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Spark That Bled posted:I'm just looking at all of this, and I'm just imagining what the expression on Asalieri's face must be while he's reading it. Similar to this 
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Mar 16, 2018 11:34
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Lmao I don’t know who that is but I’m laughing at it anyway.
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Mar 16, 2018 11:39
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CelticPredator posted:Lmao I don’t know who that is but I’m laughing at it anyway. That's DarkSydePhil and his O face. From one of the times he forgot to turn off his stream before jacking off.
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Mar 16, 2018 11:41
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CelticPredator posted:Lmao I don’t know who that is but I’m laughing at it anyway. Asalieri? He's the guy from Amadeus.
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Mar 16, 2018 14:29
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corn in the bible posted:Allison, Brad, and Phelan did one which I remember mostly just mocking it because it was poo poo. Yup, it's a great watch, if you're like me and can only get through some movies "with the riffs". http://phelous.com/2012/10/18/phelous/extras-phelous/to-boldly-flee-commentary/ Keep in mind the commentary was recorded in 2012-- so take a listen and see how prophetic it was. =)
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Mar 16, 2018 16:15
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4X3atdIIb8 New Spoiler Alert, featuring some spicy discourse about 300 and Oliver Stone's Alexander.
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Mar 16, 2018 17:40
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stingtwo posted:I'll probably be sounding like a defense of the walker brothers but every time i hear or see management issues with CA, I always think Mike Michaud. The dude has always been an rear end. One of the earliest times i saw this was when Angry Joe was 1st one the site, he ended up getting into a debate with a user for about 8 posts in the comment section before going "banned" over small but valid criticisms about the video. Nah if you go over Allison's twitter page of the past few days she talks about various times that Doug and Rob (largely Doug) were also lovely. I mean nowhere near Michaud bad but they aren't innocent by a long shot. I Before E posted:Asalieri? He's the guy from Amadeus.
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Mar 16, 2018 17:52
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A big theme from everyone in that discussion is that all the people running Channel Awesome are clueless to a dangerous degree (in the sense of injuring the bodies and dignity of the people they worked with) and destructively selfish. The other big theme is that everyone who has worked with them, including people who still work with them, wants more people to notice and talk about everything that’s come out. How CA hasn’t imploded simply out of the death of the internet middleman model is baffling to me. What do they offer to anyone not actually an employee?
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Mar 16, 2018 18:07
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lornekates posted:Yup, it's a great watch, if you're like me and can only get through some movies "with the riffs". I'm currently listening to this and its pretty much the recommended way of watching Boldly Flee but holy hell 4 hours? I was aware of these specials when they came out and avoided them because I knew well how bad they would be but I wasn't aware (or at least forgotten) that this thing was four hours.
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Mar 16, 2018 18:24
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Trojan Kaiju posted:That's DarkSydePhil and his O face. One of the times. As he remembered to turn the webcam off the second time. Just forgot to turn off the microphone. Since there is some NC Anonymous going on I liked him in high school, then my interest started dropping in 2010 and completely cratered in his Bio-Dome review. He does this bit where does the "wa wa waaaaa" thing but he does it multiple times and gets louder every time he did it. It actually hurt to listen to.
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Mar 16, 2018 18:35
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Moatman posted:Nah if you go over Allison's twitter page of the past few days she talks about various times that Doug and Rob (largely Doug) were also lovely. I mean nowhere near Michaud bad but they aren't innocent by a long shot. I thought it was the other way around with them, with Rob being more on the Michaud side of things and Doug being as clueless and ineffectual as you'd expect.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:08
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Doug was Guy de Lusignan to Michaud's Reynald de Chatillon.
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Mar 16, 2018 20:09
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Okay, something just floored me. Dan's currently posting a thread on twitter, and on it he mentions https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/974715057887064064 "Old Blip traffic estimated that in 2012, they made over $1m just from Blip ads, excluding site ads.", and that current estimates are, like, $500k in Youtube ad. Holy. loving. poo poo. It isn't that they are making a profit that's floored me, it's a sudden "this all makes sense" thing. I've always wondered, "Why the gently caress would Mike Mush-head spend so much time, effort and energy just keeping control of two dudes who have a YouTube channel with some followers". It seems that it would be a full-time job, devoting yourself to just being that much of a controlling douchebag. I've seen people do stuff like that when they become an "inner circle" or "admin" user of a forum or something. But it'd either drive everyone away, or be brief. So why would someone be THIS invested in something as low stakes as a review show? And then this all clicked into place, because it was suddenly so familiar. A while back, Decipher Inc was poised to be the top-dog of the CCG market. They could go toe-to-toe with Wizards of the Coast, had some HUGE licenses (Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings), and a sizable customer base. But the company slowly erroded, collapsed and went bankrupt. How could that be, for a company that was absolutely poised to dominate a market? Years later, the truth came out when Warren Holland, CEO / owner of Decipher, posted news about what had happened. Embezzlement. For years someone in a very trusted position spent a lot of effort embezzling money and covering it up, and from what they could find during investigation & discover, is in the neighbourhood of $9m. The most in-depth information about it was eventually posted by Mr. Holland on his website (now offline, but thank you Internet Archive), including a very long letter to his family about what went down (since it was his brother-in-law who did the bad things). Internet archive link to a PDF: https://web.archive.org/web/20110725060828/http://www.embezzlementfromdecipher.com:80/links/FamilyCommunication.pdf It's 32 pages and I heavily encourage you all to read it. Not only is it a fascinating and sickening story, but it should also be required reading for Spotting an Embezzler 101. Now, I don't want to throw out unfounded accusations at someone like Mushhead, but some of those 101 points are (listed below, more than I thought). But it all comes down to gaining trust so people don't suspect, driving away anyone who might gain trust of those you're manipulating (often saying "they're doing a bad job and should be fired"), being as close to the money as possible, and deflecting suspicion onto others. Why was Holly, perhaps the only other employee-proper of CA, fired? Seriously, read that letter. It's-- just-- yeah. - When confronted, will deny, even if it means hurting innocent people (dude was forging checks with his wife's signature, she was then going through chemo for cancer, and he wouldn't settle out of court to prevent her from going through trial & deposition) - If caught, will lie and say "they don't know how that happened" (dude was caught mismanaging $120k, said he "didn't know how that happened", said no more money was involved, and resigned with severance) - Family or friends do not matter (dude was embezzling from a company that was family owned, meaning he was stealing from his in-laws, and since Warren set up stock-in-trust for his nieces, that meant dude was stealing from his own children!) - Put self in position of power over funds (dude was vice-prez of finance and IT, so he reviewed / audited employee expenses, and thus his own-- and did credit card fraud to the tune of $120k, even buying his wife's expensive valentines gifts via that method. That was the initial $120k Decipher discovered) - Again, no morals (one of the $1k charges-- before dude's daughter's wedding, he, his son-in-law-to-be and a Baptist minister and others went golfing. Dude collected $1k in cash to pay green fees. He pocketed cash and paid with company credit card. He stole from his son-in-law and a Baptist minister) - Bending truth (dude said he owed $20k in taxes from his construction company that went under. Decipher gave him $20k in gift his first day, to pay off the lien. Only during trial discovery did they realize it was dude's business partner who owed (and paid off) the $20k, not dude. So dude started his job there stealing $20k) - Getting trust of those who could check on the books, then using that trust to embezzle (dude would wrack up money on company card, and put it in a suspense account (money owed by employees but not paid back yet). He'd keep that low. He then got trust of a finance controller by telling her that Warren didn't like her and wanted her fired, but he was defending her and shielding her job. So she trusted him. He'd then SHOW her personal checks marked as "for paying back expense account". He'd work late that night, destroy the check, and move expenses in tiny parts to other ledgers) - Getting rid of people who could expose him (anyone who was suspicious-- and that meant anyone who dude couldn't exploit the trust of and control-- he started hinting to the bosses of "poor performance", which would get that person fired. So anyone who COULD expose the skimming would be untrusted by the company and removed) - This behavior isn't a one-off thing, but a long term and well planned lifestyle. It's baked into every action (dude would make payments to vendors, but since he controlled the internal computer records and did bank reconciliation, he was actually writing checks to himself and (unknown to her) his wife (Warren's sister), then making sure no one saw the actual cashed checks) - Control technology that can expose wrong-doing (dude worked closely with a software developer to develop an in-house accounting software that would do things like reports, insight, etc. Well into the project, dude tells CEO "software is bad, and he'll never finish". So they drop it and go with Oracle instead, which only Rick learns & sets up & imports data into. During trial, software guy said "WTF, software was done, but dude told me you hated it and hated me, so he let me go. If you had used my software, you would have seen all this embezzlement instantly") - Puts on air of "overworked" so people don't suspect (dude would always complain to anyone who would listen that Decipher was overworking him, which is why he was in office all the time. It garnered sympathy for him, and put a wall of adversity between other people & the company. In truth, he was spending all his time, effort and energy orchestrating the embezzlements) - Prevent adopting anything that could expose the scheme (dude knew Oracle, if implemented right, would expose him. He worked with implementation team, who said "easy install, 120 days". He starting piling on requests, custom development, and more, to keep them busy and away from the data. 120 days stretched into 2 years) - Avoid bringing in anyone who could spot the scheme (Warren was determined to hire a CFO to help with the implementation, and take the load off dude since he was always saying he was overworked. Dude moved to block any hire, even going so far as to say working in this position for family was a matter of honor. Until Warren finally hired one on his own, and that's the guy that uncovered the "tip of the iceberg" $120k) - Put forth an air of fiscal responsibility to deflect attention (dude would sometimes bring up smallish expenses for approval, to show he was being responsible, even if they were denied. So no one would think he'd start expensing huge things & hide them. Also, when normal employee-theft happened (like, someone taking a $100 box of cards from a warehouse), dude would bring wrath-of-god down on them, going BETRAYAL and how could you hurt the company that's like family-- making him seem like a huge, moral defender) - Again, set up a system where blame is deflected (since he controlled the finances, he could make one department think it had more money than it had, and when a manager made a "wrong" decision based on that information, dude could always blame that other person) - Controlling communication (dude would intentionally insert himself in the communication chain, so he could control messages going back and forth and distort meaning, leave out critical details, etc) - When cornered, sink the company to avoid detection (this is the bulk of the story, but effectively-- dude started taking out huge loans and draining line-of-credit accounts. Decipher prided itself on (at least thinking) it was debt-free, so they could negotiate large lines-of-credit, so when the opportunity came to buy a large Hollywood license, they had access to that cash (ie: $6m for Harry Potter). He dumped tons of money on software consultants no one knew he'd hired-- got finance companies to pay for large expenditures, then paid the financing companies with company cash (so they couldn't go after the vendors, since the finance loans were legit)-- causing huge debts all over the place-- all while he still had secret access to the funds. Even when his and other finance person's access was suspended, dude didn't tell the other person, and then started getting her to issue expenses to fictional vendors. At one point, concerned about "loss" he suggested employees get bonded and extra insurance bought to protect against losses. Instead of actually doing that, he withdrew that money as expense, lied about getting the policies, and pocketed money, and thus Decipher wasn't protected from liability for losses. All the "wrong" decisions made by other employees based on faulty information cost the company millions.)
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Mar 16, 2018 20:59
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Even-odds on their employment changing enmasse inside of a day or two. This would require Michaud to read Twitter. Or his email. Or Skype. Or text messages. Or words.
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Mar 16, 2018 20:59
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lornekates posted:Now, I don't want to throw out unfounded accusations at someone like Mushhead, but some of those 101 points are (listed below, more than I thought). But it all comes down to gaining trust so people don't suspect, driving away anyone who might gain trust of those you're manipulating (often saying "they're doing a bad job and should be fired"), being as close to the money as possible, and deflecting suspicion onto others. I'm not sure about embezzlement, if only because I don't think it's embezzlement if you're shoving money into your pockets in full view of everyone. At the bare minimum it's 100% about the money. Michaud has no training or experience in anything. He was working retail when some high school friends started talking about putting their doofy comedy videos on the internet. He convinced them they should make a site, and when it started to take off convinced them he'd be the Business Guy so they could just do creative stuff. So Michaud's resume is 2005-2009 – Floor clerk at The Gap* 2009-Present – Notoriously incompetent CEO of a web startup famous for squandering potential and failing to develop even a second hit show while chopping through talent like a corn thresher Even if he's not skimming he's making an order of magnitude more by holding Channel Awesome in his toxic death grip than he'll make anywhere else. For all their creative bankruptcy even the Fine Bros. know how to make their stuff look at least vaguely professional. Think about that: Michaud is the less competent, lazier, less ambitious version of the Fine Bros. Hell, at this point I'm not going to be surprised if everyone else, including Rob and Doug, quit/move on/retire before Michaud. He's the majority shareholder. He owns the IP. He has the keys to the youTube account. He'll settle for poverty line income coasting along on people watching the back catalogue before he willingly goes and finds another job. *The Gap used for illustrative purposes, I don't know if it was literally The Gap FoldableHuman fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 16, 2018 |
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Mar 16, 2018 21:26
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A Jim Mallon for the modern age.
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Mar 16, 2018 21:29
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Every time I hear about this guy he sounds more and more pathetic. I mean, it’s understandable that he had no training or experience at the start, but he’s had almost ten years to hone his skills at this point and yet he just keeps doing the same poo poo over and over, learning nothing. No wonder he and Doug get along.
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Mar 16, 2018 23:14
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What happened with all the new projects that CA were trying out? Didn't they try to create a game show or something?
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Mar 16, 2018 23:58
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bessantj posted:What happened with all the new projects that CA were trying out? Didn't they try to create a game show or something? Yes, it was called Pop Quiz Hotshot and they spent a shitton of money shooting some terrible pilots that have since been memory-holed. You can find some of it around though.
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Mar 17, 2018 00:02
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Didn't CA try to do some show where they toured different bars in Chicago or something like that?
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Mar 17, 2018 00:06
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corn in the bible posted:Yes, it was called Pop Quiz Hotshot and they spent a shitton of money shooting some terrible pilots that have since been memory-holed. You can find some of it around though. They shot the same pilot, with the same contestants, seventeen times  When asked about it at a convention panel (and hundreds of miles away Doug, Rob, and Michaud) Brad Jones just stared laughing and said “Everyone needs a Battlefield Earth on their resume. This one’s mine.”
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Mar 17, 2018 00:41
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The new movie nights is on Hard Ticket to Hawaii. I'm happy about this, because I was planning to watch that recently myself, so that review's like the next best thing  Doug's content feels pretty stale now, even with Tamara and Malcolm to spice things up. It seems to me like Doug never really used his talents properly or worked on his weak points that much, and seemed happy to kinda....coast? It seemed like he had potential to go further than he did, like James Rolfe has. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 17, 2018 |
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Mar 17, 2018 00:41
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bessantj posted:What happened with all the new projects that CA were trying out? Didn't they try to create a game show or something? Here's the Brad pilot. Brace yourself, it's an exhausting 31 minutes. No one but Michaud wanted to release it. There's five other "test" episodes and four "real" episodes that were never posted, but the "tests" were all, somehow, bad enough that even Michaud didn't think they should be put up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klPkGfHAxqU Leal posted:Didn't CA try to do some show where they toured different bars in Chicago or something like that? They made two videos for the show Bartender Confidential, which was just interviews with bartenders, two for Make me a Drink, which was just how to mix drinks, 1.5 for The Mystic Brewers of The Inebriati which was functionally a vlog, and 10 for My Indie Life which kinda sorta still existed up until 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?MyIndieLifeTV?videos The intent was to create an entire vertical called "Barfiesta". It was stylized Barfiesta but that doesn't change the fact that "barf" is the first sound in the word. They even had a whole site set up, and you can find snapshots on the WayBack Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20110128075037/http://barfiesta.com/ Marvel at how in mid 2011 the headline still read "SET TO LAUNCH 9/1/10" and understand that literally nothing has ever changed about how Channel Awesome functions when it comes to keeping their website up to date.
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Mar 17, 2018 00:46
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I thought they were relying on Blip to make their new website and did the change themselves when Blip didn't go through with it.
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Mar 17, 2018 00:53
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Mraagvpeine posted:I thought they were relying on Blip to make their new website and did the change themselves when Blip didn't go through with it. Yes, but worse. They'd been promising viewers and creators a site update since 2010 or so, since even in 2009 the barely-altered pre-canned template was kinda dated. 2011 no update. In late 2011/early 2012 Blip did offer them a new website, but they never used the site that Blip sent them because they didn't like it (fair enough, I guess; if you used the original Chez Apocalypse site you may remember the theme was dog slow, but I doubt that was the reason they rejected it.) So no site update in 2012. 2013 no site update. 2014 they solicit a quote for a new site from the small team that built Obama's WhiteHouse.gov site. $50k. Very reasonable given the pedigree. Michaud then goes and buys a $100 theme off Themeforest or wherever and pushes it out with the domain name change to channelawesome.com. It hasn't changed since.
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Mar 17, 2018 01:07
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The funniest thing about the new website is that when it launched, Todd said on Twitter that "Chinese Democracy finally came out." Consider how that album was received.
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Mar 17, 2018 01:17
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Even in that thumbnail I can tell that Brad would have not minded if death's arms had enwrapped him at that moment.
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Mar 17, 2018 01:48
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FoldableHuman posted:Here's the Brad pilot. Brace yourself, it's an exhausting 31 minutes. No one but Michaud wanted to release it. There's five other "test" episodes and four "real" episodes that were never posted, but the "tests" were all, somehow, bad enough that even Michaud didn't think they should be put up. "In what Lebanese City did terrorist drive a truck bomb into the United States marine barracks, killing over three-hundred in 1983?" Guy in children's Optimus Prime-voice changer mask stands awkwardly.
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Mar 17, 2018 02:06
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Speaking of people involved in CA but making it on their own, here's a review of Clue by Pushing Up Roses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjYfSh7tZw I finally became a patron so I got to see it a few days ago. It's fun!
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Mar 17, 2018 02:26
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Why did they make a game show with kidnapping and murder as thematic elements? I feel like they could have bothered to watch Double Dare or something to see how game shows generally don’t rely on high-concept premises and function as light entertainment. Like, generally you should be able to explain the situation with your game show in a single sentence right as you come back from commercial. Also don’t kill the fun mood by cutting to a woman held captive in a pit. How much did that cost? $90,000 or something? And nobody was like, “hey Doug I know this is your dream but perhaps don’t remind your audience of numerous and ongoing horrific crimes against women when you’re trying to have fun?”
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Mar 17, 2018 02:34
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business hammocks posted:How much did that cost? $90,000 or something? And nobody was like, “hey Doug I know this is your dream but perhaps don’t remind your audience of numerous and ongoing horrific crimes against women when you’re trying to have fun?” I don't think Doug is very good at the whole empathy thing. Horrific crimes against women have never affected him, so therefore they are not an upsetting thing and thus okay for comedy! 
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Mar 17, 2018 02:50
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business hammocks posted:Why did they make a game show with kidnapping and murder as thematic elements? I feel like they could have bothered to watch Double Dare or something to see how game shows generally don’t rely on high-concept premises and function as light entertainment. Like, generally you should be able to explain the situation with your game show in a single sentence right as you come back from commercial. Also don’t kill the fun mood by cutting to a woman held captive in a pit. If that ghastly, horribly lit, shockingly edited barren pile of cat poo poo actually cost 90 grand to make and someone can release a budget sheet (as if one exists) proving that it actually cost that much, I will pull a Werner Herzog and release a video wherein I eat my own shoe.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:18
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business hammocks posted:Why did they make a game show with kidnapping and murder as thematic elements? I feel like they could have bothered to watch Double Dare or something to see how game shows generally don’t rely on high-concept premises and function as light entertainment. Like, generally you should be able to explain the situation with your game show in a single sentence right as you come back from commercial. Also don’t kill the fun mood by cutting to a woman held captive in a pit. Game show where the contestants are actually hostages - funny premise for a short skit show 80s themed quiz show - fine premise for a game show Game show on YouTube - not really the venue for a game show? 80s themed quiz show on YouTube where the contestants are actually hostages - hahahaha, um, wut?
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Mar 17, 2018 03:22
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I stopped watching Doug when he did Melvin, Brother of the Joker.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:29
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FoldableHuman posted:Game show where the contestants are actually hostages - funny premise for a short skit show a metaphor for capitalism
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Mar 17, 2018 03:30
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The thing that really stuck with me on Doug in his incompetence is how every once in a while on Transmission Awesome they would talk about how everyone wanted them to interview Doug, but the problem was always that Doug did not know how to operate a computer, let alone not know how Skype worked.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:36
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Kim Justice posted:If that ghastly, horribly lit, shockingly edited barren pile of cat poo poo actually cost 90 grand to make and someone can release a budget sheet (as if one exists) proving that it actually cost that much, I will pull a Werner Herzog and release a video wherein I eat my own shoe. Their lease on the warehouse is probably at minimum $3000 per month, wouldn't even be shocked if it were $6-7000. That's just lease, not utilities. Multiply that by the twenty months(!) between the IndieGoGo campaign (where they had already leased and moved into the warehouse and half-built the set) and the actual release of that haunted video, $60k minimum went to leasing a space that was functionally sitting empty. The best part is that they built a green screen space in the warehouse, but it was so cavernous they needed to put a roof on it to dampen the noise, so now it's just a normal sized room with a green wall, and the rest of the warehouse is too awful to shoot in so 90% of their shooting is done in the attached office space. So really all they needed was a light industrial office space with 10' ceilings where they could paint a wall green.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:49
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I deleted channel awesome from my bookmarks when stuff started coming out about how horrible things were, and I haven't been to the site since. I was barely keeping up with it anyway, as all the good youtubers had jumped ship, had their own websites, or had spectacularly flamed out by then. I have friends who still follow the Nostalgia Critic, and when I tell them why I stopped they just shrug awkwardly.
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Mar 17, 2018 03:52
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FoldableHuman posted:Game show where the contestants are actually hostages - funny premise for a short skit show It’s not even a well constructed game show either. Most quiz shows have some degree of contestant interaction, like category selection or wagering, just to keep some sort of rhythm. This is just a bunch of sad dudes answering questions on a grade school play stage.
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Mar 17, 2018 04:04
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FoldableHuman posted:Game show where the contestants are actually hostages - funny premise for a short skit show Pretty much. There's a funny idea in there, 'hostage gameshow' could be like, a B+ SNL skit, and an 80's themed quiz is a good idea, lots to pull from there. But like, why mash them up? Why not just do one or the other? Who told him the 80's themed youtube game show needed ANOTHER 'thing' on top of it?
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Mar 17, 2018 04:32
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