zelda_queen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zelda_queen) wrote2018-04-13 05:42 pm
zelda_queen) wrote2018-04-13 05:42 pm
Entry tags:
The Awesome Has Left: A Dissection of Channel Awesome's Official Response
ZeldaQueen: Folks, there comes a time when something reaches critical wank capacity. Anyone who's been a member of das_sporking for any length of time probably knows that by now. Still, that doesn't make it any more pleasant to watch when it unfolds in front of you.
Especially when it involves a group of people that have held a special spot in your heart for half a decade or so.
Gehayi: Most of you have probably heard about the now SEVENTY-THREE PAGE Google Doc "Not So Awesome" that has been circulating, as of this writing, for the past week or two. For those who haven't read it, it's a documentation of complaints from producers who no longer work for Channel Awesome. I have been following most of these people on LiveJournal, Twitter and Tumbr starting in 2006. I've seen their complaints voiced since about 2011. This is not sudden. I've read Allison Pregler's complaints before. I recall when Lindsey Ellis and her friends up and left without warning. There have long been hints--hints as strong as concentrated skunk scent--that something was wrong with Channel Awesome.
But I never expected it to be as bad as "Not So Awesome" revealed it to be.
ZeldaQueen: Let's get something clear right from the start. For years, I've loved the Nostalgia Critic. I've loved the Nostalgia Chick (one of my favorite ways to spend lunch when I was in college was to eat a pepperoni stromboli and rewatch one of her older reviews). I've loved all of the crossovers, being impressed by the scope of such projects. I was devastated when I heard that the NC was retiring, and while I never got a chance to see any of the Demo Reel videos, I was sure they'd have the same care and creativity that the NC episodes got. And when I heard the Critic was coming back? I was thrilled about that! I never minded the format changes, the skits, the inclusion of Rachel, Malcolm, and Tamara. There were some things I disagreed with (for the life of me, I don't understand why Doug didn't make his Sailor Moon review a crossover with someone who actually knew the anime, like he did with JO for the Digimon review). I've loved seeing Doug branch out a bit, doing videos like his Disneycember reviews (seriously, how rare is it to find someone who champions Disney's Cinderella like he has?) So I am not coming into this as a hater who is pissy that Doug isn't doing what I want.
Gehayi: And I'm in much the same boat, though I broke from the channel years ago. (Not because of anything I'd heard, but because I got mad about Doug's Sailor Moon review. You can't review a five-season anime by watching the first three episodes of the first season and the crawl. And y'all know me about Did Not Do the Research. It is my biggest pet peeve. And it annoyed me all the more because he'd done reviews that were both funny and good.)
But I still watch Linkara on Youtube. I love What the Fuck Is Wrong With You? with Nash Bozard (who just quit Channel Awesome this week) and Tara Deenihan. My subscriber page on YouTube is dominated by former CA producers.
ZeldaQueen: That being said, neither of us doubt that the producers who contributed to the "Not So Awesome" document were telling the truth. I've seen some folks who chalked this whole thing up as a few cases of sour grapes from lying liars who lie (including, as it turns out, the site's owners themselves, but we'll get to that in a minute). Perhaps if it was only one or two producers with horror stories, I might believe that it was a misunderstanding or bad luck. But if you end up with a 70+page Google Doc written up by more than a half a dozen former producers making consistent claims, that goes beyond any handwave of "oh, it was a mistake". At the very least, if the claims weren't reputable, why the hell would Linkara, one of the biggest names on the site, quit in protest? Suede made a point to return to the site after a lengthy sabbatical, and he quit the site within a week or so of the complaints being aired.
Gehayi: The week before "Not So Awesome" appeared, CA had more than forty producers listed on the site. I checked the site just now. They are currently down to FOUR: Blockbuster Buster, Brad Jones, Gaming Wildlife, and Guru Larry...and The site is hemorrhaging talent. People don't quit jobs for no reason, especially in today's economy.
ZeldaQueen: And do keep in mind, none of this was planned. This wasn't the result of some disgruntled former producers secretly arranging to put together this document. The entire thing began when Allison Pregler (Obscurus Lupa) was asked on Twitter if she was still angry with Channel Awesome over her being fired (her story of which can be found here, and it will look very familiar after you read the document and see other stories producers had about poor communication). When she made it clear that she was, other former producers chimed in with their own stories, until the thread was so unwieldy that it was put on a document for easy reading.
This was not planned. It's the result of someone finally pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. And many people have not been pleased.
Which brings us to where we are now. With all the attention the former producers and their document has been getting, it stands to reason that Channel Awesome would give some sort of public statement. And they did… over Twitter.
Gehayi: That is a ridiculously long Tweet.
ZeldaQueen: If that seems like the perfect definition of a non-apology, you'd be right. It did not smooth things over with either the former producers or the fans, all of whom noted wording like "we're sorry you feel that way" pretty much just shifted blame onto the accusers.
Again, this sort of thing shouldn't be unfamiliar to folks at the comm who've seen wanky suethor responses get sporked. Those people, at least, usually have the excuse that they're publishing fanfiction for free. Channel Awesome is supposed to be an actual company. One who, as many people noted, probably wish they hadn't fired their PR lady right about now (and for more info on that, read Holly Brown's section under the document. It's going to be coming up in a second, and you probably don't want to go into it blind).
So in the weeks that followed after that, even more producers left the site in protest (including more longtime members like Film Brain). It's understandable that Channel Awesome would feel the need to try once more to smooth things over. But somehow, in attempting to do so, they managed to produce a response that was worse than the form letter-esque tweet they did before.
This one managed to bypass condescending and become downright Trumpian.
Gehayi: One might even call it "sporkworthy."
ZeldaQueen: And I think most of you fine folks now get what we're here for, so let's take a look at some of the finer (so to speak) points of the rebuttal.
Since the posting of the “Not So Awesome” document on Monday, April 2, 2018, we have been exploring all of our options of how to address the lies that have been alleged by multiple disgruntled individuals with vindictive intentions.
ZeldaQueen: And lo and behold, whoever wrote this (I'm willing to bet it's Mike Michaud, the site owner, although the actual poster is simply "Channel Awesome") ruined any and all chances of calming down Online Hurricane Shitstorm headed their way. By now, we're well past the point of people forming opinions on whether or not they believe the document. They do, probably for the reasons I outlined above. At this point, calling the claims "lies" is only tossing fuel in the fire. The people angry with you want apologies, which you refused to give. Even if you're right and the document contained lies, opening like that is only pissing off people more. The only way you could have made it worse is if you called the document "Fake News".
Channel Awesome has always tried to keep our dealings with our content partners out of the public eye and despite any differences or disagreements we have never publicly spoken negatively about any of them, but a response to the accusations leveled against us must happen.
Gehayi: Well, yes, a response would be nice. Like "We're sorry and we will try to do better. " But since you're accusing twenty-one people of being lying liars who lie--despite, as I mentioned before, the problems reaching back at least seven years that I've been hearing about--I'm guessing you're not going to admit any wrongdoing. This is probably for legal reasons, given that at least two members of management were accused of sexual harassment in the document, and at least five people stated that the rest of management did nothing to stop the harassers, despite being made aware that sexual harassment was going on.
ZeldaQueen: I might also add that it's not surprising that negative dealings have been kept out of the public eye. From the many accounts in the document, Michaud's favorite tactic appeared to be keeping the producers he didn't like isolated and too scared to protest his behavior. Allison Pregler has said that when chatting over Skype, he liked to get producers into private conversations so he could bully them without being caught.
Obviously, we cannot address all 73 plus pages of accusations against us in this forum, but we will address the most egregious now.
ZeldaQueen: Probably because those are the easiest ones to refute. Again, this shouldn't be unfamiliar with comm members. We've seen plenty of suethors cherrypick points to refute. Hint -- it's always the ones that are more minor and nebulous enough that it's easy to claim there's not enough evidence backing them up. Conveniently they ignore the more concrete arguments that people actually care about. And this isn't limited to wanky suethors. Relationship guru Dr. Nerdlove pointed out how people trying to shitstir relationships will do so by finding flaws that conveniently are impossible to give evidence against ("We think you just don't work well together", etc.)
For this rebuttal, the author of the post chose to present the points from the doc as "Accusations" and the responses as "Facts". While the document is made up of accusations, calling the responses "facts" is just more weasel-wording to try to make the accusers look bad.
ACCUSATION – Jane Doe accuses us of knowing about a “sexual deviant” for over a year (Page 66).
ZeldaQueen: For those who don't know, a woman who contributed to the document who wanted to be left anonymous (hence the "Jane Doe" pseudonym) claimed that Mike Ellis -- one of the original three owners of Channel Awesome -- took advantage of her by sexually grooming her (at the time, while she was 18 she described herself as having "the mind of a 16 year old AT BEST" Ellis remained with the site for a year after this happened.
This was not, incidentally, the first time in the document that Ellis was accused of massively inappropriate behavior. Sean Fausz's sexual harassment accusation will be addressed momentarily, but Holly Brown (the site's former PR lady) also said he tried to get her to date him when he was married and… did not take it well when she refused. To give you an idea, when Ellis was finally fired, the Walker's and other site staff members armed themselves and took Holly to a safe house for some time out of fear that Ellis would try to attack her.
Gehayi: They also walked her to and from her house while armed with baseball bats.
FACT – The screen shot below clearly demonstrates the time elapsed from being made aware of the individual in question (name redacted for legal reasons) and the time the content partner was released from Channel Awesome – 3 weeks, not over a year. During the 3 week period, we consulted a lawyer and waited to see if anyone would come directly to us, as our only knowledge of this was second hand.
It is obvious the person who came forward with this in the Not So Awesome document wants their name protected, so we will continue to do so.
(Link to full-sized image here)
Gehayi: This is a log excerpt--not even a log--of one Skype call. It does not indicate that Jane Doe had spoken to them once three weeks before. In fact, it would be entirely within the grounds of normalcy for Jane to have had to make multiple complaints before management deigned to notice that something was wrong. This is not right, but it is sadly very common, and not only at CA.
Second, Jane did not actually know how long the grooming went on, as it took her some time to realize what was happening. When asked how long it was between her coming forward to management for the first time and Mike Ellis being fired, she said (on page 67), "It's kinda hazy, but I'd say maybe a year?"
They are saying that because they do not agree with her approximation of how long this went on, nothing went on at all. Which is silly. I doubt if they took notes on her first complaint--or even her first few. And disagreeing with someone about how long it took from the start of an even to its conclusion doesn't mean the event didn't happen. Whether homicidal urges started three weeks ago or a year ago, at the end there's still a body on the floor. CA is staring at the body and saying that because they don't think that the trouble began when another witness said it did, there obviously can't be a corpse on the floor.
No. There can. There really can.
ZeldaQueen: I'd also like to say that there's zero point in the author of this post pointing out that Jane doesn't want her name published. We know she doesn't. Not only is she clearly being credited under a pseudonym (and the two other people who spoke with her are just credited as "Anonymous I" and "Anonymous II"), but the Not So Awesome doc flat-out states that she requested her name be withheld. Therefore, there's no reason for the author to say that they're going to keep her name a secret. It's completely irrelevant. Perhaps it's me overanalyzing, but given the history of intimidation tactics Michaud has used, it looks creepily to me like the post's author was making a veiled threat to out Jane's real name as a scare tactic. "Remember, we know who you really are and we're respecting your wishes to withhold your name… for now".
Gehayi: And believe me, to anyone who has been stalked or harassed, especially by a boss or former boss, this is a serious threat.
ZeldaQueen: Especially since, as I mentioned above, Ellis was apparently considered enough of a loose cannon that Holly was given special protection from him at one point.
ACCUSATION – Sean Fausz accuses former Channel Awesome COO and founder, Michael Ellis, of a conversation of sexual nature that lasted over two hours (Page 49 & 50.)
ZeldaQueen: Specifically Ellis crudely propositioned Fausz and later tried to blame the entire thing on him being drunk… despite Fausz noting that Ellis's typing was suspiciously well-written and spelled for a drunk man.
Gehayi: Can you really call it a conversation when only one person is talking? Because Fausz did not respond once. Mike Ellis propositioned Fausz repeatedly for over two hours...despite the fact that he wasn't getting any answers. Ellis was effectively chatting with himself.
ZeldaQueen: Now keep in mind, while Fausz was appalled at Ellis's behavior, the part of the story that had everyone really shaken up was Michaud's response -- when Fausz reported Ellis's behavior, Michaud just said, "Damn it, I told him he couldn't be doing this shit. I'll take care of it."
Gehayi: "I told him he couldn't be doing this shit." That does suggest that Ellis was a repeat offender.
ZeldaQueen: Keep this in mind when we see how the author "refutes" it.
FACT – Michael Ellis resigned from the company and no contact from Michael Ellis was attempted after the conversation was reported to Michael Michaud. With any termination involving a founder and shareholder, legal separation must happen and this takes time.
ZeldaQueen: Yet again, the author completely missed the point. Yes, Ellis didn't talk to Fausz again after that. The reason everyone is appalled is that Michaud's reaction implies that Ellis did something like that -- an incredibly gross case of sexual harassment -- at least once before, and it sounded like it was just being treated as some embarrassing incident.
Yes, I'm sure it takes time and effort to get rid of a higher-up in any group or company. But if Ellis was in the process of being removed (which is the only possible way I can see the rebuttal being relevant), Michaud's response in no way conveyed that to Fausz. One would think he'd say something like, "Sorry, we're in the process of taking care of this" or some reassurance that Ellis would be facing consequences for his actions. Instead, Michaud's response was what you'd expect to get if you complained to your neighbor that your dog pissed on your rosebush again.
Also, Fausz has given his own thoughts on the rebuttal. He's about as impressed with it as you'd imagine.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners state payment for their contributions to the site were not compensated.
ZeldaQueen: There were actually quite a few money complaints. Ones that never get addressed in this rebuttal include the IndieGoGo money debacle (Channel Awesome got $90K in donations to fund a gameshow, they only ended up producing it because IndieGoGo was going to investigate them, and the twelve episodes they made were infamously awful), crossover compensation (they made any producers who made crossovers during the anniversary events fork the videos over so the site could get the money in compensation), and possibly the premium content (I heard several site members complain that they signed up for that and basically got jack shit in return).
FACT – From the beginning of the site, anyone that has been added as a content partner was informed that ChannelAwesome.com was an aggregator for their content. At no time did Channel Awesome take a cut of their videos, as the practice is with Multi Channel Networks (MCNs). We never wanted to be an MCN and only asked them to schedule their videos that they already were doing for Blip.tv and YouTube.
Gehayi: Um...yeah, about that...you're arguing apples and oranges. T Allison Pregler merely stated at the beginning of her section that--contrary to what most viewers thought--no one got paid but the Chicago crew. The site hosted the producers' work; the producers were not salaried employees. A lot of people were confused about that and about CA's legal rights re: producers' videos, and Allison was trying to clear matters up.
But.
The financial issues have nothing to do with CA being a hosting site.
They have to do with blatant cash grabs by the management, particularly Mike Michaud.
ZeldaQueen: Precisely. The accusations of lack of compensation had nothing to do with Channel Awesome charging them unfairly or taking cuts of their profits. Kaylyn said that when she and several other producers first signed on for the site, they didn't get their own Blip channels. They sent their videos to Michaud, who hosted them on a communal channel. The deal was meant to be that any money made from their videos should be passed back to them, but that didn't happen for all of them. Lindsay said she got hers. Kaylyn didn't. And according to Kaylyn, Michaud wasn't very happy when she went and made her own Blip channel, acting like she was sneaking around behind his back.
Gehayi: I think that the second most egregious involved Michaud trying to sell an artist's work--an artist with whom the site had no contract--without her permission and without giving her a cut of the profit.
ZeldaQueen: Ah yes, that'd be Marion Bricaud, Benzaie's girlfriend and the one who made the lovely artwork in the Suburban Knights end credits. According to Benzaie, Michaud was furious when he was told he couldn't sell her artwork without permission.
Gehayi: The first most egregious cash grab involved Mike Michaud wanting to MONETIZE A VIDEO WAKE.
ZeldaQueen: Specifically Justin Carmical, aka Jewwario. Mind you, this was not the most disgusting thing he did in regards to Carmical's death. I think the "honor" there goes to him telling Dr. Gonzo of Nerd to the Third Power podcast not to bother doing a tribute video because, and I quote, "Nobody knows who you are. They won't care about anything you're gonna put together. We're gonna have Doug or Lewis or someone put something together. Someone people actually come here to see."
By this point, if it's not clear, Michaud needs a kick in the ass. HARD.
Also, Kaylyn has pointed out how this response is lying by omission, pure and simple and Dan Olson pointed out how telling someone they're not getting money for something doesn't make it any less shitty that you're the only one profiting off of something they helped with.
We gave them access to over 30 million page views and over a million unique viewers a month at our height. Channel Awesome viewed the partnership as a way to help content partners grow their audience while bringing in new content and increasing the community within the site.
ZeldaQueen: Which does not refute the issues cited in the document, I might add. None of the former producers made any secret of the fact that most of their payment came in the form of "exposure". Besides the fact that exposure doesn't exactly pay the rent (when Allison came forward about the circumstances behind her being fired, one big point was that Michaud and the Walkers wouldn't let her do midroll credits or promote her Patreon, both of which could have worked well with exposure to help her earn money), there was a problem with that -- a lot of folks complained that you were mighty picky about who got the most exposure.
A lot of people in the doc complained about an elitist hierarchy on the site. Anything Doug did automatically got top billing, then big names like Linkara or Spoony, then the plebes could fight for slots. And no, this was not addressed for the first time when the doc was compiled. In his commentary for "To Boldly Flee", Noah Antwiler cited this as one of the reasons he left Channel Awesome -- the people considered more "important" always got top billing, it wasn't fair to the newcomers, and since he didn't need the exposure bump from Channel Awesome, there wasn't much point in staying there and stealing the spotlight from other people.
Further benefiting content partners, Channel Awesome covered all costs associated with server, hosting and labor costs associated with maintenance and updates. Some content partners even had their servers for their own sites paid for by Channel Awesome. None of these costs were ever passed along to our content partners.
Gehayi: And why would these costs be passed on to your producers? The site's server issues, labor costs, maintenance, etc. are the financial responsibility of the people who own and run Channel Awesome--such as CEO Mike Michaud. It is NOT the job of the young producers who, let me remind you, you only provide with a limited number of slots and pay only in exposure to pay YOUR bills.
ZeldaQueen: I think this is where the site's staff are beginning to show their ignorance. According to a few contributors to the doc, Michaud and Company never seemed to get the importance of things like social media. There was also an instance where Doug offered a $100 reward for an art contest and failed to realize that was hardly any sort of reward for what the contest asked for (he later bumped the reward up to $300). It wouldn't surprise me if they also didn't get how ridiculously easy it is these days for someone to actually produce and host their own web series and genuinely think that "we're giving you a shiny place to embed your video and taking responsibility for the server we own" means something these days.
Oh, and incidentally? Given how the site pretty much never updates unless it's to unceremoniously delete the archives of producers who left? It really doesn't look like anyone's holding up the "we handle the server's maintenance and updates" side of things.
ACCUSATION – The document talks about the drop in traffic to the site.
ZeldaQueen: That's grossly simplifying the complaint. In the document, Kaylyn Saucedo (Marzgurl), at the very least, pointed out how Doug's decision to abruptly get rid of the Nostalgia Critic and replace him with a completely different web series didn't just hurt Doug's viewership, it caused fewer people to visit Channel Awesome entirely and thus indirectly harm the other producers. Yet again, let's see how this misses the point.
FACT – While we did have an initial drop after the switch to Demo Reel, the real hit to the site’s traffic came from our growing presence on YouTube. When we relaunched the Nostalgia Critic show in January of 2013, Blip.tv decided to start placing the full episode up on the LeagueofSuperCritics channel a week after we launched it on Thatguywiththeglasses.com.
As we grew on LeagueofSuperCritics more and more viewers decided to watch it on YouTube instead of our site. The biggest blow to site traffic came before the downfall of Blip.tv. While we won’t go into full details, we were forced to abandon the LeagueofSuperCritics channel and instantly start achannelthatsawesome in May, 2015. This is the point when traffic began to quickly drop off our site (now Channelawesome.com).
One of the biggest accusers stated that they might still be on the site if the views were there. As stated by Kaylyn below:
ZeldaQueen: I'm not sure how true this is or isn't, but yet again, the author is missing the point. Kaylyn wasn't just upset about the drop in viewership. She and the other former producers were upset because Doug chose to make such a major decision and didn't give any head's up on it at all. A recurring complaint the former producers made was that the overall "I'm getting rid of the Critic" attitude Doug peppered throughout To Boldly Flee left most of the crew feeling demoralized and upset. The entire movie had the air that the Age of Reviewing was coming to an end, as if the rest of them weren't going to be able to succeed once the Critic left. It was pretty much a slap in the face to them and wasn't helped in the slightest by the fact that Doug was so eager to get rid of the Nostalgia Critic that he failed to recognize any of it. In a Tumblr post, Kaylyn compares the whole thing to some rich guy planning to go down big by crashing his yacht, failing to consider that other people are also on board and are going to need to find some way to survive.
And the fact that the author ignored all of that and took such a snippy attitude towards Kaylyn (who, I might add, wrote in the document how she spent much of her start at CA feeling lonely and scared and was humiliated by Michaud over slights at several points, so phrasing it like she's a Bitch Queen really doesn't sit well with me) pretty much proves their points. Yes, the lack of pay and the poor communication and the technical errors suck. But after reading the document, I got the feeling that a lot of the producers could have managed to work through all of that if the site's managers had NOT BEEN SUCH UNFEELING ASSHOLES.
People generally get that there's going to be technical errors. They get that mistakes happen. But when one's boss not only has so much bullshit happen and repeatedly sends off vibes of "I don't actually care about you, stop wasting my time", that's when people get really pissed off. There's a reason why managers and CEOs are taught how to treat their employees as valued members of a team. If people feel ignored or unappreciated, they're not going to work very well. And as the many accounts in the doc have proved, people like Michaud don't seem to care about that because hey, the Critic's still making money! It makes more sense to just keep putting him front and center instead of taking the time to put some effort into building up a few new talents.
And I'm not sure why the author thought to include a screencapture of Kaylyn saying about viewership dropping after the NC was killed off. It doesn't prove the author's point. If anything, it validates the former producers as it shows that Doug cared more about giving his character a grand sendoff instead of planning a little better for his next work (which also hurt him, I might add, because if people weren't so shocked and upset over the abrupt end of the NC, maybe they might have accepted Demo Reel better).
ZeldaQueen: Oh, and speaking of? I'm still inclined to agree that there was at least some significant drop in viewership after the NC was killed off. Want to know why?
Because the Critic was revived in the first place.
That was clearly not something Doug wanted to do. It was something he was pushed into doing, and his bitterness about it was quite evident in The Review Must Go On. I remember reading somewhere that he was actually told that he didn't HAVE to end Demo Reel, he could have revived the NC and kept both shows going. He basically killed off DR completely because he was too upset about being forced back to something he wanted to have over and done with.
So yeah, if he was so determined to get rid of the Critic, clearly something must have happened to get him to change his mind on that.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners have alleged our Anniversary Specials were not compensated for time worked and crossover videos were asked to be turned over, if filmed, to Channel Awesome.
Gehayi: Well, actually, the complaints are mainly from or on behalf of people who were NOT producers and who did NOT have contracts with CA and who were simply volunteering. Holly Brown, the PR person, was one of those who mentioned not being compensated for her time and work. Another was Iron Liz, Linkara's then girlfriend, who came as a guest and ended up ferrying people around in her car, running errands, acting as an extra, and getting seriously hurt during the shoot. The managers forced Liz to sign a contract absolving them of liability before they would even let her get ice for her injured knee. This went on for TWO HOURS.
ZeldaQueen: And they refused to let her have any of the food that they bought for the actors (when they actually did get them food) because she was not, and I quote, "the talent".
Gehayi: Phelous was a content producer who ended up doing special effects work gratis on Suburban Knights, despite the fact that he didn't have the equipment to do the level of special effects work that Doug and Rob Walker wanted. He got nothing for his trouble except for a complaint that the management made to Welshy and which Welshy relayed to Phelous: "Do you think he's half-assing it?"
Also, the crossover videos were made by the content producers on their own time --which couldn't have been easy, given that the anniversary shoots ran from 12 to 18 hours PER DAY, and no one seemed particularly concerned about the fact that the content producers were being worked to a state of exhaustion. Yet Michaud demanded the crossovers be handed over to CA as "extras" for the anniversary DVDs. These videos were not Michaud's property. They were not CA's property. There were no contracts in play that said CA owned even a piece of those videos. But Michaud felt that they were. He felt entitled to them. And most people, feeling that they had to turn over the videos or be fired, opted to give him the videos. Oh, and despite the fact that these crossovers appeared on the anniversary DVDs, no content producer has ever earned anything from them. Not one dime. All the profits have gone to the management.
Obviously, CA doesn't care. But it sounds slimy to me.
ZeldaQueen: It is. And as the tone of this post proves, clearly the management of the site don't care if they're being morally awful as long as you can't actually pin a crime on what they did.
FACT – When invitations for the Anniversary Specials were issued, we made it clear to all content partners that their participation was on a voluntary basis. In addition, content partners were always given the option of declining our invitation with no questions asked and no repercussions. We understood we were asking our content partners to give up their time and that not everyone could do that.
ZeldaQueen: In his rebuttal of this post, Linkara made a very good point on this -- a lot of producers didn't want to turn down being in the anniversary event because it was a communal project, it was a good indicator of pecking order (who was important enough to be included), and it was fantastic exposure. And considering how we were just told how exposure was something the former producers should be grateful for, you'd think the author would realize that something as big as the anniversary events would not be something they'd pass on.
I might also add that while I'm probably going to discuss it in more depth as this post goes on, the anniversary events still failed to provide basic necessities--like water in the Nevada desert-- and saying, "Hey, they should have passed" doesn't excuse that. To use a rather appropriate example, look at "The Disaster Artist". In it, Tommy Wisseau treated Juliette Danielle (the actress who played Lisa) absolutely dreadfully, screaming at her and, among other things, embarrassing her by shouting for all the crew to hear about how gross it was that she had some acne on her back. One would think that Juliette should have just left… except that she really needed the money and hey, nobody at the time knew the film was going to be such a flop. Do you think an aspiring actress lucky enough to be cast as the female lead in a film would take the chance of missing out on a big break?
The Producer Contract for Channel Awesome 3rd Anniversary Film Participation also outlined the following terms and conditions for those who did agree to participate, including:
• Participation was voluntary
• Crossovers were never required
ZeldaQueen: To go back to Linkara's rebuttal, while crossovers were optional for the Suburban Knights shooting, they were pushed to cover costs for To Boldly Flee. I suppose one could nitpick that nobody was forcing anyone to make any there either, but pressuring a group of people into doing something, especially when they're no doubt already stressed and riding some emotional waves, isn't made any less emotionally bankrupt just because you didn't outright force them to do it.
Gehayi: And given that the crossovers were made by people who often had to make their own costumes, pay for their own food and lodging and transportation, work up to 18 hours a day, and were frequently assuming a hefty debt by appearing in the anniversary films at all, I don't think that it takes TOO much in the way of brains to figure out that most content producers made the videos that Michaud later confiscated in the hopes of breaking even. Yes, crossovers were optional...rather in the way that applying for jobs is optional if you're on SNAP. You don't work--or at least try to--you don't stay on the program. I imagine that most content producers felt that they had no choice to try to obtain the exposure and the money that they so desperately needed. (Most were in college or grad school. It's not unlikely that they had student loans and didn't need more debt.)
Everyone who attended the anniversary was told that Channel Awesome would cover the cost of travel, lodging, breakfast, lunch, and dinner if the filming went late.
ZeldaQueen: Yeah… except according to the document, you didn't deliver on the meal part, at least. The Walkers had to be reminded to have food and fricking water on set! In her section, Iron Liz said how the main memory she had of filming Suburban Knights was of being hungry to the point of drinking tap water just so she'd have something in her stomach (and she wasn't the only one doing that). According to Allison, she and several others were temporarily stranded while everyone else got to go to Applebee's, because Doug forgot they didn't have enough vehicles. Yes, he apparently did bring them food. Still, if "we promised to provide everyone with food and lodgings" is the argument here, it doesn't look too good that you only just scraped by on it!
ACCUSATION – A few content partners alleged a misogynistic work atmosphere by Channel Awesome.
ZeldaQueen: Whelp, there's an understatement if I ever heard one. According to the document, Allison, Lindsey Ellis (the Nostalgia Chick), and Pushing Up Roses, at least, all complained about misogyny while working for the site. Specifically, they noted that Michaud disliked the female producers on the site, being more aggressive and labeling them as "troublemakers" if they spoke to him with problems. There were also at least two instances where female producers were blamed for something male producers associated with them did -- Dena Natali was yelled at for something her husband, Lee (host of Still Gaming), did and Lindsey was blamed when a producer she vouched for, Dan Olsen, created an article on how 8-chan was complicit in child pornography and became the target of harassment. If you're wondering why Michaud blamed anyone at all for the latter incident, it's because the online harassers emailed him while trying to cause Olsen trouble and Michaud decided the entire thing was Olsen's fault and called Lindsey to yell at her about it. Two days before Christmas, as she was driving home to her family.
FACT – Channel Awesome’s current and former female staff, including Tamara Chambers, Rachel Tietz, Aiyanna Wade, and Heather Reusz, have had vastly different experiences than the ones described.
Gehayi: This is called "fallacy of composition"--that is, arguing that what is true for a part of the group must be true for the whole. Tamara, Rachel, Aiyanna and Heather may not have been harassed...that doesn't mean that other people weren't. Yes, they had different experiences than those complaining about sexual harassment. Having different experiences doesn't make one side truer than the other. Again, this is just silly.
ZeldaQueen: In the case of Rachel and Tamara, it also doesn't prove much because they're a part of Doug's personal crew. Remember the elitism I mentioned? So yes, it's very likely they were both treated well. Malcolm also has claimed that working with Doug has been a great experience. And maybe it's just him blowing smoke because it's his job. But if it's one thing the document has shown, it's that the producers were unofficially sorted into "important people" and "peons". Lindsey, Allison, and PUR all seemed to be low enough on the totem pole that they didn't make the cut.
We are always trying to improve ourselves both personally and professionally and moving forward we will implement mandatory sensitivity training for all staff to ensure we maintain a culture of respect for all employees.
ZeldaQueen: So you just proved the complaints right, asshole! You just said, "we're working to be more sensitive in the future"!
And okay, fine. People and organizations can recognize that they made mistakes in the past and work to be more sensitive about things in the future. BUT THE WAY YOU'RE GOING ABOUT THIS ISN'T HELPING ANYTHING AT ALL! For Christ's sake, you defend yourself by saying that Channel Awesome is working to be more respectful towards your female employees, and then you lump all the former producers who complained about misogyny into this post as liars! Yeah, remember how the first sentence said you were addressing a bunch of lies from vindictive people? You can't just say shit like that and then try to pull the, "Oh, we're trying to do better in the future" card!
At the risk of destroying the comment section, I'm going to make a comparison to a current example -- Aziz Ansari. I'm sure a lot of people reading this heard about the account given about the woman who went on a date with him and ended up being sexually harassed the entire night. If you haven't, go find it online and read it and then come back here. I'm not recounting it. What I am going to say is that as baffling as it was that Ansari apparently didn't realize he was upsetting the woman (I realize he was apparently drunk at the time, but if someone walks across the room to get away from you, it doesn't mean they want you to follow and continue to paw them up), he apologized for his actions both times they were brought up to him! When the woman texted him the next day, he said he didn't notice she was upset and he was very sorry to have distressed her. And after she went public about that evening, he once against said he regretted upsetting her and was very sorry he did so.
This here is like if Ansari's response was "Man, that woman's lying because she's mad the date went wrong. But in the future, I'll be careful not to grope any other women I bring back to my place, don't worry". Do you see why that's a problem?
(A reminder, folks, this is not an invitation to turn the comments section into a discussion on Ansari or #ME TOO. This is a comparison to show how fucked up the response is. Please focus on that.)
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown makes numerous accusations throughout the document.
ZeldaQueen: I find it amusing that the author suddenly went incredibly vague over Holly's complaints. Looks like they're falling back on the Walkerian tactic of "I don't know how to refute this, so I'm going to describe it in a vague and somewhat condescending manner".
I'll give some specifics, since the author won't. Holly's main issues were that she was overworked by the site, was rarely actually listened to, continued to work on To Boldly Flee even though she was getting surgery, was called in the day after surgery to be told she was fired (she was not given a reason for this and, according to her, Doug was the deciding vote on firing her), and her life post-firing was a complete trainwreck as she was forced to sign a contract to get severance pay, which kept her from working in the industry for three years. As per the document, that meant she couldn't be paid to consult or run a website or anything like that. And that's all on top of the aforementioned sexual harassment and potential danger from Mike Ellis.
Quite a lot to skip over, I'd say.
Oh and incidentally, while Holly's complaints are mentioned here and there throughout the document, all of the points I listed above were compiled in one section which is clearly labeled (and the document even has a table of contents, so figuring out the order people are in isn't hard at all). The author wording it like her complaints are in disarray throughout the document feels incredibly insulting to me, or at the very least like a cheap way to pretend they can't find all of the points she raises.
FACT – Holly Brown is a former employee and shareholder who was allowed to resign. Unfortunately her accusations are not true and are vindictive in nature.
ZeldaQueen: … And? You plan to actually follow up and offer proof of that? Or are you deliberately being vague because you can't? I'm sure Holly has proof, at the very least, that you fired her the day after her surgery and forced her to sign a contract that basically left her life a wreck after.
The whole thing actually sounds kind of shady and makes me wonder if that's why the "facts" are so vague here.
Also, she was "allowed to resign"? That's a lie. Holly has posted a screenshot of a chat conversation with Rob Walker proving that there was a vote to fire her.
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown alleges CEO Michael Michaud, is sole owner of the Nostalgia Critic IP.
FACT – The IP is owned by Channel Awesome, Inc. The partnership is owned by four individuals with a 5th person joining ownership by the end of the year.
Gehayi: I think that this might refer to Michaud, Mike Ellis, and Bhargav Dronamraju founding the company, with Rob Walker currently functioning as Creative Content Officer. Ellis and Dronamraju have both been fired. Michaud is the only one in charge. And the point is that Doug does not own the IP for his own character. Whether you want to say the site does or Michaud does, it comes to the same thing. For Michaud is the CEO of Channel Awesome, and he owns the site.
ZeldaQueen: If there really are four or so mysterious other people running the site, the author should really list them. It's not like it's some secret knowledge they can't disclose.
Gehayi: If there are four or five mysterious other people, they are not listed on the contact page. I just checked that. If you click on "advertising", you get a feedback-style page. "Site contact (general issues)" and "store" have the same thing. The only named person on the contact page is Doug Walker. And again--it's a feedback page. There are no emails, no Twitters, no blogs, no other websites--not even a phone number.
ZeldaQueen: They're also not listed on Wikipedia. Michaud, Ellis, and Dronamraju are listed as the site's founders and the Walkers are listed for various titles, but no one else is. And I'm not surprised at the lack of social media or extra content. According to the document, none of the people running the site seemed to see any benefit to that sort of thing. That's why someone else run the site's Twitter for so long.
And yeah, yet again, they pick a complaint that's relatively minor and ignore the really serious ones. I think Holly is more upset about the fact that she was overworked, underappreciated, and basically had her life ruined than the fact that only one moron owns the Critic's IP.
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown alleges Channel Awesome had her work during “To Boldly Flee” after her surgery.
FACT – During this time, Robert Walker, Doug Walker and Michael Michaud told her she did not have to work. Site updates were performed by others as she recovered.
(Link to full-sized image here
ZeldaQueen: Which doesn't mean all that much. A recurring thing brought up in the documents is that staff and producers for the site did not have rules enforced equally on them and often people would be punished for things they were unaware they did wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if Holly was told she didn't have to do work at certain times but felt she needed to do it anyway or would be punished.
Also, even if the point was completely valid, Holly wasn't complaining only about having to work then. According to the document, she worked just about every single day of the year, even holidays. She had to build her schedule around updating the site. And it was made harder because Michaud wouldn't let her preschedule things to be posted. Are we going to get refutations on those points?
Also-also, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, Linkara has apparently pointed out how incredibly easy it is to fake those text chats that keep getting posted as evidence. Granted I've not tried to fuss around too much with Skype's conversation archives, but is that what they look like? Skype seems to be what most of Channel Awesome used to communicate.
Also-also-also, Holly has tweeted her thought on this, complete with a picture of her working on set with the drain in her stomach hanging out from under her dress.
ACCUSATION – Lindsay Ellis alleges Doug Walker and Channel Awesome ignored concerns regarding the “transformation scene.”
ZeldaQueen: Oh hey, time for a follow-up on the misogyny! 8D I was really looking forward to that. Yeah, Lindsay wasn't the only one who had problems with that. Linkara did as well, and according to him, he was the first one to raise complaints. As Lindsay noted here, this post seems to mostly pick at complaints made by the women, with Fausz's sexual harassment complaint being the exception.
Gehayi: In fact, let's see what Lindsay stated in the document:
The worst of course was the "transformation" scene, which was just an extended rape joke. Lewis and I talked about it between each other weeks before the shoot (Lewis actually reached out to me with his concerns, as I had not read the script yet) and explained our objections to Doug together. Doug's solution was, rather than rewrite it, have a "toned down" version in the final cut, in which I make comical sexual assault noises instead of the original script as written. In effect, it was not changed, and it's still an extended rape joke, just less overt.
ZeldaQueen: Incidentally, this is yet another issue that wasn't only just raised in the doc. Lindsay brought this up post-To Boldly Flee. The only new info, far as I can tell, is that Lewis was also pushing against it and Doug seemed completely incapable of getting why they didn't like it.
Gehayi: And the screenshot of the original script page provided by Allison, who didn't like the rape scene any more than Lewis or Lindsay did.
So we've got three different people supporting Lindsay's version.
FACT – As the screen shot below shows, Lindsay was repeatedly asked for her opinion and approval of the scene before it was finalized. Lindsay even helped Doug make the scene sound ‘better.’
(Link to full-sized image here)
ZeldaQueen: Yeah, about that? Lindsay and Lewis both tried to get Doug to understand why the joke was in bad taste and, according to them, he really didn't get why they didn't want to do it. I'm willing to bet that if Doug went back to Lindsay for post-production dubbing and fell right back to "make sounds like you're being raped" and generally making it clear the arguments didn't stick, she probably went "Fuck it" and saw no benefit to arguing further. That doesn't mean she was all right with it. It means she just gave up.
Gehayi: Which, honestly, a lot of people would do if their bosses weren't listening. The fact that Lindsay mentions her and Lewis going to Doug together, however, makes me think that that confrontation happened in person on the To Boldly Flee set, as Lindsay lives in New York City, Lewis lives in Minnesota, and Doug lives in Chicago, Illinois. Meaning that it probably happened AFTER the above screenshot.
ZeldaQueen: The confrontation definitely happened on the set, but that screenshot is probably of Doug requesting vocals from Lindsay because they needed fixed up in post-production.
ACCUSATION – Lindsay Ellis alleges Channel Awesome did not do enough to protect female content partners from abusive commenters.
ZeldaQueen: Well, yes. This is one point she raised. She also argued that Channel Awesome didn't do anything to protect Olsen from online harassment (specifically it's stated that he'd asked for his anti-Gamergate video to have the comments disabled, which Michaud didn't do), that she felt very uncomfortable with the fact that her movie-making knowledge had her being treated like a snob during the anniversary events (this began after she asked about food being provided and got scoffed at until Noah Antwiler (Spoony) said that it's something expected at all shootings), and that there were other things she was asked to do for To Boldly Flee that she didn't like (specifically dressing as 7 of 9 never sat well with her).
Of course, none of that's going to actually be addressed.
FACT – Channel Awesome has a strict policy regarding our community including IP banning all abusive posters, as well as banning their account via username and email and continuing to monitor our forums. We worked with Lindsay directly to help her address issues resulting from an abusive commenter.
Gehayi: Lindsay never mentions abusive posters. She says:
During this time there was also a streak of harassment against female contributors. The worst case that involved me resulted in an extended case with the NYPD. This was not the only incidence of harassment that went unremarked upon by CA. There was a rash of harassment against CA producers between 2013 and 2014, mostly women, which was never acknowledged or condemned by CA.
Based on all the other commenters talking about sexual harassment by Ellis and, to a lesser extent, Michaud, I strongly suspect that Lindsay is talking about that and not an abusive commenter. CA won't admit that they have employed any sexual harassers, so they have to twist Lindsay's meaning like Barbara G. Walker playing with etymology.
Also, protecting employees and contractors from harassment falls under both federal and state law, so you don't get any cookies for stopping an abusive commenter. That's your job. You're supposed to do that!
ZeldaQueen: Can I also say that I "love" the irony of the author insisting they took care to protect the wellbeing of their female producers while writing this entire post to portray those same producers as a bunch of lying bitches who are just all disgruntled and vindictive and don't know what they're talking about? Really helps the case.
(Link to full-sized image here)
ZeldaQueen: That screenshot really doesn't prove much. Lindsay only speaks once in it and the only reason I can guess it's about someone harassing her is because of the context. Other than that, they're looking up the location of an IP address.
And the number one asshole argument of idiocy is...
ACCUSATION – Allison Pregler states “not a single person wasn’t miserable.”
ZeldaQueen: Now, I might buy that this is an exaggeration to an extent. Lewis, at the very least, has stated he liked working with all of the anniversary events. But he's also stated that he's fortunate enough to be able to support himself with his reviews and knows not all of the producers are in his same situation. So the spirit of the statement is very true, if not the letter.
Gehayi: It's not even a full quote. What she said was "[n]ot a single person wasn't miserable, except Doug, who had no idea how badly it had went [sic]."
And honestly, even if you don't accept "everyone was miserable" as the literal truth, it's clearly hyperbole--exaggeration not meant to be taken literally. If some or most people were miserable but not all, that doesn't make the statement untrue. The main point has been communicated; many people were unhappy, and Doug didn't realize it.
ZeldaQueen: It reminds me of HG-131, who responded to being told that everyone hated Hogwarts Exposed and thought it was awful by insisting that nuh-uh, clearly the handful of people in that Yahoo group who haven't been around for months proves that wrong!
And how does the author choose to refute this?
FACT – In this video, you’ll find that Allison says that it “was a great production to be a part of. It was a lot of fun to be a part of this and Suburban Knights.”
ZeldaQueen: Yes. This is seriously where they go with this. The author ignores the fact that no fucking duh Allison wouldn't badmouth To Boldly Flee because it's something she acted in and she's relying on it for exposure to get money and probably Michaud would rip her a new asshole if she criticized it and ruined sales.
And it doesn't even particularly address the issue. Allison didn't say that she specifically was miserable. She said everyone but Doug was. Even if that video somehow magically proved that she was actually fine with making To Boldly Flee, there are half a dozen former producers at least who have aired grievances with it.
And one last point is farted out here.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners addressed the lack of communication.
FACT – We agree communication could have and should have been better. We got into this business based on our passion for content creation and have had many growing pains over the years.
We always strive to learn from our mistakes and strengthen our skills.
Gehayi: No, you don't. I'm sorry to say this, but you don't. You're not even trying to learn from your mistakes now; you're striving to blame everyone else for exaggerations and lies. That's not an attempt at improvement, no matter how you look at it.
ZeldaQueen: Exactly so. Channel Awesome is not some newbie site. It's been going on for a long time--since 2008. Long enough for its owners to learn what they need to do to manage it better. These complaints were not brought up for the first time today. Most of the former producers did try to speak with people about issues they were having. Lewis said the main reason he stuck it out on the site as long as he did was because he was trying to improve things from the inside. He made a number of suggestions, including using funds from a Kickstarter campaign to finance any future anniversary events. Almost all of his suggestions were shot down.
And as Gehayi pointed out, this post itself is proof that you aren't learning. The producers and your fans got angry with you because your first response to the accusations was unfeeling and insincere. Instead of giving a more heartfelt apology, you opted to give a rebuttal that was (A) mean-spirited and condescending and (B) failing at actually backing up any of your points. And it went as well as you might think. Everyone's angrier with the site than ever. It really makes me wonder how much longer this can go on for before it's only Doug and his team there.
Gehayi: According to Wikipedia, which linked to this tweet, that's already happened. Remember the four people I mentioned still being on the site? According to Twitter, three of them quit within hours of this non-apology going up. Everyone is now gone. Everyone...except Doug Walker and Guru Larry. And Guru Larry has tweeted that he's simply staying there to amuse himself. There are still videos from other producers up on the site--I would guess that Michaud and company are hoping people will come back--but even so, it says something that ALL BUT ONE CONTRACTOR-PRODUCER QUIT. That doesn't generally happen at happy, well-run businesses.
Have we made mistakes? Yes, we have. We even discuss some of our challenges in our behind the scenes videos. We’ve always focused on trying to entertain our viewers, shine spotlights on unknown talent and share our attention with various charities – and we hope to continue to do so moving forward.
ZeldaQueen: In other words, we're ending with, "Well we've made some mistakes but ignore that in favor of vague mentions of nice things we did". Yes, there are producers on the site who make entertaining content. Yes, it is very noble of Doug to do a shout-out to a nonprofit at the end of every review he makes. But that doesn't change the fact that he and Rob and Michaud seem to not grasp two very simple facts going on: first, no matter how the site's functioning now, people were hurt by management in the past, and second, they need to apologize. It baffles me these people don't seem to get how a simple, "We should have done more to help you in the past and we're very sorry for that" would have helped. As it is, they seem to want the best of both worlds -- to snipe at and discredit the former producers and then play the "we made mistakes but we're trying to improve, please forgive us" card.
Guys, as a fan of Channel Awesome, this entire thing has been incredibly painful to watch unfold. One of the big draws of the site was how communal it was. Everyone always gave the impression that they were one big Channel Awesome family and how the Walkers were so nice and so much fun to hang out with. And while the former producers have maintained that they loved being around each other and still do have each other's backs, finding out that the Walkers were so complacent in all of this and that there was so much backstabbing and mismanagement behind the scenes really hurts to learn. I mentioned at the start how much I'd loved the Nostalgia Chick videos. A few days ago, Lindsay came out and said she really didn't have any memories of good times from her days as the Chick, that she was never entirely comfortable with the gig, and that she's over and done with talking about Channel Awesome. I completely understand her reasons and I'm glad she's moved on to doing stuff she loves (I do like her analytical videos), but it's like if Rowling came out and said how much she hated writing Harry Potter. Shortly after this all went down, it was revealed which producer was the one grooming and taking advantage of female fans (I'm not going into that here, because there's not much to say people haven't already said and frankly I need time to cope with what's already happened). That's not even touching on how monumentally unprofessional this response is. I don't care if this is an online review website, if they're big enough to have a damned CEO, they're big enough to have a professional person review official statements made to dispel controversy!
Still, I am incredibly glad that the truth came out. I think everyone who spoke up is very brave and watching the former producers support one another is incredibly inspiring. I also have mad respect for all the producers who chose to leave the site. As Lewis pointed out, not everyone could make it without the site's exposure, so it's a ballsy move. (And to go with what others have said, please no trashing of anyone still on or who may be added to the site.)
If you're wondering what you can do to help out your favorite producers, just about all of them have their own YouTube channels you can subscribe to and Patreons you can donate to. A handy chart has been compiled here, so give it a look. Spread the word on their updates via Twitter. If you like a producer that's still on CA, see if they have their own YouTube channel and follow them there. Don't subscribe to CA.
And because I don't want to leave everyone completely in shambles, I'll leave you with this delightful parody video Kaylyn made, which about sums up Michaud and his reactions perfectly.
For anyone not familiar with das_sporking and enjoyed Gehayi and our sporking here, please check us out! It's loads more lighthearted and funny than here, we promise.
Gehayi's running a WeCare fundraiser! Want to help out? Take a look here for more information. If she reaches 4K total by July, she can pay her next round of taxes. If she reaches 8K, she can pay off what she owes for her oil tank repairs. Help her reach these goals and we'll love you forever (and offer some nice literary analysis -- see the fundraiser for details!)
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Especially when it involves a group of people that have held a special spot in your heart for half a decade or so.
Gehayi: Most of you have probably heard about the now SEVENTY-THREE PAGE Google Doc "Not So Awesome" that has been circulating, as of this writing, for the past week or two. For those who haven't read it, it's a documentation of complaints from producers who no longer work for Channel Awesome. I have been following most of these people on LiveJournal, Twitter and Tumbr starting in 2006. I've seen their complaints voiced since about 2011. This is not sudden. I've read Allison Pregler's complaints before. I recall when Lindsey Ellis and her friends up and left without warning. There have long been hints--hints as strong as concentrated skunk scent--that something was wrong with Channel Awesome.
But I never expected it to be as bad as "Not So Awesome" revealed it to be.
ZeldaQueen: Let's get something clear right from the start. For years, I've loved the Nostalgia Critic. I've loved the Nostalgia Chick (one of my favorite ways to spend lunch when I was in college was to eat a pepperoni stromboli and rewatch one of her older reviews). I've loved all of the crossovers, being impressed by the scope of such projects. I was devastated when I heard that the NC was retiring, and while I never got a chance to see any of the Demo Reel videos, I was sure they'd have the same care and creativity that the NC episodes got. And when I heard the Critic was coming back? I was thrilled about that! I never minded the format changes, the skits, the inclusion of Rachel, Malcolm, and Tamara. There were some things I disagreed with (for the life of me, I don't understand why Doug didn't make his Sailor Moon review a crossover with someone who actually knew the anime, like he did with JO for the Digimon review). I've loved seeing Doug branch out a bit, doing videos like his Disneycember reviews (seriously, how rare is it to find someone who champions Disney's Cinderella like he has?) So I am not coming into this as a hater who is pissy that Doug isn't doing what I want.
Gehayi: And I'm in much the same boat, though I broke from the channel years ago. (Not because of anything I'd heard, but because I got mad about Doug's Sailor Moon review. You can't review a five-season anime by watching the first three episodes of the first season and the crawl. And y'all know me about Did Not Do the Research. It is my biggest pet peeve. And it annoyed me all the more because he'd done reviews that were both funny and good.)
But I still watch Linkara on Youtube. I love What the Fuck Is Wrong With You? with Nash Bozard (who just quit Channel Awesome this week) and Tara Deenihan. My subscriber page on YouTube is dominated by former CA producers.
ZeldaQueen: That being said, neither of us doubt that the producers who contributed to the "Not So Awesome" document were telling the truth. I've seen some folks who chalked this whole thing up as a few cases of sour grapes from lying liars who lie (including, as it turns out, the site's owners themselves, but we'll get to that in a minute). Perhaps if it was only one or two producers with horror stories, I might believe that it was a misunderstanding or bad luck. But if you end up with a 70+page Google Doc written up by more than a half a dozen former producers making consistent claims, that goes beyond any handwave of "oh, it was a mistake". At the very least, if the claims weren't reputable, why the hell would Linkara, one of the biggest names on the site, quit in protest? Suede made a point to return to the site after a lengthy sabbatical, and he quit the site within a week or so of the complaints being aired.
Gehayi: The week before "Not So Awesome" appeared, CA had more than forty producers listed on the site. I checked the site just now. They are currently down to FOUR: Blockbuster Buster, Brad Jones, Gaming Wildlife, and Guru Larry...and The site is hemorrhaging talent. People don't quit jobs for no reason, especially in today's economy.
ZeldaQueen: And do keep in mind, none of this was planned. This wasn't the result of some disgruntled former producers secretly arranging to put together this document. The entire thing began when Allison Pregler (Obscurus Lupa) was asked on Twitter if she was still angry with Channel Awesome over her being fired (her story of which can be found here, and it will look very familiar after you read the document and see other stories producers had about poor communication). When she made it clear that she was, other former producers chimed in with their own stories, until the thread was so unwieldy that it was put on a document for easy reading.
This was not planned. It's the result of someone finally pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. And many people have not been pleased.
Which brings us to where we are now. With all the attention the former producers and their document has been getting, it stands to reason that Channel Awesome would give some sort of public statement. And they did… over Twitter.
Gehayi: That is a ridiculously long Tweet.
ZeldaQueen: If that seems like the perfect definition of a non-apology, you'd be right. It did not smooth things over with either the former producers or the fans, all of whom noted wording like "we're sorry you feel that way" pretty much just shifted blame onto the accusers.
Again, this sort of thing shouldn't be unfamiliar to folks at the comm who've seen wanky suethor responses get sporked. Those people, at least, usually have the excuse that they're publishing fanfiction for free. Channel Awesome is supposed to be an actual company. One who, as many people noted, probably wish they hadn't fired their PR lady right about now (and for more info on that, read Holly Brown's section under the document. It's going to be coming up in a second, and you probably don't want to go into it blind).
So in the weeks that followed after that, even more producers left the site in protest (including more longtime members like Film Brain). It's understandable that Channel Awesome would feel the need to try once more to smooth things over. But somehow, in attempting to do so, they managed to produce a response that was worse than the form letter-esque tweet they did before.
This one managed to bypass condescending and become downright Trumpian.
Gehayi: One might even call it "sporkworthy."
ZeldaQueen: And I think most of you fine folks now get what we're here for, so let's take a look at some of the finer (so to speak) points of the rebuttal.
Since the posting of the “Not So Awesome” document on Monday, April 2, 2018, we have been exploring all of our options of how to address the lies that have been alleged by multiple disgruntled individuals with vindictive intentions.
ZeldaQueen: And lo and behold, whoever wrote this (I'm willing to bet it's Mike Michaud, the site owner, although the actual poster is simply "Channel Awesome") ruined any and all chances of calming down Online Hurricane Shitstorm headed their way. By now, we're well past the point of people forming opinions on whether or not they believe the document. They do, probably for the reasons I outlined above. At this point, calling the claims "lies" is only tossing fuel in the fire. The people angry with you want apologies, which you refused to give. Even if you're right and the document contained lies, opening like that is only pissing off people more. The only way you could have made it worse is if you called the document "Fake News".
Channel Awesome has always tried to keep our dealings with our content partners out of the public eye and despite any differences or disagreements we have never publicly spoken negatively about any of them, but a response to the accusations leveled against us must happen.
Gehayi: Well, yes, a response would be nice. Like "We're sorry and we will try to do better. " But since you're accusing twenty-one people of being lying liars who lie--despite, as I mentioned before, the problems reaching back at least seven years that I've been hearing about--I'm guessing you're not going to admit any wrongdoing. This is probably for legal reasons, given that at least two members of management were accused of sexual harassment in the document, and at least five people stated that the rest of management did nothing to stop the harassers, despite being made aware that sexual harassment was going on.
ZeldaQueen: I might also add that it's not surprising that negative dealings have been kept out of the public eye. From the many accounts in the document, Michaud's favorite tactic appeared to be keeping the producers he didn't like isolated and too scared to protest his behavior. Allison Pregler has said that when chatting over Skype, he liked to get producers into private conversations so he could bully them without being caught.
Obviously, we cannot address all 73 plus pages of accusations against us in this forum, but we will address the most egregious now.
ZeldaQueen: Probably because those are the easiest ones to refute. Again, this shouldn't be unfamiliar with comm members. We've seen plenty of suethors cherrypick points to refute. Hint -- it's always the ones that are more minor and nebulous enough that it's easy to claim there's not enough evidence backing them up. Conveniently they ignore the more concrete arguments that people actually care about. And this isn't limited to wanky suethors. Relationship guru Dr. Nerdlove pointed out how people trying to shitstir relationships will do so by finding flaws that conveniently are impossible to give evidence against ("We think you just don't work well together", etc.)
For this rebuttal, the author of the post chose to present the points from the doc as "Accusations" and the responses as "Facts". While the document is made up of accusations, calling the responses "facts" is just more weasel-wording to try to make the accusers look bad.
ACCUSATION – Jane Doe accuses us of knowing about a “sexual deviant” for over a year (Page 66).
ZeldaQueen: For those who don't know, a woman who contributed to the document who wanted to be left anonymous (hence the "Jane Doe" pseudonym) claimed that Mike Ellis -- one of the original three owners of Channel Awesome -- took advantage of her by sexually grooming her (at the time, while she was 18 she described herself as having "the mind of a 16 year old AT BEST" Ellis remained with the site for a year after this happened.
This was not, incidentally, the first time in the document that Ellis was accused of massively inappropriate behavior. Sean Fausz's sexual harassment accusation will be addressed momentarily, but Holly Brown (the site's former PR lady) also said he tried to get her to date him when he was married and… did not take it well when she refused. To give you an idea, when Ellis was finally fired, the Walker's and other site staff members armed themselves and took Holly to a safe house for some time out of fear that Ellis would try to attack her.
Gehayi: They also walked her to and from her house while armed with baseball bats.
FACT – The screen shot below clearly demonstrates the time elapsed from being made aware of the individual in question (name redacted for legal reasons) and the time the content partner was released from Channel Awesome – 3 weeks, not over a year. During the 3 week period, we consulted a lawyer and waited to see if anyone would come directly to us, as our only knowledge of this was second hand.
It is obvious the person who came forward with this in the Not So Awesome document wants their name protected, so we will continue to do so.
(Link to full-sized image here)
Gehayi: This is a log excerpt--not even a log--of one Skype call. It does not indicate that Jane Doe had spoken to them once three weeks before. In fact, it would be entirely within the grounds of normalcy for Jane to have had to make multiple complaints before management deigned to notice that something was wrong. This is not right, but it is sadly very common, and not only at CA.
Second, Jane did not actually know how long the grooming went on, as it took her some time to realize what was happening. When asked how long it was between her coming forward to management for the first time and Mike Ellis being fired, she said (on page 67), "It's kinda hazy, but I'd say maybe a year?"
They are saying that because they do not agree with her approximation of how long this went on, nothing went on at all. Which is silly. I doubt if they took notes on her first complaint--or even her first few. And disagreeing with someone about how long it took from the start of an even to its conclusion doesn't mean the event didn't happen. Whether homicidal urges started three weeks ago or a year ago, at the end there's still a body on the floor. CA is staring at the body and saying that because they don't think that the trouble began when another witness said it did, there obviously can't be a corpse on the floor.
No. There can. There really can.
ZeldaQueen: I'd also like to say that there's zero point in the author of this post pointing out that Jane doesn't want her name published. We know she doesn't. Not only is she clearly being credited under a pseudonym (and the two other people who spoke with her are just credited as "Anonymous I" and "Anonymous II"), but the Not So Awesome doc flat-out states that she requested her name be withheld. Therefore, there's no reason for the author to say that they're going to keep her name a secret. It's completely irrelevant. Perhaps it's me overanalyzing, but given the history of intimidation tactics Michaud has used, it looks creepily to me like the post's author was making a veiled threat to out Jane's real name as a scare tactic. "Remember, we know who you really are and we're respecting your wishes to withhold your name… for now".
Gehayi: And believe me, to anyone who has been stalked or harassed, especially by a boss or former boss, this is a serious threat.
ZeldaQueen: Especially since, as I mentioned above, Ellis was apparently considered enough of a loose cannon that Holly was given special protection from him at one point.
ACCUSATION – Sean Fausz accuses former Channel Awesome COO and founder, Michael Ellis, of a conversation of sexual nature that lasted over two hours (Page 49 & 50.)
ZeldaQueen: Specifically Ellis crudely propositioned Fausz and later tried to blame the entire thing on him being drunk… despite Fausz noting that Ellis's typing was suspiciously well-written and spelled for a drunk man.
Gehayi: Can you really call it a conversation when only one person is talking? Because Fausz did not respond once. Mike Ellis propositioned Fausz repeatedly for over two hours...despite the fact that he wasn't getting any answers. Ellis was effectively chatting with himself.
ZeldaQueen: Now keep in mind, while Fausz was appalled at Ellis's behavior, the part of the story that had everyone really shaken up was Michaud's response -- when Fausz reported Ellis's behavior, Michaud just said, "Damn it, I told him he couldn't be doing this shit. I'll take care of it."
Gehayi: "I told him he couldn't be doing this shit." That does suggest that Ellis was a repeat offender.
ZeldaQueen: Keep this in mind when we see how the author "refutes" it.
FACT – Michael Ellis resigned from the company and no contact from Michael Ellis was attempted after the conversation was reported to Michael Michaud. With any termination involving a founder and shareholder, legal separation must happen and this takes time.
ZeldaQueen: Yet again, the author completely missed the point. Yes, Ellis didn't talk to Fausz again after that. The reason everyone is appalled is that Michaud's reaction implies that Ellis did something like that -- an incredibly gross case of sexual harassment -- at least once before, and it sounded like it was just being treated as some embarrassing incident.
Yes, I'm sure it takes time and effort to get rid of a higher-up in any group or company. But if Ellis was in the process of being removed (which is the only possible way I can see the rebuttal being relevant), Michaud's response in no way conveyed that to Fausz. One would think he'd say something like, "Sorry, we're in the process of taking care of this" or some reassurance that Ellis would be facing consequences for his actions. Instead, Michaud's response was what you'd expect to get if you complained to your neighbor that your dog pissed on your rosebush again.
Also, Fausz has given his own thoughts on the rebuttal. He's about as impressed with it as you'd imagine.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners state payment for their contributions to the site were not compensated.
ZeldaQueen: There were actually quite a few money complaints. Ones that never get addressed in this rebuttal include the IndieGoGo money debacle (Channel Awesome got $90K in donations to fund a gameshow, they only ended up producing it because IndieGoGo was going to investigate them, and the twelve episodes they made were infamously awful), crossover compensation (they made any producers who made crossovers during the anniversary events fork the videos over so the site could get the money in compensation), and possibly the premium content (I heard several site members complain that they signed up for that and basically got jack shit in return).
FACT – From the beginning of the site, anyone that has been added as a content partner was informed that ChannelAwesome.com was an aggregator for their content. At no time did Channel Awesome take a cut of their videos, as the practice is with Multi Channel Networks (MCNs). We never wanted to be an MCN and only asked them to schedule their videos that they already were doing for Blip.tv and YouTube.
Gehayi: Um...yeah, about that...you're arguing apples and oranges. T Allison Pregler merely stated at the beginning of her section that--contrary to what most viewers thought--no one got paid but the Chicago crew. The site hosted the producers' work; the producers were not salaried employees. A lot of people were confused about that and about CA's legal rights re: producers' videos, and Allison was trying to clear matters up.
But.
The financial issues have nothing to do with CA being a hosting site.
They have to do with blatant cash grabs by the management, particularly Mike Michaud.
ZeldaQueen: Precisely. The accusations of lack of compensation had nothing to do with Channel Awesome charging them unfairly or taking cuts of their profits. Kaylyn said that when she and several other producers first signed on for the site, they didn't get their own Blip channels. They sent their videos to Michaud, who hosted them on a communal channel. The deal was meant to be that any money made from their videos should be passed back to them, but that didn't happen for all of them. Lindsay said she got hers. Kaylyn didn't. And according to Kaylyn, Michaud wasn't very happy when she went and made her own Blip channel, acting like she was sneaking around behind his back.
Gehayi: I think that the second most egregious involved Michaud trying to sell an artist's work--an artist with whom the site had no contract--without her permission and without giving her a cut of the profit.
ZeldaQueen: Ah yes, that'd be Marion Bricaud, Benzaie's girlfriend and the one who made the lovely artwork in the Suburban Knights end credits. According to Benzaie, Michaud was furious when he was told he couldn't sell her artwork without permission.
Gehayi: The first most egregious cash grab involved Mike Michaud wanting to MONETIZE A VIDEO WAKE.
ZeldaQueen: Specifically Justin Carmical, aka Jewwario. Mind you, this was not the most disgusting thing he did in regards to Carmical's death. I think the "honor" there goes to him telling Dr. Gonzo of Nerd to the Third Power podcast not to bother doing a tribute video because, and I quote, "Nobody knows who you are. They won't care about anything you're gonna put together. We're gonna have Doug or Lewis or someone put something together. Someone people actually come here to see."
By this point, if it's not clear, Michaud needs a kick in the ass. HARD.
Also, Kaylyn has pointed out how this response is lying by omission, pure and simple and Dan Olson pointed out how telling someone they're not getting money for something doesn't make it any less shitty that you're the only one profiting off of something they helped with.
We gave them access to over 30 million page views and over a million unique viewers a month at our height. Channel Awesome viewed the partnership as a way to help content partners grow their audience while bringing in new content and increasing the community within the site.
ZeldaQueen: Which does not refute the issues cited in the document, I might add. None of the former producers made any secret of the fact that most of their payment came in the form of "exposure". Besides the fact that exposure doesn't exactly pay the rent (when Allison came forward about the circumstances behind her being fired, one big point was that Michaud and the Walkers wouldn't let her do midroll credits or promote her Patreon, both of which could have worked well with exposure to help her earn money), there was a problem with that -- a lot of folks complained that you were mighty picky about who got the most exposure.
A lot of people in the doc complained about an elitist hierarchy on the site. Anything Doug did automatically got top billing, then big names like Linkara or Spoony, then the plebes could fight for slots. And no, this was not addressed for the first time when the doc was compiled. In his commentary for "To Boldly Flee", Noah Antwiler cited this as one of the reasons he left Channel Awesome -- the people considered more "important" always got top billing, it wasn't fair to the newcomers, and since he didn't need the exposure bump from Channel Awesome, there wasn't much point in staying there and stealing the spotlight from other people.
Further benefiting content partners, Channel Awesome covered all costs associated with server, hosting and labor costs associated with maintenance and updates. Some content partners even had their servers for their own sites paid for by Channel Awesome. None of these costs were ever passed along to our content partners.
Gehayi: And why would these costs be passed on to your producers? The site's server issues, labor costs, maintenance, etc. are the financial responsibility of the people who own and run Channel Awesome--such as CEO Mike Michaud. It is NOT the job of the young producers who, let me remind you, you only provide with a limited number of slots and pay only in exposure to pay YOUR bills.
ZeldaQueen: I think this is where the site's staff are beginning to show their ignorance. According to a few contributors to the doc, Michaud and Company never seemed to get the importance of things like social media. There was also an instance where Doug offered a $100 reward for an art contest and failed to realize that was hardly any sort of reward for what the contest asked for (he later bumped the reward up to $300). It wouldn't surprise me if they also didn't get how ridiculously easy it is these days for someone to actually produce and host their own web series and genuinely think that "we're giving you a shiny place to embed your video and taking responsibility for the server we own" means something these days.
Oh, and incidentally? Given how the site pretty much never updates unless it's to unceremoniously delete the archives of producers who left? It really doesn't look like anyone's holding up the "we handle the server's maintenance and updates" side of things.
ACCUSATION – The document talks about the drop in traffic to the site.
ZeldaQueen: That's grossly simplifying the complaint. In the document, Kaylyn Saucedo (Marzgurl), at the very least, pointed out how Doug's decision to abruptly get rid of the Nostalgia Critic and replace him with a completely different web series didn't just hurt Doug's viewership, it caused fewer people to visit Channel Awesome entirely and thus indirectly harm the other producers. Yet again, let's see how this misses the point.
FACT – While we did have an initial drop after the switch to Demo Reel, the real hit to the site’s traffic came from our growing presence on YouTube. When we relaunched the Nostalgia Critic show in January of 2013, Blip.tv decided to start placing the full episode up on the LeagueofSuperCritics channel a week after we launched it on Thatguywiththeglasses.com.
As we grew on LeagueofSuperCritics more and more viewers decided to watch it on YouTube instead of our site. The biggest blow to site traffic came before the downfall of Blip.tv. While we won’t go into full details, we were forced to abandon the LeagueofSuperCritics channel and instantly start achannelthatsawesome in May, 2015. This is the point when traffic began to quickly drop off our site (now Channelawesome.com).
One of the biggest accusers stated that they might still be on the site if the views were there. As stated by Kaylyn below:
ZeldaQueen: I'm not sure how true this is or isn't, but yet again, the author is missing the point. Kaylyn wasn't just upset about the drop in viewership. She and the other former producers were upset because Doug chose to make such a major decision and didn't give any head's up on it at all. A recurring complaint the former producers made was that the overall "I'm getting rid of the Critic" attitude Doug peppered throughout To Boldly Flee left most of the crew feeling demoralized and upset. The entire movie had the air that the Age of Reviewing was coming to an end, as if the rest of them weren't going to be able to succeed once the Critic left. It was pretty much a slap in the face to them and wasn't helped in the slightest by the fact that Doug was so eager to get rid of the Nostalgia Critic that he failed to recognize any of it. In a Tumblr post, Kaylyn compares the whole thing to some rich guy planning to go down big by crashing his yacht, failing to consider that other people are also on board and are going to need to find some way to survive.
And the fact that the author ignored all of that and took such a snippy attitude towards Kaylyn (who, I might add, wrote in the document how she spent much of her start at CA feeling lonely and scared and was humiliated by Michaud over slights at several points, so phrasing it like she's a Bitch Queen really doesn't sit well with me) pretty much proves their points. Yes, the lack of pay and the poor communication and the technical errors suck. But after reading the document, I got the feeling that a lot of the producers could have managed to work through all of that if the site's managers had NOT BEEN SUCH UNFEELING ASSHOLES.
People generally get that there's going to be technical errors. They get that mistakes happen. But when one's boss not only has so much bullshit happen and repeatedly sends off vibes of "I don't actually care about you, stop wasting my time", that's when people get really pissed off. There's a reason why managers and CEOs are taught how to treat their employees as valued members of a team. If people feel ignored or unappreciated, they're not going to work very well. And as the many accounts in the doc have proved, people like Michaud don't seem to care about that because hey, the Critic's still making money! It makes more sense to just keep putting him front and center instead of taking the time to put some effort into building up a few new talents.
And I'm not sure why the author thought to include a screencapture of Kaylyn saying about viewership dropping after the NC was killed off. It doesn't prove the author's point. If anything, it validates the former producers as it shows that Doug cared more about giving his character a grand sendoff instead of planning a little better for his next work (which also hurt him, I might add, because if people weren't so shocked and upset over the abrupt end of the NC, maybe they might have accepted Demo Reel better).
ZeldaQueen: Oh, and speaking of? I'm still inclined to agree that there was at least some significant drop in viewership after the NC was killed off. Want to know why?
Because the Critic was revived in the first place.
That was clearly not something Doug wanted to do. It was something he was pushed into doing, and his bitterness about it was quite evident in The Review Must Go On. I remember reading somewhere that he was actually told that he didn't HAVE to end Demo Reel, he could have revived the NC and kept both shows going. He basically killed off DR completely because he was too upset about being forced back to something he wanted to have over and done with.
So yeah, if he was so determined to get rid of the Critic, clearly something must have happened to get him to change his mind on that.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners have alleged our Anniversary Specials were not compensated for time worked and crossover videos were asked to be turned over, if filmed, to Channel Awesome.
Gehayi: Well, actually, the complaints are mainly from or on behalf of people who were NOT producers and who did NOT have contracts with CA and who were simply volunteering. Holly Brown, the PR person, was one of those who mentioned not being compensated for her time and work. Another was Iron Liz, Linkara's then girlfriend, who came as a guest and ended up ferrying people around in her car, running errands, acting as an extra, and getting seriously hurt during the shoot. The managers forced Liz to sign a contract absolving them of liability before they would even let her get ice for her injured knee. This went on for TWO HOURS.
ZeldaQueen: And they refused to let her have any of the food that they bought for the actors (when they actually did get them food) because she was not, and I quote, "the talent".
Gehayi: Phelous was a content producer who ended up doing special effects work gratis on Suburban Knights, despite the fact that he didn't have the equipment to do the level of special effects work that Doug and Rob Walker wanted. He got nothing for his trouble except for a complaint that the management made to Welshy and which Welshy relayed to Phelous: "Do you think he's half-assing it?"
Also, the crossover videos were made by the content producers on their own time --which couldn't have been easy, given that the anniversary shoots ran from 12 to 18 hours PER DAY, and no one seemed particularly concerned about the fact that the content producers were being worked to a state of exhaustion. Yet Michaud demanded the crossovers be handed over to CA as "extras" for the anniversary DVDs. These videos were not Michaud's property. They were not CA's property. There were no contracts in play that said CA owned even a piece of those videos. But Michaud felt that they were. He felt entitled to them. And most people, feeling that they had to turn over the videos or be fired, opted to give him the videos. Oh, and despite the fact that these crossovers appeared on the anniversary DVDs, no content producer has ever earned anything from them. Not one dime. All the profits have gone to the management.
Obviously, CA doesn't care. But it sounds slimy to me.
ZeldaQueen: It is. And as the tone of this post proves, clearly the management of the site don't care if they're being morally awful as long as you can't actually pin a crime on what they did.
FACT – When invitations for the Anniversary Specials were issued, we made it clear to all content partners that their participation was on a voluntary basis. In addition, content partners were always given the option of declining our invitation with no questions asked and no repercussions. We understood we were asking our content partners to give up their time and that not everyone could do that.
ZeldaQueen: In his rebuttal of this post, Linkara made a very good point on this -- a lot of producers didn't want to turn down being in the anniversary event because it was a communal project, it was a good indicator of pecking order (who was important enough to be included), and it was fantastic exposure. And considering how we were just told how exposure was something the former producers should be grateful for, you'd think the author would realize that something as big as the anniversary events would not be something they'd pass on.
I might also add that while I'm probably going to discuss it in more depth as this post goes on, the anniversary events still failed to provide basic necessities--like water in the Nevada desert-- and saying, "Hey, they should have passed" doesn't excuse that. To use a rather appropriate example, look at "The Disaster Artist". In it, Tommy Wisseau treated Juliette Danielle (the actress who played Lisa) absolutely dreadfully, screaming at her and, among other things, embarrassing her by shouting for all the crew to hear about how gross it was that she had some acne on her back. One would think that Juliette should have just left… except that she really needed the money and hey, nobody at the time knew the film was going to be such a flop. Do you think an aspiring actress lucky enough to be cast as the female lead in a film would take the chance of missing out on a big break?
The Producer Contract for Channel Awesome 3rd Anniversary Film Participation also outlined the following terms and conditions for those who did agree to participate, including:
• Participation was voluntary
• Crossovers were never required
ZeldaQueen: To go back to Linkara's rebuttal, while crossovers were optional for the Suburban Knights shooting, they were pushed to cover costs for To Boldly Flee. I suppose one could nitpick that nobody was forcing anyone to make any there either, but pressuring a group of people into doing something, especially when they're no doubt already stressed and riding some emotional waves, isn't made any less emotionally bankrupt just because you didn't outright force them to do it.
Gehayi: And given that the crossovers were made by people who often had to make their own costumes, pay for their own food and lodging and transportation, work up to 18 hours a day, and were frequently assuming a hefty debt by appearing in the anniversary films at all, I don't think that it takes TOO much in the way of brains to figure out that most content producers made the videos that Michaud later confiscated in the hopes of breaking even. Yes, crossovers were optional...rather in the way that applying for jobs is optional if you're on SNAP. You don't work--or at least try to--you don't stay on the program. I imagine that most content producers felt that they had no choice to try to obtain the exposure and the money that they so desperately needed. (Most were in college or grad school. It's not unlikely that they had student loans and didn't need more debt.)
Everyone who attended the anniversary was told that Channel Awesome would cover the cost of travel, lodging, breakfast, lunch, and dinner if the filming went late.
ZeldaQueen: Yeah… except according to the document, you didn't deliver on the meal part, at least. The Walkers had to be reminded to have food and fricking water on set! In her section, Iron Liz said how the main memory she had of filming Suburban Knights was of being hungry to the point of drinking tap water just so she'd have something in her stomach (and she wasn't the only one doing that). According to Allison, she and several others were temporarily stranded while everyone else got to go to Applebee's, because Doug forgot they didn't have enough vehicles. Yes, he apparently did bring them food. Still, if "we promised to provide everyone with food and lodgings" is the argument here, it doesn't look too good that you only just scraped by on it!
ACCUSATION – A few content partners alleged a misogynistic work atmosphere by Channel Awesome.
ZeldaQueen: Whelp, there's an understatement if I ever heard one. According to the document, Allison, Lindsey Ellis (the Nostalgia Chick), and Pushing Up Roses, at least, all complained about misogyny while working for the site. Specifically, they noted that Michaud disliked the female producers on the site, being more aggressive and labeling them as "troublemakers" if they spoke to him with problems. There were also at least two instances where female producers were blamed for something male producers associated with them did -- Dena Natali was yelled at for something her husband, Lee (host of Still Gaming), did and Lindsey was blamed when a producer she vouched for, Dan Olsen, created an article on how 8-chan was complicit in child pornography and became the target of harassment. If you're wondering why Michaud blamed anyone at all for the latter incident, it's because the online harassers emailed him while trying to cause Olsen trouble and Michaud decided the entire thing was Olsen's fault and called Lindsey to yell at her about it. Two days before Christmas, as she was driving home to her family.
FACT – Channel Awesome’s current and former female staff, including Tamara Chambers, Rachel Tietz, Aiyanna Wade, and Heather Reusz, have had vastly different experiences than the ones described.
Gehayi: This is called "fallacy of composition"--that is, arguing that what is true for a part of the group must be true for the whole. Tamara, Rachel, Aiyanna and Heather may not have been harassed...that doesn't mean that other people weren't. Yes, they had different experiences than those complaining about sexual harassment. Having different experiences doesn't make one side truer than the other. Again, this is just silly.
ZeldaQueen: In the case of Rachel and Tamara, it also doesn't prove much because they're a part of Doug's personal crew. Remember the elitism I mentioned? So yes, it's very likely they were both treated well. Malcolm also has claimed that working with Doug has been a great experience. And maybe it's just him blowing smoke because it's his job. But if it's one thing the document has shown, it's that the producers were unofficially sorted into "important people" and "peons". Lindsey, Allison, and PUR all seemed to be low enough on the totem pole that they didn't make the cut.
We are always trying to improve ourselves both personally and professionally and moving forward we will implement mandatory sensitivity training for all staff to ensure we maintain a culture of respect for all employees.
ZeldaQueen: So you just proved the complaints right, asshole! You just said, "we're working to be more sensitive in the future"!
And okay, fine. People and organizations can recognize that they made mistakes in the past and work to be more sensitive about things in the future. BUT THE WAY YOU'RE GOING ABOUT THIS ISN'T HELPING ANYTHING AT ALL! For Christ's sake, you defend yourself by saying that Channel Awesome is working to be more respectful towards your female employees, and then you lump all the former producers who complained about misogyny into this post as liars! Yeah, remember how the first sentence said you were addressing a bunch of lies from vindictive people? You can't just say shit like that and then try to pull the, "Oh, we're trying to do better in the future" card!
At the risk of destroying the comment section, I'm going to make a comparison to a current example -- Aziz Ansari. I'm sure a lot of people reading this heard about the account given about the woman who went on a date with him and ended up being sexually harassed the entire night. If you haven't, go find it online and read it and then come back here. I'm not recounting it. What I am going to say is that as baffling as it was that Ansari apparently didn't realize he was upsetting the woman (I realize he was apparently drunk at the time, but if someone walks across the room to get away from you, it doesn't mean they want you to follow and continue to paw them up), he apologized for his actions both times they were brought up to him! When the woman texted him the next day, he said he didn't notice she was upset and he was very sorry to have distressed her. And after she went public about that evening, he once against said he regretted upsetting her and was very sorry he did so.
This here is like if Ansari's response was "Man, that woman's lying because she's mad the date went wrong. But in the future, I'll be careful not to grope any other women I bring back to my place, don't worry". Do you see why that's a problem?
(A reminder, folks, this is not an invitation to turn the comments section into a discussion on Ansari or #ME TOO. This is a comparison to show how fucked up the response is. Please focus on that.)
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown makes numerous accusations throughout the document.
ZeldaQueen: I find it amusing that the author suddenly went incredibly vague over Holly's complaints. Looks like they're falling back on the Walkerian tactic of "I don't know how to refute this, so I'm going to describe it in a vague and somewhat condescending manner".
I'll give some specifics, since the author won't. Holly's main issues were that she was overworked by the site, was rarely actually listened to, continued to work on To Boldly Flee even though she was getting surgery, was called in the day after surgery to be told she was fired (she was not given a reason for this and, according to her, Doug was the deciding vote on firing her), and her life post-firing was a complete trainwreck as she was forced to sign a contract to get severance pay, which kept her from working in the industry for three years. As per the document, that meant she couldn't be paid to consult or run a website or anything like that. And that's all on top of the aforementioned sexual harassment and potential danger from Mike Ellis.
Quite a lot to skip over, I'd say.
Oh and incidentally, while Holly's complaints are mentioned here and there throughout the document, all of the points I listed above were compiled in one section which is clearly labeled (and the document even has a table of contents, so figuring out the order people are in isn't hard at all). The author wording it like her complaints are in disarray throughout the document feels incredibly insulting to me, or at the very least like a cheap way to pretend they can't find all of the points she raises.
FACT – Holly Brown is a former employee and shareholder who was allowed to resign. Unfortunately her accusations are not true and are vindictive in nature.
ZeldaQueen: … And? You plan to actually follow up and offer proof of that? Or are you deliberately being vague because you can't? I'm sure Holly has proof, at the very least, that you fired her the day after her surgery and forced her to sign a contract that basically left her life a wreck after.
The whole thing actually sounds kind of shady and makes me wonder if that's why the "facts" are so vague here.
Also, she was "allowed to resign"? That's a lie. Holly has posted a screenshot of a chat conversation with Rob Walker proving that there was a vote to fire her.
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown alleges CEO Michael Michaud, is sole owner of the Nostalgia Critic IP.
FACT – The IP is owned by Channel Awesome, Inc. The partnership is owned by four individuals with a 5th person joining ownership by the end of the year.
Gehayi: I think that this might refer to Michaud, Mike Ellis, and Bhargav Dronamraju founding the company, with Rob Walker currently functioning as Creative Content Officer. Ellis and Dronamraju have both been fired. Michaud is the only one in charge. And the point is that Doug does not own the IP for his own character. Whether you want to say the site does or Michaud does, it comes to the same thing. For Michaud is the CEO of Channel Awesome, and he owns the site.
ZeldaQueen: If there really are four or so mysterious other people running the site, the author should really list them. It's not like it's some secret knowledge they can't disclose.
Gehayi: If there are four or five mysterious other people, they are not listed on the contact page. I just checked that. If you click on "advertising", you get a feedback-style page. "Site contact (general issues)" and "store" have the same thing. The only named person on the contact page is Doug Walker. And again--it's a feedback page. There are no emails, no Twitters, no blogs, no other websites--not even a phone number.
ZeldaQueen: They're also not listed on Wikipedia. Michaud, Ellis, and Dronamraju are listed as the site's founders and the Walkers are listed for various titles, but no one else is. And I'm not surprised at the lack of social media or extra content. According to the document, none of the people running the site seemed to see any benefit to that sort of thing. That's why someone else run the site's Twitter for so long.
And yeah, yet again, they pick a complaint that's relatively minor and ignore the really serious ones. I think Holly is more upset about the fact that she was overworked, underappreciated, and basically had her life ruined than the fact that only one moron owns the Critic's IP.
ACCUSATION – Holly Brown alleges Channel Awesome had her work during “To Boldly Flee” after her surgery.
FACT – During this time, Robert Walker, Doug Walker and Michael Michaud told her she did not have to work. Site updates were performed by others as she recovered.
(Link to full-sized image here
ZeldaQueen: Which doesn't mean all that much. A recurring thing brought up in the documents is that staff and producers for the site did not have rules enforced equally on them and often people would be punished for things they were unaware they did wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if Holly was told she didn't have to do work at certain times but felt she needed to do it anyway or would be punished.
Also, even if the point was completely valid, Holly wasn't complaining only about having to work then. According to the document, she worked just about every single day of the year, even holidays. She had to build her schedule around updating the site. And it was made harder because Michaud wouldn't let her preschedule things to be posted. Are we going to get refutations on those points?
Also-also, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, Linkara has apparently pointed out how incredibly easy it is to fake those text chats that keep getting posted as evidence. Granted I've not tried to fuss around too much with Skype's conversation archives, but is that what they look like? Skype seems to be what most of Channel Awesome used to communicate.
Also-also-also, Holly has tweeted her thought on this, complete with a picture of her working on set with the drain in her stomach hanging out from under her dress.
ACCUSATION – Lindsay Ellis alleges Doug Walker and Channel Awesome ignored concerns regarding the “transformation scene.”
ZeldaQueen: Oh hey, time for a follow-up on the misogyny! 8D I was really looking forward to that. Yeah, Lindsay wasn't the only one who had problems with that. Linkara did as well, and according to him, he was the first one to raise complaints. As Lindsay noted here, this post seems to mostly pick at complaints made by the women, with Fausz's sexual harassment complaint being the exception.
Gehayi: In fact, let's see what Lindsay stated in the document:
The worst of course was the "transformation" scene, which was just an extended rape joke. Lewis and I talked about it between each other weeks before the shoot (Lewis actually reached out to me with his concerns, as I had not read the script yet) and explained our objections to Doug together. Doug's solution was, rather than rewrite it, have a "toned down" version in the final cut, in which I make comical sexual assault noises instead of the original script as written. In effect, it was not changed, and it's still an extended rape joke, just less overt.
ZeldaQueen: Incidentally, this is yet another issue that wasn't only just raised in the doc. Lindsay brought this up post-To Boldly Flee. The only new info, far as I can tell, is that Lewis was also pushing against it and Doug seemed completely incapable of getting why they didn't like it.
Gehayi: And the screenshot of the original script page provided by Allison, who didn't like the rape scene any more than Lewis or Lindsay did.
So we've got three different people supporting Lindsay's version.
FACT – As the screen shot below shows, Lindsay was repeatedly asked for her opinion and approval of the scene before it was finalized. Lindsay even helped Doug make the scene sound ‘better.’
(Link to full-sized image here)
ZeldaQueen: Yeah, about that? Lindsay and Lewis both tried to get Doug to understand why the joke was in bad taste and, according to them, he really didn't get why they didn't want to do it. I'm willing to bet that if Doug went back to Lindsay for post-production dubbing and fell right back to "make sounds like you're being raped" and generally making it clear the arguments didn't stick, she probably went "Fuck it" and saw no benefit to arguing further. That doesn't mean she was all right with it. It means she just gave up.
Gehayi: Which, honestly, a lot of people would do if their bosses weren't listening. The fact that Lindsay mentions her and Lewis going to Doug together, however, makes me think that that confrontation happened in person on the To Boldly Flee set, as Lindsay lives in New York City, Lewis lives in Minnesota, and Doug lives in Chicago, Illinois. Meaning that it probably happened AFTER the above screenshot.
ZeldaQueen: The confrontation definitely happened on the set, but that screenshot is probably of Doug requesting vocals from Lindsay because they needed fixed up in post-production.
ACCUSATION – Lindsay Ellis alleges Channel Awesome did not do enough to protect female content partners from abusive commenters.
ZeldaQueen: Well, yes. This is one point she raised. She also argued that Channel Awesome didn't do anything to protect Olsen from online harassment (specifically it's stated that he'd asked for his anti-Gamergate video to have the comments disabled, which Michaud didn't do), that she felt very uncomfortable with the fact that her movie-making knowledge had her being treated like a snob during the anniversary events (this began after she asked about food being provided and got scoffed at until Noah Antwiler (Spoony) said that it's something expected at all shootings), and that there were other things she was asked to do for To Boldly Flee that she didn't like (specifically dressing as 7 of 9 never sat well with her).
Of course, none of that's going to actually be addressed.
FACT – Channel Awesome has a strict policy regarding our community including IP banning all abusive posters, as well as banning their account via username and email and continuing to monitor our forums. We worked with Lindsay directly to help her address issues resulting from an abusive commenter.
Gehayi: Lindsay never mentions abusive posters. She says:
During this time there was also a streak of harassment against female contributors. The worst case that involved me resulted in an extended case with the NYPD. This was not the only incidence of harassment that went unremarked upon by CA. There was a rash of harassment against CA producers between 2013 and 2014, mostly women, which was never acknowledged or condemned by CA.
Based on all the other commenters talking about sexual harassment by Ellis and, to a lesser extent, Michaud, I strongly suspect that Lindsay is talking about that and not an abusive commenter. CA won't admit that they have employed any sexual harassers, so they have to twist Lindsay's meaning like Barbara G. Walker playing with etymology.
Also, protecting employees and contractors from harassment falls under both federal and state law, so you don't get any cookies for stopping an abusive commenter. That's your job. You're supposed to do that!
ZeldaQueen: Can I also say that I "love" the irony of the author insisting they took care to protect the wellbeing of their female producers while writing this entire post to portray those same producers as a bunch of lying bitches who are just all disgruntled and vindictive and don't know what they're talking about? Really helps the case.
(Link to full-sized image here)
ZeldaQueen: That screenshot really doesn't prove much. Lindsay only speaks once in it and the only reason I can guess it's about someone harassing her is because of the context. Other than that, they're looking up the location of an IP address.
And the number one asshole argument of idiocy is...
ACCUSATION – Allison Pregler states “not a single person wasn’t miserable.”
ZeldaQueen: Now, I might buy that this is an exaggeration to an extent. Lewis, at the very least, has stated he liked working with all of the anniversary events. But he's also stated that he's fortunate enough to be able to support himself with his reviews and knows not all of the producers are in his same situation. So the spirit of the statement is very true, if not the letter.
Gehayi: It's not even a full quote. What she said was "[n]ot a single person wasn't miserable, except Doug, who had no idea how badly it had went [sic]."
And honestly, even if you don't accept "everyone was miserable" as the literal truth, it's clearly hyperbole--exaggeration not meant to be taken literally. If some or most people were miserable but not all, that doesn't make the statement untrue. The main point has been communicated; many people were unhappy, and Doug didn't realize it.
ZeldaQueen: It reminds me of HG-131, who responded to being told that everyone hated Hogwarts Exposed and thought it was awful by insisting that nuh-uh, clearly the handful of people in that Yahoo group who haven't been around for months proves that wrong!
And how does the author choose to refute this?
FACT – In this video, you’ll find that Allison says that it “was a great production to be a part of. It was a lot of fun to be a part of this and Suburban Knights.”
ZeldaQueen: Yes. This is seriously where they go with this. The author ignores the fact that no fucking duh Allison wouldn't badmouth To Boldly Flee because it's something she acted in and she's relying on it for exposure to get money and probably Michaud would rip her a new asshole if she criticized it and ruined sales.
And it doesn't even particularly address the issue. Allison didn't say that she specifically was miserable. She said everyone but Doug was. Even if that video somehow magically proved that she was actually fine with making To Boldly Flee, there are half a dozen former producers at least who have aired grievances with it.
And one last point is farted out here.
ACCUSATION – Multiple content partners addressed the lack of communication.
FACT – We agree communication could have and should have been better. We got into this business based on our passion for content creation and have had many growing pains over the years.
We always strive to learn from our mistakes and strengthen our skills.
Gehayi: No, you don't. I'm sorry to say this, but you don't. You're not even trying to learn from your mistakes now; you're striving to blame everyone else for exaggerations and lies. That's not an attempt at improvement, no matter how you look at it.
ZeldaQueen: Exactly so. Channel Awesome is not some newbie site. It's been going on for a long time--since 2008. Long enough for its owners to learn what they need to do to manage it better. These complaints were not brought up for the first time today. Most of the former producers did try to speak with people about issues they were having. Lewis said the main reason he stuck it out on the site as long as he did was because he was trying to improve things from the inside. He made a number of suggestions, including using funds from a Kickstarter campaign to finance any future anniversary events. Almost all of his suggestions were shot down.
And as Gehayi pointed out, this post itself is proof that you aren't learning. The producers and your fans got angry with you because your first response to the accusations was unfeeling and insincere. Instead of giving a more heartfelt apology, you opted to give a rebuttal that was (A) mean-spirited and condescending and (B) failing at actually backing up any of your points. And it went as well as you might think. Everyone's angrier with the site than ever. It really makes me wonder how much longer this can go on for before it's only Doug and his team there.
Gehayi: According to Wikipedia, which linked to this tweet, that's already happened. Remember the four people I mentioned still being on the site? According to Twitter, three of them quit within hours of this non-apology going up. Everyone is now gone. Everyone...except Doug Walker and Guru Larry. And Guru Larry has tweeted that he's simply staying there to amuse himself. There are still videos from other producers up on the site--I would guess that Michaud and company are hoping people will come back--but even so, it says something that ALL BUT ONE CONTRACTOR-PRODUCER QUIT. That doesn't generally happen at happy, well-run businesses.
Have we made mistakes? Yes, we have. We even discuss some of our challenges in our behind the scenes videos. We’ve always focused on trying to entertain our viewers, shine spotlights on unknown talent and share our attention with various charities – and we hope to continue to do so moving forward.
ZeldaQueen: In other words, we're ending with, "Well we've made some mistakes but ignore that in favor of vague mentions of nice things we did". Yes, there are producers on the site who make entertaining content. Yes, it is very noble of Doug to do a shout-out to a nonprofit at the end of every review he makes. But that doesn't change the fact that he and Rob and Michaud seem to not grasp two very simple facts going on: first, no matter how the site's functioning now, people were hurt by management in the past, and second, they need to apologize. It baffles me these people don't seem to get how a simple, "We should have done more to help you in the past and we're very sorry for that" would have helped. As it is, they seem to want the best of both worlds -- to snipe at and discredit the former producers and then play the "we made mistakes but we're trying to improve, please forgive us" card.
Guys, as a fan of Channel Awesome, this entire thing has been incredibly painful to watch unfold. One of the big draws of the site was how communal it was. Everyone always gave the impression that they were one big Channel Awesome family and how the Walkers were so nice and so much fun to hang out with. And while the former producers have maintained that they loved being around each other and still do have each other's backs, finding out that the Walkers were so complacent in all of this and that there was so much backstabbing and mismanagement behind the scenes really hurts to learn. I mentioned at the start how much I'd loved the Nostalgia Chick videos. A few days ago, Lindsay came out and said she really didn't have any memories of good times from her days as the Chick, that she was never entirely comfortable with the gig, and that she's over and done with talking about Channel Awesome. I completely understand her reasons and I'm glad she's moved on to doing stuff she loves (I do like her analytical videos), but it's like if Rowling came out and said how much she hated writing Harry Potter. Shortly after this all went down, it was revealed which producer was the one grooming and taking advantage of female fans (I'm not going into that here, because there's not much to say people haven't already said and frankly I need time to cope with what's already happened). That's not even touching on how monumentally unprofessional this response is. I don't care if this is an online review website, if they're big enough to have a damned CEO, they're big enough to have a professional person review official statements made to dispel controversy!
Still, I am incredibly glad that the truth came out. I think everyone who spoke up is very brave and watching the former producers support one another is incredibly inspiring. I also have mad respect for all the producers who chose to leave the site. As Lewis pointed out, not everyone could make it without the site's exposure, so it's a ballsy move. (And to go with what others have said, please no trashing of anyone still on or who may be added to the site.)
If you're wondering what you can do to help out your favorite producers, just about all of them have their own YouTube channels you can subscribe to and Patreons you can donate to. A handy chart has been compiled here, so give it a look. Spread the word on their updates via Twitter. If you like a producer that's still on CA, see if they have their own YouTube channel and follow them there. Don't subscribe to CA.
And because I don't want to leave everyone completely in shambles, I'll leave you with this delightful parody video Kaylyn made, which about sums up Michaud and his reactions perfectly.
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