the-wizard-of-magicland

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

so just to refresh

- we spend real live months with persephone and hades wanting to talk to erebus about the “trade” she made to become queen

- we spend even more time focusing on a sleep dive to meet erebus despite it being clear that’s not going to work

- NUMEROUS characters including metis tell persephone she NEEDS to talk to erebus to figure out what she traded

- we spend two or three weeks on just LOOKING for erebus, putting hecate in harms way

- we do ANOTHER sleep dive which we know won’t work and that kidnaps hades and morpheus

- after all of that! while humans are dying in their millions!

- the plot of finding erebus is thrown away in a cheap joke panel

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they should make a soup that fixes everything. one sip and you are free. one slurp and it all makes sense

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Hey I’m loving all your thoughts on the Watcher situation (I know I personally can’t stop thinking about what a WILD decision this was from them and am glad someone else is staring at the situation like a cat watching a bird outside the window) and now that they posted an actual Response as of like an hour ago, I’m curious to your thoughts on it. It seems like a step in the right direction to me and certainly a walk back from the initial video

hi! yeah-- i posted a full long response which you can find here. to sum up what i said there, it's a good response despite the fumbles. as i've said this whole time, i don't have any ill will towards them and while i'm not going to say "wow! this apology solves everything and we can all just forget the last three days happened!" i think it shows self-awareness and potential for growth, which are both very good signs. i've never been one to see someone mess up and think "i guess they're bad forever now," especially when this really was just a poorly thought-out business decision. when someone shoots themself in the foot i'd rather call an ambulance and sign them up for a gun safety class than let them bleed out on the floor, but idk.

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Images you can a feel

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i still feel a little burned but this could been way worse. owning up takes guts and i respect that.

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Top comments from the update

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so are watcher fans going to apologize for the unreal amounts of racism they projected toward steven or are we going to pretend that was totally normal behavior?

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

Since Watcher will most likely have to break their silence today since they have a live show tomorrow

Heres what i need you to remember

They took this carefully calculated risk. YES i think the backlash was larger than they were expecting but i still think enough people will be paying this streaming service for them to justify it.

I think they will make their bag and go. They do not care that they will probably not grow a new audience. They will simply make their money and go.

They have plenty of people they plan to dig into the pockets of. They said goodbye at the end of the video to people like you and me who value our content and cant justify adding another fucking paid content wall.

They dont need you to support or donate to them anymore, theyre not an indie channel anymore, you aren’t supporting your friends. They are and have been a company. You are supporting a machine that will outgrow you and not care for you. This was a heartless business decision. They do not care what you think. Your money and hours you spent making that money does not matter to them. If you support this subscription based content then you will only get more of it! Put your money and energy where you want the world to go. Yes maybe you can ‘afford it’ but it wont be just Watcher if you show them its successful. Itll soon be all your creators.

If you think they deserve it because they produce TV level content (they claimed it like they are the only ones working really hard with a large team on youtube) may I direct you to Yes Theory(travel/documentary), Corridor Crew(fx/vfx/more), Jazza (art) and so many more people! Who create TV level content and its free (plus ads) and they have a team of people they pay. Go parasocialize with them. Yes theory lovesssss all you parasocial relationship people, they totally fan service people like you.

Lately ive been really into MrBallen, he also has a team of people (as most youtubers do now once a certain level of subs is met), he reads online stories and true crime stories in a digestible storytelling manner.

The proper people visit abandoned places and make urban exploration videos and their content is high quality. As far as i can tell they are still just 2 people running the channel entirely. They also have a cute little dynamic, just homies who explore together. Theres a channel called Shiey where he literally does more extreme urban exploration (train surfing/biking through countrysides and helping animals along the way)

Obviously we love Safiya Nyygard but i also love DownieLive (hes more of a travel blog but he trys a lot of different things plus hes so lovely to watch. Good golden retriever personality)

Thats just to name the ones i frequent/suggest. But there are so many more.

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

i wasn't sure if ppl saying 'shane doesn't seem on board' and going to bat for him harder than ryan and steven was coming from a place of loving their white fav more but yeah i do think it is now.

like ppl have been babying both shane And ryan as if they aren't literally adults and capable of saying 'no' and shutting down a bad decision, but i rly have seen more people coming up to defend shane.

ik he's got a rep for being like 'eat the rich' but imo his 'share your account what are we gonna do?' comment to ME just came across as like. that's what he expects you to do, not that he gave a shit that people wouldn't be able to pay. he knew people wouldn't be able to pay and did noooooot care and just says 'share then lol'. as if that solves the issue at all or is the main reason why people wouldn't want to sub.

and his wife now guilt tripping on here just reinforces it bc there's no way that he and his wife don't share feelings on this. shane didn't care and ppl have a really weird parasocial lowkey white fav thing going on w him. he's no different from ryan and steven and maybe we shouldn't be babying him lol.

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

Here's the thing about Dropout: they had stuff ready by the time the site was announced. The first season of dimension 20 was filmed before Brennan was even officially a collegehumor cast member. They had seasons ready to drop. They had teasers for those shows ready to go. They promised the return of fan favorite Um Actually and Jake and Amir.

Watcher has not done that. They have one possible show and other nebulous ideas but there's no clear reason why I should sign on except they need more money. I don't know what Im getting out of this switch except the same stuff but now 6 dollars. Do you understand what I'm saying

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

Hey idk if this makes the situation worse but

Where they planning on taking a bunch of our community stories and locking them behind a 5.99$ paywall? Was that the plan all along?? Profit off your fans until you drained them of money and ideas?

And they posted this BEFORE the announcement, like they knew people weren't going to want to send in these stories if they were later going to be locked behind a paywall.

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Very intrigued by the amount of people (myself included) who are saying they didn’t like ghost/mystery files as much as buzzfeed unsolved.

Because this means we were sticking around for loyalty. Because we wanted to see Watcher succeed. Not because of “tv level content” or expensive shows or whatever else.

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

i haven’t seen these kinds of proportions outside of a - no i shan’t say

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Why are people acting as if you have to be in the 1% to be considered rich??? That's not how it works. To be rich, you have to gain, per month, at least the double median net worth of households.

In France, if you make 3900€ per month, you are rich. That's not an opinion, it's what Insee (the French national institute of economic statistics studies) label as rich right now. Yes, the USA and France have a different cost of living, but I am pretty certain that the guys each makes more than the double median net worth of USAmerican households, I can say they make more than the equivalent of 4000€ per months.

Fellas, y'all just have a fucked view of what being rich is in the USA, y'all think one needs to make 2 millions per year to be rich (from this study). That's more than TWENTY times the median net worth of USAmerican households.

From the "eat the rich" country (and, actually, the people sang "kill the rich"), the guillotine country, I'm telling you, those guys are rich. And also, they weirdly proudly displaying the luxuries they can afford, the "eat the rich" they throw around is like a protection, it doesn’t sound genuine (see: Voidzilla's video where he cringes when Ryan says "Eat the rich" before showing off his brand new Nike proudly)

And let's not talk about y'all calling their videos, where they get drunk and read ghosts' stories from the internet, "art".

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

sometime yesterday people on reddit figured out that the new watcher entertainment platform is not a website they have full creative control over (as implied in their video) but instead is from Vimeo OTT. this is why their new platform looks identical to dropout's. vimeo very likely just has a couple templates you pick from and they picked the same one.

this is FASCINATING to me for a few reasons:

it's not unusual for a company to obfuscate how their new web product is built out. "we're using vimeo's content paywall platform" is not nearly as impressive of a statement as "we're launching our own subscription service." this decision sometimes blows up in a company's face though. in this instance, being more candid about the process probably would have helped to mitigate the blowback, because vimeo could have been pinned by the audience as the evil scapegoat company and people wouldn't be feeling stupid when they create accounts and realize all the videos are hosted on vimeo. it also explains why they encouraged password sharing but their subs limit playing videos on more than three devices. it's just a function of the platform they don't control and didn't think about it when they said that.

i really wonder if they made this decision entirely on their own, or if vimeo has recruiters out there trying to make their platform bigger. obviously the watcher guys are responsible for this decision either way, but it sure would explain a lot about why they jumped to this solution to make more money if they had someone at vimeo pitching it to them.

how fucking funny is it that they posted a dramatic "goodbye youtube" video talking about wanting more control and wanting their own special platform just to go to youtube's direct competitor. lol

[the-wizard-of-magicland]

[Before anyone says anything, yes I have a life. I just happen to be an autistic person in STEM so I love stats and any excuse to do an analysis I'm there.]

So let's see how "affordable" $5.99 is a month in the US and then around the world...

[Post comparing Watcher Entertainment's 5.99 US Dollar monthly subscription to different world currencies and what they mean in terms of food (example used is a standard loaf of bread).]

All conversions are correct as of:

US Dollar

According to the United States Department of Labor website in March 2024 a loaf of bread is, on average, $2.00. So that's three loaves of bread for one month's subscription.

Pound Sterling

(My home currency)

According to the Office of National Statistics in March 2024 a loaf of bread is, on average, £1.39 a loaf. So that is three and a half loaves per monthly Watcher subscription price.

Australian Dollars

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2023 a loaf of bread, on average, was $4.04. So that is two loaves of bread per monthly subscription.

Canadian Dollars

According to this living costs and moving website in March 2024 a loaf of bread, on average, cost $3.02. So that is just over two and a half loaves per monthly subscription.

Indian Rupees

According to The Times of India in September 2023 a loaf of bread, on average, costs Rs 38. That is THIRTEEN loaves of bread per monthly subscription. THIRTEEN!

Euros

So as Euros are used in various European countries I've picked the country with the highest GDP (Germany) and the country with the lowest GDP (Malta), that both use Euros.

In Germany, a loaf of bread costs €1.91 in 2024 according to this cost of living website. That is three loaves of bread per monthly subscription.

In Malta, a loaf of bread costs €0.94 according to this cost of living website. That is SIX loaves of bread per monthly subscription.

I'm not going to make any conclusions. You can all make your own 😅