How To Turn Your Audience Against You - The Woes of Watcher | TRO

How To Turn Your Audience Against You - The Woes of Watcher | TRO

Introduction - 0:00
The Dynamic Duo - 8:12
Leaving Buzzfeed - 13:11
Create Stuff - 18:37
Watcher World - 24:35
2024 - 30:24
Why Not? - 35:43
Everyone Disliked That - 43:53
The Backtrack - 50:12
Business Strategy - 57:17
The Third Man - 1:03:33
Inspiration - 1:10:16
Just Business - 1:16:28
Unsolved - 1:23:28

Success on YouTube, it’s never meant to last forever.

YouTube is an inherently unpredictable platform, whose model makes it very hard for creators to necessarily predict their success. With the rise of “YouTuber” as a cultural phenomenon, there are more and more people who say they know how it all works from the inside, and that if you just listen to them you’ll have a million swooning subscribers in no time at all. This then beckons the question: if the formula to success is so identifiable, why do so many channels that seemed designed to exploit those formulae eventually fail?

For every TikTok from a virality coach revealing the secrets to blowing up on social media, very few will tell you what happens after: whether it takes minutes, or decades even, people lose interest. We are always evolving, or devolving as humans, and the content that you or I watched five years ago will often hardly resemble the content that is watched today. Although possible, a very miniscule amount of channels can consistently reap the benefits of an evolving landscape. When you establish an audience with a certain brand of content, the algorithm is always going to be associating you with that, and deviation from that route can often backfire.

To YouTube it just seems simpler to promote channels that are creating new content that might reach a new audience. It doesn’t matter who did it first, it’s about who can create the most views for YouTube right now. There are exceptions in genres where loyalty is more rewarding to the human brain, however, many genres do not even have the benefit of that, they are always needing to find new ways to keep an audience entertained, and in a world where media is becoming increasingly frantic yet disposable to many audiences this quandary only becomes more and more pertinent to those trying to maintain internet relevance, especially when the content they’re creating is already at the point of market saturation.

The “mystery” genre on YouTube is probably one of the most relevant examples of this… people have always been interested in strange occurrences and seemingly supernatural events that simply can’t be explained away by the lay person, with many TV shows and even channels being set up around this premise, but its inroads to YouTube were a bit more gradual than other genres, I think at least partly because it required an atmosphere that felt too high production for much of the early era of YouTube which instead mostly veered towards crude alternatives like creepypastas. However, in the last decade, as YouTube has embraced its role as the alternative to television, many creators have filled that gap, with one network in particular seeming to make the most of the pivot towards higher budget higher production content.

Sometimes I feel that Buzzfeed receives more mentions than it should on this channel, but make no mistake, their impact on YouTube as a whole should not be understated. In the early 2010s, while YouTube was making that transition to supporting more professional content, Buzzfeed effectively backed and oversaw multiple successful series which struck the balance between glossy well-produced content, and a compelling personality-driven approach to said content that simultaneously set it apart from many TV shows, and YouTube channels alike. At the heart of this campaign was one of their most successful projects: a mystery channel by the name of Buzzfeed Unsolved.

[TheRightOpinion]

EDITING CREDITS / REFERENCES:



Check out the editors:












Project manager:


Post editing:


Sponsor:


Sound:


Thumbnail:




Outro:


Artist credits: 

Artist Credits (if your art appears here please email me, I will be updating the art crediting system soon so there will be visual credits as well):















- Special thanks to my Patrons:

Andrea Lake, AshanteRose, Caitlin Dinger, CaptainBunnicula, David, JoYKiLL, Judy Ko, Mama Pizza, Mandy with a Why, Mia, Natasha Gray, onixiracri, Orkfighta, RistrettoEva, Sasori Akasuna, Serena Stueber, Silvia, soph, tiredglow, Xiao Tong Kong

$5 Patrons:

_xxa.o.mxx_, Charlotte Purnell, CJ the Boi, Emily Ward, How About Nope, Mary Alvarado, McGhee Orme-Johnson, megan hilmes, Mike Rooba, U.R Madoff-Stoopid

$10 Patrons:

Clarissa Wee, Fretless108, Hunter R, Lynette Chia, Madison Lynn, nimbis, Nini, Nydelius 

$20 Patrons:

- catears_jpg, Jason (Teoshen), SeaCryptid 

$50 Patrons:

- Cerie Tisch 

[ChairmanChico]

YouTube… you either die a hero or live long enough to become three creators on a couch.

[valolafson]

It is nice though, that their controversy is ''they got greedy'', and not ''they are literal criminals''.

[eloso]

They kept mentioning “making a tv show” and “tv quality production” without ever asking themselves if that’s why people consumed their content

[yvaincallipso]

I'm always gonna be thankful that their controversy wasn't one of them cheating on their wife with an employee or being a creep to kids.

[goopyghst]

i think what it was for me was that they were like "we're financially struggling we NEED to charge your money" right after a video that was uploaded about steven going on an international trip

[_b_e_a_n_s_]

They wanted to make Buzzfeed 2 without realizing that nobody wanted Buzzfeed 2

[nemozetbit]

YouTubers thinking audience craves high budget production is like game devs believing ray tracing in 4K and hyper realistic faces make a AAA game.
Same with movies throwing money at CGI instead of a script or director. It's like when people get to a certain level they think money solves everything.

[Rainybee]

I’ll never forget that in the comments under their bye YouTube video someone pointed out that the duo had caught more convincing evidence while using cheap gear than they had with all their high tech stuff

[samwilliams]

I think one of the biggest hits they took during this controversy was that a lot of people looked down the barrel of a Watcher-less future and realized they were okay with it. A lot of people (including myself, my wife, and my sister) followed them to Watcher due to pre-existing affection for Unsolved and primarily stuck with them out of loyalty or a desire to support them. I will say I certainty thought their Watcher content wasn't as consistently enjoyable as their Unsolved content, and even the stuff I did like, such as Puppet History, released at a pretty glacial pace. Even the direct successors to Unsolved, such as Ghost Files and Mystery Files, felt lacking to me. And while I can't speak for everybody, I did see a decent chunk of people online share this sentiment. So, when they made the announcement, it made a lot of people step back and realize they honestly weren't all that invested in their actual content, and that's not really something they can get back with an apology.

[darkninjafirefox]

What annoyed me the most about their announcement was that they have patreon, merchandise, sponsors, and ad revenue on top. If all of that wasn't enough to keep the lights on, then they had to be woefully financially inept. At that point they should have hired an accountant, not start their own streaming platform. Or whatever their plan was

[MetalTrenches]

Frankly, what I loved the most were those old videos with the scrolling text. Don’t need the bells and whistles

[Soiréemade]

I saw a comment saying “the old Shane would’ve made fun of the new Shane for doing this” and it couldn’t be more accurate lol

[DNApex]

I regularly watched Watcher, then heard they were leaving youtube and said "thats unfortunate" and never checked on them again. I didn't even know that got backtracked on.

[lizzieintheskywithdiamonds]

I feel like what worked for me was the sceptic/believer dynamic, and now it's pretty obvious Ryan doesn't believe anymore, so now it's just two guys yelling and goofing off in dilapidated buildings across the country with no real stakes.

[Javabeanlatte]

I saw a comment on the og video saying "the professor would want us to pirate watcher content" and I couldn't agree more

[BlackZynfyndel]

As an “old”, I wished these creators got it through their skulls that I come to YT because it’s NOT like tv. Stop trying to make your channels like lame ass basic cable networks.

[GummyDinosaursify]

I'm going to be honest, I was a HUGE fan of Unsolved. I had some merch, the book and my friends and I would have watch parties pretty regularly. I followed them over to Watcher and was enjoying all the content (even if some of it felt less personal and more corporate). After they posted the "Goodbye YouTube", I never went back. I felt like that illusion of two best friends hanging out doing stupid stuff together was gone and now all I could see was a corporate money scheme. It completely broke the vibes of the channel and I could never view their content the same way. I completely forgot their channel existed and I hadn't even heard about the apology video until this exact video.

[cyanidesix]

i think something that was glossed over in this video was also the watcher crew's obsession with wanting to be a TV show. they mention this and aiming for 'TV quality' etc a number of times. and it was weird. i could watch tv, but i'm not, i'm watching youtube. i'm watching watcher on youtube because it's not TV. but for some reason the watcher crew had this idea in their head that they weren't as good because they weren't TV, when they were the only ones who wanted that.

[segyloveschombey]

The way, since this all happened, ive just never been back to a watcher video. Its not even because I hate them now or anything, I just dont feel the same when the videos pop up and dont have the urge to click anymore, like moving on from an old friendship