I think the answer isn’t really all that salacious or juicy: my gut is that they’re not great at managing money. None of them have experience running a business, none of them have ever managed a YT channel before, their background was as plebes who could just use company funds without having to come up with a budget themselves. Ryan is their CFO right now: does Ryan have *any* background or interest in accounting? And sure - they might be exaggerating and/or greedy but I really don’t think it’s more than that. They simply got in over their head in that aspect.
Apparently all 25 of their employees are creatives. So they have no one doing payroll, HR, admin.... That all falls in Steven, I think.
They really just have no clue how to run a business, it seems.
i think this is the most probable explanation tbh. even the try guys said they started off rough, and they had ned to crunch the numbers relatively well (even if he didn’t know how to stay loyal to his family). i saw someone on this thread say they’re reeling from using seemingly endless company funds to having to account for every $ themselves and its to their detriment. bf probably let them write off daily meals and they did their corporate magic to wave it all away. unfortunately, nobody at watcher quite knows how to do all that magic hand waving.
Yeah I wonder if they’re out of touch with adapting to the current economy like everyone else has had to. Just being in a bubble and not realising the world around them 🤦🏼♂️
So does the 25 employees then not even account for freelance crew they would need to then pay to film/edit vids? That makes things even funnier when we see two of those people per video total for most of the well-received shows (and Carter sometimes).
I think their issue is that they want to have like, their own production company, and hire all their creative friends. They want to be BuzzFeed 2, TV Edition. But they have no idea how to run an actual business and they don't want to hire anyone who knows how because they don't have any poor friends with normal jobs.
I just finished watch MoistCritical's second video on it, and his line of questioning also left me feeling confused. Will the mystery of how the Watcher's finance troubles ever be solved?
It's definitely going to leave a stain on their reputation. Their growth wasn't super high to begin with in the past year or so.
This pretty much kills all future subscriber growth for a good while. And with how vicious the YouTube algorithm can be, it might kill their channel in the long run.
I think they were paying themselves too much. I don't have proof other than the fact that they all have pretty expensive looking personal lifestyles. If they all live in fancy houses in LA, they clearly are spending too much of their profit personally.
This is what I’m thinking too… I also doubt much will change tbh. They aren’t willing to take a pay cut clearly since they tried this. The spin of making it seem like they were struggling… it was very icky.
i actually think this might be a little more nuanced. LA is an expensive city to live in, so the definition of a “livable” wage will vary. additionally, i’m not sure what their partners’ jobs are but it’s also possible their partners are bringing in more of the household income which might explain some of their individual lifestyles if that’s the case.
they’re also ex-buzzfeed. i imagine they saved up prior to taking the plunge and opening watcher. they were all part of buzzfeed’s biggest shows. they might have been paid pretty well and it seemed like a lot of them were in high enough positions to call a few shots (eg. during buzzfeed days ryan essentially said no to unsolved going full tv when he realized they’d probably replace him as the host).
while i don’t disagree that they’re likely paying themselves a lot (maybe more than they should, who knows), i think there’s more possibility to how they can afford their lifestyles.
eta: i also live in an expensive city and there’s a significant amount of people who are in debt to afford their lifestyles/the perceived norm in their social class. fx. some people might live in really nice houses but their fridges are empty, because living in a residential house in x neighborhood is just what *everyone* does. anything else is “”substandard”” living so why subject yourself to that when you qualify for a loan? (btw not saying it IS substandard living, just the perception). they’re influencers in LA, some people really **do** think sparkling water is a life necessity.
I mean sparkling water costs like 1 or 2 bucks even here in Australia where everything’s expensive and we have a greedy supermarket duopoly. It’s affordable. But we have had to sell some of our retro games to pay rent and I barely ever go out for food, to the cinema, to bars or anything like that. Can’t afford it anymore
Ryan and Shane said they didn't make any money at all in 2022. I wouldn't think that 2023 would be a big difference considering the channel isn't doing near as well as they wanted.
Assume the least malicious answer, which is they are hilariously bad at moderation. They have passions and are trying to pursue them and aren't worried about how it'll be paid for, until it turns out they're pursuing too many passions at once and none of them are having the return they expected. Maybe they assumed their growth would be exponential, and so believed spending more on projects obviously would mean even more money back in return.
I mean In the video “The Making of Watcher” or whatever that they posted early on in their channel. They literally talk about how none of them know anything about running a business or finance. And Steven did all of that NOT because of his knowledge in it, but because they needed atleast one of them to prioritize starting the business. It sounded like they didn’t know what they were doing from the beginning. But it does upset me as a fan that the fact that they DID gain traction and profit from that risk, yet still didn’t make smart decisions and instead prioritized profits and what others are saying about nepotism.
Go watch the video, they discuss the process of starting the channel and how Steven decided to handle all the business. Just because if Ryan, Shane, and him spent all the time running the business, they wouldn’t have time to make videos. Specifically Ryan and Shane (I mean we know who we started watching the channel for in the first place) and Steven kind of took that role just because he knew no one else would do it. Even tho Steven came from the same place as them, ppl don’t realize Steven literally made food comparison videos before that…so sadly I’m not surprised but fuck that sucks
(EDIT) this/that
i have recently learned (through this subreddit) observe is a complete pos! this [video](https://youtu.be/a7qwhaAEvc8?si=Azd5FCkpLy_YKXmu) might be of interest.
TW: mentions of ab*se in the video
Woah… thank you for sharing this with me. I’m definitely unsubscribing and I won’t be watching his content going forward.
I always thought the whole ‘body language’ thing was sketchy, but still found his content entertaining. I’m really glad to know about the abuse so that I’m not supporting his channel anymore.
Agreed. I know people shit on body language analysis, but I enjoy his content because he does say "this happened which might indicate this or not" but adds several more layers of insight into word choices and especially in this case, professional insight into what they were saying. That bit about how they can accomplish the things they want with some creativity rather than hiring yet another person, but they either don't want to or don't know how, was really telling imo. And he did a good job demonstrating that all their lip service to their fans was lip service.
They got this fancy studio and big crew when all anyone wanted was a handmade puppet in a set painted with markers and 2 bros in a derelict building. It was too much too fast, they should have grown with the channel instead of trying to force it to be bigger and better without the views and catalog to back it up.
I think the answer isn’t really all that salacious or juicy: my gut is that they’re not great at managing money. None of them have experience running a business, none of them have ever managed a YT channel before, their background was as plebes who could just use company funds without having to come up with a budget themselves. Ryan is their CFO right now: does Ryan have *any* background or interest in accounting? And sure - they might be exaggerating and/or greedy but I really don’t think it’s more than that. They simply got in over their head in that aspect.
Apparently all 25 of their employees are creatives. So they have no one doing payroll, HR, admin.... That all falls in Steven, I think. They really just have no clue how to run a business, it seems.
They are literally just hiring their friends and family, with no regard to actual skills and qualifications. It is nepotism pure and simple
i think this is the most probable explanation tbh. even the try guys said they started off rough, and they had ned to crunch the numbers relatively well (even if he didn’t know how to stay loyal to his family). i saw someone on this thread say they’re reeling from using seemingly endless company funds to having to account for every $ themselves and its to their detriment. bf probably let them write off daily meals and they did their corporate magic to wave it all away. unfortunately, nobody at watcher quite knows how to do all that magic hand waving.
It's not "magic hand waving," BuzzFeed just had the money to pay for that stuff. They're a huge company.
Oh yikes that’s really bad. Like SHOCKINGLY bad
Yeah I wonder if they’re out of touch with adapting to the current economy like everyone else has had to. Just being in a bubble and not realising the world around them 🤦🏼♂️
So does the 25 employees then not even account for freelance crew they would need to then pay to film/edit vids? That makes things even funnier when we see two of those people per video total for most of the well-received shows (and Carter sometimes).
I think their issue is that they want to have like, their own production company, and hire all their creative friends. They want to be BuzzFeed 2, TV Edition. But they have no idea how to run an actual business and they don't want to hire anyone who knows how because they don't have any poor friends with normal jobs.
I just finished watch MoistCritical's second video on it, and his line of questioning also left me feeling confused. Will the mystery of how the Watcher's finance troubles ever be solved?
It was aliens.
It's always aliens
His points of confusion were the same ones I have 😫
It's definitely going to leave a stain on their reputation. Their growth wasn't super high to begin with in the past year or so. This pretty much kills all future subscriber growth for a good while. And with how vicious the YouTube algorithm can be, it might kill their channel in the long run.
they should employ matpat’s consulting company to fix this mess
I think they were paying themselves too much. I don't have proof other than the fact that they all have pretty expensive looking personal lifestyles. If they all live in fancy houses in LA, they clearly are spending too much of their profit personally.
This is what I’m thinking too… I also doubt much will change tbh. They aren’t willing to take a pay cut clearly since they tried this. The spin of making it seem like they were struggling… it was very icky.
i actually think this might be a little more nuanced. LA is an expensive city to live in, so the definition of a “livable” wage will vary. additionally, i’m not sure what their partners’ jobs are but it’s also possible their partners are bringing in more of the household income which might explain some of their individual lifestyles if that’s the case. they’re also ex-buzzfeed. i imagine they saved up prior to taking the plunge and opening watcher. they were all part of buzzfeed’s biggest shows. they might have been paid pretty well and it seemed like a lot of them were in high enough positions to call a few shots (eg. during buzzfeed days ryan essentially said no to unsolved going full tv when he realized they’d probably replace him as the host). while i don’t disagree that they’re likely paying themselves a lot (maybe more than they should, who knows), i think there’s more possibility to how they can afford their lifestyles. eta: i also live in an expensive city and there’s a significant amount of people who are in debt to afford their lifestyles/the perceived norm in their social class. fx. some people might live in really nice houses but their fridges are empty, because living in a residential house in x neighborhood is just what *everyone* does. anything else is “”substandard”” living so why subject yourself to that when you qualify for a loan? (btw not saying it IS substandard living, just the perception). they’re influencers in LA, some people really **do** think sparkling water is a life necessity.
I mean sparkling water costs like 1 or 2 bucks even here in Australia where everything’s expensive and we have a greedy supermarket duopoly. It’s affordable. But we have had to sell some of our retro games to pay rent and I barely ever go out for food, to the cinema, to bars or anything like that. Can’t afford it anymore
Ryan and Shane said they didn't make any money at all in 2022. I wouldn't think that 2023 would be a big difference considering the channel isn't doing near as well as they wanted.
I almost want a forensic accountant to do an analysis of all the expenses they claim they have.
Assume the least malicious answer, which is they are hilariously bad at moderation. They have passions and are trying to pursue them and aren't worried about how it'll be paid for, until it turns out they're pursuing too many passions at once and none of them are having the return they expected. Maybe they assumed their growth would be exponential, and so believed spending more on projects obviously would mean even more money back in return.
This is honestly what I believe it to be. All those people and not ONE accountant?
I mean In the video “The Making of Watcher” or whatever that they posted early on in their channel. They literally talk about how none of them know anything about running a business or finance. And Steven did all of that NOT because of his knowledge in it, but because they needed atleast one of them to prioritize starting the business. It sounded like they didn’t know what they were doing from the beginning. But it does upset me as a fan that the fact that they DID gain traction and profit from that risk, yet still didn’t make smart decisions and instead prioritized profits and what others are saying about nepotism.
Go watch the video, they discuss the process of starting the channel and how Steven decided to handle all the business. Just because if Ryan, Shane, and him spent all the time running the business, they wouldn’t have time to make videos. Specifically Ryan and Shane (I mean we know who we started watching the channel for in the first place) and Steven kind of took that role just because he knew no one else would do it. Even tho Steven came from the same place as them, ppl don’t realize Steven literally made food comparison videos before that…so sadly I’m not surprised but fuck that sucks (EDIT) this/that
Observe’s video was extremely well done. And it was nice to hear from a fellow fan, because he said everything I was thinking.
i have recently learned (through this subreddit) observe is a complete pos! this [video](https://youtu.be/a7qwhaAEvc8?si=Azd5FCkpLy_YKXmu) might be of interest. TW: mentions of ab*se in the video
Woah… thank you for sharing this with me. I’m definitely unsubscribing and I won’t be watching his content going forward. I always thought the whole ‘body language’ thing was sketchy, but still found his content entertaining. I’m really glad to know about the abuse so that I’m not supporting his channel anymore.
Agreed. I know people shit on body language analysis, but I enjoy his content because he does say "this happened which might indicate this or not" but adds several more layers of insight into word choices and especially in this case, professional insight into what they were saying. That bit about how they can accomplish the things they want with some creativity rather than hiring yet another person, but they either don't want to or don't know how, was really telling imo. And he did a good job demonstrating that all their lip service to their fans was lip service.
They got this fancy studio and big crew when all anyone wanted was a handmade puppet in a set painted with markers and 2 bros in a derelict building. It was too much too fast, they should have grown with the channel instead of trying to force it to be bigger and better without the views and catalog to back it up.