I will never get over how weird it feels to have tragic and emotional chapters of your life where you just also still go to work, and the grocery store, and see funny videos online all while feeling such paralyzing fear and heartache

life just goes on no matter what

Watcher fans, as someone who has seen this rodeo happen to other internet groups and companies time and time again, I suggest not letting your guard down just because they made an update response to their video.

Cos it always starts of with "guyssss nothing is gonna change, everything is going to exactly the same with only some minor changes dont worry! uwu"

And guess what? It's almost and undoubtedly a lie. Every single time I see this happen they slowly roll new things and change it for the worst. "Nothing's gonna change!" and then a year down the line everything is completely different and bad and it's too late to fix it and they have your money so at that point they're not gonna care.

Biggest example I can best describe is Roosterteeth cos I used to be a fan of them for years. They pulled the "nothing's gonna change we're just gonna post stuff a week later than members will get to see" stunt so many times years ago and guess what? They're shutting down this week because it all came to bite them in the end.

I'm not like suddenly anti Watcher or anything in fact I'm glad they're still keeping the youtube channel up but I've been through this rodeo before and this like the easiest corporation tactic to slowly turn the heat up and make shit worst until you the frog notices too late to get out of that boiling pot. The only difference in Watcher is that they did a dumb and accidentally spoiled the ending for the frog before they could turn up the heat and boil it.

Big companies like Disney did it. Small companies like Roosterteeth did it. And now Watcher's doing it. Don't fall for it. "Oops sorry!" Isn't gonna cut it when you break the trust of your audience to that extent. People's opinions of them are never gonna be the same, and everything that has occurred (the video, the silence, the targetted backlash commenting they did and what's gonna happen at the live tour tmr) should make everyone think twice before spending your well earn money on their sketchy platform.

Hey Watcher fans, if you guys are looking for new content to listen to now that Watcher is disappearing into a paywall I reccomend checking out Red Web!

They're also an unsolved mystery podcast with 2 hilarious hosts Trevor and Fredo and they used to be part of Roosterteeth but now that RT is shutting down they're going indie and making their own channel to continue the show in the future. (We aren't sure if they're changing their name yet but for now it's still called Red Web) They have some topics that cross with Watcher and Buzzfeed Unsolved but they also dive into modern internet mysteries, mysterious historical artifacts, ARGs and even a few ghost hunts of their own and they're extremely passionate about it that they wanted to continue their show even after their parent company shut down.

I reccomend checking them out and supporting them as they branch out from their main company just like Watcher did with Buzzfeed many years ago. Who knows? Maybe we can help them become the new Watchers in the future?

Honestly seeing the absolute sinking ship that is the Watcher brand really makes me take a step back and see how resilient Roosterteeth was as they literally shut down this week. They were on a slow decline in 2019 but they really took a hit in 2020 when all their shit started to blow up, and yet their ship kept on sinking until 2024 when Warner shut them down. That's a solid 4 years they somehow survived which sounds short but you can attend and graduate from college in that time span or watch an entirely new olympics, and they would probably still be struggling and sinking but still going if Warner didn't pull the plug. Really shows the tenacity if anything of the people who continued to work there and continued making shows despite the failing views and negative comments because they still enjoyed it.

Personally I don't think Ryan and Shane are the type of people who would continue making their show if it had low views. They're quite babied by the fact that even in the buzzfeed days they always had good views on YouTube and you can see they've gotten quite spoiled by that with this announcement. I'm curious to see how Watcher survives this absolute and definite stain on their reputation, are they gonna get tired by low views and negative comments and close up Watcher before they even tried or are they gonna continue making videos because they still enjoy it despite everything?

Wait hold on I just learned that not only did Watcher announced probably the worst decision they made in their lives, but they're literally going on a WORLD WIDE LIVE TOUR immediately after it? Wow I've never heard of anyone travelling to the angry mobs instead of running from them but there's a first in history for everything i guess?

Imagine packing your bags to go on a tour to meet hundreds of thousands of extremely angry people and you can't back out of it?

Folks at Watcher now probably:

Really takes one stupidly bad decision to completely ruin years of dedication, passion and hard work. Good job @wearewatcher, you lost the trust of your entire audience just like that. And that's something money can't buy back.

Hey Watcher fans, if you guys are looking for new content to listen to now that Watcher is disappearing into a paywall I reccomend checking out Red Web!

They're also an unsolved mystery podcast with 2 hilarious hosts Trevor and Fredo and they used to be part of Roosterteeth but now that RT is shutting down they're going indie and making their own channel to continue the show in the future. (We aren't sure if they're changing their name yet but for now it's still called Red Web) They have some topics that cross with Watcher and Buzzfeed Unsolved but they also dive into modern internet mysteries, mysterious historical artifacts, ARGs and even a few ghost hunts of their own and they're extremely passionate about it that they wanted to continue their show even after their parent company shut down.

I reccomend checking them out and supporting them as they branch out from their main company just like Watcher did with Buzzfeed many years ago. Who knows? Maybe we can help them become the new Watchers in the future?

The difference between College Humor and Watcher is that CH has a huge cast of people with mutiple shows releasing episodes extremely regularly. Not only just a huge cast of people but people the audience like. Sure there's the highlights like Brennan and such but people aren't gonna skip an episode of Game Changer just because Brennan isn't there. Watcher has only a few shows and they don't even put things out weekly. And other than Ryan and Shane no one really remembers who the other casts are. Even Steven is like meh to a lot of people, and you can tell just by looking at the views on their shows not including Ryan and Shane, the views are much MUCH lower than stuff like Ghost Files and Puppet History. You can even compare it to Roosterteeth who also started on a separate paid channel. Even they had a huge cast and though it got worst over the years they still kept their main cast front and center and made free content on YouTube for years and premium content was a separate show that didnt affect the youtube scene for a long time until 2020 where it all went downhill. Watcher is literally dropping YouTube altogether and moving to a paid platform and not touching YouTube ever again.

So Watcher:

1) doesn't make content regularly enough to be worth the high cost of their subscription

2) has only a handful of casts that would even interest people to move

3) is dropping YouTube entirely even though their audience was born from people watching them solely on YouTube

Of course people are gonna to be mad. These are the people who saw their potential during their buzzfeed unsolved days and gave them the support to make their own company as Watcher. Without these YouTube fans Watcher would not be where it is today. Dropping YouTube entirely and put on such an expensive paywall is just the dumbest narsarcistic thing they could think of when the economy is literally crumbling and their audience is made out of younger people. Idk who in Watcher thought this was a good idea, but clearly they need to learn from the mistakes of Roosterteeth and just don't. Trying to chase after College Humour when they both started in different ways is like trying to put a square into a circle hole. It's never gonna work, and if they try to force it, just like Roosterteeth, it's just gonna break all the work they did to build their company after so many years in a record amount of time.

Hey Watcher fans, if you guys are looking for new content to listen to now that Watcher is disappearing into a paywall I reccomend checking out Red Web!

They're also an unsolved mystery podcast with 2 hilarious hosts Trevor and Fredo and they used to be part of Roosterteeth but now that RT is shutting down they're going indie and making their own channel to continue the show in the future. (We aren't sure if they're changing their name yet but for now it's still called Red Web) They have some topics that cross with Watcher and Buzzfeed Unsolved but they also dive into modern internet mysteries, mysterious historical artifacts, ARGs and even a few ghost hunts of their own and they're extremely passionate about it that they wanted to continue their show even after their parent company shut down.

I reccomend checking them out and supporting them as they branch out from their main company just like Watcher did with Buzzfeed many years ago. Who knows? Maybe we can help them become the new Watchers in the future?

Should you wish people who didn't wish you on your birthday a Happy Birthday? On one hand, they didn't wish me so why should I bother wishing them? Like "hope you had a happy birthday even though you not remembering made mine not happy." On another hand, I feel bad not wishing them and I don't want to be that asshole who only continues the cycle of hatred. On another another hand, I don't even think they remember my birthday even though our birthdays are days apart and they probably don't even care whether I wished them or not anyways.

Conundrums, conundrums...

Dont mind me, totally not feeling left out or anything ;_;

Some shameless POS literally used AI to steal my friend's animated film

I usually don't post stuff like this but this shit's insane and downright insulting. I graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2022, a pretty well known animation school in the US, and every animation student on their final year of college has to make an animated film for our final thesis. If you have any idea of the animation making process, you would know that making an entire film by yourself in one year is batshit insane and extremely exhausting, to the point where I'm still feeling the effects of the process on my physical and mental wellbeing 2 years after I graduated. Once more, my friends and I did it during the covid period, which was another level of hell. I was literally watching my grandfather's funeral while working in the labs at 2am because I couldn't fly home to attend it because we had to make this film. This film was our lifeblood, the culmination of 4 years of hell at school which was suppose to be our gateway into the industry. Tldr, it's fucking difficult to do, especially on your own.

So imagine 2 years later and I wake up to a bunch of messages on our alumni chat where a dear friend of mine posted a link to a tiktok video of someone literally stealing her entire film and superimpose it shot by shot and claim it as their own ad for their AI game. As animators, we aren't unaware of people stealing our films and reposting them elsewhere. Heck my own film "The End" was stolen from our school vimeo and posted on tiktok BEFORE IT WAS EVEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED, and that tiktok got hundreds of thousands of views while a year after my own real release my film is still struggling in the thousands.

But this

This is a fucking new low.

Can you imagine? A fresh graduate going through literal blood sweat and tears to make a film on their own that is so important to their future in the industry, to get them a job, with a film that represents a part of themselves to the world, just used as fodder for some stupid tech assholes? It's infuriating. It's insulting. It's literally a big fuck you to the hundreds of students who spent their lives toiling to make these films from the heart who are just desperate to get into the industry.

The animation industry right now is in complete shambles. People are graduating from animation schools with thousands of dollars in dept only to be met with a wasteland of minimum wage and lack of funding and competing for jobs with people who have already been in the industry for years affected by the massive layoffs not only in the movie but also the gaming industries. These films we make for our thesis aren't just films made for fun, they represent our lifeblood, our only opportunity to get a job as a graduate in this sea of hell. If you didn't make a good film, chances are you're never even stepping foot in the industry ever. It's our golden ticket that we would put thousands of hours through, sleepless nights and pushing through no matter the circumstances of sickness and pain it caused us.

And now some dumb fucking AI using dickbags see that and decide it's worth nothing.

Here's a link to my friend's real film. Please go watch it and support her work. I'm not even gonna link the other piece of shit tiktok because I don't want that video to even get a single extra view but here's a recording my friend made so you can see this malarkey side by side.

It's heartbreaking to see my friend's film barely getting any views while the stolen garbage is already in the thousands. I hope the person who stole my friend's work and made that shit dies in a fiery car crash and go straight to hell.

I cannot emphasise how we must not let this shit continue to happen. We're living in a fucking dystopia and unless we do something about it and support those affected by it it's only going to get worse. They're already expanded from stealing people's still art to stealing people's entire films, if we don't stop this nothing we create would ever be safe.

My friend's film:

The shameless fuckheads who stole her film:

I don't have a lot of confidence in my art, but Roosterteeth and Achievement Hunter was one of the few things back in the day that got me to sit down & draw. I'm still really honored to be one of their guest artist for their 18th anniversary. You weren't always the best Roosterteeth, but thanks for inspiring this shy artist to keep drawing.

REAL artists be like:

They could've remade the Avatar series like this but noooooooo

Blue Eye Samurai || Episode 7

New Pokemon Legends announcement just dropped! It looks like it's set in what might be a future Kalos which is interesting because they have yet to remake Black and White yet. I'm excited for it nevetheless though! Hopefully it'll be just as good as Arceus!