Drama over Channel Awesome/TGWTG business practices

[Strelnikov]

I have to bring up this because of a video I recently watched:


The guy above is Mike Jeavons, who had been involved with Channel Awesome (formerly That Guy With the Glasses) (link to the pre-ruins) for about nine years during which they snubbed him, asked him to make a short film that they wouldn't provide a budget for, then slapped the film on a DVD and sold it for a profit and gave Jeavons no royalties at all. He was also endlessly overlooked when the yearly group video project was made, which means he wasn't involved with such "films" as Kickassia, Suburban Knights, and To Boldly Flee (which might be a blessing, they range in quality from "holy shit that's awful" to "meh.")

CA is (soon to be was) a content aggregator site featuring all the reviewers Doug Walker and his brother Rob could scrape from YouTube and elsewhere, plus a number of text-only reviewers nobody remembers. Over the last weekend the dam has burst (again) on Twitter with the #ChangetheChannel hashtag and ex-contributors like Allison "Obscurus Lupa" Pregler and Kaylyn "MarzGurl" Saucedo openly dumping things that had been hinted before, like this list:

1. Firing an employee who had worked for them literally every day, including holidays and weekends, because she had to take time off for surgery, then holding her severance hostage to have her sign a contract saying she wouldn’t work for another media site for 2-4 years.

2. Turning a blind eye to sexual harassment until it almost (or actually) got violent.

3. Not compensating people for days of work

4. Not providing food or water for people on their movie sets

5. Trying to force two of their contributors to do a rape/sexual assault scene

6. Spending $90k of viewer money on this:



7. Buying a warehouse “studio” and not bothering to sound dampen it

8. Mass producing and selling prints of an artist’s work without informing or compensating her.

9. Firing someone for making anti-Gamer Gate videos.

10. Mislabeling videos in their queue. Then screaming at any contributors who mentioned the mix-up to fans.

11. Constantly changing scripts for anniversary videos so no one could learn their lines on time.

12. A general Wiseau-esque approach to filmmaking and treatment of cast/crew. Like, just WOW. WOW. RIGHT DOWN TO PEOPLE FAINTING ON SET. THERE WERE EVEN CAMERA SHENANIGANS AND THIS GUY HAS COVERED BOTH THE ROOM AND THE DISASTER ARTIST.

13. Not informing contributors that they’d be “retiring” the Nostalgia Critic character years ago.

14. General mismanagement of footage, videos, resources and staff. And expecting people to do tons of work in basically NO time.

15. Verbally abusing contributors (to the point of tears) for their advertising practices (the ad revenue that some were trying to live on, and practices that they’d eventually engage in, such as mid-rolls) (Keep in mind these people were not paid in anything but “exposure”)

16. Never addressing contributor issues and complaints. Insulting and harassing (female) people who had suggestions/complaints.

17. Shutting down entire sites without forewarning to the contributors.

18. General misogyny towards female talent.

19. Management not being available to site members. (Keep in mind that CA is a full blown corp)

20. This shit.

21. Randomly dropping people for “not posting videos” despite random rule changes and/or the videos simply not being scheduled right on the managers’ end.

22. This shit too. Basically a “prime membership” thing that never produced anything that cost $30 to get “exclusive” videos…. that they mass-released a year later anyways.

23. A general creepy and flippant approach to the characters they wrote.

24. Ignoring the existence and work of contributors who had been there for years, including excluding them from video events directly involving their own extensive work, such as the Don Bluth Special. And using other contributors’ footage in “response” videos without telling them.

Go check the original list out, it has ALL the gory details - S.

And there is this nice long resetera thread.

And people on YouTube are mocking the situation:


....and all of this is an odd deal, because a lot of this had "leaked" before* through places like Encyclopaedia Dramatica and 4chan, but nobody took that seriously because it wasn't presented as journalism, so it could be discounted. The truth is Mike Michaud (CEO of CA) is little more than a scam artist, Doug and Rob have never grown as critics or videomakers, and they never paid any of the "producers" (i.e. the ex-YouTube critics) but they certainly treated them like actual employees. One (Justin Carmical) killed himself, one changed sex, and Noah "Spoony" Antweiler is a total wreck.

Phelous talking about why he left CA, Tumblr post is three years old but honest; he had been involved with the site for six years.

More ancient commentary: T.J. Kirk ("The Amazing Atheist") in 2011 talking about Trailer Failure and how badly managed the place is.

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* The truth about CA has been out there for nearly a decade (things were said about the production of Kickassia in 2010), but it was always mixed with rumor. The fact that the contributors were "paid with exposure" should have been a flashing red light and warning horn to all the fans.

[Strelnikov]

And now there is a Google Docs document full of fans' interactions with the Channel Awesome members at conventions and hoo-boy....


Alan P.: I remember meeting Doug and Rob outside at Anime Nebraskon 2015. They were alone and both on their phones. I had brought my Suburban Knights DVD for CA crew to sign and had a bunch of autographs on the case. I nervously went up to them to get them to sign and say hi, and at first they didn't notice me because I was so shy and quiet. I said hello a little louder, and Doug looked up while Rob still was still texting. Doug smiled and asked what he could do for me, and I said "Hi, been a fan since 2008, can you guys sign my DVD?" Doug said sure, signed it and handed it back. I asked Rob to sign it, and he looked up, said "What's up..." I said "Hi, big fan, could you please sign my DVD?" and he simply replied, "No." Doug looked at Rob and said something like "Aww, come on, man..." And Rob literally looked at Doug and said "Fuck off." Doug apologetically said to me, "Sorry man, you should probably go now." My experience with Doug was fairly positive but Rob was an asshat indeed. Never told that story online till now, pretty disheartening.


Brent: I was once asked to leave one of Doug’s panels because he was filming the audience for a segment in a review. I was told I wasn’t being animated enough and I looked out of place. I didn’t understand what they meant, but they asked a cosplayer from the hall outside to be a seat filler as I was escorted to the back wall.


And here are a bunch of leaked Skype chats posted to Imgur, including the immortal firing of Allison Pregler for not answering Mike Michaud's query within 15 minutes.

(For context Michaud would only "talk" on Skype chat - never by telephone, email, or even fax, and he would only speak to people once a week if even that.)

The following was taken from here:

....If you really want to deep dive into the hacky comedy of Doug Walker, you should check out the thing he believes to be his magnum opus, To Boldly Flee, a remarkably pretentious movie that is somehow longer than Schindler’s List running in at three hours and twenty nine minutes.

To Boldly Flee is the finale of a trilogy of anniversary films directed by Doug. It is a sci-fi epic that takes place almost entirely within Doug’s parents’ basement, and occasionally if we’re lucky, a random field.

It is a movie that is so convoluted in its story that I think if you ran Schindler’s List twice in the background as a timer, I would fail to explain what happens in To Boldly Flee.

It is a movie that clumsily makes extremely heavy-handed political commentary on the SOPA bill and the definition of “fair use,” that then goes on to lift entire pages of script from Star Wars.

It has such little of a handle on any of its cast that instead of viewing the individual material that any of them have made and using it as a basis for their character, the film has each of them dress up as random sci-fi characters like Robocop for no discernible reason, and have that instead be their character.

As such, our supporting cast, the reviewers, are just bodies to pad out the film and make it seem like people actually like Doug.

This is also the movie where the Nostalgia Critic fucking dies. He merges with the “Plot Hole,” his body becoming imbued with blue light, and when he opens his eyes we see that he is pupil-less. All set to a crazy intense Latin chorus.

This is also the same film where Doug runs around in a bad Judge Dredd outfit that can’t keep its helmet on straight.

For a movie that revolves around heady themes like art vs. the artist and the purpose of a critic in this world, it is engaged so little with the people that created it: the twenty or so content producers, and instead focuses on the importance of the Nostalgia Critic.

The individual personalities that they brought into the website and served as its backbone dilute into the one dimension with Doug’s “writing.” These abused artists who were essentially bullied into working for the site by that point, are merely just bodies added to make it seem like people actually like Doug.

The only difference between Nostalgia Critic 2007 and Nostalgia Critic 2018 is that instead of his videos taking place in his parents’ living room, his videos now take place in a remarkably unappealing looking studio.

The studio is additionally the rotting carcass of his short-lived web-series, Demo Reel, that he gave up on the second people started to criticize it.

The thing about Doug is that ever since he started making videos, he has refused to change. Watching his earlier behind-the-scenes videos, you can see that when he “directs” the other actors, he does that shitty thing Charlie Chaplin used to do, which is perform the scene for the actors and make them shoot take after take until they do it exactly as he did. Watching his current behind-the-scenes videos, you can see him still do it.

The entire point of having actors perform for you is so you can collaborate. When you create art, you want new ideas. But with Doug, that isn’t really the case. You end up watching Doug surrounded by Li’l Dougs who were told to act like Big Doug, who over time has become a Li’l Doug to his former Big Dougness.....

Former technical contributor to Channel Awesome and present YouTube alcoholic drinks reviewer talks about his time with the firm:

[Strelnikov]

And the Google document has been released:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZF ... A/preview#

It runs 69 pages.

Find out how they arrogantly were not going to provide food or water on the desert set of Kickassia until Noah Antweiler and Lindsay Ellis told Doug and Rob Walker that even student films have craft service tables!

Hear how administrator Holly Brown was forced to work 365 days a year, then was fired and had to sign a contract barring her from working in "the industry" for three years on pain of forfeiting her severance pay*!

Find out about all the mind games Mike Michaud (CEO) and Mike Ellis did to various producers, including how Ellis allegedly tried to pick up Sean Fausz by text messages calling Fausz "Cupcake."

The internal site hasn't changed in nearly ten years - it's structured around an Icki Sports "Joomla" template! And like Wikipedia, the video backups were all on one drive that crashed in 2010!

Even though he acts like he runs stuff, Doug Walker is little more than "talent" and not really the boss of the place, even though he has been depicted in media as being the Biggest Cheese at Channel Awesome!

Finally, hear how they dodged defending female producers from the GamerGate insanity, and how M. Michaud yelled at Lindsay Ellis for some journalism Dan Olsen (Folding Ideas) had done on Medium concerning child porn on 8chan, because Ellis had put a good word in for Olson to be picked up by CA.

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* Even in a right-to-work state, how is that even fucking legal?

[ericbarbour]

As I said in email: crap like this happens in the corporate world every day. CA is doing a Wikipedia-level shit job of covering it up--if they were Walmart or Goldman Sachs, I guarantee they would have a law firm threatening everyone associated with this complaint into silence the same day.

Need a current example? Look at what happened to Mike Gustavison, the "head of IT Security" at Equifax when they had a major security breach in 2013. (More likely he puffed himself on his LinkedIn and was just a middle manager.) I suspect he was probably fired "for cause" (meaning, not doing his goddamned job), lied on his resume, and was quickly hired -- by Panera Bread. And what happened then?

https://medium.com/@djhoulihan/no-paner ... 078027f815

And that is how you know you're dealing with truly incompetent management. If you don't hear about it in the media, then the management is at least competent enough to attempt to cover it up.

[Strelnikov]

As I said in email: crap like this happens in the corporate world every day. CA is doing a Wikipedia-level shit job of covering it up--if they were Walmart or Goldman Sachs, I guarantee they would have a law firm threatening everyone associated with this complaint into silence the same day.

Need a current example? Look at what happened to Mike Gustavison, the "head of IT Security" at Equifax when they had a major security breach in 2013. (More likely he puffed himself on his LinkedIn and was just a middle manager.) I suspect he was probably fired "for cause" (meaning, not doing his goddamned job), lied on his resume, and was quickly hired -- by Panera Bread. And what happened then?

https://medium.com/@djhoulihan/no-paner ... 078027f815

And that is how you know you're dealing with truly incompetent management. If you don't hear about it in the media, then the management is at least competent enough to attempt to cover it up.

It's amazing that CA/TGWTG is a corporation at all - at most they had six paid people working for the firm when it started, and three of the original executive staff are still around, plus somebody to replace Holly Brown and Doug's two actors (Walker was burned with YouTube copyright claims when he was forced to go back there from Blip.tv and now he re-enacts scenes in his movie reviews instead of using clips). At the most it should have been a LLC, because really all they are doing is pulling a crude SEO trick: "Our Mascot/Founder is Internet Famous, so partner with us and your online material will be promoted and you will Get Internet Famous Too!" It was all lies, because the site was laid out horribly and promoting Doug Walker seemed to be job one. They could get away with this, for a while, because they were the only game in town, but Twitter and Tumblr and other forms of promotion outstripped them, because the site is trapped in 2010. (This happens to large sites as they age; Lileks.com is mostly stuck in 2003*, Wikipedia is permanently in 2009 with a 1999 mentality.) Michaud and the Walkers have not figured out that their business model is untenable, and it will be made untenable as more people hear about their "substandard management practices" to give a business euphemism for all the personal abuse, incompetence, sexual harassment, waste and fraud.

Look at what happened to Mike Gustavison, the "head of IT Security" at Equifax when they had a major security breach in 2013. (More likely he puffed himself on his LinkedIn and was just a middle manager.) I suspect he was probably fired "for cause" (meaning, not doing his goddamned job), lied on his resume, and was quickly hired -- by Panera Bread....And that is how you know you're dealing with truly incompetent management. If you don't hear about it in the media, then the management is at least competent enough to attempt to cover it up.

My view is that cover-ups are just making the problem worse, because it shows contempt for the public. Many times it's not the original breach or crime that does in a perpetrator but the cover-up they run. And when it's an entire government, such as the one in the People's Republic of China which tries to laugh off accidents like the 2015 Tianjin explosion, it utterly corrodes any trust in the state, which is why Bitcoin was used to get money out of China so that middle class people could escape if it all crashes.

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* It was always about nostalgia for 1962, but James Lileks got on a high horse after 9/11 and the Afghan-Iraq wars, so the nostalgia was mixed with bitterness at war protesters, the death of neon signs, the death of the WWII-style "we're in this to win" mentality, and a general loathing of being a 1970s teen.