(not rbing/adding the user just cause i wanna use their points to say mine, not trying to cause an argument. i just think we have literal direct opposite viewpoints and hence theyre a good way for me to jump off)
like YES please support artists and especially those from youtube leaving it or pursuing other ventures. but if you do the math a lot of what watcher is saying about their budgeting issues is kinda lying (ie; "ghost files costs 100k per ep" when, ive seen people in the comments do the math and that cant be true unless theres LOTS of frivolous spending), and the obvious dramatic increase in production quality before leaving youtube says a lot to me about where their money is going. something tells me downscaling could fix the problem. not only that it wouldve been easy to do audience surveys and polling about what theyd wanna see from the company, what future moves they wanted to make, etc. even if this was the plan the WHOLE TIME entertainment, ESPECIALLY youtube, requires elastic and flexible business models.
im not gonna empathize with struggling economic experiences with the same guy who owns a tesla, flies around, and eats fucking bull balls full of gold and calls it content or whatever. and im not gonna empathize with the other two who will gladly sit aside and rake their viewers for profit. they have a patreon, and merch sales, and sponsors, and ad revenue. this just sounds like theyve been poorly managing the business from the start.
im not gonna comment much on the dropout / college humor thing cause i have never been invested in it. also i'd like to point out roosterteeth did a similar migration to a website that is free with ads and failed miserably. it doesnt always work. and as was pointed out, the audiences are different in percieving these kinds of decisions. hence why i think polling shouldve been done.
maybe im just young, dumb, and naive, but no amount of "THINK OF ARTISTS!!!!" will make me think this isnt tone-deaf and the corporate greed that inevitably consumes.