that document doesn't have much evidence apart from testimonials. So if they did apologize and say "we're sorry for everything! We apologize from the very depths of our soul for all that's happened!" that's just admitting that it's all true. It won't even matter because people will just say "you're apologizing now? Too little, too late." There's no way out. They've already been sentenced in the court of public opinion, and in these courts there's no appeal.
I don't think their chat logs make them look that bad either. That one with Lindsay 'seems' as if they are as giving her the final say on the scene she has a problem with and she says whichever way is fine with her. It is only partial context though.
I think this line is particularly funny in light of current events:
Not saying they are innocent though, that contract does look just as cruddy as the doc stated.
I don't think their chat logs make them look that bad either. That one with Lindsay 'seems' as if they are as giving her the final say on the scene she has a problem with and she says whichever way is fine with her. It is only partial context though.
I think this line is particularly funny in light of current events:
Not saying they are innocent though, that contract does look just as cruddy as the doc stated.
That's the problem isn't it? They're stooping to the base level of an irritated forum user, nitpicking through accusations that are themselves, in many instances, nitpicks. It's unprofessional, unbecoming and a PR fiasco in general. The fact that they're only tackling a choice portion of the accusations and that they're dignifying them with screenshots is embarrassing, it makes it look like they don't know what to do with all the other accusations and that we can't trust their word as much as physical evidence. "Worst ever" may be hyperbole; even so they're doing none of the things they should be doing in an effort to contain the situation.Rednog said:
I'm coming from a PR perspective, I don't care for the channel nor is my blood boiling over the workplace drama. But it strikes how awfully they're following the accusations. A simple if disingenuous apology would've immediately halved the outrage.
So two thing I want to address.Major Tom said:
1) I'm genuinely curious what else in the google doc they should've addressed?
2) The one thing you did point out, the compensation of film crossovers. I kind of understand where they were coming from, and I kind of got this view from listening to the "Down the Rabbit Hole" livestream of the google doc, the anniversaries were a money pit. It looks like they were trying to recoup costs, and they did it in a hamfisted manner. In all honestly they probably should've just never done the anniversaries after they realized that it wasn't profitable.
"Recent", this shit has been out there for years (I remember reading out the experiences of the extras on the desert movie and they were all identical: Doug and Rob are terrible, Spoony has legitimate mental problems, Linkara is a sperg and Mike Michaud is evil).
I went back and rewatched the "rape scene"...I'm a bit confused as to why Lindsay thinks it's worth mentioning. It's Linkara turning her into a cyborg. I don't even get where one gets a rape implication from that scene.Drathnoxis said:Honestly, I don't think there is a way that they could have gotten out of this. The public has made up it's mind and there is no changing it, no matter how much evidence there is or is not against the allegations or how much they apologize. I mean, these are still only allegations, that document doesn't have much evidence apart from testimonials. So if they did apologize and say "we're sorry for everything! We apologize from the very depths of our soul for all that's happened!" that's just admitting that it's all true. It won't even matter because people will just say "you're apologizing now? Too little, too late." There's no way out. They've already been sentenced in the court of public opinion, and in these courts there's no appeal.
I don't think their chat logs make them look that bad either. That one with Lindsay 'seems' as if they are as giving her the final say on the scene she has a problem with and she says whichever way is fine with her. It is only partial context though.
I think this line is particularly funny in light of current events:
Not saying they are innocent though, that contract does look just as cruddy as the doc stated.
Whereas Lindsay was made and was involved in vidoes whose entire substance was one big rape joke.
She made a "Rape Rap" and was in a Spooning with Spoony episode, but the transformation scene is worth mentioning?
Eh, channel awesome always came across as an amateurish venture from the start. While I'm certain a lot of the issues raised are genuine, and channel awesome will probably sink now, I'm also just tired of the bandwagoning hate going on at the same time. I've seen so many people give their "takes", or try to add to the conversation (my personal favourite being a charming young woman who spent about 3 minutes talking about how Doug is the "fucking cringe king") that I feel numb to both sides.
Look, I'm not going to die on this hill, because I think Lindsey has been quite open about having said and done some stupid shit which she regrets and the rape rap is.. uncomfortable, in retrospect. But to be fair, there is a really big reason why it's different.Rednog said:
It's written on the premise that rape is bad.
Like, it's pretty unambiguous about the fact that rape is bad. The "joke" (and it's not a very funny joke) is that this guy is rapping about being a rapist and that this is shocking and horrifying for everyone present (including, presumably, the audience). It's pretty bog standard taboo humour. It's literally the same joke Brad Jones makes all the time, for example (since a lot of the movies he watch have rape in them) and has never been called out on by Lindsey or anyone else. The rape rap is more laboured and obnoxious than Brad's schtick, but it's still basically the same joke.
If you read the original script for the transformation sequence provided in the document, you'll notice that the "joke" isn't that rape is shocking or taboo, it's that rape itself is funny. That the position of someone being helpless to prevent someone having implied (and not subtly implied, like directly referenced by other characters) sex with them is, in and of itself, hilarious.
As the script itself puts it "resistance is.. comical".
If anything, I think you can probably take this as a sign that Lindsey's standards on this issue were, at the time at least, not that clear-cut, and she clearly didn't have a problem with edgy humour provided the audience was laughing along with and not at victims (which I disagree with, but it's at least a stance). The fact that this scene made her uncomfortable in spite of that should perhaps be a warning of just how bad it is. I mean, it's pretty bad.. the rape rape may be uncomfortable, but that script made me vomit in my mouth.
I mean, you're right. The person I actually feel sorry for in that particular situation, more than anyone, is Lewis. I don't like his content, I don't watch his show and I don't think he's particularly good, but he's always been very clear cut that he believes rape is a serious issue, it's not something to joke about or to be handled trivially. Casting him as a comedy rapist seems.. mean.. to be honest.. just mean. I don't even think it's intentional meanness, it just illustrates that they really had no idea who these people they'd chosen to host and collaborate with actually were.
Because proving themselves right is the most important goal right now, isn't it? That surely will stop the hemorragy of content creators who are the reason people visit their channel... oh wait! It won't!Drathnoxis said:
Public opinion, schmublic opinion. In their situation, that "court" is irrelevant as crap!Drathnoxis said:
I don't know if I'm missing it or what, but I've looked over the google doc a few times and I went back to look at Lindsay's and Linkara's sections and I don't see the script for the original lines?evilthecat said:
Edit: Ended up just googling it...
Uhh sure, I guess. I don't know I honestly still don't see it as a "rape scene". I see it just as a shitty/cringy joke (about the same garabge quality as the rest of the film), but to go to the point that it's so revolting you vomited from it?
The joke is she's being assimilated/turned into a cyborg and FilmBrain is stupid enough to think that it's sounds of sex. But at least as far as I can tell there's no actual implication that he is actually raping her behind the door. The other characters are under the impression that they're having consensual sex.
It's a minor notation, and obviously Lewis still played the character, but that was specifically an evil robot and not his Linkara character.evilthecat said:
Though aside from the script apparently reading "rape noises" that's not really the context of the scene. Film Brain is a moron that thinks they're having regular (or consensual anyways) sex is the main "joke" to it, and the actuality is Borg assimilation or whatever.