- I always make comments
about how social media fame is actually really fleeting and that there could come a time where you guys could hate me. Now, it is interesting
for me to see a channel just completely speed run this. That's it, that's my intro. Hey, I'm Amanda, you're
watching Swell Entertainment and today we are talking about Watcher, the Watcher boys and watchertv.com. Why? I've been asking myself the same question throughout all of this. At the time of recording this, this is the day after the guys have put up their an update video about the backlash and everything from the first video. We're going to talk about
the entire situation, but we're going to talk
about the first video first, obviously, so if you're
gonna sit here and be like, they already responded
to this, I don't care. We're going to talk about
it in its entirety, okay? Because this whole thing was a masterclass of what not to do as a
channel that is struggling or a channel that is trying
to make more steps, okay? And do more things. So let's discuss the whole process and then we can discuss their update and we'll talk about it all. It's coming. Breathe for five seconds. This whole situation is
dripping in parasocial behavior, which I think is why
the backlash as it was was so charged for a lot of people. Four days ago, at the
time we recorded this, YouTube put out Goodbye YouTube, which is a 14 minute and 32 second video. The amount of discussion
this video has had, I expected more views actually. That should be at least at 13 million with the amount of discussion I've seen. So the fact that it's only at 1.9, I don't think is a good sign. That sounds ridiculous, but I need you to understand
how many think pieces I have seen on this video already. And the fact that it's only
nearly 2 million views, I don't think that's, oh
God, that's probably bad. That means you really got
your people, most likely. This wasn't like just like
a flash in the pan video. It was like, this is like, oh God. For those of you that are new here, not perpetually online from
the age of eight like me, Watcher is according to
their own about page, Watcher is a new production studio that is focused on
creating television caliper unscripted series in the digital space. Our shows have a genuine curiosity and earnest exploration
into a variety of topics, including food, travel, horror,
and everything in between. I don't watch Watcher, okay? I never am subscribed to Watcher. I think I've probably
seen a couple of videos and I was a fan of Buzzfeed Unsolved. That is where people
know Ryan and Shane from is they were the hosts
of Buzzfeed Unsolved. And that's where I think so
much of this comes back to because Buzzfeed Unsolved
was definitely one of their, I guess, cult favorites, if not one of the favorites of Buzzfeed. And it was basically Ryan and Shane going over like unsolved mysteries, ghost files specifically
that were unsolved, where they would go like on
little ghost hunting tours and all of that. This was all through Buzzfeed. These shows, there's like
10 seasons of the show to the point that it's literally on Hulu. I think they sold the entire
backlog of that show to Hulu, which I'm sure if I'm Ryan and Shane, if they did not get a cut
of that, I would be pissed. If I was working with Buzzfeed and I made the series what it was and then they like just put it on Hulu, I don't know the details of that deal. But if it was that, I also
would be like, we're done. But like that's where people
really came to love them. I watched that show. I thought it was funny. I still rewatched old
Buzzfeed Unsolved episodes. Okay, here and there. I never really got into Watcher and not for any particular reason. It just didn't really appeal to me, but Watcher is their show. At the time of me recording
this, they have 378 videos. 376 of those are unrelated to
the watchertv.com situation. Concepts that they got from
Buzzfeed that they liked, that people liked them for and take that same style of content that's like still really
unscripted, off the cuff, YouTube style content, shot at a TV level with
a high production value. My question is, is this necessary? Now this is going to sound like a tangent, but one of the most formative
moments for me as a YouTuber, in 2022, I went to VidSummit
for the first time, okay? And I had someone tell
me, I love your videos. I had no idea you could become
like a full-time YouTuber just talking to a camera. And someone like me who
has been watching YouTube since I was in middle school, that really floored me 'cause
I was like, what do you mean? That was the entirety of
what YouTube was for years. To some degree, it still is. Plenty of YouTubers are still just people talking to a camera. I know the MrBeast
situation has made it seem like there's these big teams
and all this stuff behind it. And then you've got these
big businesses run channels that are also like very
high production value, a lot of people involved. But like this version still works. I am still able to be a full-time YouTuber with me and William, my editor. Like this is still a thing
that is able to be done, okay? You don't need to do all of that because people at the end of
the day want to be entertained and they get entertainment
from different things. It doesn't always need to
be a high production value. There are absolutely people
that love watching that. But there are also people
who wanna see me go and lose money paying for a
ridiculous event, you know, and get scammed so that
they can get the joy of missing out through me, okay? Or they wanna hear me talk about a channel nuking their goodwill with their audience, okay? They don't necessarily need to see me doing that in 4K, okay? But anyways, that was the
whole premise of Watcher, okay? Essentially it was like these shows, some of their more popular
shows that I am familiar with. Puppet History is really popular. Mystery Files is also popular. They're averaging about
1 million views a video. The thing with Good by YouTube
is the first half of it is about their road to where they are now. Making content at home, joining BuzzFeed, what they mailed at BuzzFeed, the choice to leave BuzzFeed,
building up Watcher, the 25 employees they have, we'll talk about that in a second, just like the content that they've made and doing it for the last couple of years. And then they start talking about money and they say that 50% of their business is paid for by advertisers. That is not uncommon for content creation. And I wanna make that
abundantly clear here 'cause some people were
like, that's really unstable. The entirety of social media
content creation is unstable. That is the risk you take
when you get into this job. I have videos that do really great that I expect to do really
great that do great. I have videos that I
expect to do really great that do no money. And that is on me and
that's the risk that I take as a self-employed
full-time content creator. That is the same deal
they are making, okay? Now they can have a
production company behind them that they are running and all of that. You have Smosh as well. That's like a full production
company and all of that. But at the end of the
day, they still take, there's advertisers, there's
views from advertisers. I'm assuming they're specifically talking about sponsorships and brand
deals when they're doing that. I do sponsorships and
brand deals here as well. I try not to rely on them
because I don't want to make you guys feel like I'm
constantly peddling you a product all the time. But I have a handful of companies
that I like working with that I continue to work with. What I don't think they're
talking about is Google AdSense. Google AdSense is how
basically any YouTuber who doesn't want to do brand deals, that is how you can
make money from YouTube. Someone just watching your video is supporting your channel. If you have YouTube premium,
we get a chunk of that as well. And also if like a video is
demonetized or limited ads, then YouTube premium actually
does support that video still the way that like advertisers don't. Google ads, it's very precarious, okay? And like there are videos
that get demonetized or limited ads. I have literally told
YouTube employees before that like being a YouTuber is kind of like working really hard on a video. And then once in a while,
someone comes into your office and says that you don't
get to get paid that week for your work and then walks out without you being able to talk
to anyone about why that is. Because once you get a video
demonetized or limited ads, it is incredibly difficult to even just get a straightforward answer as to why that is happening. That being said, content like Watcher's, it is well-documented on
YouTube that crime content and like anything relating
to sensitive topics, the watch time, the views, really good. The likelihood that you
are monetized, really bad. They kind of give out
that 50% advertisers stat, not like it's like, oh my God,
we have to deal with this. It's like, oh yeah, this is how we run our business basically. I need you to understand
that that is the normal for most big creators. I would say that my AdSense
and my sponsorship income is pretty neck and neck. And I think that that's the case for a good chunk of creators. In a lot of instances, they
barely rely on Google AdSense and they rely entirely on
brands to sponsor their content. Merch can also take up a
good chunk of that for me. Patreon takes up a good chunk of that. Now I do Twitch. So Twitch takes up a good
chunk of that now as well. Like trying to diversify where
your money is coming from is the smart thing to do, especially when you're self-employed in the content creator sphere, because that makes it so that you don't go and blow all your money on a Lambo, which you shouldn't do regardless, but you don't go blow
all your money on a Lambo and then you can't pay
your rent the next month. You diversify where your
money is coming from and then you're
responsible with your money once you have it. And then they talk about Watcher.com and how they are going to essentially make a streaming platform that
is just their content. You ever get deja vu? (laughs) For $6 a month, you get access
to all of their episodes that they've ever made on Watcher. So 376 episodes, essentially. And then new shows where the first episode only will be posted to YouTube for free, but then if you wanna finish the show, you gotta go give them $6 a month. Also in Goodbye YouTube, they don't discuss one of
their other forms of income, which is their Patreon. Because a lot of the first
response to Goodbye YouTube was people asking, "Why don't
you guys just do Patreon?" I'm not currently happy with Patreon for a couple of different reasons. I am looking at alternatives
for myself and my audience, but I do still use Patreon. So I wanna put that out there right now because I understand why
people would not want to make the move onto Patreon, especially at this current point in time. Color me dumbfounded when I found out they don't only have a Patreon, it does incredibly well. A couple of people on TikTok were like, "Oh, I'm on their Patreon." And I think it's really underused. Patreon has this thing now
where you can join for free and it kind of inflates
the numbers a little bit. So paid members here, they've got 5,887 paid members times $5 a month is $29,000 a month. And that's on the lowest end possible. It's probably higher because statistically you probably have someone who's at 25, probably have a handful of
people that are 100 most likely. So not nothing. And if they advertised it
and played into it more, it would probably make
way more money, obviously, because that's a direct
access to those creators, including a Discord as well. So you're wondering, "Okay, Amanda, you mentioned Shane and Ryan. Who's this third guy?" This is Steven. He was also at BuzzFeed. And Steven was, my understanding, mostly known for his show "Worth It," where they would go try a
sandwich that was like $5 and then a sandwich that
was like $125, okay? And they would be like, "Is it worth it? I guess, I don't know." But then he came and joined Watcher, okay? And originally what
happened, my understanding, is that they were all the CEOs. Ryan, Shane, and Steven were
all CEOs of Watcher, okay? And then they realized,
like most creators do, okay, that Ryan and Shane, they weren't really
interested in being CEOs, but Steven was, or they weren't
suited for whatever, okay? So now Steven is currently the sole CEO, is my understanding. Now, this is very common. A lot of creators have
to be business people at the same time, and it's
not always the best bet. If you can be like me,
who's clinically insane and was a creative raised
by two people in business, therefore I'm crazy and make this work. But there's also a lot of
creators who are just like, hire me a manager, hire me a businessman, or hire me a CEO, and then
I can just make content and do whatever I want, and
that's all I care about. So it's not uncommon to have
one person or someone else even be the CEO of your company. Still means that you're the figurehead and you will still crash and burn if your image crashes and burns because that's just the nature of content. So eight days ago, they said, "Breaking Andrew Ilnyckyj and Adam Bianchi joined Watcher. The trio will produce and
star in a brand new food show. We picked up where we
left off with Worth It, but we're also making
something completely new," Andrew shared. "More info to come this Friday with other major announcements." Okay, so basically they
announced that Steven is now bringing back
the guys from Worth It and that they have
essentially acquired Worth It and they are now making a new show with the Worth It guys and Steven. So how do they frame
bringing up Watcher TV? They frame it as, "This is our way to bring you bigger and better content for Watcher. We have ideas we want to bring to you and we wanna give you
bigger and better content." They talk about how for
their Mystery File show, their ghost show or whatever, they want to be able to
do international episodes and travel internationally. They mentioned, I think,
Scotland or Ireland or something. They're also bringing back
Worth It as travel season, which is a whole new show of them traveling around the world, trying these foods to see
if it's worth it or not. The main selling point for
the timeline of everything was going to be Travel Season, a show that does not
include Shane and Ryan, who are, regardless of what you say, the driving force of
people liking Watcher. I'm not trying to be a dick to Steven. That's just the reality of
your fan base currently. And then they also talk about how this is also our chance
to bring back a show that we feel didn't get the
love it deserved the first time and that this was the chance for fans to vote on this show. They fumbled the entirety of this, but this right here is where I'm like, "Oh, you could have fixed this so easily." Part of why they decided
they wanted to do Watcher TV is that there are times
where they have done videos that don't make it on the trending page or that every single
video that they've made has not made it on the trending page, but they have made it. Shane wanted us to know that they have made it
on the trending page. But because there are
episodes that they have done that haven't made it on the trending page, they think just because it didn't make it on the trending page doesn't
mean it wouldn't do well on a streaming platform. What? That's an insane statement for one, because why would you think that a show that didn't do well on a platform where you could get, again, billions of views a day onto YouTube, but then then take it and then go put it on
the streaming platform where there's no built-in audience, no built-in discoverability, really, why would you think that
would do better over there? I'm just really curious about the thought process behind that one, because that doesn't make
sense as a sentence whatsoever. One of the things they wanna do with this is that they're going to bring back a show that didn't perform well on YouTube, so they never picked it up, but the fans really liked. So they gave a bunch of examples, and it's like, oh yeah,
vote which one you want, or pick which one you want, and then we will basically revamp it and start doing it again. This, you guys fumbled, because there was a secret
way you could have done this, and then you already could have had handful of episodes available on the site, that that way people
would at least be like, oh yeah, new content
already on watcher.com. They could have done a
YouTube community poll, Twitter, anything like that, like, hey, what's a show
that you guys really like that you wish we did more episodes of? 'Cause what they end up
doing is that currently, Watcher is not actually live. Watchertv.com is not live. It's in a beta program right now. It doesn't officially
launch until May 31st, okay? And so I think this was a way
to kind of get people like, the yearly payout is like
discounted right now for the beta, but there's no new content
currently on watchertv.com, okay, for the beta process, but it was available, so I was able to click through it and look into it a little bit. Even then, in their goodbye YouTube video, unless I miss something, the only show that they say is coming out on watcher.tv.com at
launch is "Travel Season," a show that no one really asked for. Not that anyone asked
for any of these shows, again, whatever, but
like, you get my point. I don't know why you guys thought that was like a really good driving force for new subscriptions to your site. And that is where the comment that they pinned on
this video confuses me, because what a bunch of
people started speculating was that they were going to
be taking off their backlog from YouTube and putting
it onto watchertv.com only. Now, I initially heard this, and I was like, that is incredibly stupid. So I know people who
have sold their backlogs for various reasons, and they regret it after the fact, because once the change happens and the copyright claims
happen and all of that, they lose 50% of their monthly ad revenue because they didn't realize
how much of their backlog was like contributing to
their monthly revenue. They get views for years. So it's like, I thought that
was incredibly stupid move. Turns out that's not the case. It sounds like maybe it was at one point, but then they decided it wasn't because of potential like backlash, because they didn't foresee
all of this backlash, but they expected maybe some of that. So then they commented, 'cause originally it just said, "The fun will continue at watchertv.com. "We hope to see you there. "Edit. "Hey all, seeing a lot of folks saying "that we're pulling all of
our content off YouTube. "To clarify, all of the
content on our YouTube channel "will continue to live here forever. "For new seasons, the first
episode will be released "on YouTube with the remaining
coming out exclusively "on the Watcher platform." That's the entire comment. So my question is why? Because then what is the
value of your platform? Again, the beta, you know, you've got your new show coming out, okay? But the value for your content, the value for your fans
would be that backlog. Even for May, like I
don't know how you thought that that was going to be
like a profitable launch at the start for May 31st or even now, because if the only show coming out was going to be travel season, then that was the only draw for the page because your backlog, you
have the backlog on there. You can go and watch it with, you know, if you pay the fee and all
that, if you pay your $6. Why would I pay to go see it there when I can go pay to see it here? Unless you frame this as this
is an extra way to support us. Also on this, Shane started saying like, they can password share,
what are we gonna do? Stop them, like just go
ahead and show the password. It's fine. The other thing in this video as well for, talk about money, why $6 a month? And they said, "We chose
that because we decided "it was affordable for everyone. "Every person can afford it. "So that way as many
people as want to join us "over there can." And then Steven's comment on Instagram, if he's smart, he deleted it. Nope, still up. Okay, this is Steven's post
announcing four days ago, a photo of, you know, "Travel Season," the guys, all this stuff. "I gave everything I had to
YouTube over the past 12 years, "but it's finally time to say goodbye. "Today marks the day we officially moved "to our independent
streaming platform, Watcher. "For those who won't be joining
us on this next chapter, "thank you for all your love and support. "I wouldn't be here without you. "And for those who want
to continue watching, "you can become a member
of our streaming service "at watchertv.com to
access everything we make "completely ad-free. "Hope to see you there." That also tells me you did have a plan to take everything off of YouTube. That's my opinion. The way you framed that makes me think you were gonna take
everything off of YouTube and not do the first episodes
and things like that. Personally, 'cause again, Goodbye YouTube, Goodbye YouTube, Goodbye YouTube. That doesn't sound like you're going to be putting new episodes out on YouTube. But also the phrase that pissed me off for those who won't be joining
us on the next chapter, thank you for all your love and support. Are you joking? (laughs) What do you mean? That's a crazy thing to put in there. Thank you guys so much
for all your support. Can't wait for this next journey. You can know that you're
gonna lose fans doing this, but it's another thing to
actively acknowledge this in your announcement post. That's crazy. You might as well have said goodbye poors and moved along with your day. People would respect you
more at the very least. They all went radio silent
for the last couple of days. The phrase, again, everyone
can afford that for $6 a month. That's what really pissed off
their hardcore fans, okay? Because their fans, for the most part, even when I was really into, you know, Buzzfeed Unsolved years ago, was when I was a college student, was when I had zero money. I had no dollars. What was in purse? Zero. (laughs) That appeal is still there. Most of their fan base
have self-identified as broke college students who actively went out of
their way to save and budget so that they could afford
merch to support them or to afford their Patreon for $5 a month. We're also, as a country,
not doing well financially. I live in California. Gas gets close to $6 a
gallon regularly, okay? Because money. The ongoing complaint
that I hear from everyone, it's like, I don't need another
streaming service, okay? At least with Patreon, they're usually supporting
multiple creators or pledging to multiple creators
on one page with Patreon. That's the one thing that
hasn't gotten me off of Patreon is because I know that a
lot of my viewers over there are already supporting other people and it's really easy for them
to support people via Patreon. To ask someone to straight up go to a whole new streaming service that only has your content on YouTube, which I believe is maybe
max eight episodes a month, is my understanding,
that's not enough, okay? For people to pledge for that, okay? It just isn't. And then people were also
really defending Shane in this because Shane regularly makes comments throughout his content about, you know, eat the rich, snitch on the rich, things like that constantly, okay? So again, you've built up
that also in your audience. And then it's like, hey, no
more free content for you, you gotta pay. But people were like,
Shane clearly is not happy, Ryan's not happy, this must
all be Steven, he's the CEO. Which I hate to break it to you, I hate to pop the little
parasocial bubble, these are grown adult men,
they can say something. But people were ready to
leave Shane out of this 'cause even Shane is like,
hey, they can password share, what are they gonna do? Password share, he's trying to protest the best way he can, all of this stuff. Before their update video came out, Shane's wife was on Tumblr. People are not their spouses. And I should also note again, this video does not frame it as we are struggling for money, it's framed as we've built
this, we wanna make it bigger, that is how it's framed. We want to travel for ghost hunting, we want to send Steven and his friends to go eat gold flakes in
Antarctica, I don't know. That's how it's framed, it's not framed as we
are struggling for money. Sarah posted, check out watchertv.com. I get people don't like to pay for things that were once free, but paying people fairly and
making a survivable living while making cool things
is hard, even with ads. I think what the fellows are cooking up will be well worth it, tbh. I think the survivable living thing is what's laughable for people. I straight up said survivable
living was laughable, I said that fully because
no one needs 25 employees, you just don't, I'm sorry. I'm gonna say this right now as well, business is hard, you have
to make hard decisions and I'm not advocating
for people to get fired or laid off or anything like that, but if you have structured
your business poorly, that is not on your followers
to help you make more money to fix those decisions, because no amount of money will
fix bad business practices. You can think that like bringing
more money in constantly will just make it easier, it won't. You'll hire someone else and then you won't be able to pay them and then it'll be back and then you'll be making
the puppet making OnlyFans, okay, you'll do something like that. And now we have the update video, so let's go to the update video. I think this is as good of an update as can really be expected
for the situation. They probably put too much
money into watchertv.com, that was never gonna just
go away, we knew that. They apologize repeatedly, they apologize for being insensitive and for not thinking
about people's incomes and things like that with
the insensitive comment about everyone can afford it. And they also acknowledge
Patreon in this video finally and they basically just said that they did a really
bad job of explaining why they needed to do this transition and they basically just explained the money situation of Watcher, okay, and that it's become very difficult to continue to make the
content they have been making and to sell their content to advertisers. Like I said, the content that they make as far as like crime content
and things like that, doesn't matter how pretty it looks, a lot of advertisers don't
want their names on that. And so now the platform is basically going to be changing but if you wanna get the
episodes for their shows early and ad-free, you
can get them on Watcher and then the month later, they will be available
for free on YouTube, which I think is probably
the best case scenario. It is basically becoming another Patreon. Now for also Patreon members as well, they will be getting a code so that they can get access
to the Watcher platform for free through their Patreon. I'm assuming this is going
to be a month to month code, if not like a one year code, we'll see. I'm not sure how that's
really all gonna play out. They also explained that
anyone who did decide to buy into Watcher
before all these changes have the opportunity to get refunded if they don't like the
way the new restructuring is going to be working. They go on to say that
staying on YouTube only has made it difficult
for them to stay relevant to advertisers and relevant on YouTube with the ever-changing
algorithm and landscape. And that they were trying
to look for options that could make it so that
they don't have to end Watcher as well as don't have to let people go that have made Watcher what
it is behind the scenes. And they basically acknowledged
that though they found that Watcher TV was the
best way to do this, they didn't think of the logistics of how this would impact their audience, which I'm sorry, what do you mean? As a small business
owner myself, I get it. It's difficult, but you obviously knew there would be some form of backlash because I don't think you make
Steven's Instagram caption without expecting that you
were going to lose viewership. In my opinion, I don't
think you make that caption without believing that. And so you just didn't think
that it would be 90, 80% of your audience for that. And there are people I should say that are still not happy
with this response, okay? Or at least they're not
happy because they've had the wool pull over their eyes or whatever. Or they're just not happy
with how this whole thing was handed in that they
basically did radio silence for three days because of all of this. So there are also people who totally think this is a reasonable response
and that they are done with being angry and that
they're going to subscribe to the Patreon and to Watcher, which I think is just a bot. 'Cause what do you mean
you're gonna do both? That doesn't make sense. But basically that they are
looking forward to the show and things like that, but they still have lost
quite a lot of subscribers. They were at just under
3 million at the time and they are now at 2.84 million. I do think some of that has come back. Some people have come back,
but some people are not. Let's go through some of
these comments on this one. The absolute crisis mode
these guys must have been in over the weekend. I paid 5.99 to be a fly on the wall of that Watcher office
these last 72 hours. I'm glad they apologized and
came up with a compromise, but I still wish they'd
realized they don't need high budgets or a huge staff. Their amateur video days were their best. And I think that's the
sentiment that I have seen quite a bit, especially on TikTok. Like people loved Buzzfeed Unsolved where there would be certain cut scenes where they would be like telling a story and it would all of a
sudden cut to a black screen and it would be white and blue
text to show Shane and Ryan bantering back and forth, okay? And it would just be like
literally moving text on screen. People love those moments. They are still referenced
and used as memes to this day, years later. I don't think that has happened with any of the Watcher content because you can have the
highest production value. I'm not saying this is the case, but I'm saying that you
can have the highest production level possible, okay? And still have unentertaining content, content that doesn't connect with people. You are not entitled to an audience that loves your production value if they don't love the content. Same with any YouTuber
that is watching this, but I shoot in 4K, I should
have a million followers. Are you entertaining? Are you smart? I don't know. What else do you bring to the table other than my video is crisp? 'Cause like, I'll tell you what, I know creators who still shoot on iPhones and edit on iPads. Their mics are from like Urban Outfitters. Okay, those little mini,
they still record on those. People want entertaining content. So much of my audience
that I know for a fact is you guys, hi guys, is
people who are artists who are not even watching
this video right now. I am being played as a podcast. They don't need the high production value. I could be filming on a potato and they would still tune in because they wanna hear me talk about something they barely care about. A bunch of the people watching this probably have never heard of you guys. They're just like, "Oh my God, wait, "Swell's gonna talk about something? "Crazy, great, welcome on in." I'm not trying to say I'm
better than the Watcher guys. I'm trying to say you don't know what your audience wants really because they don't want
the crazy production value. Someone on TikTok was like, "I don't know about you guys, "but I think we have ghosts at home. "I'm cool with local ghosts. "I'm cool with local ghost hunting. "I don't think we need to go to the UK. "I don't think that's necessary." You know, like we've got
ghosts back home, which we do. We've got a lot of ghosts in the US. As someone who makes some
very expensive content, I just got back from Japan. Those videos are not going to make back the cost of that trip to Japan. I know that, okay? So I have videos that are also sponsored, and then I have videos like this one. This cost me nothing but
several brain cells to film, and then I'm gonna pay William to edit it, and that is the entire
cost of this video, okay? Because I know that I need
to do videos like this and just talk about topics
that I'm interested in, or I wanna be nosy and I wanna
deep dive because I'm crazy, that I need to make videos like this so that I can be able to afford to do those bigger project videos or go to an event that costs 500 bucks or something like that, because my audience wants me
to go and review that event. Okay, like that, I know that
that's what I have to do because that is how I keep
my business, my income, my revenue, my total
gross profit and costs in balance as a business owner. If you have fumbled how
you laid out your business, that is not on your audience to fix. Now, if you do have to, comes to a point where you
do have to fire people, then the best thing you
can do as a business owner is help people find new jobs. The best thing you can
do as a business owner, like, hey, we have to let you go, but we're gonna let you a
glowing letter of recommendation. We know several other people
that would love to have you. Let's try and get you new work, but like we can't afford
to keep you on right now. That is the difficult thing
you have to do in business. It sucks, and I don't want
anyone losing their job, but that's the reality of
the industry that we are in. The thing about content creation is it's one of the few industries that has no earnings cap. And so like tech, we're seeing this insane
thing happen as well, where people are just
expecting exponential profit and exponential growth, and that is not sustainable for anyone, but especially audiences
and platforms in general. So many creators are feeling it, and the answer is be more
responsible with your money, be more responsible with your finances to avoid things like this happening. A bunch of people have shared like, how could they have done this in a way that would make it so that it wasn't so
alienating to audiences? And a bunch of people
have brought up Dropouts as an example. One, Watcher is not Dropouts. It just isn't. Watcher was never college humor. What you also can do is like, oh, these shows are gonna
be explicitly on Watcher, but these shows are gonna be
available on YouTube as well. Like you can do specialty
shows and things like that. There's quite a few YouTubers that have private bonus content
on their own platform, because as a YouTuber,
I share this as well, YouTube could demonetize
my stuff tomorrow, okay? So I am a big fan of owning your content. Having a place where you actually own where all your videos are
and you control all of that, I think that's fine. Having watcher.com where you've got all your stuff extra shared, that is fine. I don't know how you ever thought that having only Travel Season at launch was going to be a good idea. Someone brought up a good point that I didn't even think about. I'm no economist, but if you're struggling
to pay your existing staff, I doubt hiring three new hosts is a way to resolve that issue. Valid flippin' point. What are you doing? Why would you acquire a new show when you can't afford to
pay your existing staff if it's that difficult? Anyways, do I think
this will kill Watcher? No, I think this is going to make it very difficult for them. But if anyone who was still
watching them over this time, we'll see what happens in
the next couple of months. I think the next couple
of months are critical. I think you guys have really nuked the goodwill you had with your audience. And I think that that's gonna
be very difficult to get back if you can get it back at all. Someone brought it up really well. It's like, listen, we already followed you to a new platform. We followed you from Buzzfeed to Watcher. That's why we're here. And yet what we've done
is not good enough, okay? 'Cause then the answer, again, the answer would be cutting
back costs, re-evaluating costs. Like I said, more money
is never going to solve bad business practices. I think that's where I'm
really going to end this. Did you ever watch Buzzfeed Unsolved? Did you ever watch Watcher? Were you aware of Watcher
before all this started? Are you going to go and
subscribe to Watcher TV? Did this response actually
mean something to you? Do you think that this
is going to help them gain back goodwill? Let me know, comment down below. Reminder that I stream on Twitch. Reminder that Swell Entertainment is now available on Spotify. Reminder to use code Swell
for 10% off on Gamer Supps. Shout out to all my patrons. If you also support my
Patreon, link is down below. Like to my little social
media, that'll be up here. And that's me, have a lovely day. Goodbye. (upbeat music) Why would you ever say we chose $6 a month because everyone can afford it when everyone's already paying for so many streaming services? And you've previously sold
your content for free, essentially. Bad choices all around. Thank you Oz, Eva, Ayana, Abby, Angel, Goth, Glynn, Palace,
Pink, Jasmine, Lauren, Amy, Aslan, Medic, Rosie,
Victor, Andrew, Tenzin, Sam, Maywest, Michael,
Ryan, Adira, Nathan, Zwing, Literal, Jeffrey, Randy,
Qwerty, Nomad, Thomas, Tasha, Donnie, Winter, Kenny,
Robert, Cameron, Elliot.
