hi guys I don't normally do videos like
this on my channel but because it's
something that's been getting a lot of
attention lately I thought that I should
do a video to address some of these
things if you've been following me on
Twitter you probably noticed me tweeting
a lot about hashtag changed the channel
which has to do with channel awesome
that guy with the glasses or nostalgia
critic which is a site that I used to
make videos for I don't know how many of
you who are following me aren't aware of
my affiliation with that guy with the
glasses or channel awesome or what they
are I imagine a lot of you are but if
you aren't channel awesome is a video
aggregate site they have lots of
different contributors who produce
videos for them and I used to be part of
that and we had a falling-out a pretty
public falling-out about two three years
ago and 2015 and recently myself and
about 20 other producers from the site
put together a Google document talking
about our experiences there which were
largely really negative and I'll get
into that in a little bit but before I
really dig in I want to say thank you
for channel awesome giving me an
audience for them giving me so many
lifelong friends there's so many people
that I met there that are going to be my
friends for the rest of my life I met my
boyfriend through that site there are
memories there that I wouldn't take back
for the world so there are so many great
memories associated with being with
channel awesome so when it started out
there was at least an illusion that they
cared about the producers there there
were problems like a lot of websites
have or a lot of businesses have that's
just that comes with the territory so
you expect that these things will smooth
out over time and instead they just got
worse there was this long history of not
communicating with us bullying us
patronizing us not caring about their
producers and there's lots of serious
allegations in this document some of
them are less serious than others but
all of them are legitimate grievances
and they center around primarily Mike
Mashhad
who is the CEO of the company and Doug
and Rob Walker and I don't want to be
too repetitious and go over everything
that's in the document so if you want to
read it yourself
it's linked on my Twitter it's not very
hard to find but the whole thing is well
over 70 pages now we've updated it with
a couple other people that wanted to add
their piece but I did want to give
people an update on what's been going on
since and how this all came about one of
the biggest misconceptions that I've
seen about this whole thing is that we
were paid employees and we weren't we
did it all for free it was a symbiotic
relationship you know they would give us
exposure and we would give them traffic
for our videos and they would get ad
revenue from people who clicked on our
videos on the site this includes the
anniversaries we did those for free we
were paid to fly out but we were not
given any compensation and in fact in
the contracts which was the only thing
we had contracts for we were told we had
to give over our cross overs to them to
help recoup costs so not only were we
doing this movie for free we were taking
time out of our work to make these
videos for them we were taking time out
of our rest during the production to
film them and Mike still told us
constantly how great it was that he
never took a cut of our revenue from our
videos they got money from us embedding
our videos on their site not hosting
them embedding them and he thought that
it was so generous of them not to take a
cut of our money let me just reiterate
about the anniversaries we did not make
any money off of the DVDs that was all
them in fact they didn't give us the
DVDs in some cases I never received a
copy of to boldly flee so while they
were concerned with making money off of
our crossovers they couldn't be bothered
to give the people in the movie copies
of the movie and we had tried talking to
them several times it's not like this
just popped up overnight
in 2013 we came up with a list of
producer grievances and gave it to them
and they answered these in a text file I
I put it online and we had group calls
where we talked about these issues and
they promised that they would change and
address some of these things and they
didn't
they broke every single promise every
time you probably noticed from the
things that I've written about this that
I have a huge problem not just with Mike
Mashhad but with Rob Walker and with
Doug Walker because they are complicit
in this and I know a lot of people want
to believe that they're not involved or
that they don't know about this stuff
because they make videos that they like
and they are nice in the videos and
they're not monsters all the time they
were nice to me at times but there were
times when they said some really hurtful
things and did some hurtful things and
they were part of decisions that
affected us there was a very specific
incident when I came to Chicago to film
the crossover for a talking cat
with Doug and while I was there I shot
his talk show shot up and talked and
when I was on that set Mike Mashhad
waited until everyone else left and
cornered me and aggressively asked me
why I had so many mid roles on my videos
and he was saying that it was causing
people to turn on adblock and he left up
comments that were mean as a hint to me
instead of just coming to me about it
and whatever you want to say about the
mid rules the way that he handled this
was really just atrocious and it made me
really uncomfortable and I cried in the
bathroom in the studio because I was so
upset over this and the only person
around afterwards was Doug so I came to
Doug and I told him what happened and he
said that he would look into it and the
next thing that happened was he and
Mashhad Doug was in this call called me
up to tell me that they were limiting
the mid rolls they were deciding what we
were gonna do with our videos and the
things that Michoud did were never
addressed and in the document you can
see other things where they were
involved so it's not just this so all of
them are complicit in this and if you
read the document you'll see that about
99% of the problems are from Mike
Mashhad he's a terrible manager and he's
a bully and a misogynist and he just
should not be in this position of power
so a lot of people are asking why are
you talking about this now why wasn't
this brought up
or well for a lot of people that guy
with the glasses was all there was at
the time when we started you know in
early 2010 YouTube was not a great place
to go with our kinds of content they
were a lot more stringent with their
rules about usage of clips and it was
just really difficult to try and make a
living that way so a lot of us were on
blip TV and blip was not a great place
to search for videos so you had to be
embedded on a popular site and that guy
with the glasses was one of them if you
spoke up about this you were kicked off
and you just disappeared you didn't have
anywhere else to go so a lot of us
didn't say anything for a long time and
around the time when patreon came along
and when we started putting our videos
on YouTube they didn't have any leverage
on us anymore no one had any reason to
stay so a lot of people now are finding
their voices because of this as for what
happened with me it was very public in
2015 I was kicked off of the site
because I called them out on their
hypocrisy with patreon they were telling
us that we couldn't promote it that we
couldn't have links for it and
eventually they conceded that we can put
bumpers in the videos about them but
they didn't tell us about the links they
weren't communicative about what we
could do so when I told them that the
thing that they told me about adding
links was that it was a slap to the face
to fans that it was a begging I asked
for an apology because the way that they
handled it was really poor and Mike was
really standing his ground on this they
never admit any faults in anything and
he asked me if I could be in a call and
I said no because I was very heated I
didn't want to get into a conversation
in that state of mind and I went to go
film something and a couple hours later
he and Doug tried to get me into a Skype
call to discuss this presumably to say
what they were going to say anyway and
15 minutes later they tell me because
I'm ignoring them that they are taking
me off the site and my stuff was
immediately removed
so essentially what they told me was
they were letting me go because I was
at the computer for 15 minutes so when
all of this happened
I left the site and some other people
had left the site fail and left the site
there was a whole mass exodus and we did
posts about this I blogged about this I
told everyone exactly what happened and
my experiences on the site and some
people were really upset about this and
some producers were really upset about
this and eventually people just sort of
forgot and you can't just keep bringing
this up constantly so I stopped talking
about it because eventually it just
starts feeling like you're the old man
yelling at a cloud you know and I didn't
like the person that I was becoming I
didn't like being angry and bitter about
this all the time so I just stopped and
this kept seeping into my life in the
strangest of places you know I kept
seeing channel awesome everywhere and
its really there are some obvious places
like you can't avoid that your friends
do crossovers with them or you see posts
about it and that's something that is my
problem not theirs but then channel
awesome would start appearing in other
places I'd be at a wedding and someone
would be name dropping them to me I
would be at conventions and people would
want to talk about them to me people
would quote duck at me I would have
emails in my inbox from apps trying to
get me to join up and saying look we
have the Nostalgia Critic and I was just
so sick of feeling like I was trapped
under channel awesomes umbrella it felt
like I was back in 2010 and it it just
suffocated me and a lot of people would
assume that Doug and I are friends and
they would talk about him to me and one
day in mid-march
I just gotten one too many of these
things someone not asked me about Doug
on Twitter and so for the first time in
a while I said something I said look he
treated us awfully I don't like him and
I started talking about some of the
stuff that they'd done and I didn't
expect anything to come from this but I
think at this point in time it was just
the right time for a lot of other people
to air their grievances
so after I posted this pushing up roses
Sarah said something and then Mars girl
said something Kailyn said something and
then Luis said something and I think
really Kalyan and Luis were the people
that really caused it to gain traction
because a lot of people heard me or
heard individuals scattered throughout
these years and just assumed it was some
sour grapes but when you hear so many
people talking about their experiences
it quickly becomes clear that this is a
problem with the company so Kalyan and
Luis and suede and a bunch of other
people just started talking until
eventually there was around 30 of us on
Twitter just sharing stories non-stop I
think it was around 48 hours where we
were continually talking about stuff the
thread just was not stopping but Twitter
is not a great place to compile a lot of
things there's lots of different threads
and branches and people just couldn't
follow what was going on so we got a
group together and we decided that we
were going to put this all in one place
that we could direct people to and
eventually we came to the consensus we
were going to create a Google Doc and
that way we could have a place to direct
people to to say this is what happened
be cautious with this company and don't
let them take advantage of you there's a
lots of people that their dream is to be
on that site and a lot of companies will
want to take advantage of you and I
think a lot of our testimonies and mine
especially do have personal things in
them so you might find some of it petti
and that's fair enough if you don't
agree with everything that I've said but
please try to take into consideration
what everyone else has said there's lots
of really consistent problems throughout
all of these testimonies once this
document got out I didn't really expect
the attention that everything would get
so many people were talking about it and
people started making videos about it we
started getting contacted by the press
they were posting articles about it
there was a mass exodus of producers
from the site right now I think they
have 13 people left
and in March they had 40 that is a lot
of people and I just want to address
quickly the people who have left the
site I don't want anyone to harass them
and I apologize for the fallout that's
come to them this includes Tamara and
Malcolm because they are not involved
with the management in the company they
have been nothing but nice to me and I
want to extend some encouragement to the
people that have left because I know
that it is not easy to sever ties and
there are some people that are not in
the same financial situation don't have
the same kind of following as me or
anyone else and it's really difficult to
sever ties especially if you've been
with them for so long
so I just want to wish them nothing but
success some of them I know some of them
I don't I just hope that they find their
happiness and their footing and that
great things happen for them I think
really the impetus for all of the people
leaving though was not the document it
was channel awesomes response they
posted on Twitter a text response to all
of this and their wording was we
sincerely regret you felt that way and
what that did was either alert people
who weren't aware of it to what's going
on or alienate people who did know what
was going on it backfired on them I've
seen next to no people supporting them
because of that because it was a
non-apology it backfired
they were placing the blame on the
people who were wronged and that's been
their typical response to a lot of
things they they never admit culpability
and when they posted that response a lot
of people that were still in the site
who were hoping that maybe this time
they would change realize that they
weren't and that was the response that
they got they've been asking them in the
group chats on skype which is their
method of communication they've been
asking them to talk to them to tell them
what's going on and they've given them
nothing they've given them the response
that they gave us on
Twitter they have had 10 years to make
things right and they have made no
indication that they're gonna make an
active change and I hope that eventually
they do I hope that if there's anyone
still left on the site that they treat
them better the people who are or were
on the site are incredibly talented
hard-working individuals and they
deserve to be treated better all I've
really wanted from this was a sincere
apology doesn't I want I want them to
admit that they did wrong I know that I
get very heated about things but I hope
that some positive change comes from
this I don't know what else I can really
add to this I'm not sure where things
are going to go I just want to end by
saying thank you to everyone who has
supported all the producers in this who
has said something who has listened
there is a tweet that I got in the
middle of all this that said I have
always believed you and it just made me
want to cry so I just want to say thank
you to that person and thank you to
everyone who has believed us so that's
all I really wanted to say thank you
truly and genuinely thank you