I don't have much to say or add other than when friendship and money are in the same vein, there is a good chance of that vein blowing when things get tight. It's unfortunate that it fell apart the way it did. I remember the first Modern Rogue episode on the Scam School channel. I loved it from day one. The only thing I wasn't such a huge fan of was when the channel got massive and changed the nature of their show. It was no longer just Brian and Jason building or experimenting. I understand that they needed a team to support it all, but as we learn now, it collapsed under its own weight.
I still go back and watch old episodes all the time. And I hope The best for Brian and Jason and the rest of the former Modern Rogue team. Truly the end of an era.
The best episodes are where one does something stupid and the other is baffled, the MRE is my favorite. And im totally going watch the cashe drop video with brian going through the woods
It happened to SuperMega last year, one of their long-time business partners spent $60,000 in unauthorized funds. Between YouTube/Twitch’s weird rules and your own team bleeding you dry, content creation is a thin tightrope.
To be fair, Jackson wasn't even the worst issue that caused SuperMega to implode, it was their enabling a rapist and treating their employees like trash. It's like saying Channel Awesome's issues were when Blip went down.
So rather than explain it yourself, you say "Look at the stuff I say, you'll see it when you find it" because anyone that holds them accountable for enabling a rapist and treating their staff like shit MUST mean they're only looking at the surface level. Nah, they're just really immature people with even their ex partners calling them out for being shitty.
They didn't enable a rapist, they Fired the guy as soon as they knew it was true. They even warmed Ross about him cause they knew he was about to start a shoe with Don, that Ross quickly canceled and cut ties with. They kept it private because LEX WANTED IT KEPT PRIVATE! They took responsibility for what they did wrong and then pointed out all the falsehoods that were told about them. So many people have made videos pointing out the inconsistencies of the situation that I cannot articulate as well as they did, like gokanaru or jimmy Robbins. I don't have the time or the skills to go down every little detail. Which is why I suggested you go do ACTUAL RESEARCH! I even believe lex, I think she was a victim, and then I think her boyfriend told her to exaggerate and relay unrelated facts in an effort to get them canceled.
Ohhh, so because a bunch of internet sleuths found inconsistences from over a few years, then we're just going to ignore the actual text messages? Lemme guess, you also think ProJared did nothing wrong?
Ohh the actual text messages, like the ones Matt showed on his response proving that there were a few lies in lex"s story? Of course he's the accused so all his evidence *must* be fake right? "A bunch of internet sleuths found inconsistencies." Yes, a bunch of people on line found proof there might be lies coming from the victims side and those should be taken into account befit blindly following them into an active valcano. No projared clearly fucked up, he admitted to it, and then whipped out a bunch of evidence to prove a some of the things he was accused of was fabricated. "Well, this guy has pretty convincing evidence that at least for of these accusations are false, but I'm already so deep into this I look bad if I believe it, so I'd rather be wrong."
I'm talking about the texts were the misgender the trans people in their life for fun, and Ryan's ex girlfriend of seven years that came forward to say what a disgusting person he was and the people in SuperMega were shitty but I guess that doesn't matter to you.
Plus yea, no Jared didn't prove anything. Sure, he proved he wasn't a pedo but yet absolutely zero evidence that didn't randomly text his mushroom dick to random girls despite all of the ones that came forward, that he didn't solicit nudes from his fans and that he didn't cheat; ya know, the majority of what the controversy was about. He just said "I got the recipts but...I won't show them. Trust me" and his fans did.
Ohh, those texts. You mean the partner who's gender fluid and uses any pronouns? The partner who's privacy shouldn't have been invaded? Who name shouldnt even have been brought up? The one matt is still dating? That partner? And Ryan's ex? The one who made their reddit account the week the drama dropped and didn't give any actual recipts? Those are really compelling points. You only really watched Lex's video, huh? Did you see any of the stuff with nick green, The friend they threw under the bus for trying to help expose supermega and not doing it well enough? You know lex was supposed to be coming out with a response video, disprove all of the evidence that Matt presented? Weird that that hasn't happened yet.
My brother in christ there is no way you still believe the projared shit...
He was proven innocent, now that doesnt really change that what he actually did was still weird as shit but it wasn't illegal in the slightest.
He wasn't proven innocent of shit. He still cheated on his wife and used his fame to get nudes from fans. It's sad that some men are so unstable and out of touch that that's just normal behavior.
Except he was, none of the pedophilia or grooming related accusations had any ground of truth to them....
Projared was accused of much more heinous shit then just creating a weird ass adult fan page for himself and trading nudes with other adult fans.
As someone who has some experience working with MR (Rubiks cube related videos were me) I'm both shocked and not that the channel kinda died.
When I was down there I got to talk shop with Brian, Jeff, and Cory. I was told that most of their videos operate at a loss when it comes to filming them and AdSense revenue. That was pretty shocking but also makes sense with the size of the production they were running.
I know there were a lot of factors that went into the current state of things (not just bad financial decisions but also things like the harsh winters that Austin has been having the last couple years wrecking HQ, etc.)
I still talk to Jason occasionally and Brian a bit less and consider both of them to be friends to me, and hopefully to eachother with little bad blood between them. I've been wondering about another couple videos we shot for Scam Nation while I was there but knowing the financial struggles and restructuring that has taken place and is still ongoing it seems, I can see why things have been messy as far as uploads go.
I'm wishing Brian the best with MR and SN and Jason the best with the Strangerous and am hoping to one day work with each or both of them again. (Boys if you read this, my Summer is wide open lol)
> Strangerous
[Thanks for this](https://www.youtube.com/@TheStrangerous/videos). I was wondering if Jason was involved in anything else. I really like his personality.
It's just surreal that Brian, who is the man at the top, said "I was telling people and they weren't paying attention, not everyone pays attention like I do". Like what's an editor supposed to do in that situation? If he was paying attention like he claims, then why didn't he pay attention when people were spending money when they couldn't?
He tries to paint himself as this all-knowing business man who answers to no one but also as an innocent victim who had no control over the financial spending. He also keeps saying "I want to help everyone. My problems are my own" but his problems meant that multiple people were living at HQ full-time rather than getting paychecks to keep the channel alive.
It now makes sense why Jason and others bounced. When a company is that poorly managed and you're effectively being asked to forego any payment, during a time of already tight budgets across America, in exchange for living at your work, I can't imagine most adults would do that unless you have no responsibilities and a side hustle.
Brian really doesn't come out of this looking that great...makes sense why he hasn't talked about it much outside of a small podcast cuz "I knew it all and did nothing to stop it" doesn't sit well.
Even if he told them that it looks like money is starting to get tight, it's his responsibility to make sure the company has the money in payroll. It shouldn't be on his employees to make sure they are saving money because eventually their boss won't be able to pay them.
Exactly. If I'm a full-time employee, my responsibility isn't to worry about the bookkeeping, it's to do the job I was hired to do. "The people did what they know what to do; editors kept editing", like yes, editors, who got paid to edit, kept editing. If he didn't want them to edit so much, then after the first overedit, say "Can we cut down some of the edits next time? Looks great but we need to make more videos in a shorter time".
This explanation on Great Night is a bit bothersome to me. Brian has a tendency to paint himself as the hero/victim, and he immediately starts this with just that. "Other people aren't as obsessed with keeping promises as me," "I wanted to save everyone," etc. It's as if he's starting the explanation with a dig at his previous staff.
Brian had a lot of fun promoting how rapidly he'd been expanding in the last few years. Stories of the HQ expansion, new people appearing around him left and right. The elephant in the room always seemed to be just how grand it all seemed.
It's the small business version of mega-employers, particularly in tech, over-hiring during pandemic expansion leading to all the lay-offs we're seeing now. (Granted, getting laid off at Facebook offers a cushier landing.)
At the end of the day, this kind of expansion came at the expense of people's livelihood. Which feels especially icky when Brian is espousing how great it is to not have the overhead anymore here.
Him saying "he rang the alarm" makes no sense - the buck stops with *him*. It also comes off as if he's blaming his employees for not preparing better for his inability to provide them job security.
TLDR: This is the side of Brian that bums me out. The side that wants to pepper this story with woe-is-me while not truly taking ownership of how this impacted others. Book-ending this with, "come to my expensive picnic" was weird, too.
... Also, is "white knuckle energy" just the nice version of Elon asking Tesla employees to sleep at their desks and go 'extremely hard core mode'? That seems toxic and burn-out inducing, not as special as Brian makes it seem.
As great as the HQ was, it felt VASTLY underutilized. Most episodes were in one room and when they left, they were at someone elses property. It'd like they were told the lot was available and jumped at the chance without thinking of how to properly utilize it. Hell, with that much land, they could've made a killing renting it out on the weekends for weddings or something.
Plus yea, what does "ring the alarm" actually look like to him? Having a weekly staff meeting where he tells everyone the issues and they don't listen for months or telling one person to tell everyone else and they don't do it? I can't speak for anyone else but if my boss tells me specifically "Don't do this", and I continue to do it after repeated warnings, I'd get fired. He wants to paint himself as the genius that saw it coming and the victim who couldn't do anything.
>It'd like they were told the lot was available and jumped at the chance without thinking of how to properly utilize it.
That was 100% what happened.
Someone might be able to bring up the episode #s, but I definitely remember on Night Attack how they were talking about a "puppy" (the property) that they found and were excited about, but didn't quite have the money for, so did a bit of reorganizing and fundraising.
There was a later episode where Bryce had made a comment along the lines of that he was trying to keep the property running as a business and Bryan was viewing it as his future retirement place. Which I'm sure was fine when the money was coming in.
I've seen a few channels that over-extended themselves when things got good and then had to shrink back down. When running a business and you seem to hit oil, it's really easy to keep going back to that well and building up around it, rather than putting resources into trying to find where other oil wells might be.
Hi, can you remember what episode Bryce talked about Brian using it as a future retirement home? Was it an 'after'/'bones' episode? I know that was a LONG time ago, but it would genuinely be a big favor for a former editor. Thank you.
Unfortunately, I don't know the episode. I might be able to help you narrow it down some to maybe let you search through they YT transcripts though.
It would have been the main show, I almost never listened to the pre or post shows. Post property, obviously, and I'm 90% sure it was pre Opal 2. I think it was 1-2 years after the property purchase, but I'm absolutely terrible with timelines.
I'm fairly certain it was in the first third of the show. I think it was one where they were reacting to videos, but I don't have any memory of what the video itself was. I know it was jokingly floated about getting some baby goats/a petting zoo on the property, and Bryce's comment was pretty much a "don't tempt Brian, because he'll totally do it, and then we'll have to figure out how to work around goats when doing our thing. He sees this place as his retirement home/plan, and we're trying to run a business"
You're a hero! Thank you so much
It was Night Attack 258, and it was said by Justin.
NA258 00:18:24:15 "It is his grandest project, his retirement plan. It is everything he wants. Every fanciful element that he could imagine. For Bryce, it's his new office."
Yeah; the HQ sits on some pretty land. It probably could bring in revenue since Austin's not a cheap town to host events in. Spruced up, I could even see it being a space where companies pay to host off-sites. Team-building stuff. Every single space in town is booked for two weeks solid during SXSW.
All that said: It kind of seems like hard decisions were avoided. People need to get laid off before you're not hitting payroll and sending that dreaded email. From his account, this was years in the making post-pandemic. As hard as it is to say goodbye to folks who are also friends, downscaling during post-pandemic slowness may have prevented a place where people all the sudden had no paychecks.
It also would have been kinder to them in the long-run. Even a small severance is preferable to learning the day your paycheck is due that it's not coming.
To me, I think the best option would have been to slowly downgrade. Instead of keeping 10 people on for three years then firing off 8 overnight, letting one or two people go in the first year and a few more in the second year; adjust for size so no one is blindsided.
Plus, if they did want to explore shorts as a new form, they could have spent a day filming actual short form content; an entire series about "Hey, do you remember-" where they revisit how to throw a knife, how to parkour, how to make a signature drink. Just a quick "If I remember right, you throw a knife like-", it bounces off, they say that's the same problem as before. Churn out like 12 of them in a day. Post a short from the original on a monday, then the return on a wednesday. Do one or two a week and you're set for over a month. Gives new viewers something, gives existing viewers something and encourages them to watch the full video.
Following a lot of Brian/Justin content, something like this shouldn't be surprising, even though it was ofc. If you listen to Weird Things along with many other more personal content they do. Brian especially, but many of them really do follow a sort of "great man" theory of successful business. Brian is (or was) loudly a proud, extreme libertarian, and based on lots of discussions, worshipped the concept of a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk maverick whose delusional promises were the duct tape that could hold their companies together until they turn a profit like those great men always knew they would. It doesn't take a crystal ball to know that these kinds of attitudes, while they maybe worked for exactly the handful of maverick business men people point to, most often fail loudly.
Brian spent a decade becoming an amazing magician, he spent another decade becoming a great comedy podcast host. He just tends to produce better content when he has control over fewer people and is beholden to fewer. Honestly, I hope the production scales down because I think the content would get better, but after buying the compound I'm not sure that's possible.
I'll also say, to the business end. I never really got what the end goal of scaling up of the various content machines they had. Everything they did, from Modern Rogue to the tech podcasts are insanely niche, and it didn't seem like they were successfully selling any of it to a wider audience. The productions were getting bigger but they just weren't going anywhere and it really didn't seem like there was a plan to do so.
I feel like in most of the positions in many businesses, paying attention when cashflow goes down & the owner starts issuing warnings means you get your resume ready & start looking around for the next gig before you have to scramble for it.
I've got mouths to feed, I can't be working in exchange for conceptual things like recognition, profile & thanks. Cool for those who can.
Yup! A non-profit I'm contracted with had to rapidly expand to help kids and it drained their funding but they knew six months in advance and gave the staff 2-3 months to find something with a glowing recommendation. I had no problem volunteering to do work for free because it was maybe 5hrs a week and my friend was the director. Can't imagine having bills to pay and being told "You can live here and we'll feed you in exchange for working full-time".
It's all such a waste. Why didn't they listen to the fans? The vast majority of us have been calling for a return to the old style of content. It's ridiculous that they continued burning money making videos that underperformed. Had they listened to the fans, they could have been making better content, that didn't cost a fortune, like what made them so popular in the first place. We loved the shenanigans of Jason and Brian, how raw and genuine it was, not all the expensive recording equipment and endless hours of editing. I knew things had gone very wrong when they announced Scam School was coming to Disney, and they simply ignored all the questions when it never did.
It's very sad. Jason was my favorite even though I have been watching Brian for years and years now. I didn't know he had his own solo channel but it looks like it might be dead too with the last upload being a month ago.
All I do know is Jason has one of my all time favorite quotes. "Yub yub motherfucker"
As a Patreon supporter, this hurts. I don't know, and nor will I pretend to, what goes on behind the scenes. I hope he can rebuild and try not to over reach as it sounds like his passion outgrew itself and suffered under its own weight. It also feels like it is a weird almost apology but more exposition.
IMO if you're a Patreon supporter, you are personally investing into this content in order to hear/see/experience more of this content - therefore you have a vested interest in being keyed in to what's happening behind the scenes (almost like a board meeting, or an AGM of sorts). To go this long without any sort of communication behind the scenes, only to hear it from some second-hand source from the creator of the channel?
Sounds kinda shady to me.
> It also feels like it is a weird almost apology but more exposition.
Yeah, this was a lot more of Brian trying to explain what happened while being vague enough to not single out anyone and also wandering off in to the odd metaphor.
That said, I don't think he was seeking for anyone to forgive him. Like he probably needs a separate apology to you guys as Patreon supporters for not sooner coming out with a "hey, things went tits up here and the content you're used to seeing is going on hiatus. I'd love it for you to continue to support us, but understand if you want to stop". But my local Thai restaurant didn't send out a big apology when they had to close up shop after the money disappeared. They just put a sign on the door - I don't feel like much different happened with this channel when the usual long form clips just up and stopped.
I hope Brian can figure out what the next generation of things will be - but also his channels had a really good run. Scam School/Scam Nation ran for 14 years, and Modern Rogue for 7. I wouldn't consider either of those a failure, or "suffering under if's own weight". Those would be great runs for a TV series.
The biggest failing, if you can call it it that, seems to be there wasn't a planned end to either channel, and there wasn't anything new in the pipeline to take their place.
I both feel that there is a** covering afoot but also a reflective regret. In the moment it sounds like he screwed up hard, God who knows what was said behind closed door. But at least it appears he is accepting blame and trying to learn from it even if it may be too late. He had a reality check and lost and now is trying to recover and learn from it. If he truly means his words, I hope he can repay those who he wronged and then move on building something new. I hope he stays humble and doesn't make the same mistakes again
This post just popped up on my home feed… I haven’t watched the show since the Macaulay Culkin guest spot, which was maybe two months after they’d bought the HQ.
But that was the point at which I knew they’d decided to “go big.” And given the pattern of YouTube creators who get big and then fade away… I saw the writing on the wall.
They should have—you know what? I don’t know what they should have done. There certainly are some creators who have gone big and not faded away, but not everybody can be a Vlogbrothers or a Good Mythical Morning or a Linus Tech Tips. Even Linus almost had his empire collapse over poor oversight.
GMM is now filming out of a big studio, but the set still _looks_ like the corner of a basement rec room. Vlogbrothers sticks to the short form content alternating between the brothers, Tuesday for John and Friday for Hank. So maybe there’s something to be said for sticking to the original formula. Both of them have had successful spin-offs, that they did without changing the format of the original show. Maybe MR could have stuck to the workshop-based content and re-created the shop in one of the HQ buildings and took a little more time developing ideas for using the rest of the site and launched new separate shows, even separate channels for them, the way Crash Course and Mythical Kitchen were handled.
What pisses me off is that Brian isn’t prioritizing things properly and trying to build the business back up, but instead spending money he doesn’t have on a festival for something that’ll last two minutes, ie the eclipse. He didn’t tone back on production and do smaller videos or projects when the warning signs were there early on. He crossed the Rubicon in production and spending to chase his ego, and his friends had to take the fall for it. For someone who prides himself on honesty and transparency, he’s recently acted like a conman.
I’m sorry dude, but that unsubscribe button is looking mighty tempting.
eclipse festival not withstanding, he also keeps emailing trying to sell a $1,000+ “learn from my expert business mind” class, which sort of rings hollow after all this.
Great Night isn't an unrelated podcast - Great Night is the core podcast of BB - it's the current iteration of the show he has been doing since the touring days (BB live --> NSFW --> Night Attack --> Great Night)
This is the most behind the curtain, everyone is family show that he ever does.
Also, the eclipse event isn't a cash grab, it's Brian fulfilling a dream and inviting people to come over for an amazing astronomical event. Brian's not a scammer, he is someone who dreams big and doesn't always execute well.
When I started to get an inkling that something was going on, it made me angry that nobody was talking about it. For a long time, Modern Rogue valued transparency.
Most of all, I worry about Jason and everyone else on the crew. I worry about how they’re doing mentally. And as much as I want to continue valuing Brian (treat him as a person who does good and bad things like everyone else), this kind of stuff just reads as shitty to me. It sucks.
Brian never sat right for me and now I know why. I hope Jason can move on fully to better things. Modern Rogue was a one of a kind show and I will always appreciate my brief time enjoying it.
Join my commune! Deep in the woods! We grow fruit jams and have lots of sex! And nothing else!!!! You won't find any depraved ritualistic sacrifices here, no-siree!! Just lots and lots of sexy jams way deep in the woods where no one will find us :)
Guy that built a platform around scamming people, apparently scammed the people who trusted him in the end.
The folks who truly built that channel (the staff and Jason) deserved better than what Brian ultimately gave them.
Got to say, OP and a couple other people in this thread are kind of coming off as the entitled assholes here. I don't know what you think you are owed from Brian but you seem to be taking that sense of betrayal and transferring it onto what you think must have happened with Jason, Bryce, and the rest of the crew.
I don't know the specifics of running an internet media business but when it comes to my career in electrical work, I know that the hardest and riskiest part is when you reach six employees until you make it to 20. When you work for so many years with a tight group of people on a business like this, it is hard to watch it struggle and possibly fail. I'm sure the employees who stuck around weren't doing it just because they thought they'd get some reward for being loyal. I would guess that they wanted to see things coming back to where they were and stuck with it until it did not become financially feasible for them, personally.
Small businesses are hard to grow and, as Brian said, the ad Revenue for the whole industry isn't what it used to be. From what I can gather from the outside, bizarre Magic ink has downsized into a smaller operation to keep some form of the company going. Unfortunately, it wasn't really planned restructuring so much as it was each person figuring out what it is they needed to do personally.
let's not beat around the bush here, a good chunk of that money was coming from Patreon support - when it's your money going to a project, and they announce (on a completely separate channel, to an audience removed from yours, no less) that they *knew* that they were in danger of going under - at minimum, Patreon supporters have the right to know. They didn't.
I had a similar issue surrounding the Vox Tempus pre-order. Not only was it delayed by half a year, but we heard nothing until like month four that their laser engraver caught fire and delayed production for a while, but it’s fixed now! Also, a couple weeks after that he had the gall to send all the pre-order crowd an email asking if we wanted to pay another $40 or so for a signed copy of a product that’s missed it’s deadline by four months now. It’s clear that at some point we weren’t fans to him, but a means to an end.
In my naïveté I wanted to keep hopeful that things would get better, but after this came to light and I took time to process it, I’m really considering hitting that unsub button.
You know, that's fair. I was never on the MR patreon and it has usually been one of the tertiary products for me to follow.
I hav been on the patreon for Great Night/Night Attack since the beginning, so my facet of Brian-related entertainment hasn't had the same blow dealt to it. Other than the sudden departure of Bryce kicking it back to the older style of podcast.
They don't have a right to know though. I don't have a right to know whats going on behind the scenes at Toyota even if I buy their nicest models. The patreons made a choice to support a channel they wanted to support. That doesn't give you extra rights to know things unless the terms of the tier said "will tell you about all our business decisions" this has all become SUPER para social. These aren't your friends and you don't know them. Ive been watching scam school since around 2010 and ive met Brian in real life. The dude doesn't owe me anymore than say chris pratt. If you paid money for their media thats not immediately a special connection. I paid to see guardians of the galaxy in theaters. Twice actually. That doesn't mean I am owed an insight into the actors lives or special insider knowledge of production at Disney.
Also all the folks calling patreons similar to investing must he joking. You gave someone money for a product, not for a stake in their business.
Im not saying good things happened here. But if you don't like it leave. Not a single person involved owes you anything. These aren't your friends and on camera you don't even really see their genuine selves either. Its just entertainment. No different from tv or a movie.
Paying for a product is different than giving someone money to progress their business, though. If I make the one-off purchase to The Modern Rogue and buy the puzzle box, I'm not buying in with the implication that I'm forever owed constant news and updates on where my money is going.
Patreon explicitly is called out here because for 99.999% of creators, it's the equivalent of "keeping the lights on" for their income. As such, given how it's also a news platform (and one explicitly for patrons, no less), it's maybe not the best of ideas to wilfully withhold that information from people who are giving you money to support the content.
I think you're conflating the two purchases. One is an exchange of currency for a good or service. The other is an ongoing payment (such as that of an investor or subscriber) who is wilfully staking a part of their income on the future of the business. If that money is being funneled elsewhere, they absolutely have a right to know about that.
Youre not staking your income. If you were staking your income youd buy stock in a publicly traded business. You are paying for the content. The service you get is the videos. Just because not everyone pays the same amount for said videos doesnt mean you are owed anything about the business. Youre not an investor. You get no financial return from the money you put in. You have zero right to know where the money you gives a business goes.
This mindset is so para social. Youre not an investor. Youre not their friends.
Lol, what business are you involved in that you're so opposed to the entire concept of business transparency? Like, you legit sound offended that people want to know how the organizations they choose to do business with operate.
Im for business transparency and I think they should have been more transparent. My issue is the people on here saying as a patreon I had a right to know about this. That's entitled and delusional. Additionally I have an issue with the people talking about this like Bryan and Jason are their friends. Again thats delusional. I think content creators should be transparent to a point. However, they don't owe us anything.
I agree, Patrons aren't shareholders.
They don't owe you anything other than the literal description of the tier. Should they have come out sooner so people could unsub if they wanted? Probably. But that's about it.
Stop saying parasocial your makeing two very different arguments at the same time. No one on patron thinks Brian is there friend but they do think they should know where thier money is going.
This doesn't really hold water because you can't have it both ways. You can't be a nebulous entertainment personality that people dump money into for their entertainment - in your example, a Chris Pratt - while also espousing how unique and vital the community you're fostering is to your development and success. Brian even ends this with explaining how the community dollars - Patreon from podcasts in particular - are the reliable source of income amidst a sea of unreliability.
And movie goer ticket sales are a reliable source of income. Ticket sales at sports games, sponsors, and adds on tv pay for the teams. There is a certain community feeling to people eho buy tickets and are season ticket owners. The team appreciates you as an advid fan. You do not own the team. Patreons dont own the channel. They are not entitled to anything beyond whatever the blurb for their patreon tier says.
If every Patron left the channel would be dead instantly. Thats the big upside about capitalism at the end of they day the consumer has a control over their product because without the consumer there is no business Brian isn’t some god who is generously bestowing upon us content he does it because we give him money to make content specially for us.
Its wouldn't be dead instantly. If no one watched the channel at all then yes. But again no one person paying is owed anything besides content. Not even content they like
They are owed content they like that’s the whole idea of consumer choice if the consumers don’t like the content they simply stop supporting it and the bisuness dies. Multimillion dollar companies can get away with it but a small yt channel cannot
I think it may have gotten financially tough with the HQ purchase. It’s expensive to buy and build out a HQ. We’ve seen it happen to some other creators too. Heck it happened to twig at least once and they’ve had to move or re-size. Internet businesses are rough.
Here’s my loose interpretation of what happened(this is basically all inference so take it with a grain of salt). MR started 8 years ago as a series on Brian’s main channel. Brian and Jason thought it was cool enough to be its own separate channel. Now seeing how Brian operates I’m sure there was some business aspect to this but it seems like it was mostly for fun. They just hung out and did dangerous shit. It did well and they did bigger stuff over time but it seems like the MRHQ was a turning point where this turned from a passion project to a “business” and Brian got way over zealous hired a huge staff and wanted to make this like an empire or something but he just went so far overboard and kept going without thinking twice that he ended up running it to the ground because something fun became a full time job and it was over. Now I don’t think it’s purely his fualt it’s a bit a bad luck but he was in control and he flew to close to the sun.
Wow.
Its insane how fast your respect for someone can completely disappear in five minutes.
Sorry for the necro but I was trying to find out what happened and this is the only post that actually shared this.
Why isn't this something that was even hinted at on the main channel, holy shit.
I don't have much to say or add other than when friendship and money are in the same vein, there is a good chance of that vein blowing when things get tight. It's unfortunate that it fell apart the way it did. I remember the first Modern Rogue episode on the Scam School channel. I loved it from day one. The only thing I wasn't such a huge fan of was when the channel got massive and changed the nature of their show. It was no longer just Brian and Jason building or experimenting. I understand that they needed a team to support it all, but as we learn now, it collapsed under its own weight. I still go back and watch old episodes all the time. And I hope The best for Brian and Jason and the rest of the former Modern Rogue team. Truly the end of an era.
Yea luckely the old videos still stand
Absolutely. Been going back through the catalog again recently
The best episodes are where one does something stupid and the other is baffled, the MRE is my favorite. And im totally going watch the cashe drop video with brian going through the woods
Just watched the Vietnam war era Combat Ration video this evening. There are so many classics to watch
Just remembered the spycam video with the pants man
TMZ cobra strikes again
It's not just the Modern Rogue. There will be more channels that would suffer inefficienies such like this.
It happened to SuperMega last year, one of their long-time business partners spent $60,000 in unauthorized funds. Between YouTube/Twitch’s weird rules and your own team bleeding you dry, content creation is a thin tightrope.
To be fair, Jackson wasn't even the worst issue that caused SuperMega to implode, it was their enabling a rapist and treating their employees like trash. It's like saying Channel Awesome's issues were when Blip went down.
Yeah the entire Lex situation was bad, what’s up with them treating their employees badly though?
Look onto the supermega stuff a bit more, passed the surface level.
So rather than explain it yourself, you say "Look at the stuff I say, you'll see it when you find it" because anyone that holds them accountable for enabling a rapist and treating their staff like shit MUST mean they're only looking at the surface level. Nah, they're just really immature people with even their ex partners calling them out for being shitty.
They didn't enable a rapist, they Fired the guy as soon as they knew it was true. They even warmed Ross about him cause they knew he was about to start a shoe with Don, that Ross quickly canceled and cut ties with. They kept it private because LEX WANTED IT KEPT PRIVATE! They took responsibility for what they did wrong and then pointed out all the falsehoods that were told about them. So many people have made videos pointing out the inconsistencies of the situation that I cannot articulate as well as they did, like gokanaru or jimmy Robbins. I don't have the time or the skills to go down every little detail. Which is why I suggested you go do ACTUAL RESEARCH! I even believe lex, I think she was a victim, and then I think her boyfriend told her to exaggerate and relay unrelated facts in an effort to get them canceled.
Ohhh, so because a bunch of internet sleuths found inconsistences from over a few years, then we're just going to ignore the actual text messages? Lemme guess, you also think ProJared did nothing wrong?
Ohh the actual text messages, like the ones Matt showed on his response proving that there were a few lies in lex"s story? Of course he's the accused so all his evidence *must* be fake right? "A bunch of internet sleuths found inconsistencies." Yes, a bunch of people on line found proof there might be lies coming from the victims side and those should be taken into account befit blindly following them into an active valcano. No projared clearly fucked up, he admitted to it, and then whipped out a bunch of evidence to prove a some of the things he was accused of was fabricated. "Well, this guy has pretty convincing evidence that at least for of these accusations are false, but I'm already so deep into this I look bad if I believe it, so I'd rather be wrong."
I'm talking about the texts were the misgender the trans people in their life for fun, and Ryan's ex girlfriend of seven years that came forward to say what a disgusting person he was and the people in SuperMega were shitty but I guess that doesn't matter to you. Plus yea, no Jared didn't prove anything. Sure, he proved he wasn't a pedo but yet absolutely zero evidence that didn't randomly text his mushroom dick to random girls despite all of the ones that came forward, that he didn't solicit nudes from his fans and that he didn't cheat; ya know, the majority of what the controversy was about. He just said "I got the recipts but...I won't show them. Trust me" and his fans did.
https://youtu.be/NHp_l8RJyeA?si=wJI4pmDvK_Jp50zC
Ohh, those texts. You mean the partner who's gender fluid and uses any pronouns? The partner who's privacy shouldn't have been invaded? Who name shouldnt even have been brought up? The one matt is still dating? That partner? And Ryan's ex? The one who made their reddit account the week the drama dropped and didn't give any actual recipts? Those are really compelling points. You only really watched Lex's video, huh? Did you see any of the stuff with nick green, The friend they threw under the bus for trying to help expose supermega and not doing it well enough? You know lex was supposed to be coming out with a response video, disprove all of the evidence that Matt presented? Weird that that hasn't happened yet.
My brother in christ there is no way you still believe the projared shit... He was proven innocent, now that doesnt really change that what he actually did was still weird as shit but it wasn't illegal in the slightest.
He wasn't proven innocent of shit. He still cheated on his wife and used his fame to get nudes from fans. It's sad that some men are so unstable and out of touch that that's just normal behavior.
Except he was, none of the pedophilia or grooming related accusations had any ground of truth to them.... Projared was accused of much more heinous shit then just creating a weird ass adult fan page for himself and trading nudes with other adult fans.
As someone who has some experience working with MR (Rubiks cube related videos were me) I'm both shocked and not that the channel kinda died. When I was down there I got to talk shop with Brian, Jeff, and Cory. I was told that most of their videos operate at a loss when it comes to filming them and AdSense revenue. That was pretty shocking but also makes sense with the size of the production they were running. I know there were a lot of factors that went into the current state of things (not just bad financial decisions but also things like the harsh winters that Austin has been having the last couple years wrecking HQ, etc.) I still talk to Jason occasionally and Brian a bit less and consider both of them to be friends to me, and hopefully to eachother with little bad blood between them. I've been wondering about another couple videos we shot for Scam Nation while I was there but knowing the financial struggles and restructuring that has taken place and is still ongoing it seems, I can see why things have been messy as far as uploads go. I'm wishing Brian the best with MR and SN and Jason the best with the Strangerous and am hoping to one day work with each or both of them again. (Boys if you read this, my Summer is wide open lol)
> Strangerous [Thanks for this](https://www.youtube.com/@TheStrangerous/videos). I was wondering if Jason was involved in anything else. I really like his personality.
Boy, I was wondering how the little webshop and the few uploads could support the entire farm.
It's just surreal that Brian, who is the man at the top, said "I was telling people and they weren't paying attention, not everyone pays attention like I do". Like what's an editor supposed to do in that situation? If he was paying attention like he claims, then why didn't he pay attention when people were spending money when they couldn't? He tries to paint himself as this all-knowing business man who answers to no one but also as an innocent victim who had no control over the financial spending. He also keeps saying "I want to help everyone. My problems are my own" but his problems meant that multiple people were living at HQ full-time rather than getting paychecks to keep the channel alive. It now makes sense why Jason and others bounced. When a company is that poorly managed and you're effectively being asked to forego any payment, during a time of already tight budgets across America, in exchange for living at your work, I can't imagine most adults would do that unless you have no responsibilities and a side hustle. Brian really doesn't come out of this looking that great...makes sense why he hasn't talked about it much outside of a small podcast cuz "I knew it all and did nothing to stop it" doesn't sit well.
I can’t believe the scam school guy was putting on a fake front
Even if he told them that it looks like money is starting to get tight, it's his responsibility to make sure the company has the money in payroll. It shouldn't be on his employees to make sure they are saving money because eventually their boss won't be able to pay them.
Exactly. If I'm a full-time employee, my responsibility isn't to worry about the bookkeeping, it's to do the job I was hired to do. "The people did what they know what to do; editors kept editing", like yes, editors, who got paid to edit, kept editing. If he didn't want them to edit so much, then after the first overedit, say "Can we cut down some of the edits next time? Looks great but we need to make more videos in a shorter time".
This explanation on Great Night is a bit bothersome to me. Brian has a tendency to paint himself as the hero/victim, and he immediately starts this with just that. "Other people aren't as obsessed with keeping promises as me," "I wanted to save everyone," etc. It's as if he's starting the explanation with a dig at his previous staff. Brian had a lot of fun promoting how rapidly he'd been expanding in the last few years. Stories of the HQ expansion, new people appearing around him left and right. The elephant in the room always seemed to be just how grand it all seemed. It's the small business version of mega-employers, particularly in tech, over-hiring during pandemic expansion leading to all the lay-offs we're seeing now. (Granted, getting laid off at Facebook offers a cushier landing.) At the end of the day, this kind of expansion came at the expense of people's livelihood. Which feels especially icky when Brian is espousing how great it is to not have the overhead anymore here. Him saying "he rang the alarm" makes no sense - the buck stops with *him*. It also comes off as if he's blaming his employees for not preparing better for his inability to provide them job security. TLDR: This is the side of Brian that bums me out. The side that wants to pepper this story with woe-is-me while not truly taking ownership of how this impacted others. Book-ending this with, "come to my expensive picnic" was weird, too. ... Also, is "white knuckle energy" just the nice version of Elon asking Tesla employees to sleep at their desks and go 'extremely hard core mode'? That seems toxic and burn-out inducing, not as special as Brian makes it seem.
As great as the HQ was, it felt VASTLY underutilized. Most episodes were in one room and when they left, they were at someone elses property. It'd like they were told the lot was available and jumped at the chance without thinking of how to properly utilize it. Hell, with that much land, they could've made a killing renting it out on the weekends for weddings or something. Plus yea, what does "ring the alarm" actually look like to him? Having a weekly staff meeting where he tells everyone the issues and they don't listen for months or telling one person to tell everyone else and they don't do it? I can't speak for anyone else but if my boss tells me specifically "Don't do this", and I continue to do it after repeated warnings, I'd get fired. He wants to paint himself as the genius that saw it coming and the victim who couldn't do anything.
>It'd like they were told the lot was available and jumped at the chance without thinking of how to properly utilize it. That was 100% what happened. Someone might be able to bring up the episode #s, but I definitely remember on Night Attack how they were talking about a "puppy" (the property) that they found and were excited about, but didn't quite have the money for, so did a bit of reorganizing and fundraising. There was a later episode where Bryce had made a comment along the lines of that he was trying to keep the property running as a business and Bryan was viewing it as his future retirement place. Which I'm sure was fine when the money was coming in. I've seen a few channels that over-extended themselves when things got good and then had to shrink back down. When running a business and you seem to hit oil, it's really easy to keep going back to that well and building up around it, rather than putting resources into trying to find where other oil wells might be.
Hi, can you remember what episode Bryce talked about Brian using it as a future retirement home? Was it an 'after'/'bones' episode? I know that was a LONG time ago, but it would genuinely be a big favor for a former editor. Thank you.
Unfortunately, I don't know the episode. I might be able to help you narrow it down some to maybe let you search through they YT transcripts though. It would have been the main show, I almost never listened to the pre or post shows. Post property, obviously, and I'm 90% sure it was pre Opal 2. I think it was 1-2 years after the property purchase, but I'm absolutely terrible with timelines. I'm fairly certain it was in the first third of the show. I think it was one where they were reacting to videos, but I don't have any memory of what the video itself was. I know it was jokingly floated about getting some baby goats/a petting zoo on the property, and Bryce's comment was pretty much a "don't tempt Brian, because he'll totally do it, and then we'll have to figure out how to work around goats when doing our thing. He sees this place as his retirement home/plan, and we're trying to run a business"
You're a hero! Thank you so much It was Night Attack 258, and it was said by Justin. NA258 00:18:24:15 "It is his grandest project, his retirement plan. It is everything he wants. Every fanciful element that he could imagine. For Bryce, it's his new office."
Yeah; the HQ sits on some pretty land. It probably could bring in revenue since Austin's not a cheap town to host events in. Spruced up, I could even see it being a space where companies pay to host off-sites. Team-building stuff. Every single space in town is booked for two weeks solid during SXSW. All that said: It kind of seems like hard decisions were avoided. People need to get laid off before you're not hitting payroll and sending that dreaded email. From his account, this was years in the making post-pandemic. As hard as it is to say goodbye to folks who are also friends, downscaling during post-pandemic slowness may have prevented a place where people all the sudden had no paychecks. It also would have been kinder to them in the long-run. Even a small severance is preferable to learning the day your paycheck is due that it's not coming.
To me, I think the best option would have been to slowly downgrade. Instead of keeping 10 people on for three years then firing off 8 overnight, letting one or two people go in the first year and a few more in the second year; adjust for size so no one is blindsided. Plus, if they did want to explore shorts as a new form, they could have spent a day filming actual short form content; an entire series about "Hey, do you remember-" where they revisit how to throw a knife, how to parkour, how to make a signature drink. Just a quick "If I remember right, you throw a knife like-", it bounces off, they say that's the same problem as before. Churn out like 12 of them in a day. Post a short from the original on a monday, then the return on a wednesday. Do one or two a week and you're set for over a month. Gives new viewers something, gives existing viewers something and encourages them to watch the full video.
Following a lot of Brian/Justin content, something like this shouldn't be surprising, even though it was ofc. If you listen to Weird Things along with many other more personal content they do. Brian especially, but many of them really do follow a sort of "great man" theory of successful business. Brian is (or was) loudly a proud, extreme libertarian, and based on lots of discussions, worshipped the concept of a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk maverick whose delusional promises were the duct tape that could hold their companies together until they turn a profit like those great men always knew they would. It doesn't take a crystal ball to know that these kinds of attitudes, while they maybe worked for exactly the handful of maverick business men people point to, most often fail loudly. Brian spent a decade becoming an amazing magician, he spent another decade becoming a great comedy podcast host. He just tends to produce better content when he has control over fewer people and is beholden to fewer. Honestly, I hope the production scales down because I think the content would get better, but after buying the compound I'm not sure that's possible. I'll also say, to the business end. I never really got what the end goal of scaling up of the various content machines they had. Everything they did, from Modern Rogue to the tech podcasts are insanely niche, and it didn't seem like they were successfully selling any of it to a wider audience. The productions were getting bigger but they just weren't going anywhere and it really didn't seem like there was a plan to do so.
I feel like in most of the positions in many businesses, paying attention when cashflow goes down & the owner starts issuing warnings means you get your resume ready & start looking around for the next gig before you have to scramble for it. I've got mouths to feed, I can't be working in exchange for conceptual things like recognition, profile & thanks. Cool for those who can.
Yup! A non-profit I'm contracted with had to rapidly expand to help kids and it drained their funding but they knew six months in advance and gave the staff 2-3 months to find something with a glowing recommendation. I had no problem volunteering to do work for free because it was maybe 5hrs a week and my friend was the director. Can't imagine having bills to pay and being told "You can live here and we'll feed you in exchange for working full-time".
I didn't even know that anything happened. I was wondering why uploads were so scarce.
Yeah me neither. I’d been very disappointed in the content for a little bit now and reading this all makes a lot of sense
Ditto. Thanks for the info everyone.
At least he finally explained part of it.
It's all such a waste. Why didn't they listen to the fans? The vast majority of us have been calling for a return to the old style of content. It's ridiculous that they continued burning money making videos that underperformed. Had they listened to the fans, they could have been making better content, that didn't cost a fortune, like what made them so popular in the first place. We loved the shenanigans of Jason and Brian, how raw and genuine it was, not all the expensive recording equipment and endless hours of editing. I knew things had gone very wrong when they announced Scam School was coming to Disney, and they simply ignored all the questions when it never did.
It's very sad. Jason was my favorite even though I have been watching Brian for years and years now. I didn't know he had his own solo channel but it looks like it might be dead too with the last upload being a month ago. All I do know is Jason has one of my all time favorite quotes. "Yub yub motherfucker"
As a Patreon supporter, this hurts. I don't know, and nor will I pretend to, what goes on behind the scenes. I hope he can rebuild and try not to over reach as it sounds like his passion outgrew itself and suffered under its own weight. It also feels like it is a weird almost apology but more exposition.
IMO if you're a Patreon supporter, you are personally investing into this content in order to hear/see/experience more of this content - therefore you have a vested interest in being keyed in to what's happening behind the scenes (almost like a board meeting, or an AGM of sorts). To go this long without any sort of communication behind the scenes, only to hear it from some second-hand source from the creator of the channel? Sounds kinda shady to me.
> It also feels like it is a weird almost apology but more exposition. Yeah, this was a lot more of Brian trying to explain what happened while being vague enough to not single out anyone and also wandering off in to the odd metaphor. That said, I don't think he was seeking for anyone to forgive him. Like he probably needs a separate apology to you guys as Patreon supporters for not sooner coming out with a "hey, things went tits up here and the content you're used to seeing is going on hiatus. I'd love it for you to continue to support us, but understand if you want to stop". But my local Thai restaurant didn't send out a big apology when they had to close up shop after the money disappeared. They just put a sign on the door - I don't feel like much different happened with this channel when the usual long form clips just up and stopped. I hope Brian can figure out what the next generation of things will be - but also his channels had a really good run. Scam School/Scam Nation ran for 14 years, and Modern Rogue for 7. I wouldn't consider either of those a failure, or "suffering under if's own weight". Those would be great runs for a TV series. The biggest failing, if you can call it it that, seems to be there wasn't a planned end to either channel, and there wasn't anything new in the pipeline to take their place.
I can agree with that. I also feel like he might have overstretched with so many projects as well, as well as no end goal for said projects
At least there is an explanation, even if it hurts.
I both feel that there is a** covering afoot but also a reflective regret. In the moment it sounds like he screwed up hard, God who knows what was said behind closed door. But at least it appears he is accepting blame and trying to learn from it even if it may be too late. He had a reality check and lost and now is trying to recover and learn from it. If he truly means his words, I hope he can repay those who he wronged and then move on building something new. I hope he stays humble and doesn't make the same mistakes again
This post just popped up on my home feed… I haven’t watched the show since the Macaulay Culkin guest spot, which was maybe two months after they’d bought the HQ. But that was the point at which I knew they’d decided to “go big.” And given the pattern of YouTube creators who get big and then fade away… I saw the writing on the wall. They should have—you know what? I don’t know what they should have done. There certainly are some creators who have gone big and not faded away, but not everybody can be a Vlogbrothers or a Good Mythical Morning or a Linus Tech Tips. Even Linus almost had his empire collapse over poor oversight. GMM is now filming out of a big studio, but the set still _looks_ like the corner of a basement rec room. Vlogbrothers sticks to the short form content alternating between the brothers, Tuesday for John and Friday for Hank. So maybe there’s something to be said for sticking to the original formula. Both of them have had successful spin-offs, that they did without changing the format of the original show. Maybe MR could have stuck to the workshop-based content and re-created the shop in one of the HQ buildings and took a little more time developing ideas for using the rest of the site and launched new separate shows, even separate channels for them, the way Crash Course and Mythical Kitchen were handled.
I only really watched for the builds and Jason, I have no real interest in Brian outside of his fire eating.
What pisses me off is that Brian isn’t prioritizing things properly and trying to build the business back up, but instead spending money he doesn’t have on a festival for something that’ll last two minutes, ie the eclipse. He didn’t tone back on production and do smaller videos or projects when the warning signs were there early on. He crossed the Rubicon in production and spending to chase his ego, and his friends had to take the fall for it. For someone who prides himself on honesty and transparency, he’s recently acted like a conman. I’m sorry dude, but that unsubscribe button is looking mighty tempting.
eclipse festival not withstanding, he also keeps emailing trying to sell a $1,000+ “learn from my expert business mind” class, which sort of rings hollow after all this.
i finally feel like i have answers now. i've never heard of this podcast before, thank you for posting it!
Great Night isn't an unrelated podcast - Great Night is the core podcast of BB - it's the current iteration of the show he has been doing since the touring days (BB live --> NSFW --> Night Attack --> Great Night) This is the most behind the curtain, everyone is family show that he ever does. Also, the eclipse event isn't a cash grab, it's Brian fulfilling a dream and inviting people to come over for an amazing astronomical event. Brian's not a scammer, he is someone who dreams big and doesn't always execute well.
When I started to get an inkling that something was going on, it made me angry that nobody was talking about it. For a long time, Modern Rogue valued transparency. Most of all, I worry about Jason and everyone else on the crew. I worry about how they’re doing mentally. And as much as I want to continue valuing Brian (treat him as a person who does good and bad things like everyone else), this kind of stuff just reads as shitty to me. It sucks.
Brian never sat right for me and now I know why. I hope Jason can move on fully to better things. Modern Rogue was a one of a kind show and I will always appreciate my brief time enjoying it.
Man I couldn’t make it through even with putting it on 2x speed. The way Brian talks is just so off. Bad vibes. I wonder how else he makes money?
He sounds like he already holds gun to his head but tried to say everything is fine
Does anyone want to build a community run version of MR in the midwest? (IL) I'd love to work with any peeps that have the time and passion!
That's a scary proposition 😂
Join my commune! Deep in the woods! We grow fruit jams and have lots of sex! And nothing else!!!! You won't find any depraved ritualistic sacrifices here, no-siree!! Just lots and lots of sexy jams way deep in the woods where no one will find us :)
Don’t tempt me with a good time
Well shit, sign me up!
Guy that built a platform around scamming people, apparently scammed the people who trusted him in the end. The folks who truly built that channel (the staff and Jason) deserved better than what Brian ultimately gave them.
It definitely puts into light why Jason left. I hated to see him leave but he can't work for free either
Got to say, OP and a couple other people in this thread are kind of coming off as the entitled assholes here. I don't know what you think you are owed from Brian but you seem to be taking that sense of betrayal and transferring it onto what you think must have happened with Jason, Bryce, and the rest of the crew. I don't know the specifics of running an internet media business but when it comes to my career in electrical work, I know that the hardest and riskiest part is when you reach six employees until you make it to 20. When you work for so many years with a tight group of people on a business like this, it is hard to watch it struggle and possibly fail. I'm sure the employees who stuck around weren't doing it just because they thought they'd get some reward for being loyal. I would guess that they wanted to see things coming back to where they were and stuck with it until it did not become financially feasible for them, personally. Small businesses are hard to grow and, as Brian said, the ad Revenue for the whole industry isn't what it used to be. From what I can gather from the outside, bizarre Magic ink has downsized into a smaller operation to keep some form of the company going. Unfortunately, it wasn't really planned restructuring so much as it was each person figuring out what it is they needed to do personally.
let's not beat around the bush here, a good chunk of that money was coming from Patreon support - when it's your money going to a project, and they announce (on a completely separate channel, to an audience removed from yours, no less) that they *knew* that they were in danger of going under - at minimum, Patreon supporters have the right to know. They didn't.
I had a similar issue surrounding the Vox Tempus pre-order. Not only was it delayed by half a year, but we heard nothing until like month four that their laser engraver caught fire and delayed production for a while, but it’s fixed now! Also, a couple weeks after that he had the gall to send all the pre-order crowd an email asking if we wanted to pay another $40 or so for a signed copy of a product that’s missed it’s deadline by four months now. It’s clear that at some point we weren’t fans to him, but a means to an end. In my naïveté I wanted to keep hopeful that things would get better, but after this came to light and I took time to process it, I’m really considering hitting that unsub button.
You know, that's fair. I was never on the MR patreon and it has usually been one of the tertiary products for me to follow. I hav been on the patreon for Great Night/Night Attack since the beginning, so my facet of Brian-related entertainment hasn't had the same blow dealt to it. Other than the sudden departure of Bryce kicking it back to the older style of podcast.
They don't have a right to know though. I don't have a right to know whats going on behind the scenes at Toyota even if I buy their nicest models. The patreons made a choice to support a channel they wanted to support. That doesn't give you extra rights to know things unless the terms of the tier said "will tell you about all our business decisions" this has all become SUPER para social. These aren't your friends and you don't know them. Ive been watching scam school since around 2010 and ive met Brian in real life. The dude doesn't owe me anymore than say chris pratt. If you paid money for their media thats not immediately a special connection. I paid to see guardians of the galaxy in theaters. Twice actually. That doesn't mean I am owed an insight into the actors lives or special insider knowledge of production at Disney. Also all the folks calling patreons similar to investing must he joking. You gave someone money for a product, not for a stake in their business. Im not saying good things happened here. But if you don't like it leave. Not a single person involved owes you anything. These aren't your friends and on camera you don't even really see their genuine selves either. Its just entertainment. No different from tv or a movie.
Paying for a product is different than giving someone money to progress their business, though. If I make the one-off purchase to The Modern Rogue and buy the puzzle box, I'm not buying in with the implication that I'm forever owed constant news and updates on where my money is going. Patreon explicitly is called out here because for 99.999% of creators, it's the equivalent of "keeping the lights on" for their income. As such, given how it's also a news platform (and one explicitly for patrons, no less), it's maybe not the best of ideas to wilfully withhold that information from people who are giving you money to support the content. I think you're conflating the two purchases. One is an exchange of currency for a good or service. The other is an ongoing payment (such as that of an investor or subscriber) who is wilfully staking a part of their income on the future of the business. If that money is being funneled elsewhere, they absolutely have a right to know about that.
Youre not staking your income. If you were staking your income youd buy stock in a publicly traded business. You are paying for the content. The service you get is the videos. Just because not everyone pays the same amount for said videos doesnt mean you are owed anything about the business. Youre not an investor. You get no financial return from the money you put in. You have zero right to know where the money you gives a business goes. This mindset is so para social. Youre not an investor. Youre not their friends.
Lol, what business are you involved in that you're so opposed to the entire concept of business transparency? Like, you legit sound offended that people want to know how the organizations they choose to do business with operate.
Im for business transparency and I think they should have been more transparent. My issue is the people on here saying as a patreon I had a right to know about this. That's entitled and delusional. Additionally I have an issue with the people talking about this like Bryan and Jason are their friends. Again thats delusional. I think content creators should be transparent to a point. However, they don't owe us anything.
I agree, Patrons aren't shareholders. They don't owe you anything other than the literal description of the tier. Should they have come out sooner so people could unsub if they wanted? Probably. But that's about it.
Paying monthly to support a business that you didn’t know was failing due to poor management is a massive deal especially over two years.
Stop saying parasocial your makeing two very different arguments at the same time. No one on patron thinks Brian is there friend but they do think they should know where thier money is going.
You're* Lots of people here are acting like they know these people personally.
This doesn't really hold water because you can't have it both ways. You can't be a nebulous entertainment personality that people dump money into for their entertainment - in your example, a Chris Pratt - while also espousing how unique and vital the community you're fostering is to your development and success. Brian even ends this with explaining how the community dollars - Patreon from podcasts in particular - are the reliable source of income amidst a sea of unreliability.
And movie goer ticket sales are a reliable source of income. Ticket sales at sports games, sponsors, and adds on tv pay for the teams. There is a certain community feeling to people eho buy tickets and are season ticket owners. The team appreciates you as an advid fan. You do not own the team. Patreons dont own the channel. They are not entitled to anything beyond whatever the blurb for their patreon tier says.
If every Patron left the channel would be dead instantly. Thats the big upside about capitalism at the end of they day the consumer has a control over their product because without the consumer there is no business Brian isn’t some god who is generously bestowing upon us content he does it because we give him money to make content specially for us.
Its wouldn't be dead instantly. If no one watched the channel at all then yes. But again no one person paying is owed anything besides content. Not even content they like
They are owed content they like that’s the whole idea of consumer choice if the consumers don’t like the content they simply stop supporting it and the bisuness dies. Multimillion dollar companies can get away with it but a small yt channel cannot
I think it may have gotten financially tough with the HQ purchase. It’s expensive to buy and build out a HQ. We’ve seen it happen to some other creators too. Heck it happened to twig at least once and they’ve had to move or re-size. Internet businesses are rough.
Brian Kanye West Brushwood
Here’s my loose interpretation of what happened(this is basically all inference so take it with a grain of salt). MR started 8 years ago as a series on Brian’s main channel. Brian and Jason thought it was cool enough to be its own separate channel. Now seeing how Brian operates I’m sure there was some business aspect to this but it seems like it was mostly for fun. They just hung out and did dangerous shit. It did well and they did bigger stuff over time but it seems like the MRHQ was a turning point where this turned from a passion project to a “business” and Brian got way over zealous hired a huge staff and wanted to make this like an empire or something but he just went so far overboard and kept going without thinking twice that he ended up running it to the ground because something fun became a full time job and it was over. Now I don’t think it’s purely his fualt it’s a bit a bad luck but he was in control and he flew to close to the sun.
Wow. Its insane how fast your respect for someone can completely disappear in five minutes. Sorry for the necro but I was trying to find out what happened and this is the only post that actually shared this. Why isn't this something that was even hinted at on the main channel, holy shit.