sad

[drawfeefan321]

I support taking a serious step back cause burnout sucks and ive done it myself. But if it were just that, they have been open about mental health often enough, even Julia taking well needed time not instantly bouncing back due to pmdd was communicated, sure no private details but definitely an open explanation.

The announcement being too neutral and vague is the real issue here thats leading to speculation. Privacy regarding details about their personal lives is a 100% understandable, but maybe respect the fans enough to not put out a statement thats so obviously cagey that its inevitably misleading and then turn on us for wanting a crumb of clarification . Even just a general amicable vibe would have sufficed so much more greatly.

But as a fan the complete non explanation is disappointing and the speculation (which again they are causing themselves) is firmly about their public facing front. The statements are so oddly composed!!!! like they cant simultaneously be a public presence but also private individuals in the same post? Either be all professional and dont leave glaring room for questioning or be private individuals with a shady request for privacy. Both at once is causing fan divides that are both completely valid rn imo

I guess we just have to wait and see

hey, thank you so much for essentially summarising all of my thoughts and feelings on the matter. i think you have put it very well here.

you are much more eloquent than i am. i would also like to add that i find that while the drawfee community is a very supportive bunch, we should not be blindly following and trusting. This is very frustrating as someone who have wholeheartedly supported them for such a long time, when they have demonstrated their ability to be private and transparent with issues at the same time in the past.

[adventuremaus]

More thoughts about the drawfee announcement or whatever, because I wanted to say something. Mainly about the people saying we should just accept it and not be "parasocial"

The discussion feels a little weird to me. Whether we want to or not, everyone is gonna be a little parasocial about youtubers they watch regularly. Parasociality isn't an avoidable part of the experience. The problems arise when people start demanding more from a fake relationship or expecting people to fit a box they never chose.

This is not that, it's not a discussion about imagined fake relationships, it's about the actual relation between audience and performer, obviously the audience is not gonna be happy if a performer just leaves all of a sudden with no explanation.

We show up for a pretty regular 30-minute episode every week, and that's that, when something important changes they do have a responsability to comunicate it apropiately, leaving it as a text post with no real way of discerning the tone on a channel that's carried by the raport of 4 people joking about art, is just about the worst way of doing it. Even in a worst-case scenario, it just should have been a video.

Like imagine it as an irl comedy show you go to weekly. The performers aren't your friends but you enjoy their show, and they seem nice from where you're sitting, when 2 of them leave for a bit because they're having a baby, they say so and it's understandable, you are happy for them. Then, a year or so later, you go to the usual place where there's just a sign saying:

" Today's show is cancelled. And, in the future, performer x will be leaving to do something else. Please keep supporting them."

You would think that's weird, right? You were here last week, and there was no discussion of the sort. They didn't allude to having to announce something either. It's just not like them to do it like this.

The other people who were also coming to see the show are gonna gather around the sign and talk about it. Of course they are, that should be expected.

And now people are worried, they don't know what to think, they can't really get answers, so what's left is to speculate among themselves. Why not announce it in a show ? Was it something bad ? Did someone get hurt? Will the show I like continue the same, or will it be different now? That's normal human worrying, it's not prying or demanding it's just caring.

As far as I know, the fandom has mostly kept to discussing among themselves, and I haven't seen people demanding more from them directly. I think this is a pretty respectful fanbase, and I do get why we tell each other not to be parasocial because we want to be a good fandom, we want the vibe to stay nice and calm, and we don't wanna make them uncomfortable. That's awesome, I think it's great to want to give it time and trust the message. But also, as long as it's kept civil, I'd say we are allowed to be sad or worried or mad or just confused. It's a big change, that's literally normal. Don't be mean to people for being upset about it or criticising the announcement. There is an extent to which fans can worry about youtubers they like and expect better from them. Especially if it's people supporting them financially.

[drawfeefan321]

well said.

[drawfeefan321]

damn what do u guys think about the fact that they stream and make episodes from karinas apartment

that they would have to stop. LOL.

im sure they will figure something out, whether it is physically in a different place or remotely a la covid. i do think physically recording together would provide a more natural cadence to video commentary but its up to them

or who knows, maybe they will continue recording at karina's place, which would be the most interesting outcome imo.

ur guess is as good as mine

[drawfeefan321]

oh man, i watch sss streams regularly and a some weeks back they started doing youtube shorts, with jacob and julia making a couple each. later on, julia talks abt being the only one making new shorts, and they both agree that jacob’s real busy with something at work and he’ll get back to it eventually.

guess we know what that was now 😬

actually... we dont haha

i would think the splitting issue would impact everyone, and there could have been a reshuffling of responsibilities, or different people taking up different workloads.

however, the "busy with something at work" could also be referring to something else we do not know about yet. it could also be due to say, doing editing more, or planning for future videos, or creating thumbnails, or rendering more art, or creating new theme songs, or a myriad of things we do not have insight to and thats fine.

just my two cents

[drawfeefan321]

turns out there are also people out there that have some sense. OP aside, because of course.

[drawfeefan321]

I wonder if the stream where Spencer was insisting he's got more going on than being Karina's friend...? Like, I feel like between burnout, workload, tensions being high, and Karina sharing a lot of little kind of shady remarks here and there through streams, like I feel like something has been brewing for a minute. She was dead silent too during that last drawf stream when Jacob and Nathan were talking about doing what you love as work. I feel like its a grab bag of lots of stuff.

hmmmm i remember that stream you are talking about with spencer. I remember it being more like he was surprised people didnt know he had other stuff going on than drawfee though, and was doing a lil bit of a bit and playing up his indignancy. but ymmv.

many things indeed.

[drawfeefan321]

I've been listening to Drawfee with Karina since I was 17, knowing that she's not there feels like losing a friend, even if my interactions with her were, at best, indirect....

I just hope everybody's okay,

i think this is a sentiment many are sharing. at the end of the day we just want them to be okay, whatever form that may be

[drawfeefan321]

speculation is healthy! it is bad to blindly trust information presented to you! and as long as (in this case) you arnt shoving it in the faces of the people involved i honestly think its fine and a good thing!

because of how vague the statement is we dont know if it was drawfees fault or karinas fault! perhaps there is no one at fault at all! Hell! it could have been a mutual separation and they (as drawfee have done multiple times in the past) just greatly underestimated their impact! (though the point still stands that they could have at least made it sound more amicable than it perhaps actually was)

because of how vague the statement is i think its actually impossible to form an infomred opinion due to the lack of information!

people have supported drawfee with their hard earned cash and their ever dimishing time! and those who have invested something in drawfee deserve at least a small notice of where their investment is going and if its the right place for it!

this being said! i think it is best to support both sides till we have more information because as much as we can speculate theres just not enough information for an informed opinion

tldr: i agree the statement was far too vuage (and straight up a bit wierd) and healthy speculation exists

(i aslo lowkey think that its more parasocial to blindly trust and go with whatever the internet personality/group you like says because it indicates that youve forgone critical thinking to instead protect yourself from possibly facing the fact that the personality/group you put on a pedestal arnt as perfect as you want them to be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

yes, no blaming or hating anyone.

and hard agree on the last point.

[drawfeefan321]

Not really directly related to drawfee i just notice this in a lot of fandom spaces... People really love proving how good of a little fan they are (in this case going on and on about how Bad the people speculating are) and it always pisses me off like. Its the same energy as chatters in streams who go and and on about how Bad backseat gamers are and its like yeah. Theyre annoying. We get it youre The Good One congrats

Anyway thats what this whole ordeal is reminding me of again

nobody like pick mes.

the responses are always so predictable

just follow this recipe to create your very own comment:

pick between 1-5 of the following buzzwords: parasocialism, entitled, weird, speculative, demanding. bonus points if u can link them in some cool exciting way!

pick a catchphrase: "respect their privacy" "they dont owe you anything" "its their personal matters"

add a dash of hypocrisy with a speculative "its probably just burnout" or "handle your feelings"

for the best impact, make sure the comment is written with an "im better than you" attitude, it really brings it all together

optional: dont read the original comment and assume everything was said with malicious intent and we are demanding personal information from them at gunpoint

bring it to the potluck so everyone can taste what everyone else has cooked up

yum!

[drawfeefan321]

to be honest im not totally dismissing the idea that the team just thought this would be the best way to phrase things to protect Karina’s privacy? e.g. maybe they thought “Karina is leaving drawfee” would make ppl harass her for the reason/blame her, so they went with a much more neutral passive voice statement.

but im reaaaally hoping the (famously offline) hosts are at least seeing some of this reaction and planning on making a follow up statement or something? they‘ve made unpopular decisions before and they always address it so i want to have faith it’ll happen again

guess we’ll see during tomorrow’s sss stream (if they don’t cancel it)

unfortunately, there are better ways to phrase their announcement if that was the case im afraid. the execution leaves much to be desired.

i hope they do, and only time will tell. i also want to have faith in them.

[drawfeefan321]

To be fair, they may not actually know why she left either, or have very little information. like of she just quit with very little notice because she couldn’t take it any more (for whatever reason) and gave no explanation.

i hope not. karina has not been shy to voice her opinions or things she take issues with.

[drawfeefan321]

Let's be real, if the split was amicable and mutually agreed upon like a lot of fans seem to want to believe, the announcement would have given a reason for her leaving (even a vague one) and had a more positive tone, and they would have addressed it on stream or in a video and not just via text post. No matter how you twist it, it's weird that this official announcement came out of nowhere and sounds like it was made by a soulless corporation for a random office worker and not by an internet comedy company for 1 out of the 4 main hosts who is beloved by fans and has had an undeniably massive influence on the show for the past 7 years. The rest of the Drawfee team aren't stupid, they know how big of a deal this is and they know fans were going to be upset, there's no chance they didn't spend hours and hours carefully drafting that statement (hell they might have even hired an outside firm depending on the situation). When companies use this kind of language in a PR statement it's not because they did a bad job writing it, it's because there was no nicer way to phrase things, because whatever went down was not good. If the issue was solely related to burnout or health, either the Drawfee team or Karina would have mentioned that. If the Drawfee team wanted to emphasize how much they still love Karina and will miss having her on the team, they would have mentioned that. If the split had nothing to do with interpersonal conflicts, they would have mentioned that. The fact that they didn't speaks volumes. The statement they released is weird and bad because whatever happened that caused this was weird and bad. I'm not interested in guessing what exactly went down that resulted in Karina leaving. But the people who are really parasocially attached to the Drawfee team and their friendships and want to believe that everything is totally cool between them are going to be in for a rude awakening when more information eventually comes out, even if all we get is the rest of the team saying "we really don't want to talk about it."

yea. i also think many fans are not reading between the lines of the post (and ignoring the circumstances of the post, which in itself i very odd like you said.)

its about what they are Not Saying. there's things that are just glaringly missing i really wonder how some people can just gloss over it.

[drawfeefan321]

On the last stream Karina mentions thinking they were recording that day only to text Jacob and realise they aren't and it making her upset (ostensibly because she felt dumb). Makes me think this has been brewing for at least a month, with the lack of streams too.

To me it seems like probably a falling out, not bad enough to not still publicly support each other but bad enough that there's suddenly no more content together. In which case this is probably the best they could do - if parties don't want to do a send off together, then a professional, courteous message to notify the fans/supporters is the only option really.

It's a real shame though, if they could have done a proper send off I'm sure we'd all feel much more closure - but I'm sure they would have wanted to do that if they could have

I'm gonna ignore the bracketed words because we cannot assume that.

i think so too. I just think the announcement was just not handled well.

Edit: Turns out she said "I felt stupid" in the stream. I apologise for my remark above.

[drawfeefan321]

wow

hey, maybe dont do this.

or be man enough to leave it up anw

[adventuremaus]

I know we're all trying to be normal about Karina leaving, but like, what's up with that announcement? A host leaves, and we just get a wall of text about it? I don't want to pry or force them to say anything. Like, I don't need any concrete reason or behind the scenes, but I do hope she gets a proper sendoff. If this is it, and they just post the remaining videos she's in with no fanfare or anything, that would be pretty upsetting.

Anyway, I don't want to come off as disrespectful or bring people to speculate about it. Leave them alone, I don't care what happened. But I don't want her to just gradually disappear from the channel. She deserves more than that.

I'm sure they'll make something. I'm probably just overreacting too early. This is just weird and sudden.

This was not at all comprehensive, I'm just venting. Whatever they decide to do, I can't do anything about it or tell them what to do, I can just wish them the best and hope they are okay.

[drawfeefan321]

@fishfurred made some important points in one of the comment sections that i think should be its own post.

[ksanya]

People who are worried that the text post is all we'll get, let's wait until at least the Thursday. Maybe there is no episode because they'll post something else. Or not! Maybe they just wanted a break.

In the end they can't not address it. They need to clarify the vibe of the situation (which doesn't require them to tell us what happened! They can just say "it's private, but everything is cool!") so we can continue to interact with the team in their chats and YT comments.

[drawfeefan321]

agree w this, mostly.

except, they have had all the time to sort things out, and do a better announcement. Or they could have taken more time to do it, it's not like people had any idea what was going on (nothing super substantial anw, idt an extra 2 weeks would have mattered.)