how to destroy your audience's trust

"people who are artists who are not even watching this rn, i am being played as a podcast" hearing this literally made me look up from my sketchbook so fast 😭

watched buzzfeed unsolved religiously. When the moved to be Watcher i straight up just....couldnt get into it. And im realizing its 100% because they prioritized their production value at the cost of being entertaining. I want (wheeze) back, not 4k cameras and 17 editors.

Thank you for the Ryan and Shane comment. Sick of people trying to pretend like they weren’t involved in this decision. They were

You forgot to mention that THERE WAS A COUNTDOWN TO THEIR FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT. As in, fans were excitedly waiting for news they’d been hyping up, only for it to be like “if you’re poor this is the last you’ll see of us”. The way this was handled was WILD.

"Steven is spending all the money" "Shane is uncomfortable" "Ryan wouldnt d-" THEY ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE!! THEYRE ALL ADULTS!! Dunk on the expensive food shows as much as your heart desires, this descision was made by all of them.

What financially comfortable people always fail to realize is that even a dollar is a lot of money when it’s your last dollar.

‘I’m being played as a podcast cos they want to hear me talk about something they barely care about’ called me out so much

The funniest part of Shane's wife's comments on tumblr was that directly under that post she shared a $100 tote bag she bought, yeah girl you're struggling to survive

It really is a head-scratcher to me that creators assume I watch a free entertainment service because I have money to spare. Some live in an entirely separate reality.

"You might as well have said 'goodbye poors' and moved along with your day" fucking got me.

It is craaazy that so many people said, "This doesn't align with my idea of Shane or the things he's said are his values. Therefore, this decision wasn't his." I get that it's painful to see one of your faves be hypocritical but that is some twisty logic.

In Steven's post, "for those who want to continue watching..." like bro??? I DO want to continue watching, YOU are preventing me from doing so

I saw somebody saying "Maybe 6$ isn't expensive but what about the people that live in another country where the currency isn't dollars ?" And then the person explained that in their country 6$ was a 2 week of grocery

Their biggest mistake, really, was mixing two very different messages. "We need to do this to save our production. We might have had to shut down entirely if we didn't do this." Really doesn't play well right next to, "We want to make bigger content! We want to bring in more people! We want to jetset around the globe to show you amazing things!" They needed to pick one and stick to it. No way to please everyone, but their competing messages didn't end up pleasing anyone.

I’m not gonna pay for Steven to travel the world and eat amazingly decadent food while I have to go to the food shelf

The biggest thing this "controversy" taught me was how little Watcher content I actually watched. Ghost Files in particularly, as a previous Unsolved: Paranormal fan, is just too bloated to hold my attention. They don't need a bunch of fancy ghost-hunting garbage, sets, and 1 hr+ runtimes, they just need tight editing and good banter. The "Road files" behind-the-scenes video that was on the Watcher TV platform was pretty illuminating as to their general lack of business sense and mismanagement of resources. They have waaay too many people for location scouting, too many days on location without shooting, etc. Watcher wasn't delivery TV-quality ideas like Dropout is, they don't need TV-level budgets, and even if they were, they don't seem to have the business sense to handle them.

They had 25 employees and not one of those employees was a decent financial planner.

I have friend in fiance and she's like "this is because they have too many employees" and like... they do.

I absolutely still reference the 'I've connected the dots' 'you didn't connect shit' thing from one of the unsolved episodes, they were SO FUNNY and it's like they didn't realize the fact the show was also kind of campy and funny made the show more than two dudes going into a haunted house.

That phenomenon you mentioned about being background noise for artists like a podcast; I think some creators overvalue their content as "main monitor" content. Often, especially now in the slop algorithm feed era, people like content they can put on their second screen to absorb the audio or commentary while getting something else done. I haven't been a Watcher/Unsolved viewer in years, but their content always struck me as something to pop on and enjoy while eating lunch or something; not as a Media phenomenon like a Netflix show that fuels dialogue outside of their social media.