We’re Leaving YouTube

Abso-fricking-lutely this.

Slave

Shane and Sara flew first-class for their wedding and Steven posts videos of him eating the most expensive food he can find, but they’re talking down to folks scrounging to find money for food, and when that price is genuinely out of reach some places because of exchange rates, talking about “a survivable living.”

We’re Leaving YouTube

The night before Watcher's big Announcement

4/18/24; no spoilers here. Just a bit of reflection.

12 years ago, I started blogging on this Tumblr page to capture my feelings and where I was at. Even though so much has changed, it also feels like nothing at all has changed. Back then, I was a kid from Ohio just trying to make a living off YouTube. At the time, I didn't even know how to operate a camera, how to act on screen, or even how to edit a video. But I knew that I loved the process of making videos, and that propelled me day by day.

When I started making YouTube videos in 2012, I gave myself 4 years before I'd call it quits. 4 years to make a living or I'd reconsider and find a different career path. Looking back, I didn't realize how close I cut it. But it really wasn't until 3 years in that I made a hit. And I thank God every day because it was some combination of luck, hard work. and divine intervention that somehow someway led me to work at BuzzFeed, create Worth It, meet Ryan and Shane, launch Watcher, and well.. the rest is history.

That being said, I'm at a crossroads here again. Tomorrow is kind of a big day for me and our team. It's nerve-wracking to take risks at this stage of my career and company's life. Who knows where things will go? Will we succeed or will we fall flat on our face? I truly don't know. But no matter what, I just wanted to take this time to dwell in a place of gratitude. Thank you to all the people who have supported my career, team Watcher, and the shows we make. I can't believe this is my job that I get to wake up and do every single day. Speaking of job, thank you to my team at Watcher, I love you and am so grateful for all of you. I can't believe how hard you all work day in and day out to make the beautiful videos and shows that we do. Thank you to my wife, thank you to my family and friends, thank you to our investors/mentors, and thank you to God.

For some reason this journal entry came out like an acceptance speech at the People's Choice Awards. Whoops. I honestly don't even know what I wanted to get across when I started writing but that's it for now. Tomorrow's a big day and I don't know what this means for myself or for Watcher's. But what I do know is that it's been the best five years of my life building Watcher and I thank God every day for that.

See you on the other side,

Steven

the Federation itself as a concept is so funny because the founding members are

the Vulcans, who have been friends with humanity for years but don't seem to actually like them all that much, instead regarding them with a sort of perverse fascination usually reserved for virology labs

the Andorians, who were fighting the Vulcans for like a hundred years

the Tellarites, who don't like any of these people and whose cultural trait is arguing, and

humans, whom nobody knew existed until last century when they shot themselves into space on a heavily modified nuke, invented world peace and won a fight with the nearest imperial superpower

like imagine you're the Romulan Empire and these weird monkeys who've barely figured out interstellar travel show up on your doorstep in the equivalent of a shipping container with missiles strapped to it, kick your ass in front of everybody, and then start a friendship club with 3 of your neighbours who all hated each others' guts until like a year ago. now I understand why every Romulan on the show is so angry

when i came out as trans i had an old friend from my church days message me to congratulate me and ask me for my name and pronouns. and i was shocked tbh cause he was such a head-deep-up-the-church’s ass kind of guy so i was super wary.

and after digging a little deeper i found out that he was very supportive of transness, saying that trans men are men and trans women are women

BUT

he also believed in the church’s gender roles meaning that trans women had to marry men and be submissive wives and trans men had to marry women and be strong christian husbands.

which is like ????

the weirdest and most surreal form of trans inclusive misogyny i’ve ever seen.

If you haven't heard about the enshittification of baseball uniforms

Okay so they're manufactured by Fanatics now, and it's not uncommon for fan replica jerseys to suck, but now the players themselves are wearing uniforms that are just as cheap. So cheap they look like bootlegs. They're flimsy and stuff that used to be actually stitched on is now just a patch or graphic

All that is bad. But there's. There's a bigger problem, with the new MLB uniforms. See if you can spot it!

a man self immolated in front of the israeli embassy in washington dc yesterday. not just any man. an active member of the us air force. he live streamed his death, and said that he refused to be complicit in a genocide any longer. he said that compared to what palestinians were facing every day, setting himself alight was nothing.

let me reiterate. an active duty air force member burned himself alive because he was so disgusted by what the us government was openly supporting. he live-streamed his own suicide, so the whole world could bear witness as a man in his military uniform set himself on fire to protest his government’s complicity in the horrors that we have all been forced to watch happen in real time. he became a new horror. footage of the immolation blurs him out the moment the fire catches, but you can hear him. it is over in seconds, really, but you can hear him screaming. he shouts “free palestine” until his body physically cannot make any sounds other than guttural screams of agony. and then he falls silent. a police officer arrives and points a gun at his still burning body, shouting at him to get down on the ground. and it is over.

his name was Aaron Bushnell. he was twenty five years old. and he isn’t here anymore because the political ruling class has decided that genocide is perfectly fine as long as it preserves imperialism. in the coming days, people will try to discredit him. to say that he was mentally unstable. they will try to bury his actions to save face and defend israel’s propaganda. do not let them. aaron knew what he was doing. he knew what he was doing when he put on his military uniform, set up his twitch stream, and made his final walk up to the embassy. he knew what would happen to him when he flicked that lighter. do not let them forget. aaron’s blood is on the hands of the political ruling class.

Is ANYONE at all surprised? Anyone?

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NO JAMES SOMERTON DID FUCKING NOT

I went to friend’s wedding once. She’s Japanese and he’s French.

By not even halfway through the dinner party, my brain has completely melted down and I was trying to speak Japanese to his family and French to all the Japanese guests. I was ready to cry 🤣

i love the strange reality of being a human person with a human brain. one time someone said something to me in a foreign language (japanese, which i do not speak) and i automatically responded in a different foreign language (spanish, which i do not speak well) and then we both said "what?" in english, an experience made more surreal by the fact that everyone around us was speaking loudly in canadian french (as this occurred in Quebec)

Fate spins along as it should.

you know what i’ll use my own imagination for a while