The downfall of TGWTG or Channel Awesome

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@Angrybrony  
I don’t think they were in on any of the management.
 
But I do know that one CTC member knew about said rapist, and said nothing, but pretended she was innocent in the matter.
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@Ebalosus  
I wouldn’t necessarily say Channel Awesome “came out relatively unscathed.” They were one of the biggest reviewing communities in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but now they’ve lost pretty much all of their contributors except Doug Walker and Brad Jones. Luckily for them, Doug has always been the main draw of Channel Awesome, so his presence has managed to keep them somewhat afloat.
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@Background Pony #BC65
 
Correct on both accounts. The problem with CTC is that it came too late to do any real damage, as TGWTG was just coasting by since about the time Allison and Phelan left, and the people who joined after 2014 were by-and-large already established thus weren’t impacted either way by TGWTG reverting back to well, more-or-less TGWTG.
 
Did the upper management and Doug and Rob do some pretty shitty things? Yes, without a doubt. Were they as bad at CTC attested? No. Why? Because they lied. We know they lied about things like catering because in one of the behind-the-scenes videos for Kickassia, you can clearly see and hear Bhargov asking people what they’d like to eat, and how they should drink a lot of provided water given that they’re in the desert. People on Kiwifarms have also dig up claims that CTC encouraged Dr Gonzo to lie about him not being allowed to do a memorial video for Mormon Mario.
 
As was said at the time by critics of TGWTG, nobody is innocent there, and the two or so years since have shown that to be correct.
 
Doug et al have weathered the storm pretty well, and are in a good if not very expansive place. Lindsay, Todd, and Joe are successful in their endeavours and have quite comfortably left TGWTG behind. Lewis, Allison, Marzgurl, and E-Rod are however shackled to both TGWTG and CTC, and are stuck in its shadow.
 
Lewis is middling and is trapped by AT4W by his own choosing, and the more that time passes, the more he comes across as the Doug that CTC proported Doug to be. Allison, Marzgurl, and E-Rod are essentially moribund online career-wise, and are involved in their own controversies. My advice to them would be to get the fuck over whatever TGWTG did to them, and move on, because them bringing it up make them out to be the bad ones, not Doug, Brad, or Rob.
The Glim Glam
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@Ebalosus
 
That would the case, but Allison really loves to continue holding onto the CTC past. Honestly, I do hope Lewis decides to either:
 
  1. Take time off from AT4W because despite his insistence, it’s obvious doing the show for so long without breaks is mentally draining, and while he isn’t uber financial like let’s say…let’s players, it should be feasible enough for him to take at best a month off.
     
  2. As much as he wouldn’t want to, just retire the AT4W format and just be a normal comic reviewer. I feel that without the whole “Linakra” persona, he’d still present his criticisms in a relatively respectful and well spoken matter.
     
    At the end of the day, the whole CTC fiasco boils down to people wanting to relieve grievences against CA, but as stated, a bit too late and the only thing it did was cause a shit ton of people to leave and Doug to now be considered a joke, even with a fanbase. At most, everyone sees the movement more as Allison’s beef with Doug and now Brad considering the fallout they had.
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@Angrybrony
 
Basically Lewis jump and sided with Allison when she and Brad had their nasty fall out. I can’t remember the details but I know a part of it was Brad being overall done with the whole “Change the Channel” stuff.
HeadlessHorselessHorseman

@Ebalosus  
What’s weird is how totally unaffected Phelous has been by this whole thing. Like, whatever he’s doing to maintain that level of inner peace he apparently has, more people should do it.
 
If I had to guess, maybe his months-long hiatus between Jacob’s Ladder and Aladdin: The Adventure of All Time way back in 2013 was a sign that Channel Awesome drama was weighing on him, but even then, I can’t say for sure.
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@The Glim Glam
 
As I said on page 173, Lewis doesn’t have to abandon AT4W entirely, just scale it back to either three times a month or fortnightly, and introduce something else into that opened up time slot. That’s what James Rolfe has done, as did Doug Walker for a time when he brought back the NC*. His mate Charles Sonnenberg (SF Debris) has also successfully done that.
 
For all the people who have done that, it’s given them a hell of a lot of flexibility going forward, and has allowed them to both retain their core audience and grow it through coverage of other, possibly unrelated, media.
 
No one doubts Lewis’s work ethic, but like quite a few others, I feel he could be a bit smarter in its application.
 
*(He seems to have stopped that, but it’s more of a soft differentiation where one week will be skit-heavy, and the other light on skits)
 
@HeadlessHorselessHorseman
 
That’s because Phelan left TGWTG back in 2015, thus his grievances end there.
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@The Glim Glam  
Erod similarly is another person who can’t let it go. One of his more recent videos even feature a “gag” (and I use that term very loosely) where he blows up a Channel Awesome satellite.
 
 
@Ebalosus  
I don’t know much about kiwifarms (mainly because I refuse to touch that site) but I have heard about some of the shit they’ve done on Deadhorseexchange (and have posted on there).  
That’s where I learned about some of the shit Allison and co. did last year, including mocking the deaths of both Brad’s father in law and cat.
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@The Glim Glam
 
From what we can gather, he’s operating under the old system of if you don’t produce known product constantly, then you’ll go under financially. Given that Patreon is his main source of income, that paradigm doesn’t really apply.
 
If his fans really are the ones holding him to said paradigm, then it’s his damn fault for cultivating such a fanbase to begin with! All it does is lock him into a niche that is self-fulfilling where he can’t change because that would damage his income, but can’t grow because he can’t change.
 
Very few would begrudge SF Debris for cutting back on Trek reviews, which has allowed him to review other properties, much to the delight of his fans, and has increased his audience thanks to that.
 
@Background Pony #7FB7
 
While I understand the notoriety that Kiwifarms has, their coverage of TGWTG alumni post-CTC has been very on-the-money, with a lot of what I’ve discussed here being gleamed from conversations the denizens there have had.
 
It’s thanks to them that I learned that Lewis was only artificially a ‘big member’ of the site due to the management wanting a “comics guy” as an anchor, and his actual viewing numbers were actually quite low, for example.
 
It also helps that they’ve got insiders there that can fill us in on what said alumni were really like and not what CTC says they’re like.
 
@The Glim Glam
 
I actually have a lot of sympathy for E-Rod, as I feel he got a raw deal by a lot of the people at TGWTG, not just the Chicago boys. Where my sympathy ends is where he doesn’t realise that the likes of Sad Panda, Sean Fauze, and I believe one other were against his addition to the site, and were subsequently very cold towards him; yet E-Rod persists in thinking that the Chicago boys were the only villains there. It’s unsurprising that him and Allison are closer because of CTC, since many other alumni don’t have (or don’t want) much to do with either.
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@Ebalosus
 
I really do hope Lewis begins to expand, he definitely can do it, especially with his retrospective skills.
 
As for Erod, I do have sympathy for the guy, so it surprises me that so many people (Kiwifarms especially) do nothing but shit on him and go after him but never really explain what the issue with him is.
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@The Glim Glam  
@Angrybrony
 
They aren’t that comparatively harsh if you know how they’re saying what they’re saying. The main issue they have with him is the goofy aspect ratio of his videos, and how he just isn’t that good.
HeadlessHorselessHorseman

That’s because Phelan left TGWTG back in 2015, thus his grievances end there.
 
So did Lupa, but her grievances definitely didn’t. To be fair, she’s calmer now than she was a year or two ago, but things were bad for a long time. And yet, all that drama just passed Phelous by, including the fallout with Brad Jones, which is amazing. I mean, maybe he made a tweet or two about it that I haven’t seen, but as far as I can tell, there was nothing remotely like the shitstorm that went down between Jones and the rest of Change the Channel.
 
Speaking of SadPanda, it’s interesting how well he and Michaud got on, compared to everyone else. He’s stood by Change the Channel as far as I know, but for whatever reason, he avoided the abuse that the others got.
TenaciousDreamer2nd

I saw a post from Lewis where someone was rightfully calling him out on sticking up for his scummy friends despite confirmed lies they’ve made and he proceeds to call that person full of crap and shows he’s completely cool with the shit they did.
 
I can’t believe I actually used to defend that asshole.
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@TenaciousDreamer2nd
 
Lewis’s problem is unfortunately being heavily bias with dicksucking up to Lupa and pals.
 
While I can sort of GET sticking with them because any of us can do so to friends (I myself do this with someone considered hated in the fandom), there has to come a time when you can’t. And with Lupa, it’s just not possible.
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@The Glim Glam
 
Yeah, there’s a time if someone starts acting too toxic it may be best to cut ties with them. I’ve seen some people start cutting ties with someone like MAP for example.
 
Hell, I once stuck up for DSP of all people.
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@HeadlessHorselessHorseman
 
That seems to be the general consensus from a lot of the non-American TGWTG alumni, because I believe Film Brain, Welshy, and MikeJ (UK), Benzaie (France), or Suede (NZ) had any major negative run-ins with Michaud. I guess that because they were foreigners, it was more a case of easy-come easy-go as far as he was concerned, thus didn’t need to be as managerial with them since they weren’t as important as the American talent.
 
(By “American” I mean North-American in this context)
 
@TenaciousDreamer2nd
 
I wouldn’t feel too bad, because even I up until relatively recently still operated under the auspices that he was one of the good ones who just wanted to be helpful and friendly with everyone, even if he had his moments and quirks.
 
When I really think about it, I have marginally more respect for Lupa, because despite her behaviour and her complaints, at least they come from a somewhat genuine place, whereas Lewis nowadays comes across as very two-faced.
 
Remember that it’s only recently that Lewis started being very anti-TGWTG. He originally left in solidarity with CTC, not necessarily because he thought TGWTG was irredeemable.
HeadlessHorselessHorseman

@Ebalosus  
What has Linkara done that’s especially two-faced, though? Has he been beefing hard with Brad Jones or something?
 
I mean, I don’t keep up with his Twitter feed or him in general (stopped watching AT4W years ago, and I was one of the few who was a bit more interested in the storylines than the comic reviews), but I can see a plausible trajectory where he starts out following CTC out of solidarity and gradually becomes more and more disgusted by TGTWG as times goes on, especially if he doesn’t really believe all the stories about CTC’s subsequent actions. Like, you can start out as a moderate dissenter and turn into a radical over time.
 
And if I’m being honest, Jones in particular hasn’t really covered himself in glory when he does speak on the subject; he’s cagey, and the gradual exodus of people like Brian Lewis from his creative circle does make me wonder if there’s something brewing under the surface. I don’t want there to be, but I can’t say for certain.
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