Sorry I'm just so fucking sick of people online recognizing that ads and algorithms suck and it's best to find ways you can support creators directly, how every website is sanitizing the internet and fucking over anyone who wants to do anything different is awful and evil, and how if you get money from selling out(often against your will) to corporations said corperation might just randomly decide to nuke you and everything you've ever made off the face of the earth to save on taxes or w/e like what happened to Rooster Teeth and College Humor and The Escapist, but then throwing a fucking fit when the answer to that is "yeah well it costs money to make stuff because we don't live in a post scarcity utopia, so like maybe try, you know, financially supporting the creators you love if you want them to not get driven away by said enshittifcation of the internet or sold to and then deleted by rich corporations to make their shareholders more money".

I'm sorry, you can't have it both ways. Shit costs money, and your favorite creators asking you to support them so they don't have to stop making the stuff they AND we love(or sanitizing it and filling it with ads just to pay the bills, or begging for money from investors who will demand constant growth and retain insane control over what gets made and might decide to just delete everything to save a quick buck) doesn't make them monsters. Being broke sucks but like, christ. There's a difference between YouTube and Netflix price gouging and being greedy capitalists and your favorite indie creators asking for a little money so they can keep making stuff.

(And if you can understand why Dropout and Nebula are paid services and A03 has donation drives, then you can understand why Watcher is going the same route. We're trying to save the shows you love in the forms you love while challenging Google's damn near monopoly on online video sharing and continuing to not give corporations the power to delete massive chunks of media history.)

Just like fuck man, needing money to make things/keep your favorite websites up isn't inherently evil. Asking viewers for support is the GOOD ending for stuff like Watcher. I'd rather pay to watch than watch them sell out to W.B. or die off on YouTube.

I get being upset about content being put behind a paywall, it definitely sucks especially when a lot of people simply can't afford it. That being said I also understand why they are doing it, YouTube puts a limit on them and what they can post. They also need to be able to make money as a company so they can continue to make things. With that though I do really hope they find a way to still share content that people don't have to pay for

@crispycreambacon and I are mourning right now

I just feel in my bones that Shane didn’t do this to me. This happened to him too.

It really is baffling that the watcher crew don't seem to realize the answer to their legitimate financial woes has GOT to be downsizing. Like there's a reason they succeeded in leaving a network, there's a reason people followed them to watcher from BuzzFeed, and it's because the core element is just those specific two guys hanging out. Everything else is just set dressing. There's a reason too many spirits is one of their best shows and it only requires lawn chairs and some liquor basically. I respect the attempt to become a legitimate network and if that's their creative dream that's their prerogative, but asking the fans to finance that is just not going to work because it's just not what most people actually want. And obviously they're not obligated to tailor their dreams to what fans want, but fans are also not going to open their wallets to pay for things they don't care about.

realistically 6 dollars is really not that much; though for a ton of people it's not going to be in the budget that's more a general cost of living thing than the watcher's fault imo. But a) the framing of asking people to pay for a streaming service I think has reflexively caused backlash by people who are angry at the other big corps splitting everything onto their services, who they're powerless to yell at whereas they can yell very effectively at the watcher gang, and b) people are used by now to content just as high quality as the watchers for free, so they will not want to pay for it, and c) there is an extremely tiny faction of any group of fans that is willing to actually pay for the content they like. Like a LOT of the views any given creator gets is people just passing the time or really casual fans, especially on YouTube where people open up the site to "watch YouTube" not to "watch ghost files." People who are just there to see "a YouTube video" are going to go and watch a different YouTube video and that's a lot of people.

But honestly I think a) is really more of a driving force here. People are tired of being up charged for free services on every single front and they're usually so helpless in the face of the corpos who are the usual culprits that it makes them feel betrayed that people they connect with are doing the same and it feels good to lash out at someone they know is likely to hear

A land of no rains 🌘🏜️

Watcher, sitter and observer

+ FP and NSH

words cannot describe my excitement

(in reference to the Ned speculation)

Everyone: YouTube is such a garbage platform! It only cares about ad money and exploiting creators, and they have frankly draconian rules about what you can say or show, and sometimes even if you follow all the rules you'll either lose your money and viewerbase to demonetization, and there's basically no way to fix that unless you are a huge creator who makes a massive stink about it on Twitter, or to the algorithm just deciding your videos aren't worth promoting anymore. I hate how many ads there are too, 2+ prerolls, midrolls, and ones at the end?? Tons are unskippable and they often contain triggering content with NO warning. And like, half the sponsorships are for corrupt scams and full of lies. And ugh the switch to prioritizing short from content is fucking over anyone who doesn't want to make discount tiktoks. Plus they're trying to stop people from using adblocker in fucked up ways. And on top of all that Google is just straight up evil. YouTube really does suck these days :/ I feel bad for the creators I love who are stuck using it.

Watcher: YouTube was a good place for our shows at first, but as you all know if you want to make money here you have to compromise the types of content you want to make to please the algorithm and advertisers, and we don't want to make content for them, we want to make quality TV shows for and supported by our viewers, so we can grow and offer even more, much higher quality stuff, so it's time to open our own independant streaming service. It's as cheap as we can make it, and we also want to give our fans more control and so there's a deal if you sign up now where you get 30% off for the first year and can vote on our next show, plus we will never implement any measures to prevent account sharing, one person can share with whoever they want. We're still going to upload trailers and premiers on YouTube, and we will NOT be deleting anything that's already up here. We hope you can support us, because it's your support that matters to us more than anything else.

Everyone: Oh my god you guys are such assholes who hate poor people, what the fuck is your problem!! How dare you abandon us, here's a huge paragraph about how your shows are the only thing that makes my life worth living because [xyz systemic issue], just so you know you're actively ruining our lives by trying to get rid of ads, make better content, and focus on what the viewers want. Why didn't you switch to Nebula or something?? Idc if that's not how it works. Fuck you all, I'm going to go review bomb all your videos. This is so evil and scummy. Also, I'm pissed because people are claiming this isn't avaliable in the rest of the world, even though no one has offered a single source to back it up. Anyway back to watching Dropout, a service you have to pay for, which I'm not mad about at all.

Me:

"I hope you guys will follow us this one last time" Ryan if you said "let's all go into this deep dark pit that probably has death at the bottom" I'd ask for a time to be there. I've been invested for years, I'll follow y'all to hell.

unbelievably pumped about the new DLC, its been confirmed that it's a return to the more "esoteric aspects of the world" and that the modded regions are only but a small part of a big package :DD it will be the first almost fully original content by videocult since 1.9!!

Welcome home, Nightcat

Texts From Superheroes

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day 29 - nightcat

watcher, huh

closeups + insight below

wanted to do something physical for this month, so here we are !