Watcher's cringe apology

Are these the same guys that booted out a member that cheated on his wife? The video seems familiar.

No, the Try Guys had their meltdown last year.

Watcher shot themselves in the foot over the weekend. Shane's cunt of a wife didn't help with some comments she made on social media.

This was one of the most bone-headed moves I've seen in a while from a YouTube channel.

They already had a Patreon with 6K paying members. Plus YouTube Adsense. Plus merch. Plus sponsors.

For a channel with "only" 2.85 million subscribers they were idiots to think they could pull this off.

College Humor/Dropout managed to pull it off, but that channel has a fanbase going back 15+ years and has 15 million subscribers. They also put out a lot of high quality, and varied content.

Lots of YouTube channels have memberships, but usually it is for extra/behind the scenes/bonus content. I don't know of anyone who paywalls all their content (not even Dropout does).

Am I the only person who doesn't even know who they are?!?

I've heard of the Try Guys although I've never felt the need to watch them, but these guys?!?

And based on the that thumbnail in OP, they're not even cute!

[quote]Am I the only person who doesn't even know who they are?!?

They had a subchannel on Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed Unsolved which did like true crime and paranormal stuff that got popular, so they struck out on their own at the beginning of COVID.

[quote]And based on the that thumbnail in OP, they're not even cute!

When Ryan is well groomed, he's good-looking. He has a nice body.

Shane is just kind of gangly and makes some unfortunate choices with his hair color.

Here is the original Goodbye YouTube video that essentially killed Watcher's career. This came out on Friday and their apology dropped on Monday. It really does look like they were crying all weekend.

The arrogance in this video is shocking because they forgot where they came from and where they are. They are not Netflix or Hulu. They're a niche YT channel and saying they need to pay their 25 employees (!!!), most of whom are family members or friends, is just laughable.

Good satire from a YouTuber I follow.

I just want to know who convinced them that this was a good idea. Even the Try Guys, who are way bigger, never tried to put themselves behind a paywall. They originally had planned to take all of their content off YouTube eventually and make people pay. Even for some of the ones that have gone partly behind a paywall, like LegalEagle or Lindsay Ellis at least went to a platform where there's a subscription that covers multiple channels. They were asking for more than Nebula ($7/month versus $5) just for their content, when Nebula gets you dozens of channels.

Do you subscribe to Nebula VOTN/R8? I keep considering it for Joe Scott, Legal Eagle, and Sunbright Films.

I've considered it, but I already have a YouTube Premium subscription, and I don't know if if there's enough to draw me there. I like Bright Sun Films/Travel, hbomberguy (who posts way too infrequently to make it appealing) and Legal Eagle, and I have kind of a love/hate thing with Lindsay Ellis, and used to follow Extra Credits a long time ago, but I don't feel strongly enough when the first three still post their content to YouTube. If Max Miller were to move to there, I would consider it at the point, because that's enough to make it worthwhile.

As it stands, I'd rather support individual creators on Patreon, particularly when that tends to net extra content, like podcasts and Discord servers and the like.