As I’m typing this, it is just a few weeks away from the 2nd of April. By the time I’m posting this up, it will have been one or two days past the 2nd of April. Most of you probably don’t know why that day is so significant, but for those who’ve payed attention to the online reviewer scene, you know that was the day back in 2018 that the infamous Not So Awesome document was released on line for all to see. The document that showed off all of the bullshit that was going on from behind the scenes over at Channel Awesome. All of the mistreatment, all of the politicking, etc. Though this had been going on for a long time, I think most of us mistook the warning signs as nothing more that occasional rough moments in the work place......boy were we wrong.
My history of watching Nostalgia Critic & many of the other Channel Awesome content creators goes back quite a long way. All the way back in November of 2011, I was visiting a future friend of mine for the very first time, and during that weekend I caught my very first glimpse of the Nostalgia Critic. I forgot the review in question, but what I do remember was seeing Doug Walker for the very first time. The hat & coat, the white shirt, the glasses, and even the red tie I remember, but what I can recall a lot was his performance. The yelling, the over the top antics, and just his personality won me over practically immediately. From him, I managed to wander my way through a lot of the creators on TGWTG: Cinema Snob, Blockbuster Buster, Spoony, you name it! It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the variety of individuals quite a bit, but as time went on.......well, I think we all know at this point.
Flash forward to 2018, and the Channel Awesome site, not to mention it’s creators, was quite different. Doug Walker himself was different also: After retiring in the summer of 2012 (If I’m recalling correctly), he would go on to do Demo Reel, and to say it was a bust was understating it. The humor was not what people had known, and while it was fun to see Doug tear into various movie tropes, it didn’t have the craftsmanship he’d been known for the past few years. After it tanked, Doug would bring back the Nostalgia Critic in early February of 2013, and for a while it seemed like everything was okay. As the years went on, it turned out that things weren’t so good, as the character morphed into a hollow mockery. He became meaner, insensitive, oafish, and incredibly vindictive (Watch his review on The Wall. This transformation is highly evident in that video). The somewhat opposite of what he was in 2012 & before. It was pretty shocking to me, and to anyone who noticed this change. Not only that, but by 2018 there were plenty of shakeups, firings, and controversies that caused people to alter their opinion on the once former bastion of creativity. Then, on the 2nd of April, 2018, the Not So Awesome google doc was released.....and all was unfortunately revealed.
Now, my opinion on some of the information & complaints within the Not So Awesome document has changed somewhat in the 5 years that it was released. Some of the info and complaints comes across to me as.....fake? Manufactured? It’s difficult to say, but since 2018 I always had the feeling that part of the document was artificially designed to make Channel Awesome & it’s management look like complete monsters, and the various content creators that worked there as completely innocent victims. Even not factoring that into the equation, the Not So Awesome google doc is one of the most darkly illuminating documents ever released. Certainly not on par with more politically charged pieces from decades before, but it revealed way more behind the curtain than anything that fans of the Nostalgia Critic and Channel Awesome were ever expecting. All of the corruption, all of the politicking by the management, all of the mistreatment, and perhaps most horrifically.....the fact that the higher-ups were covering up & protecting JewWario, who turned out to be a sexual deviant. Perhaps just as horrifically, almost nobody among the CA reviewers knew how awful he was, and the revelation of his awfulness sent out shockwaves that every once in a while some people still feel rarely. Even worse than that, JewWario’s widow fully believes this, which sort of begs the question as to how much she actually knows.
But perhaps most tragically, and despite the revelations within the Not So Awesome document.....Channel Awesome ultimately won the war. Well, more like Mike Michaud won the war. As valiant as the ChangeTheChannel movement was, it ultimately amounted to nothing when CA stayed completely silent after the JewWario reveal, and CTC didn’t keep pressing until some amount of justice took place. Mike Michaud’s meal ticket is still firmly secure in his pocket, and Doug Walker is the most shriveled up dance monkey I’ve ever seen. I confess I was beginning to watch the Nostalgia Critic less & less beforehand in the prior years, but once the Not So Awesome document came out I would only tune in out of morbid curiosity. Channel Awesome & the Nostalgia Critic have been dead for a few years now at this point.....they just don’t know it. As for the various content creators that jumped ship before & after, some of them most definitely kept and even improved their careers, while others rightfully/wrongfully faded into the ether. Nothing else to really say in that regard.
As for my final words......well, this meme alone describes what I think fits Channel Awesome nowadays (Used it a post I have a link to below).
So, that was my retrospective look at the ChangeTheChannel movement from 5 years ago, and the tragedy that nothing came from it. Channel Awesome was definitely declining beforehand, but after this it became nothing more than a husk of what it once was, and one of the funniest reviewers falling from grace into semi-irrelevance. Fortunately, this is all behind us now, so join me in a few days for my birthday!
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If you’d like to see what I thought of ChangeTheChannel a year after the incident, check out the link below:
Food For Thought/Thought For Food No. 13: #ChangeTheChannel (1 Year Later)
Also, If you’d like to read the ChangeTheChannel Google Doc, check out the link below:
Not So Awesome: A Record Of Events While Working For That Guy With The Glasses
Also Also, if you’d like to see an interesting retrospective on when Doug’s transformation began, click on the link below:
The Review Must Go On - Doug Walker's Haunting Masterpiece
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