Accusation: Really, Sarah? You too? Really?
Fact: I wasn't gonna make a video about this.
A million different people have already talked about the various abuses that happened at Channel Awesome
in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.
Besides, although I've been watching Channel Awesome, Lindsey Ellis, and similar content for many years,
I've only actually started making my own video essays a little over a month ago.
The internet really does not need another random nobody with no personal stake in the situation
to add more stock commentary about how horrible everything was and give their two cents.
But then, things somehow got worse.
I'm not going to give you an emotionally outraged reaction video
because, as someone who wasn't personally affected,
I don't think that I would be adding anything to the conversation.
What I am going to do is look at Channel Awesome's latest response to the controversy
and analyze the veracity of their claims one by one.
For anyone who might be new to the situation,
Channel Awesome is a company that hosts content mainly centered around reviews on their website.
They're most famous for hosting the Nostalgia Critic,
a character played by Doug Walker, who rants at childhood films and screams a lot.
Like, *a lot* a lot
[screaming]
Their website started out as That Guy With The Glasses,
and primarily hosted Nostalgia Critic videos.
Over time, they began to hire more producers,
or other reviewers or creators who were featured on the website.
These included people like Obscurus Lupa who reviewed terrible action flicks,
Linkara who primarily examined comics, Mars Girl who reviewed anime,
and Lindsay Ellis, playing the Nostalgia Chick,
who was brought on specifically to mimic Doug Walker's style as much as possible
but, like, with ovaries, I guess.
In late 2014, they rebranded as Channel Awesome,
and around that time, a number of the aforementioned producers left the website.
A couple of them, like Lindsay Ellis and Mars Girl,
have talked about the company's lack of professionalism and misconduct in the past,
but none of these concerns have blown up in the massive way that they did recently.
On April 2nd of this year, a Google Doc titled "Not So Awesome,"
compiled by several former producers, was published.
The document lists the grievances of over 20 former employees.
I'm gonna put a link to the doc in the description box below but, to sum up,
most of these accusations are directed specifically towards Channel Awesome's CEO Mike Michaud
or "Mishod," I guess, it depends how French you want to be today.
He was accused of, among other things,
knowingly keeping a sexual harasser in his employment for over a year,
refusing to communicate with producers,
arbitrarily enforcing rules in a way that specifically targeted female producers,
firing longtime employees for minor mistakes,
misusing crowd funding money, and devaluing every producer who isn't Doug.
There were also a number of specific concerns about the work environment
during Channel Awesome's anniversary films, particularly the film "To Boldly Flee,"
including scripts that were given out last-minute,
major decisions impacting the reviewer characters that they were not informed of in advance,
a lack of food and water on set, multiple injuries,
and Doug writing in rape jokes that made several actors uncomfortable.
You get the gist.
I would urge everyone watching the video who hasn't already, to go back and read the document,
and, from this point forward, I'm going to assume that everyone has.
So, imagine you're the CEO of this company and you get this sudden backlash across social media
for your lack of professionalism and the harm you've done to former employees.
How do you respond to this?
Do you: A, issue a heartfelt and genuine apology,
acknowleding the wrong you've done and pledging to do better in the future?
B, ignore the issue altogether so that casual fans don't catch on and wait for it to blow over?
or C, issue a wishy-washy, non-apology saying, "We regret that you feel that way,"
thereby both bringing the issue to casual fans' attentions
and further pissing off the people who already knew about it?
If you chose C, then congratulations, you are now fit to run a multi-million dollar company!
After issuing this response, Channel Awesome has lost around 20 thousand subscribers so far,
and around 20 producers have chosen to leave the site following the non-apology.
So, here's where we are now.
Imagine you're Mike.
You're getting mass amounts of bad PR, casual viewers are starting to unsubscribe,
there are multiple screenshots and chat logs that prove that some misconduct occurred.
At the same time, it's starting to die down.
Everyone's gotten their think pieces about it out already,
the initial wave of angry subscribers have already left,
hell, Lindsay Ellis even promised not to tweet about it anymore!
How, at this point, can you possibly dig yourself even deeper
into this hole that you've single-handedly created?
How can you make this worse for yourself from a PR standpoint?
Well, somehow they've done it!
Instead of even entertaining the idea of apologizing for their actions,
Channel Awesome has instead decided to double down on the idea that they haven't done anything wrong
by posting a list of the claims made in the Google Doc,
which Channel Awesome disproves one by one with a number of, uh, facts.
Except they haven't really proven anything, have they?
Let's take a look at their list of proofs and break down the problems with each one.
First of all, they respond to the claim from an anonymous former employee
who identifies herself as Jane Doe,
claiming that Channel Awesome knowingly kept a producer in their employment for over a year
after discovering that that producer was sexually grooming Jane.
So, how do they respond to this?
So, Channel Awesome claims that they actually only took about 3 weeks
between discovering these allegations and firing the employee, and present a few chat logs here.
It's worth mentioning that by keeping the date in the screenshots,
they ended up accidentally revealing who the harasser was.
That producer is the late Justin Carmichael or Jew Wario.
This is further confirmed by Mars Girl on Twitter,
who says that she was informed of his identity shortly before the document was published,
but wanted to respect Jane Doe's wishes by keeping everyone involved anonymous.
Former HR Director Holly Brown has also confirmed this.
So, first of all, if Channel Awesome was genuinely committed to respecting the wishes of the victim,
leaving personally identifiable information on the screenshots you're using to defend yourself
that could potentially lead to the victim being identified is incredibly scummy.
But let's say that this was genuinely a careless mistake.
I mean, the document does say at length that nobody at Channel Awesome knows how social media works, so...
Is their statement disproving Jane Doe's testimony even true?
Well, even with the dates carelessly attached, the screenshots don't actually prove anything.
The only thing that both of the screenshots mention
is that the issue of firing Justin was discussed in the January of 2013, and then again in February.
There is no mention of the date when Jane informed Channel Awesome
of the aforementioned sexual misconduct,
so that piece of information really doesn't do much to disprove any of these allegations.
All it says is that they discussed firing him.
There is no frame of reference for how long Channel Awesome actually knew about these allegations.
Now, I think there is something important to say about burden of proof here.
Generally speaking, the burden of proof should be on the people making the accusation
to prove it in the first place.
For instance, if an accuser has provided no evidence that someone did something harmful,
the fact that the accused can't immediately prove that they didn't do it
doesn't automatically make them guilty of anything,
but that's not what's happening here.
For starters, there are several testimonies to back up Jane's,
and the fact that Justin was indeed sexually harassing people
was confirmed by Channel Awesome themselves in the chat log.
Additionally, there's more evidence to back up the fact that Channel Awesome
was complicit in harboring at least one other sexual harasser,
after former owner Mike Ellis sent Sean Fausz a number of sexually explicit messages.
Michaud allegedly responded with, "I told him he couldn't be doing this,"
implying that this had already happened in the past
and that Michaud was already aware of a member of Channel Awesome staff sexually harassing producers
and did not take action until this happened again.
I think it's therefore fair to assume that these accusations are not baseless and that they hold water,
and it's not unreasonable to expect a defense claiming to disprove these accusations to,
you know, actually disprove them. And this response does not.
Which actually brings us to our next fact from Channel Awesome,
in which they respond to the aforementioned allegations by Sean Fausz.
They essentially claim that, because Ellis resigned from the company
and no further interactions took place, this can't be held against Channel Awesome.
This, again, disproves nothing. First of all, Sean had already stated this in his testimony.
He explicitly informs us that he had never heard from Mike Ellis again after that.
Secondly, the response misses the fundamental problem;
that is, that Michaud had known about Mike Ellis doing this to other people in the past
and had done nothing to prevent it except going, "Harasser, no harassing!"
Additionally, Michaud never even bothered to follow up on the issue with Sean.
Those are not the characteristics of good management.
The third accusation fact pair, as well as the fifth,
referred to a lack of compensation on set for the anniversary films and crossovers.
They give you a picture of a contract that shows that the producers consented to this happening
to prove that these accusations are made up,
which would be a great piece of evidence against the idea that Channel Awesome broke contract
or legally forced them to do unpaid crossovers,
if that was what literally anyone was claiming.
Linkara has already addressed this in a Twitter thread,
but the complaints about the way Channel Awesome handled the anniversary films
were never ones of legal issue.
The accusers are criticizing a work culture that, hint-hint nudge-nudge, highly encouraged producers
to take several weeks out of their work time to take part in unpaid,
often 18+ hour shoots in which several producers were injured,
Doug and Rob kept wasting everyone's time by arguing on set,
and they were not informed of many important decisions regarding the films.
They are at no point claiming that they did not sign a contract consenting to doing this,
because that isn't what they're criticizing.
Either Channel Awesome has severely misunderstood the complaints of their former employees,
or they are deliberately obfuscating the point to save face.
Saying that anyone complaining about your shitty work conditions should just shut up
because they agreed to work for you doesn't actually address any criticism.
If the strongest defense for your work conditions being garbage is, "Well, you know,
we're technically allowed to have them be garbage," that kind of makes you look worse.
The next few facts are some of my favorites,
just because of how little they actually do to disprove any of the producers' allegations.
The first one addresses how many of the female producers at the time
felt that the atmosphere was misogynistic,
and that the concerns of female employees were often mocked or ignored.
Their response here is, "Well, the current female employees don't think so,
so clearly this could never have been true!"
And look, I don't work at Channel Awesome (thank fuck).
I can't say with a hundred percent certainty how, say, Tamara Chambers is currently being treated.
It might be great for the current Channel Awesome producers.
But, even if this is the case, this does not automatically mean
that the complaints of former producers are made up, or that they're not worth apologizing for
simply because you're doing better now.
"Our current female employees don't feel mistreated" is not interchangeable with
"We did not mistreat our past female employees,"
and it certainly doesn't disprove the testimonies of over 20 people who worked with you.
It is also worth mentioning, since we're talking about misogyny,
that the Channel Awesome statement disproportionately focuses
on the women who made complaints about the company.
Lindsay Ellis has already talked about this on Twitter,
but there is a surprising lack of focus on any of the allegations made by their male former employees,
with the exception of Shaun Fausz.
In fact, although female employees made up about half of the Google Doc,
8 out of Channel Awesome's 13 responses are specifically addressed towards women,
1 response is addressed towards a man, and the rest are general.
And when men and women had the same accusations, only the women were mentioned in the statement,
which doesn't say much for Channel Awesome's claim that their work environment
treated men and women equally.
For example, Lindsay Ellis and Linkara both expressed discomfort at the rape joke scene in '"To Boldly Flee,"
but Channel Awesome's response only addresses Lindsay,
even though Linkara's statement was nearly three times the length of Lindsay's in the document.
Even better, their proof that Lindsay was not uncomfortable with the scene
was a chat log between her and Doug
where Doug asks her to record some background noises for the scene and she agrees.
This, again, does not prove anything.
The only thing it proves is that she eventually did participate in filming the scene,
which says nothing about whether she or Linkara were uncomfortable during the process.
In fact, on their website, they claim that Lindsay was
"repeatedly asked for her opinion and approval about the scene,"
However, nowhere in the screenshot of the chat logs
does Doug ask Lindsay if she is comfortable with the scene.
Nothing that Channel Awesome says here disproves any of Lindsay's or Linkara's statements.
They also have 3 separate points responding to their former HR director Holly Brown.
These really aren't worth spending that much time on,
given that they don't even try to provide evidence for what they were saying here.
Their entire response to her claim that she was mistreated in the workplace is literally just,
"Holly Brown is a vindictive former employee and nothing she's saying is true."
No evidence for that statement, just calling her vindictive and movin' on.
Maybe if this was like one employee making these allegations
and people were already on your side you could get away with saying that but, like,
given that more than 20 people all had very similar complaints about the way your company was run,
you kind of have to give a better response than, like, "Nah, she's just lying for funsies."
I mean, unless you're claiming that every single person who corroborated Holly's statements
teamed up to lie about your company and destroy it just 'cause.
"Only 26 women have come forward so far, so it's just a case of he said, she said,
she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said,
she said."
The only one of their statements against Holly that is given any substantive evidence
is their response to the claim that Holly worked on "To Boldly Flee" directly after having surgery.
The screenshot does indeed show Rob telling Holly that she doesn't have to come in the next day
because she is getting surgery.
Which, again, would be a great response to the claim that Holly was forced to work,
if she had literally ever made that claim.
Nowhere in the documents does Holly ever claim that she was forced to work immediately after her surgery.
The reason she brings up that she chose to work on "To Boldly Flee" after this
was to illustrate the fact that she put everything into this company,
which makes it all the more egregious that she was never told why she was fired
and was made to sign a contract barring her from working in the industry for 3 years afterwards.
Again, Channel Awesome is fundamentally misunderstanding the heart of what Holly is claiming.
I guess they were just relying on no one having actually read the document that they were responding to.
Finally, they respond to Alison Pregler, or Obscurus Lupa,
claiming that she was miserable on the set of "To Boldly Flee"
by providing a video of her saying that she had fun working on the production.
Just for some context here, the video was from the "To Boldly Flee" DVD as part of the bonus material.
As if she was just gonna sit and prop up a camera while working for Channel Awesome
and tell potential viewers of "To Boldly Flee" that working on it sucked and she hated it,
on a DVD intended to promote it.
Maybe Allison would have done this if she was intentionally trying to get fired,
but, like, in the reality that we actually live in
this proves nothing about the actual working conditions during "To Boldly Flee."
So there we have it. The incredibly accusatory, defensive statement effectively amounts to,
"Our former producers are just vindictive lying bitches who want to take us down for no reason."
None of the evidence that they've provided actually refutes anything that the document was saying,
and a number of their facts don't even provide evidence at all.
But who am I to judge Channel Awesome in this situation?
There might be a very legitimate reason that they've refused to apologize
and instead dug themselves deeper into this hole.
Maybe the word "sorry" is just harder on Doug Walker's vocal cords than 11 years of non-stop screaming.