will you press pause on your shit for 5 minutes?

Hiya, this is my Buzzfeed Unsolved Sideblog! (I also put a lot of other buzzfeed content on here) 22/she/her #shaniac please dont follow or interact with me if you defend or create fucked up shit. yall know what i mean, i'm on a blocklist. on semi-hiatus indefinitely, i show up when i want to and mass reblog stuff from like 5 blogs.

[eziojensenthe3rd]

Petition: Do not stop transgender people from receiving care in mainstream hospital wards

The previous government proposed changes to the NHS constitution which would mean transgender hospital patients in England may not be treate

Well fucks? Get to it!

[hadleysmis-deactivated20260401]

41.7k notes and as of 7th April, the signatures are only 14,817.

The deadline is 9 July 2025.

Trans rights are always wavering in safety and are not stable and well protected in the UK. Please sign.

Trans rights in the UK is my rights.

[anxiousjarofsass]

In lieu of Watcher’s announcement, I grieve all the more for the first true loss we experienced in the Ghoulboy’s fandom 😔

RIP Hot Daga u were meant for so much more🙏🏻💔

[floaty-pickle]

Ok so i wasnt gonna weigh in on this anymore, but i just had a tiktok with a couple thousand likes come up on my fyp where the person filming somehow spun the whole watcher debacle onto sara? Sara??? Whos not even a part of watcher? Like they were deadass talking about how shes probably behind all this and their proof? Apparently they have always gotten the ~ick~ from sara. Thats it. Literally what the absolute fuck. Like are we doing this whole shit again? Blaming and hating the wives/girlfriends of the people we stan for their mistakes bc we dont want to accept that theyre not perfect? Yes, Sara posted something on insta during that whole situation but it literally was not that bad. This is embarrassing, do better.

[noctqrnxl]

my thoughts on the watcher update:

i am happy with this apology.

i will not let my guard down

i GENUINELY hope they learn to manage their finances better in the future

if they read through the comments then i hope they saw the thousands of people talking about how ryan and shane's banter >>> high quality content

i hope they get a little less out of touch??? and understand their audience??? and do some research before taking such a big decision????

i definitely hope that they find a balance between the high-quality content they want to create, doing so within understandable budget restraints, and the content WE want (which is mostly banter/talking. i used to hate anything horror-related but i loved bfu supernatural because SHANE AND RYAN MADE IT LESS SCARY!! I HAVE MADE POSTS ABOUT THIS BEFORE AS WELL!!)

contrary to what most people were saying, i actually liked steven the most at some point. when i'd watch too many spirits episodes it was steven's chaos (and eventually him and ricky's banter) that i looked forward to. i liked dish granted as well! yes i love shane and ryan, honestly who doesn't atp, but i always had a soft spot for steven. (i haven't seen a single worth it ep btw. the most i've seen of steven has been on watcher.) that's why the backlash against him specifically has been... tough to see. i acknowledge what people are saying and i also agree with it, but still. ykwim.

they look WRECKED. either they are very good actors all of a sudden or this was a more terrible weekend for them than i thought. (not to mention the bullying and harassment a lot of fans have done.)

as a lot of people have been pointing out, isn't WatcherTV basically Patreon??? i haven't signed up for either because, well, i'm an international fan 🙊 but still, it feels weird to have both??? idk

i still think WatcherTV is a bad idea but hey, at least we will see the content on yt as well, right?

i hope one day we'll all joke about this. (i don't mean to say i want us to feel good about it, because i don't think we ever will. but still...)

[moonybeam3]

Summary of the Watcher apology video:

So they’ve started by saying we’re sorry we are gonna make changes

They acknowledge they didn’t announce it well and didn’t properly express appreciation for their audience

They have apologized for the cost and stating that the cost was smth everyone could afford

They’re making it so you can watch shows on the streaming platform a month early and ad free before they come out on YouTube for free

For those that have already subscribed they will issue a full refund if you want it

All episodes and series will remain on YouTube and new ones will premier on YouTube a month after they premier on the streaming service

They said they did it because they didn’t want to have to conform to YouTube ad requirements, didn’t want to fire anyone, and didn’t want to end the company which would’ve happened if they stayed on YouTube only

They said they overlooked how this would impact the fans

They are giving all patreon members a free subscription to the platform and will give a refund to those who already paid

[straight-lies-and-half-truths]

[wearewatcher]

An Update

[friendly-neighborhood-furry]

for anyone who doesn't have the Return YouTube Dislike Plugin, here's how Watcher Entertainment's "Goodbye Youtube" video is doing right now

yeah... gonna throw out a yikes on that one

i suspect this number will only keep growing in the coming days/weeks, especially the longer and longer we go without any sort of response.

EDIT: its only been three hours and the number has already jumped to 206K dislikes.

[grimrester]

i am really so sorry to continue harping on about the watcher entertainment streaming service. but this kind of stuff (internet content as a business & marketing it as such) is truly my obsession, and i think i will implode if i don't talk about some of the takes i'm seeing.

i'd like to emphasize again i don't have strong feelings about watcher either way. i like ghost files, i watch mystery files sometimes, i watched worth it back in the buzzfeed days. i don't watch any of their shows religiously.

anyway, here's the main things i keep seeing crop up and my thoughts on each:

"watcher has 25 employees they have to pay, and employing people in this economy is good, so we should be banding together to pay them."

employing people is good if you currently have the capacity to pay them. i checked watcher's linkedin page, and many of their employees were hired within the last year or two. if they hired people they cannot pay with the business model they had before, something is seriously wrong with their internal bookkeeping/decision making. it means they either didn't know they couldn't pay these people long term, or they did know and were content with risking newly hired employees' livelihoods on a huge content pivot in the next year.

of note is that none of their employees' titles have anything to do with managing the finances of the company. they are the size of a small business but have no one aside from the figureheads of the company in charge of their finances.

this is the kind of company decision making that leads to downsizing and layoffs, which can be devastating. but you know what's worse than laying off a portion of your staff? laying off everyone because your business is going under.

"not everyone can afford the subscription, but those who can should pay it to support the watcher team."

no. $6/month for a couple hours of content (depending on what shows you actively watch and the natural fluctuation of their release schedule) is a fundamentally bad value. i can pay that much for a few movies on amazon. i can pay that much for dropout, if i want to support a smaller business instead.

and to be totally frank, even if people do sign up, i don't think they'd get enough to compete with the amount they get through patreon/sponsorships. and the fact that they didn't know how many of their subscribers would realistically sign up is a bad sign.

a pretty good conversion rate of free to paid subscribers of a service or content is 3% (usually accomplished through a free trial). given the very poor reception of the announcement, let's say about 1% of their 3 mil youtube subs pay for their service. that's 30k people paying for their new platform. that's $180k a month in their pocket.

(they currently only have 12k subs on patreon so we are being generous here.)

a sponsorship deal (based on my googling, i have less direct experience with this) is anywhere from $10-50 per 1000 views. they've gotten about 1 mil views on their last few videos. 3 mil subs is nothing to shake a stick at, but let's say they're on the lower end of the payscale at $25 per 1000 views. that's $25k a video, $100k a month if they release 1 video a week. their lowest patreon tier is 5 bucks, so even if all their subs are at that tier, that's another $60k, so $160k total. it's entirely likely they're bringing in much more than that when you factor in merch, adsence, etc.

did anyone on their team crunch numbers on how many people would need to sub to make the switch worth it? did anyone do market research on how many people they could convert to paid users? because if not, if they really didn't have a game plan for this, the subscription service was always doomed to fail.

"this was their only option to continue making the content they want to make, with the production value they want."

i watched their announcement video. a key point in that video is that they have done sponsored videos and that's what used to pay for their content, but they did not like the amount of creative control the sponsor had over the content.

look, i get that's no fun. we'd all love creatives to be able to make whatever they want. but when you are a small business with a team of employees relying on you, you have to think about making money, sometimes at the cost of creative liberties.

and they had so many other options to make money for the projects they want to make without jumping to a subscription platform.

they could have started actually promoting their patreon, and maybe done some restructuring of the tiers. why not a highly produced, special series just for patreon members? or a special high-budget episode of each series, while the main series is lower budget?

bite the bullet and continue taking sponsorship deals on some less-produced shows, while axing sponsorships from the ones the crew feels more passionate about.

schedule larger, blowout-production shows only when they can be afforded. this is what Notorious Amongus Guy streamer jerma does. he saves up for big productions like his baseball or dollhouse streams, so he can really get creative with them.

they had other options and they've tried very little, especially when you compare them to other content house business at similar scales. try guys and good mythical morning both put out significant content with significant staff, and have had to diversify their income streams with auxiliary products, shows with widely varied levels of production, etc. but it seems to be working for them. watcher has merch and that's about it, and seems to only want to increase the production quality of ALL their shows.

really, all this just boils down to a terrible business decision. it's hard to say if the watcher team is working with a consultant or anyone outside of their team, but they certainly don't have anyone internally who is experienced with running a business like this. to me, it seems very much like they got in a room together and did some extremely optimistic income ballparking with no research behind it.

and that might have been fine for three dudes running a channel alone, but if they're a business, they have to start making decisions like one.

[pomegranate]

funniest take I’ve seen during this whole mess with Watcher is someone getting mad about the paywall and calling Ryan, Shane and Steven greedy & then saying “this has ruined Taylor Swift day”

[lovelyreprisethirteen]

if you were/are a fan of Watcher, what age range do you fall into? note: please, answer, even if, you are no longer a fan of Watcher. also, please reblog to spread. thank you!

13-17

18-21

22-26

27-30

31-35

36-40

41-49

50-59

60+

Voting ended onApr 27, 2024

[rayofspades]

My take on the Watcher drama:

Based on the video, I think the guys really care about making TV level high quality content and don't see YouTube being a supportive platform for that.

BUT HERE'S THE THING

If they are serious about making a streaming service to allow themselves to make this "better and higher quality content," they are straight up looking for a whole new fan-base. The current fan-base is quite obviously fine with the current level of production quality, and in some cases doesn't even need the level of production quality currently being offered in order to be satisfied.

I think the reason this is a dumb business move isn't because it's like...greedy to want more control over your content or whatever. I think it's dumb because they basically told all of their fans that they're prioritizing their product waaaaaaay more than their current fan-base.

Which like, fine, but then why the fuck are you pitching this streaming service to your fans??? When you clearly aren't making this for them??? And if you do think you're making this for them...then this is just unbelievably misguided.

And I don't think they have enough content to draw in a whole new audience big enough to support their ambitions. I think it's just going to fall apart.

[canisonicscrewyou]

My thing about "they are artists charging for their work" as an artist who has charged for their work, albeit in a MUCH different context and scale.... Like. Yeah. I guess we aren't entitled to free work , that's so true. Just like they are not entitled to an audience and they can price themselves out of their work too. It sucks. That's what market research is for. Dropping a complete change like this with little transitional period is, what I would call, a bad move.

[thebowieconstrickter]

Yes, Watcher should NOT have created a streaming service that cost 6$ a month for their audience of younger people who cannot afford it.

Watcher shouldn’t have done this. Not Steven Lim. Ryan and Shane both agreed to this and it’s their communal responsibility. Stop blaming just Steven.

Also, I’d like to say that I genuinely liked his shows. I hate that I won’t get to see more of them.

[sage-nebula]

I know I already made one post about people being racist toward Ryan and especially Steven in the wake of the streamer announcement, but I thought I'd go ahead and make a little collection of commentary that shows exactly what I was talking about re: vilifying Ryan and Steven (men of color) while acting like Shane (white man) is an innocent victim.

So, on a post with screencaps showing the team talking about how they'll allow password sharing on the streamer, we have:

Reminder that this is what they actually looked like:

All smiles, including from Steven, who btw has talked on Pod Watcher about how he's had difficulty emoting his whole life and used to practice smiling growing up. So yes, his smile is small, but that doesn't make it less genuine, you assholes.

Another funny one considering Shane lives the exact same lifestyle that Ryan and Steven do. He blows money at a grocery store he doesn't like for weeks on end because he's not sure if he really likes it or not. He buys a ton of different fancy pencils to test them out because he had a whim about it. He upgrades his flights when he wants (such as for his and Sarah's wedding), he buys expensive pajamas from Ireland, he takes piano lessons. He has and uses the exact same amount of disposable cash as Ryan and Steven do, and has several podcast episodes in a row dedicated to his purchases, and yet you only focus on bashing Ryan and Steven for it because . . . ? Don't bother answering. We know the answer.

This is just a small sample of the comments that have been out there today. It's truly ugly. Even setting aside what Steven has done for Watcher (Ryan AND SHANE have made it clear Watcher would not exist without him managing the financials because they can't do it), he's a human being and he doesn't deserve the racist vitriol this fandom has spewed at him. He's already made it clear this is not his dream; if he walked after today's show of bigotry it wouldn't surprise me. I'd say the same for Ryan, but it IS his dream, so.

Regardless. Shane is a grown man and one of the founders of the company. You know damn well he agreed to this. Stop acting as if evil men of color forced your poor white fave into something he didn't want to do. It's fucking racist whether you're intending to be or not, and regardless of how stupid this decision was, Steven and Ryan are still real human beings who don't deserve racist backlash.

Be. Fucking. Better.

[5-stories-falling]

part of my whole thing with watcher is that. a lot of there content came from their audience. like.. are you scared, too many spirits, non insignificant portions of mystery files and ghost files. that wasn’t just them. it was us. we handed them shit on a sliver platter. they literally just got FREE content from their audiences, ESPECIALLY with too many spirits and are you scared. they’re just not gonna have that anymore.

[the-wrong-team]

“People with no business experience are saying watcher made a bad business decision.”

The backlash alone should tell you this is a bad business decision. It doesn’t take business experience or a business degree to notice that.