So the recent controversy about Channel Awesome mismanagement

[Drathnoxis]

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.

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!

They've already been sentenced in the court of public opinion, and in these courts there's no appeal.

Public opinion, schmublic opinion. In their situation, that "court" is irrelevant as crap!

Well if you look at it from the perspective that CA is effectively killed anyway, you might as well try and defend yourself. It's only fair that both sides get to give their version of events. People don't like that because they've already decided what's true and who is right.

What could they have done, at this point, that would stop the hemorrhaging of content creators? You honestly think a simple apology would cut it? Even heartfelt groveling would be met with "you had years to apologize and make things right. You're only apologizing because you got outed." I don't think there is anything they can do at this point to save the site.

And how is public opinion irrelevant? Everybody is fleeing the site because the public opinion has turned against them so rapidly. If the Google doc was released and nobody cared, do you think they would have lost such a massive amount of contributors in such a short time? I don't think so. Everybody is leaving the site because it's bad press to remain affiliated with Channel Awesome. Allegations are all you need to sink someone.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Jesus fucking Christ things just keep getting worse and worse, don't they? It's bad enough that someone I respected turned out to be a bad person, now it turns out that even more reviewers I liked were possibly just as bad... this is making it near-impossible for me to watch any of their videos again... I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

 

[runic knight]

Looks like former contributor Dan Olson commented on the jewwario thing too

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DaoIGL7X4AA7nNc.jpg:large

Really scummy to basically say he didn't want to address the topic because of the GG crowd though, considering gamergate didn't even exist til 7 months later. But I suppose it just wasn't worth it at the time to be outing the fact the company's management knew and covered that shit up while he and his friends were still working there. I mean, not like that could have prevented other possible issues down the line or would have been relevant to the interests of the people visiting the site about what sort of management they supported or anything.

On a lighter note, it seems gury larry has been the last one to vote himself off the island, as apparently brad has said in a discord he is leaving already, and removed the links from his twitter

 

[Natemans]

Guru Larry is the only one left on the site.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Now Guru Larry is claiming he's the last one left [https://twitter.com/LarryBundyJr/status/984642322649485314]. I can't confirm what he's said personally, I'm not on Brad's discord, Linkara hasn't said anything publicly about BBB and apparently BBB wouldn't know a twitter if it kicked him in the arse.

It's entirely possible Larry is trolling all of us, but what if he said is true....well then, that's it I reckon. It's the Nostalgia Critic page now, I can't see Channel Awesome picking itself back up at all now. I can't help but feel sorry for the Walkers, their entire livelihood looks to have completely subsided beneath them in the space of a week. That can't be good for the psyche.

Edit: I would mention that they haven't updated the site, but it's like 2AM in Chicago ATM, so I guess we'll find out for sure in a couple hours.

TBF, it sounds like they brought it on themselves. If you can't get a handle of management level abuse of its workers, don't complain when the business begins crumbling about your ears. It's a disaster of their own accord. It's not like a cyclone ripping apart your warehouse in a freak storm.

The lesson here isn't that it's sad that an enterprise folds up because of latent problems of exploitation or abuse, it's that management have a vested interest in running a tight ship.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Oh most definitely, I'm not suggesting that it's anything other than their own fault. I suppose it's more pity than anything else, that they destroyed 10 years work in a week through their own ineptitude.

Ehhh ... one of the reasons why I don't like working with artists is because of the egocentrism that inherently comes from making a living from performing/visual artistry. When you get artists running teams of artists, and then trying to monetize it, you really do need classic structures of HR and individual team leadership.

Channel Awesome seems no different than Andy Warhol's The Factory... in fact eerily similar in terms of the abuse of individual workers and the complete erosion of boundaries of excess.

 

[Rednog]

Honestly at this point with the JewWario reveal, everyone involved with Channel Awesome in that era, both creators and management can all go fuck themselves. They are all absolutely unredeemable garbage human beings.

They knew that he had been accused of rape and being a sexual predator, and yet no one called the cops. He ran around for a full year before he killed himself. None of the people who knew did anything, they all sat by. But yet so many of them grandstand about social justice and harassment against women. Yet fell silent when their female fans were potentially put in danger, where the fuck was their need for justice then.

And for those that didn't know for years, they still found out before the document was released. And yet they still pretended he was a fallen saint and celebrated his fucking birthday two days ago despite knowing and used his name for sympathy. And yet even though all this dropped like a bomb shell none of them are fucking addressing it; Linkara, Lupa, Holly (who for sure knew about it the whole time), Lindsay all fucking dead silent, just retweeting about how much people think CA sucks. They were all full of energy talking shit and demanding answers from CA, but now that people are asking answers from them fucking nothing.

And worse yet, despite knowing all this about their friend they didn't decide to just drop it from the doc, instead they tried to obfuscate it and turn their dead friend into a weapon against CA. Absolute quality people right there. But I guess it's more important to complain about not getting craft services than outing a sexual predator.

 

[CaitSeith]

Public opinion, schmublic opinion. In their situation, that "court" is irrelevant as crap!

You honestly think a simple apology would cut it?

Yes. Even a private apology towards the content creators who didn't see the management caring about them but were still in the fence. Instead, the "we are sorry you feel that way" hand-waving was the final straw for them. The important people here are the creators, not the public.

And how is public opinion irrelevant? Everybody is fleeing the site because the public opinion has turned against them so rapidly.

Fans will go to wherever their favorite creators are. Creators leave; fans leave. You give public opinion too much weight in what it's essentially an internal matter spiraling out of control.

 

[Thaluikhain]

They knew that he had been accused of rape and being a sexual predator, and yet no one called the cops. He ran around for a full year before he killed himself. None of the people who knew did anything, they all sat by. But yet so many of them grandstand about social justice and harassment against women. Yet fell silent when their female fans were potentially put in danger, where the fuck was their need for justice then.

Same old. Lots of big talk about the issue in vague general terms, hell, I daresay they believe it. But when it comes time to put it into practice in their own workplace, lots of cricket noises.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Honestly at this point with the JewWario reveal, everyone involved with Channel Awesome in that era, both creators and management can all go fuck themselves. They are all absolutely unredeemable garbage human beings.

They knew that he had been accused of rape and being a sexual predator, and yet no one called the cops. He ran around for a full year before he killed himself. None of the people who knew did anything, they all sat by. But yet so many of them grandstand about social justice and harassment against women. Yet fell silent when their female fans were potentially put in danger, where the fuck was their need for justice then.

And for those that didn't know for years, they still found out before the document was released. And yet they still pretended he was a fallen saint and celebrated his fucking birthday two days ago despite knowing and used his name for sympathy. And yet even though all this dropped like a bomb shell none of them are fucking addressing it; Linkara, Lupa, Holly (who for sure knew about it the whole time), Lindsay all fucking dead silent, just retweeting about how much people think CA sucks. They were all full of energy talking shit and demanding answers from CA, but now that people are asking answers from them fucking nothing.

And worse yet, despite knowing all this about their friend they didn't decide to just drop it from the doc, instead they tried to obfuscate it and turn their dead friend into a weapon against CA. Absolute quality people right there. But I guess it's more important to complain about not getting craft services than outing a sexual predator.

I don't know why you're surprised. It's easy to have lofty opinions and support things until they personally effect you and none of the Channel Awesome people ever struck me as particularly selfless people.

Honestly I'm just surprised it took as long as it did to fall apart. But I suppose sucking on the decomposing teats of the Internet Celebrity cow's carcass and living an eternal childhood is preferable to working at a proper company with a proper boss and people to amswer to amd shit. I mean they've been making these videos for year so I assume they have some transferable skills, so I assume the main reason they put up with CAs bullshit was to avoid having to live in the real world and rake in Internet Fame bucks.

 

[Terminal Blue]

They knew that he had been accused of rape and being a sexual predator, and yet no one called the cops.

Just to point out. It would not have made any difference if any of them had called the cops.

Without the victim being willing to come forward, give testimony and potentially face her attacker in court, it's unlikely there would even have been an investigation. Furthermore, with the evidence she had it's very unlikely she could have secured a conviction, assuming it was the first time he'd been accused of this kind of thing.

The best they could have done would have been to encourage the victim to go to police (although even that's morally questionable, given that it's probably going to result in a traumatic process for her which ultimately achieves nothing and, given that he's an online figure, potentially exposes her to a huge amount of risk in terms of being identified and harassed). Failing that, all they could really have done was to terminate their relationship with him immediately.

CA's management, unfortunately, didn't do this, and in doing so put everyone else in a very awkward position. While they could have spoken out sooner, doing so would have:

a) been incredibly shitty to the victim, as it effectively exposes her to the risk of identification and harassment
b) been incredibly shitty to his family, as they would have then been exposed to harassment despite not being responsible
c) likely been dismissed by many people as lies or "drama", particularly since noone would be able to provide evidence

Even now, I guarantee that people will attempt to identify the victim for malicious reasons.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Honestly at this point with the JewWario reveal, everyone involved with Channel Awesome in that era, both creators and management can all go fuck themselves. They are all absolutely unredeemable garbage human beings.

They knew that he had been accused of rape and being a sexual predator, and yet no one called the cops. He ran around for a full year before he killed himself. None of the people who knew did anything, they all sat by. But yet so many of them grandstand about social justice and harassment against women. Yet fell silent when their female fans were potentially put in danger, where the fuck was their need for justice then.

And for those that didn't know for years, they still found out before the document was released. And yet they still pretended he was a fallen saint and celebrated his fucking birthday two days ago despite knowing and used his name for sympathy. And yet even though all this dropped like a bomb shell none of them are fucking addressing it; Linkara, Lupa, Holly (who for sure knew about it the whole time), Lindsay all fucking dead silent, just retweeting about how much people think CA sucks. They were all full of energy talking shit and demanding answers from CA, but now that people are asking answers from them fucking nothing.

And worse yet, despite knowing all this about their friend they didn't decide to just drop it from the doc, instead they tried to obfuscate it and turn their dead friend into a weapon against CA. Absolute quality people right there. But I guess it's more important to complain about not getting craft services than outing a sexual predator.

Dude, according to the actual people involved in the doc itself, almost all didn't know about this until 2 weeks ago. Chill.

 

[Comic Sans]

According to what producers are saying on Twitter, almost nobody was aware of what was going on with JewWario. It was a select few of them, the executives of CA, and a few other random people. And those who did know didn't come forward because the victim, "Jane Doe", didn't want them to. You can't call the police on someone if the victim won't testify, and they weren't gonna force her to go through something she didn't want to. The big fail is on Channel Awesome for not releasing JewWario when they learned what was happening. It's not as simple as EVERYONE WAS IN ON IT AND IS CULPABLE.

 

[Raddra]

Well.. i'm not surprised about this. It seems that one of the criteria for becoming big on CA was being a garbage human being. Only a few of them were decent people, like Larry.

I'm really not surprised. Despite what your opinions on Mister Metokur are, he did a really insightful coverage on what jerks the CA big names were. If you can't stand him, learn to separate people from their work.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So I read through the second 'response' and it was a very fancy way of saying 'Haters gonna hate, ya'll just jelly, fuck you got mine! Suck it!'
This behind-the-scenes Mike guy seems like a really card.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Mister Metokur

Lol, Mister "I produce shitty videos making fun of random mentally ill people on the internet" Metokur. Mister "My mic is only $2 and boy-howdy can you tell" Metokur. I just stumbled across this jackass a couple days ago, and man does he blow chunks. He is like a bargain-bin Leafy, but somehow even more insufferable.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Mister Metokur

Lol, Mister "I produce shitty videos making fun of random mentally ill people on the internet" Metokur. Mister "My mic is only $2 and boy-howdy can you tell" Metokur. I just stumbled across this jackass a couple days ago, and man does he blow chunks. He is like a bargain-bin Leafy, but somehow even more insufferable.

Oh it gets worse when you look at his history. He used to go by the name "internet aristocrat", the guy who did the "five guys" video about zoe quinn, kicking off the "quinspiracy" which led directly into gamergate. Seriously, fuck that guy.

 

[PhoenixKnight]

Since I have nothing better to do right now, one small update. The Channel Awesome Forums are currently shut down, since by all reports they went all NeoGAF on them.

There was one small snippet about Brad Jone's status with the site: This tweet [https://twitter.com/HorrorNetflix/status/984614412932694016] came out yesterday that suggests that there might be some legal issues involved (Irving's reply, not the main tweet). Now I take this with a huge bucket of salt. Irving is a friend of Brad's and regularly appears on Midnight Screenings, but I don't know how involved he is with Stoned Gremlin Productions. He did a review later that evening with Brad (after Larry said he left), and he said nothing was mentioned in relation to leaving CA.

Oh, Malcolm and Tamara (possibly the rest of the Chicago crew, but so far all I've seen is them retweeting Tamara and Malcolm) have decided staying low was not a good idea, and have been loudly defending CA on their twitter accounts. Not exactly attracting the sort of attention the want.

Edit: They finally got around to updating the front page, and then there were 2. Gaming Wildlife and Blockbuster Buster are gone, Brad and Larry are still there.

I have to wonder whether Tamara and Malcolm have different working conditions since they were actually hired to work on the Nostalgia Critic, rather than being outside talent the site hosted.

While I don't want to throw around any accusations about them being coerced into defending the site, but I think it's interesting that they are given situation. There is always going to be a lot of "he said, she said" in these situations but the fact that so many of the content creators have expressed similar views is quite telling in my opinion. There was really no way Channel Awesome were going to come out of this looking good, but their responses definitely didn't help.

 

[Raddra]

Mister Metokur

Lol, Mister "I produce shitty videos making fun of random mentally ill people on the internet" Metokur. Mister "My mic is only $2 and boy-howdy can you tell" Metokur. I just stumbled across this jackass a couple days ago, and man does he blow chunks. He is like a bargain-bin Leafy, but somehow even more insufferable.

I absolutely love how every time I type this name there's a response to it.

I'm not a subscriber of his, but his CA stuff came out long before this current drama, its well worth a watch. if he's a jerk, he's a jerk.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Mister Metokur

Lol, Mister "I produce shitty videos making fun of random mentally ill people on the internet" Metokur. Mister "My mic is only $2 and boy-howdy can you tell" Metokur. I just stumbled across this jackass a couple days ago, and man does he blow chunks. He is like a bargain-bin Leafy, but somehow even more insufferable.

I absolutely love how every time I type this name there's a response to it.

I just find that his shtick immediately repulsive and cruel. Again, Leafy inspires very similar feelings.