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The Fall of [Channel Awesome]
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I wonder if it's written into Doug's contract that he can't say anything even vaguely disparaging about CA, which could be likely if this Mike guy saw this as an opportunity to play dictator over a cash cow.
But it's equally likely Doug was happy to overlook abuse if doing otherwise would hurt his slice of the pie.
There's also a strong component that comes from the desperation for success and popularity that we've ingrained into people. We have a sub-group of men who will sexually assault women, and then we have a sub-group of women (and men)who are desperately seeking fame and recognition and willing to do whatever to achieve it. Everything I've seen shows that the men start out exploiting women who feel they are getting a 'good deal' out of the transaction, the non sexually assaulting men become complicit and hide the truth so as to not rock the boat, and then the sexual assaulters just move on to women who are too afraid to complain. Then the dam breaks when the intimidation fails, and one of those women raises the red flag on the whole thing.
He's mentioned before that he wanted to move on to actual acting, which was the point of the Demo Reel, but the sad truth is that he just isnt all that remarkable as an actor, we watched him because he talked about pop culture and was funny while doing it for the most part. Without the Critic, he's a bald, middle aged mediocrity. Thats probably a really bitter pill to swallow.
Same here. Honestly just doing the occasional Vlog instead of doing elaborate skits around existing movies would probably be the best for him. Him shooting the breeze while re-telling his D&D days would be fine. He is a good raconteur or teller of tall tales. Some people like Lindsay thrive on in-depth analysis, but Noah works best on just riffing on what he liked and hated about something.
I watched the Noah/Spoony Vid posted earlier.... Its pretty good, but man Lord Kat is a dick. Like full on asshole dick with little else to show for it. He comes of worse then Noah when he criticizes him. Spending a solid minute calling him a loser outright left me thinking "well, if Noah is such a loser, what does that say about you that all you can do is spend time calling him a loser on a podcast he probably doesn't even listen too"?
Ehhh... it's not like he is untalented. He and Rob do come up with funny stuff, and he could set himself apart with the right director/motivation. Or maybe not, maybe he prefers being behind the camera. The point is, we don't know. Like.. I know the Game Grumps take acting classes, improv classes, vocal classes.. they are constantly working to better their craft. I'm not sure if Doug and Rob do the same - which is a shame, as Chicago has a very strong acting and comedy history!
But again, we don't know, because we haven't heard Doug's side of all this yet.
I guess, but what defence could he possibly have? "Sorry you got raped, but I didnt want to face the consequences for my poor decisions"?
I don't see any merit in bringing his appearance into this
Wait he raped somebody? That wasn't what I got from all this at all.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of documentation of bad behavior (not paying people) by management, and poor taste (lots of very poor sex jokes) by the creative team but the major problem seems to have been bad business practices. Have their been rape allegations?
The Critic himself doesnt seem to have done anything than ignore complaints, but from what I understand, there's been atleast two sexual assault claims.
But a lot of the complaints seem to relate to all the members of the channel being isolated and effectively working alone with little contact with anyone other than 'HQ', which clearly provided Mike Michaud the greatest opportunity to assault and exploit freely. But those very complaints would indicate that 'influential' members of the channel didn't really spend any time interacting with the supporting cast and mean it would be very easy for Doug to not know about it.
No one, to my knowledge, has made claims of Mike Michaud being a sexual predator. The closest was Mike Ellis (another former owner) being extremely creepy to a producer, and the information that has come out about Channel Awesome.
I want to put as much weight as possible on the victim's testimony as possible given the nature of the allegations. There's no reason to spread misinformation.
Very few creative types want to be management, but I really wish fewer people would sign over their lifes work to passing grifters.
He’s low level management with enough power to be a deciding vote on firing people. This is the type of situation where staying silent had the same effect as enabling the bad guys because he supported the status quo over his staff’s safety. Which would be in character for him over less serious things from multiple accounts.
Eh. I don't want to make a huge thing over this, but I don't agree accusation of misconduct should lead to firing. I've been in that situation and it's no fun or good at all. I don't have all the pieces here, but if the current understanding is that Doug is culpable because he should have fired someone accused of sexual misconduct, than I disagree. Accusation should be only one half of the process.
We have plenty of pieces, a big problem is that CA isn't talking and when they do they are really bad about it*. They are the only reason Jewwario got outed as the rapist to the public, for example, and under better circumstances this may have been laudable except they screwed that up enough that got victims identified and harassed.
If even half of what the accusations are true doing nothing about problematic staff and management is why CA imploded as it did. Not to mention this isn't solely one person, this is numerous people with similar or identical accounts.
I implore you to research this further, rather than shutting down at the mere thought of anyone accusing people of something. Also keep in mind all the accusers wanted was an apology, they're not being taken to court over this.
Doug is the face of CA, management and the director on the specials - all of which are big responsibilities which he is alleged to have bungled on multiple accounts and then there's the general leadership vacuum CA had which he was fine to participate in.
This is ERod, a minor player at CA, who backs up the leadership style of CA (and this is ignoring the big issues like with Jewario, and Holly, their PR lady - which is a clusterfuck in itself which ended in Doug being the final vote to fire her just after she had surgery). He had to rely on Linkara, a fellow contributor for guidance and support for too long, and Linkara isn't even management.
To explore further then the document in my OP, search You Tube for more detailed accounts like Marzgurl and other ex-CA contributors, like Guru Larry, who vary in the cliques within CA, as well as ideology.
What I don't get is why you assumed you were in his position immediately and sided with him when you had a neutral stance and could look at everything to judge for yourself. Of course, if you were in his exact position I'm not exactly going to sympathise with your position since Doug was alleged to be involved in shitty business practices at minimum.
* which includes Doug's own statements and the hired guns like Tamara and Malcolm who are defending CA on platforms like twitter
Here's Tamara's and Malcolm's twitters for their perspective.
So I think the controversy has ended because, well, what else can happen? The Nostalgia Critic to vanish entirely? Someone from Channel Awesome offering a sincere apology? I think those are unrealistic expectations.