Travis Alajoki, contributor

There are not enough words in the dictionary to explain how dumb of a decision this was. For the lucky few of you who have yet to hear what I am talking about, Watcher is a popular YouTube channel with close to three million subscribers. They make funny and unique shows, like ghost hunting and history trivia to name a couple. On April 19, they published a YouTube video called “Goodbye YouTube,” announcing that they would stop posting on YouTube and move to their own platform that they created. It is a streaming service that is $6 a month or $60 a year. To break it down slowly, they planned to STOP posting FREE content and locking it behind a paywall. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t! 

To give some context, Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej and Steven Lim are the main three faces of the company. Most people will recognize Shane and Ryan from their “Buzzfeed “Unsolved”” days. The duo cultivated a huge fan base through their interactions with each other and their goofy spin on some of the darkest crime cases and supernatural events of all time. I have been a fan since 2016 and have followed their content every step of the way. I even went to two of their live shows and have a poster on my wall from said live shows. They also gained an audience by telling their fans to “eat the rich,” so to see them all come out with a statement like this felt like a slap in the face.

The video came off as super guilt-tripping with the sad piano music and the deep sighs before their announcement. The reason why they decided to make a streaming service is because their production cost is “too high” and “not making enough money from advertisers.” The real kicker was when Steven Lim, who is also the sole CEO of Watcher, said “You can become a member of Watcher for $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year. We wanna keep the price low enough where anybody and everybody is able to afford it.” Wow. 

How out of touch can you be with not only your audience but the global economy as a whole? Not everyone can afford $6 a month. Just to kick you while you’re down, Lim is making a show where he eats the most EXPENSIVE meals from around the world while driving around in his Tesla. No wonder you’re finding it hard to pay for everything, your CEO has the company credit card and is buying worldwide tickets so he can go eat lavish things for days on end! So, for him of all people to say everyone can afford $6 a month just shows how blind he is to the real world. If I wanted to watch a rich guy with a Tesla call people poor I’d just log on to Twitter.

On April 22, Watcher uploaded a new apology video called “An Update.” The new plan moving forward is that the streaming service will get content a month before it will be uploaded to YouTube, and anyone who bought the subscription service can get a full refund if they don’t want the service. Their apology felt better than other YouTube apologies, but the thing they lost the most is their fanbase’s trust. Watcher has lost 100,000 subscribers in less than a week and the decline isn’t stopping. Trust is like a piece of paper, when it is crumpled up once, it will never be smooth again.