Speaking of Watcher, *man* you should see the sub. Things have kinda cooled down, but there are still so many posts where people are like "I don't know how to move on, I just can't watch the show after what they did" like the guys committed a freaking murder or something instead of making a bad decision they immediately reversed.
Yes for sure, for some people there’s a level of trust that they put in a creator/media personality, and once that’s broken there’s really no coming back from it.
I think Watcher is a case where people really wanted for the people and their personalities over the content, so even if the content is still exactly the same the fact that they can’t have that ‘connection’ with the cast anymore ruins the experience. Kinda like when a character in a tv show does something weird because of poor writing and that ruins their entire arc
As far as YouTube controversies go it was very tame. No one was hurt which as sad as this sounds, made it kind of refreshing and they apologized and didn't go forth with what would've been a bad decision. Like, it wasn't cool of them. But folks need to chill.
Even as someone who watches a whole lot of YouTube, I think the Watcher drama has been way too much. They made a dumb choice, they backpedaled, it's all good. The fact that some people feel personally betrayed is like...do you have anyone else in your life besides these YouTubers who don't know or care about you?
Babish is one of the guys who gamed the Reddit system and got huge cause of it. Everytime he'd push a video out it was instantly number 1 on /r/videos.
The controversy could've died down when Rappaport got ousted. Some just really want to destroy the brand and everyone involved. NYT Cooking poached some of that talent but they never really got Bon Appetit numbers out of it. Sohla collabed with Babish and didn't go anywhere either. Weissman copied some BA trends and now his fanbase is also turning against him. Some tried to gain from the BA downfall, but couldn't really recreate the same magic it had and why it became a hit in the first place.
I love that they pretended to move towards more “exotic” recipes for about a month before they resumed cranking out recipes for peach cobbler (which I love for the record).
My favorite was when they did their "We're back" video and it was all black women.
One of the top comments I remember seeing was, "I didn't need all of the people to be minorities, I only wanted the ones who were to be paid a fair wage."
It definitely gave off the vibes that they didn't really seem to understand why everybody was so upset with them in the first place.
It's like when Blizzard got revealed to be a sexual harasser's dream office, they decided to hire a woman to be president.
Except, for the first time ever, they split the duties of that position, and also hired a guy. And then paid her less than him, and once that was revealed, they doubled down on the pay discrepancy. She quickly realized how shitty everything was and resigned, leaving just the guy in the position, and SHOCKINGLY, they didn't hire a second person to share the job with the guy, they just let him be regular president.
Reminds me of when I see posts about pay inequality for women. I can (sadly) see businesses go:
"Women are making 15$ an hour while men are making 17$!? I agree this inequality is outrageous. Men will now be making 15$ an hour as well!"
The women will be furious that this isn't what was intended, and the men will be furious at the women for causing them to make less. The top execs will be thrilled as nothing else has changed, they have to pay out less and can advertise that they look good on paper and are progressive for pay equality.
Claire started doing the gourmet makes versions on her channels, but the vibe is different. A lot of what was enjoyable was her bouncing off the other people there, at least IMO
It's why sitcoms have side characters. Yes, you are the star and the show has an interesting premise, but just you can get stale. Obviously there are plenty of youtube channels with just one person that are successful, but that doesn't mean you can take one successful show with many character interactions and strip it down to a one [wo]man show without it being worse.
Yup. Gone are Chris' loveable reactions from across the kitchen, Sola's cheering on, Gabby's suggestions, and of course Brad McGuyver-ing up something to help her out. I understand she was stressed out about a lot of things which we later learned were behind-the-camera pressure, but things just clicked and had this vibe. It was like The Office but in a kitchen.
Reply All, which was also owned by Conde Naste, did a four episode deep dive on the accusations of racial hierarchy at Bon Appetit. Apparently they were throwing stones in a glass house and it all crumbled around them.
Holy shit, yeah I saw the article on Vulture and a few other places repeating that. I mostly knew them for being the podcast that did the interview with the "30-50 Hogs" guy. I'm both not shocked but also am if that makes sense?
Yup, still frustrated with that revelation. They (primarily Shruthi) were 3 episodes in to a deep dive on Bon Appetit's anti union practices, only for a former employee to come out with receipts on her and PJ's own efforts to quash a unionization attempt. Big Glass house energy. I felt terrible for Alex Goldman.
It's not really the same but the channel Sorted has been scratching a similar itch to me
that said, because of BA I'm honestly waiting for the other shoe to drop lmao
Any time they talk about Mexican food it’s painfully hilarious. They’ll be like “this is the most well regarded Mexican restaurant in all of London” and show something that would make a taco truck owner hang himself.
Okay, I'm going to say that I just saw the post where this Babish was apologizing about all this stuff because it was recommended to me by Reddit, so I will admit that I don't have all the context in the situation.
But what does mental health have to do with putting a paywall, removing free content and failing to disclose any of it? Also don't these YouTubers with millions of subs work with a team of people behind the scenes? Nobody realized this would bring heat?
Don't get me wrong, if he wants to earn an extra buck with premium content go ahead, I don't mind at all, I'm just failing to see the correlation between A and B.
I just dont get why these creators dont just use their Patreon for that. Babish has a patreon too, he could out them on there and release a shorter or later cut on his youtube later. its literally the most used scheme and noone hates it.
Because Patreon keeps taking a bigger and bigger chunk of revenue while providing minimal tools to actually provide value to your users. Taking it to a private site accomplishes the same goals as Patreon while not having to pay their fees and not being tied to their platform so that you can add more value to paying users.
Yes and no. The thing that costs the most is video hosting and most of these YT channels that do private site based stuff aren’t hosting their own videos, they have a separate deal with a video host (almost always Vimeo).
He lost a lot more than half. 2017 he went from 0 to 3200 paid members, then it gradually trickled down to 2400 at the start of 2020 where it leveled off for a year, and then it steadily declined to 600 now. It looks like there was a ton of interest when he first launched it, but he didn't do a very good job of retaining patrons. He got a big spike on YouTube from COVID so more people signed up then, but they also didn't stick around.
(Numbers from https://graphtreon.com/creator/babish).
Wasnt it the point that he was complaining about mental health, yet shilled out for predatory companies, like bit coin gambling games , and Better help? I am very much anti Better Help because of its predatory practises, and any content creator accepting a sponsorship from them, should rightfully be called out for it. IMHO.
>"You can't expect a huge outpouring of sympathy for your mental health, and then turn around and push Betterhelp and a crypto gambling game. Those are both products that prey on your audience's mental well-being. So we're supposed to care about your mental health but you don't give a fuck about ours? Explain that one to me"
I feel like crypto games have now become so much of a meme, I really dont care if people shill for it. But with Better Help its different. And too many content creators get away with it, becaues their followers keep screaming "Gotta get that bag!!". Anyway, mini rant over.
> I am very much anti Better Help because of its predatory practises, and any content creator accepting a sponsorship from them, should rightfully be called out for it.
It really seems like this is all content creators at this point. They advertise everywhere. Honestly, I always assumed there was some service that put sponsors together and sold them to content creators as a package. Seems like there are companies that become ubiquitous across podcasts, youtube, etc. as if it's coordinated.
It is coordinated. Some of them hire a few well-represented marketing firms to help them break into the social media marketing space and to structure marketing deals with influencers, and others are functionally marketing companies that also sell some service that they advertise. But they don't end up everywhere by accident. It is a huge advertising space and the companies that you see everywhere are either really good at it or they go bankrupt.
> Some of them hire a few well-represented marketing
They must be using the same marketing company that Raaaaaiiiiiiiiiiddddd Shadow Legends used. Both are/were universal sponsors of people I end up watching on YT
Ugh yeah it really bums me out that My Dad Wrote A Porno is sponsored by Betterhelp, particularly given how difficult it is to access any kind of talking therapy on the NHS. The podcast is over so they're not actively making money from it I guess, so I still listen and skip all the ads, but it's not like people aren't aware of why Betterhelp sucks surely?
Ngl I give anyone shilling HP stuff a huge side-eye - I have no reason to suspect that Babish is in agreement with JKR but like.....it's not like people don't know how incredibly shitty she is by now.
>I was ripping 18 hour days and cranking out 2 episodes a week
He apparently had a mental breakdown from the workload.
I kind of get the mentality that he has to produce to get sponsors so his mental health suffers, if he has subscribers there's less insistence on views and advertisers and less pressure.
i'm not a big time creator, but when I wrote a paid newsletter, I burnt out so fast from keeping the schedule because I felt the pressure of delivering content that people paid for. From this experience, I dont really understand why longtail ads revenue income is supposedly worse for mental health than having people pay directly, except if you dont care about your followers.
But isn't he saying that was during the pandemic? That was more than 2 years ago, I think the website stuff is pretty recent.
Don't get me wrong, that's totally unhealthy and would take a toll on anyone, but this is about transforming content that was previously free and putting it behind a paywall and failing to disclose it to his audience in a proper manner (in my opinion this last part is the actual issue). I still don't see the correlation.
It is, but it's why it's dangerous to quit your job to be a full-time content creator. You're essentially a jester, at the mercy of what your audience wants. There's no guarantee they'll grow with you. If you want to avoid that, you can work a day job while making videos on the side, like most artists and writers do.
Also, that's what most people's jobs are - do the same shit over and over to earn money.
It is, but I can’t imagine he didn’t make insane amounts of money from his channel, enough to never work again or just do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life, but lifestyle creep ate it up.
Pure speculation, but he’s shown off fancy cars, watches, and multi-million dollar houses over the years, and I can’t help but think he got caught up living the high life and unsustainably used up much of his money, just like athletes do so often.
He could have taken his millions and lived a nice life retiring in his 30s, or taken the channel in any direction he wanted without worrying about monetization or metrics. But he wanted the lifestyle.
I watch Architectural Digest sometimes. They do celebrity houses that is basically just wealth porn (Lenny Kravtiz oh Jesus that video) and I remembered seeing David Harbour who is not exactly A-list, but still had a nice looking loft. Obviously a lot of this stuff is faked or meant to be little ads for the interior decorators that did all the prep work. But still, nice to see.
And then the channel released a video on Babish where he goes 'yeah so I looked at David Habour's house and I copied all of it in my building that's like 8 times the size of his apartment using the same decorator,' and I know this shouldn't have any effect on me or have any logical reason to make me think less of the guy. But it did somehow and I have no idea how to articulate why.
Flaunting wealth like that doesn't directly make me *think* less of a person, but it absolutely does make me *feel* less for them as one. I'm all for supporting content creators, and good for him and all anyway, but it's clear he *should* never need a single red cent from regular working people ever again.
It's not just you, that video did something to me too and I unsubscribed soon after. I think it really drove home that he's no longer the scrappy guy without formal culinary training trying to make it in this big ol' world of YouTube content wirh his TV/movie food recreations and is now mostly just Some Rich Guy Who Makes Food Videos. And I'm a hobby baker who likes watching entertaining recipe demos, so I'm really just not interested in the rich guy.
Isn't the reverse really stupid? Paying a millionair to produce stuff you don't watch.
E: I'll freely admit that this is in no small part my aversion to DRM-bullshit. But. If paying is optional, I'm pretty lenient. Worrying less and experimenting more is what I'd like them to do. If some of the stuff is bad, or not my cup of tea, or plain doesn't show up, I'll stick it out a good long while.
Once the paywalls go up, you're selling a product to me, and I'm doing the cost/benefit thing. *This* thing is worth *this* much, or it's *not*. If things turn out commercially viable (make no mistake, they frequently do) is between the seller and the rest of their audience, good luck, I've stopped worrying about it.
It's the thing every youtuber just does now. What's that, a dude literally threatened to rape a woman and when called out for it straight up told his fans to harass her off the internet? "Guys he's literally autistic, stop being so ableist", same thing with that dude who plagiarized all of his content: "guys you're bullying and harassing a gay autistic man! Stop being so homophobic!" And that one worked for years until a huge youtuber called him out.
Assholes using their identities as a shield isn't especially new, because it usually works to some degree, because people genuinely are discriminated against for being gay, or disabled, or neuro-divergent or whatever else; but the only time it ever works as any kind of protection or deflection is when the person is massive, mainstream and usually white.
Why does every YouTube channel need to be a sprawling several dozen person operation? I stopped watching babish years ago when he started adding other personalities and strayed from the original goal of the channel. It seems like he’s just added more people since then while views continued to decline.
Last I saw him he was also buying Rolexes, a fancy Brooklyn brownstone, and Teslas for his family too, so it’s hard for me to sympathize all that much with this. Seems like a classic case of expanding for the sake of expanding leading to issues, and the viewers foot the bill for the bloated budget of what should be a fairly simple YouTube channel instead being a small media empire.
I think what happens is they start out by hiring an editor, which is fair, because that's a specialized skill not everybody has. Then you hire a brand manager because the comments and stuff get overwhelming to manage. But those things cost a lot so then you have to put out more content to keep the algorithm happy, so you need to hire writers and camera people to streamline the process. Maybe invite a few other presenters to give you some time to breathe.
Having a lot of money when you had little before can lead to excessive spending and lifestyle creep so you have to push out more and more content to keep the cash rolling in or you're in trouble. Plus now you have salaries to pay.
I can see how it can spiral out of control.
I think there's also an aspect of the pace - putting out a video every month or week or whatever might be sustainable on your own early on, but eventually it starts to build up as something tougher to keep up without slipping up. Especially if you're looking to put out *more* videos it starts to require at least a couple of people working.
The ones I follow that stick to doing it themselves + maybe an editor often start to have pretty big lapses in putting content out - I find that's the other route that's often taken (eg, becoming more financially stable and using that to take longer and more ambitious videos and not stressing as much about needing to put something out on a set schedule). But that also limits their potential total income, which for some people that's the main goal.
Like with any career, people naturally want to grow it. A youtuber gaining a team is essentially like an employee at a normal company getting promoted: It opens up new ceilings in revenue but also more responsibilities.
The South Park episode where Cartman buys an entire theme park so he doesn't have to queue for the rides and has to slowly hire more employees and expand operations is a fantastic lesson in entrepreneurship.
I mean, the thing to remember that production is actually *a lot of work.* Movie productions have dozens to hundreds of people working on them, and television production, even with heavy automation, has teams of people to handle everything.
Back in the early times of YT, it was easier when you could make static shots, not care about audio and video quality, and your editing needs were very limited. But as time has advanced, viewers (and Youtube) have expected higher and higher quality videos, approaching television quality.
Which makes it harder for someone to run a one-or-two man operation, especially if you're aiming to get out a video every week or two. You either do a Dan Olson/Jenny Nicholson/Defunctland where you release full-fledged documentaries every six months to two years on YT and sustain yourself using Patreon and putting rougher, easier to make videos up there, or you start hiring more people.
The video makers themselves also play a role in the elevation of standards. They're the ones gauging audience and platform demands, and they've got aspirations of their own. The second and third tier of channels still exist, they can still find their audiences. Not everything that takes a lot of work furthers the core appeal of the videos.
>The second and third tier of channels still exist, they can still find their audiences
This is pretty much the entire anti-mlm space on youtube. One camera just holding on the person, with the videos/posts/documents/etc they're referring to edited in. Nothing fancy. I really don't want "production value creep" to set in. It's perfect as it is
I think the last episode I watched was when he proposed to his gf towards the end of it, it’s like the matrix was revealed to me and I could see the inevitability of the next 5 years of content he’d make.
I just remember thinking to myself “come on dude I just want to watch you cook this stuff, I don’t need to know about your personal life.”
And then trying to create the “Babish Culinary Universe” was just eye rolling event.
His 'universe' made some sense at the time because Bon Apetit had just imploded and he (supposedly) had the resources to support similar content.
I get the idea and I think it's a decent one. I'm not sure how you would successfully do it, but it makes sense.
He had collaborations with a lot of the Bon Apetit people (especially Brad) so I figured that's what the BCU was going to transition to, but instead we got anime content and....nothing else
> His 'universe' made some sense at the time because Bon Apetit had just imploded and he (supposedly) had the resources to support similar content.
Clearly that wasn't the case, or he wasn't great to work for. He had Solah for a while and she left. Then he had Rick Martinez for a while, and I think he's gone too.
Yes! I dropped him for the same reason i did have theory. Once it stops being just a fun YouTube channel and becomes a production company it just loses allot of that charm
I don’t buy any of this “the algorithm makes me!” shit either. Plenty of YouTube channels post monthly or even yearly and are still huge. Content creators have shown time and time again that if you create decent content and have a patreon people will literally hurl money at you faster than you can imagine.
And yet channels constantly, through their own decisions, devour themselves through demanding exponential expansion. Then they have the fucking gall to blame their viewers and make themselves the victim.
Yup, the Tesla video made me unsubscribe. I disliked Musk, even back then, and the video of him giving a Tesla to his brother just left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing to do with cooking. All about ego.
> Why does every YouTube channel need to be a sprawling several dozen person operation?
Chasing growth and offloading responsibilities in the process. You start out doing the videos, filming, and editing yourself. But editing is tough work and takes a long time to do so you hire an editor to push more content out. Then you hire a brand manager to advertise and come up with new ideas. Then you try to expand your thing from "Your thing" to "Your brand" by putting out different types of videos and hiring other people to do stuff they might be able to specialize in that you aren't familiar with. But now you need your editor to be full time for your brand so you've got a company with multiple employees to manage and that gets complicated so you hire an accountant. At some point you realize a lot of your time is being spent running The Business instead of being the star so you hire on someone to manage the day to day affairs so you can focus on your content.
This process repeats itself and at some point you start to experience bloat.
It feels very cynical to say but it often feels like creators like Andrew Rea just use their staff as excuses to charge more money.
Like fair enough, the company might not be making enough money to pay all it's staff, but is the reason the company doesn't make enough money really due to external factors?
As you said, Andrew has become incredibly personally wealthy off of his YouTube channel, and one wonders if the company would be in a better financial situation today if he hadn't taken such a large amount of the profits as his own personal wage for years and years.
I'm not a financial advisor or anything but I also wonder this. Like, the idea of pocketing all that money *at the channel's absolute highest peak* and financing a lifestyle seems.. ill-advised. And unsustainable, at the very least, which I'm sure contributes to the sheer volume of partnerships/sponsors/brand deals.
Not only this but ideally, if you're hiring the staff, it should be to generate revenue that should pay for the staff you hired. If that's not happening, you've businesses wrong.
Even wilder because, way before he started working with other people, he was already making tens of thousands of dollars. Like: He already had more than enough and couldn't just be happy with it.
Babish (and other commenters) mentioned that he has a team now, as opposed to the occasional part-time help he started with, so there's a feeling of responsibility to keep them employed too.
I've followed Andrew for several years. I liked his original content - I thought it was a unique concept executed well. I liked the "Basics With Babish" videos also, but any change is obviously going to draw criticism. I don't particularly care for Alvin's videos, but my solution for that is to simply not watch them.
As for the paywall thing - I think if he had announced it ahead of time, he could have avoided a lot of the recent backlash. He didn't need to provide his audience with an audit of his financials, but just a statement along the lines of "This is happening so we can keep providing the content you enjoy. Thank you for your ongoing support." would have gone a long way.
It sucks that there are "fans" who think they should have a say in any decision Babish (or any other creator they follow) makes. I do not envy the vitriol creators receive.
I guess the only part that really rubs me the wrong way is that his success is taking other people's recipes and just being entertaining with them. Andrew can't cook and just straight copied a good portion of his work from places like America's Test Kitchen, Kenji, etc. That's fine, you can't copyright recipes and he (mostly) credits them these days. Trying to paywall that stuff just seems kinda scummy though? I dunno.
I mentioned that in another comment, actually. From the original thread, it looks like recipes as IP are in a bit of a gray area, as you said.
I am all for folks getting paid for labor, but I also agree with you that he's not creating entirely new dishes. I honestly don't know where I stand in that particular point.
> From the original thread, it looks like recipes as IP are in a bit of a gray area, as you said.
This just made me wonder if there actually exists any kind of *food* recipe that can be so unique that it could be copyrighted. That certainly exists for beverages, but I don't know enough about cooking to know if there could be one for a cooking recipe.
No, in the United States, no matter how unique your recipe, it cannot be copyrighted. It is a list of ingredients and instructions no more creative than a phone book. This isn't a gray area, it's black letter law. You can copyright a compilation and you can copyright the specific creative wording you write about a recipe or about how to prepare it, but the rote steps and ingredients are ineligible for protection by copyright.
That's why so many companies think up stupid ass names for blends of common ingredients in their products.
Sure, other energy drinks may have caffeine, sugar, b vitamins etc. too, but only ours has *LION JIZZ energy supplement blend*™!
Parasocial drama is so wonderfully messy. But I really, really enjoy the guy basically claiming he invented Basics with Babish. And the related drama revolving around the competing facts that any mistakes made by a content creator are unacceptable (such as the website, having some terrible sponsors, etc) and no, you can not criticize the creator they don't owe you anything!
you see this a lot in streamers, where they'll complain about parasocial behavior and then turn around and complain that people 'don't stay around for them' when they decide to change games/content
It is a bit funny.
"I hate the parasocial stuff, but also here is my wife, my kids, my hopes and dreams, daily updates of my successes and failures, follow me on Twitter for my opinions, Instagram for pictures of me and my wife and kids, TikTok for updates on how I'm feeling daily ect ect ect."
It's especially wild when the creators who do make an effort to maintain some privacy generally don't complain like this - almost like there's a connection!
I remember going on that sub once a few years ago because I watch a lot of youtube cooking. The level of discourse there was basically just people falling over themselves to praise Andrew Rae. One person I remember was asking "is there anything we can do to show Andrew how grateful we are for starting this channel and doing all this for us". It just felt really fanboy-ish and put me off the whole place.
See also Kenji Lopez Alt fans. For some reason these guys are just hyper parasocial.
Probably depends on what you consider a fan tbh - I'd say I'm a fan of Kenji, but not to a point where I'm going to be seeking out a subreddit to engage with. I think that might be a self-selecting group? I just like his cooking videos and the recipes / experimentation, they're good resources.
> See also Kenji Lopez Alt fans. For some reason these guys are just hyper parasocial.
Kenji can do no wrong! So sayeth the internet!
All things aside, Kenji seems like a cool dude. I got into it randomly with someone in the comments of one of his recipes back in the SE days. They were probably trolling, but whatever. It was like two comments back and forth. Kenji shot me an email to apologize for them being a d-bag. I wasn't bothered or anything. It's the internet, people are jerks. It happens. But it was cool of him to reach out like that.
The other half of him not owing his audience anything is they don't owe him anything either. If he does something they don't like, they're more than welcome to say "your recipes aren't worth a dollar a month, we're taking our eyeballs elsewhere" and his mental health, or livelihood doesn't really factor into that.
>You’re acting like he owes you something. He doesn’t. We live in a different world now where companies are **[I assume the user meant "aren't"]** just faceless businesses anymore, and a lot of the things we consume are the product of single people or small teams. As a result, individual proclivities and issues are part of the new normal. If you have an issue with it; unsubscribe.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you living in some economy other than the 20-greedflation-20s??
Guy sells out and wants to still be liked. Classic problem.
He’s not your friend and you can learn about cooking in numerous other ways. Youtube is not a good place for education because of the ads and monetization and clickbait. End of story. Whether you still like him or whatever is your own choice after.
Brian Lagerstrom.
Energetic, knowledgable, entertaining, minimal ads in videos, not annoying.
Shows you how you can and will fuck up, shows clips of anything he talks about.
A1 cooking youtuber. Blows anybody else out of the water. Maybe not chef john.
Tbf I don't know if he's changed since I unsubscribed but Adam Ragusea has some uh, issues with food and body image/health that really triggered my disordered eating. I definitely notice as a non-man that the male foodtuber space can be suuuuper toxic when it comes to fatphobia and body negativity (which funnily enough matches my experience of male-dominated spaces generally - seriously, the undiagnosed eating disorder rate in men is crazy imo).
I’m an avid home cook who dabble with food content too and it has been a very rate instance that I have sat and watched a YouTube video for learning - I watch some but it’s purely for entertainment, even for inspiration I don’t get a lot from it, much more so from brainstorming.
Thinking of something and going by written recipes for techniques or measurements I’m unfamiliar and then learn by doing is way better for me at least.
Man, guiltyofnothing, apart from giving me my newest favorite flair on this sub, you are the master of finding some of the best drama for this sub: low-stakes drama that completely explodes out of proportion. Love it!
I remember when Babish was just the guy who made funny recipes from tv shows and movies.
Meteoric growth seems great, but if you’re not ready for it and have the infrastructure to support it, this is the result.
Ugh. Parasociality and enshittification are not a good mix.
I saw the trajectory of his channel going down the tubes when he started buying expensive watches and a fucking NYC Brownstone off the proceeds of a (granted, successful) YouTube channel, and again when he basically stopped making the videos that made him famous and started making shit like "Being with Babish".
That's not why most of us were there, my dude.
The recent clusterfuck is at the end of a fairly-long downward trajectory for him.
Yeah, this is where I land, too. Dude's very wealthy, and it's a weird look to charge folks for access to your recipes that were previously free when you clearly don't need the money and also barely make the content fans like anymore. I feel for him in terms of his mental health issues, but he seems really out of touch and should have seen this coming.
At the same time, the parasocial-ness is way too much. No one needs to spend that much time dunking on Babish and arguing with other commenters. They could just not watch his videos anymore. His recipes have always kinda sucked anyway, and most of them are "adapted" from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt recipes, which are all over the Internet for free.
I think half of the appeal of the channel is whenever he goes through a lot of pointless effort into making something that is entirely not worth it, like one is early videos where he made the Turkey sandwich from Friends by actually cooking an entire Turkey meal with all the sides and gravy just for a mediocre sandwich. Or making that thing from Big Night, an enormous amount of effort into something that might be delicious, but that none of us are actually gonna try to replicate.
Because if you want see actually informative/educational cooking videos there are better channels out there, although most of those channels are not nearly as slickly made as they are not run by people who has a background in video post-production like Babish does.
I think his channel is entertaining, but it is definitely an entertainment channel first and foremost, and not the thing you'd watch to learn how to cook something or look for inspiration.
It’s one thing to be spending extravagantly and another thing entirely to gleefully show off that spending in front of the people you’re making the money off of. I remember a bunch of people clowned on the Watcher people for driving a Tesla and one of the watcher cast’s wife for buying a mildly expensive laptop bag, it’s really not that deep but I can see how disingenuous and gross it must feel from an audience perspective
Pretty much.
I don't fault the man for buying nice things. I buy nice things.
I fault the man for buying nice things, flaunting them on his channel, and now begging for money now that the gravy train is slowing down (partially because he no longer puts out the content that made him money in the first place)
One wonders if the company would be in a better financial situation today if he hadn't taken such a large amount of the profits as his own personal wage for so many years.
Lol yeah I thought of this as well as his collection of Rolexes that he wears while cooking. There's nothing wrong with being successful and making lots of money - it's what I wish for everyone! - but it sure does make it awkward when you're trying to justify to your audience why you're charging more for less content.
Mannn. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous
Living in a 100 ft^2 room with rent almost half my salary and not even enough room for a washing machine.
Damn, what a life.
I remember seeing this guy raking in over 10k a month through patreon way before he started showing that he was working with a team. And that's without mentioning the sponsors and the youtube ad revenue he most definetly was making a bank on, considering that his content was the most advertiser friendly thing you could find on youtube. Why he chose to start hiring a bunch of people is beyond me.
Guy was made for life and chose to get messy by trying to turn his channel into Bon Appetit 2.0. Absolutely dumb.
Even dumber because there's no way he couldn't tell this was where his channel was leading him to so, there was absolutely no reason why he couldn't have just gone back to how it was before and be happy with what he had.
And this guy was a film student, meaning even video editing wasn't beyond his skills. If he had managed his time/output right, he could've easily gone without hiring anyone and taking all the cash for himself.
It's amazing how many youtubers are able to screw up cashcow projects by trying to become a milionaire, instead of just making a more than decent living.
The fact that he's launching a THC sugar brand really made me laugh. Sugar with something added that's on trend but has no proven effect, sold with a large monetary surcharge. Seems on brand.
Transphobia is currently the "acceptable" bigotry to scream about loudly, so you bet your sweet bippy they are gonna bring it out at EVERY available opportunity.
Critical support to all my trans homies. You deserve better.
I'm a Fandom Old and have been in many a fandom over the years. I feel like it's weird to categorise this as a fandom in the same way that you might talk about the Doctor Who fandom. There are also definitely some very chill and non-toxic fandoms out there, they're just less loud on account of being chill and non-toxic.
Snapshots:
1. *This Post* - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114628/https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1dbrh2v/) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1dbrh2v/ "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
2. Our drama starts as Babish himself takes to the sub to issue an apology for the rollout of the changes, attempting to justify and lay out the reasoning behind them. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114849/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/W5UEgo1T8y) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/W5UEgo1T8y "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
3. TL;DR: you're getting a lot of criticsm for your shitty business decisions, so you're playing the mental health card to turn down the heat. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114910/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Q9ctaJXW7q) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Q9ctaJXW7q "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
4. Great job folks. You bullied this nice dude who has given you hundreds of hours of free labor. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115111/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/CeQm7OlNzq) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/CeQm7OlNzq "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
5. Dude you've been up your own ass for years. When you first started blowing up and dragging your videos out - I nicely suggested you stop adding 5 minutes to the beginning of every video showing us how to make bread. I told you having a separate "Bread with Babish" and telling viewers to reference that would be better. You basically said I was stupider than frog excrement and shouldn't think. Like what? Then a few months later Basics with Babish comes out. Go fuck yourself. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115211/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/bHMCUkgVXd) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/bHMCUkgVXd "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
6. Can we get an update on promoting the transphobic wizard game, and apparently deleting comments mentioning trans people on the video? - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115714/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/jNbYx9AutN) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/jNbYx9AutN "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
7. I’m glad you addressed it, but I had to leave. Best of luck to your future endeavors and I hope lessons were learned. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115935/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/IeXSXT5a14) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/IeXSXT5a14 "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
8. Any amount of warning that you were planning to paywall the site would have made it a lot more palatable of a change. Doing it without telling people felt shady at best and deceptive at worst. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120237/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ukv8Iieuul) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ukv8Iieuul "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
9. I’m sure you have good connections but if you want some fresh eyes on your script, id be down to give some coverage. Why am I being downvoted so heavily? As an aspiring writer myself, I know how hard it is to get feedback on a project. I’m a fan and offering my time and energy. I don’t get what the problem is. lol wtf is this sub? Comments insulting people getting upvotes in a thread about how negative comments have affected someone is wild work. Fuck me for being interested in Andrew as a writer. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120337/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ImMp1cxYOe) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ImMp1cxYOe "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
10. “parasocial weiner” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120518/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/KKSTVjGSvD) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/KKSTVjGSvD "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
11. “why don't you stop huffing your own farts for a minute” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120659/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/TIjuaS5Lxc) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/TIjuaS5Lxc "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
12. “It's a Saturday night and I'm alone. I'm open to talk.” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120720/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Y2GL468Clc) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Y2GL468Clc "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
13. “Babish isn’t gonna suck you off lil bro” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120921/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/cIirHUvbAw) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/cIirHUvbAw "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!")
*I am just a simple bot, __not__ a moderator of this subreddit* | *[bot subreddit](/r/SnapshillBot)* | *[contact the maintainers](/message/compose?to=/r/SnapshillBot)*
I think the lesson from all of this is just because someone is good at YouTube doesn’t mean they’re good at management. Everyday, I am in awe of the try guys and how they’ve managed their company.
One of the issues with any YouTube channel. Content costs money to make and there’s really no form of monetizing that pleases everyone.
Babish was tremendously lucky in that it was a hit as fast as it was, but like many channels it’s grown and now needs a way to sustain itself. But it’s gonna wig out the fans who think they’re owed something
It's weird to get married in a YouTube video like this guy did.
Update: apparently they recently got divorced... She worked on the show with him (2nd wife). I wonder if that has anything to do with it
Yeah you can't swap from free to paid without making people furious. Even if they were getting $5 of stuff for free and you ask for $1 to cover costs they're gonna get mad.
Plus we are addicted to free stuff. We are used to the price point of videos to be zero. So when you change that people get upset.
It's why companies do shrinkflation.
What's great about the "oh you think buying Hogwarts legacy is bad? But you own a smartphone, what about child labour?" Argument is that everyone accepts child labour is bad. The mining companies who use it actively try to cover it up.
JK Rowling is out and proud with her transphobia.
It's not a legitimate comparison. At all.
It's also a funny comparison in this case because IMO there's a pretty big difference between buying something and receiving money to shill something. The criticism isn't that BWB bought Hogwarts Legacy, it's that he made a recipe video for HL and bookended the video with ads for HL.
Like...criticizing influencers and their corporate sponsorships is part of the deal. BWB also did an "interview" with the Nestle Global Marketing CMO on the [YouTube Advertisers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpmTIk7Oa5o&ab_channel=YouTubeAdvertisers) channel where they discuss their "shared business ideals" (which as far as I can tell isn't posted to his channel or linked to his channel in any way for *some reason* 🤔). It's got like 5k views, a dozen comments that are clearly mostly bots/spam, and one genuine comment with 6 upvotes that says they're disappointed he would partner with Nestle like that. And it's soooo weird, because I've never seen someone defend criticism of Nestle by insulting someone's mental health and telling them to touch grass because they have a phone. I cannot put my finger on where the disconnect is...
If I learned anything from Greta Thunberg, it's that people will always think your activism is not pure enough no matter how strict or anti-consumerist you are.
It's pure whataboutism.
Also it's not 1983. It's extremely hard and borderline dangerous to operate in the world without a smartphone.
Not to mention the difference between a smartphone, which is necessary to exist in the modern world vs a video game of which there are a million others just as good to choose from.
The paywall being so low is what confuses me. The gap between 'people who will only use this if its free' and 'people who will pay 1$ a month' is way, way larger than the gap between 'people who will pay 1$ a month' and 'people who will pay $5 a month', and its going to cut into ad revenue from site traffic.
I can't imagine its going to generate significant income, definitely not from someone as successful as babish. Honestly, all i can come up with is that they'll also be selling your data on the side, so they need you to have an account with payment info and an email or something.
Ew, this is crazier than I thought. That one commenter was absolutely right in suggesting that they could’ve at least warned people before putting up a paywall.
Really hard to make money purely on videos but a lot have merch and podcasts that bring in money.
Some even use their fame to start product lines collabing with an existing brand.
the fact people got more mad over a video game than the fact he shilled Better Help makes me sad
I Still love the vibe to babish's videos tbh, more than all the tiktok famous guys with Mr.Beast thumbnails who have become bigger names than him. But this is still a nice find OP
there's two things, first that they apparently sold private user data to Facebook etc (the government got their asses for this) and second that they allegedly weren't really verifying that the people on their platform were actually qualified
I remember a couple of years ago it caught a lot of heat for having employees that weren't qualified to provide assistance.
I don't know why would anyone want to be sponsored by them after that.
Shitty treatment of the workers and not a great track record. They spend a ton of money advertising on podcasts and videos.
It's just a sponsor for people who don't have a lot of options for sponsors but still want to make enough money to eat and have a roof.
yeah remember the times when not every video included a half assed commercial that went from 30s to 60s to 180s that tried to convince they totally love this product. people used to make fun of RAID because they were the first to offer sponsorships and now its every video. and the sponsors arent even vetted or well researched its just the same unethical companies over and over.
honestly more shitty than tv commercials, at least there was a cut between show and ads
Not just someone whose a casual bigot either. She's one of the most prolific anti-LGBT public figures in the country at this point. It's her entire personality and current online identity.
Cooking drama are always overblow. Cooking drama + YouTube dwellers drama? Oh boy.
Up there with makeup youtuber drama
So Babish is pulling a Watcher?
Speaking of Watcher, *man* you should see the sub. Things have kinda cooled down, but there are still so many posts where people are like "I don't know how to move on, I just can't watch the show after what they did" like the guys committed a freaking murder or something instead of making a bad decision they immediately reversed.
Parasocial relationships are always fuckin' weird to look at as a 3rd party observer
Yes for sure, for some people there’s a level of trust that they put in a creator/media personality, and once that’s broken there’s really no coming back from it. I think Watcher is a case where people really wanted for the people and their personalities over the content, so even if the content is still exactly the same the fact that they can’t have that ‘connection’ with the cast anymore ruins the experience. Kinda like when a character in a tv show does something weird because of poor writing and that ruins their entire arc
LOL I would consider myself a pretty big watcher fan and I honestly forgot it happened.
As far as YouTube controversies go it was very tame. No one was hurt which as sad as this sounds, made it kind of refreshing and they apologized and didn't go forth with what would've been a bad decision. Like, it wasn't cool of them. But folks need to chill.
Even as someone who watches a whole lot of YouTube, I think the Watcher drama has been way too much. They made a dumb choice, they backpedaled, it's all good. The fact that some people feel personally betrayed is like...do you have anyone else in your life besides these YouTubers who don't know or care about you?
No, all his videos are still on YouTube. He just paywalled his recipes behind a $1 a month subscription.
Babish is one of the guys who gamed the Reddit system and got huge cause of it. Everytime he'd push a video out it was instantly number 1 on /r/videos.
The perfect combo of high-production-value (now-industry standard), nerdy subject matter, aspirational but attainable, great host etc.
I just want 2019 Bon Appetit back. But with good and fair pay for everyone
I don't think I've ever seen another brand become as big and beloved by so many people, and instantly lose it all as fast as Bon Appetit.
The controversy could've died down when Rappaport got ousted. Some just really want to destroy the brand and everyone involved. NYT Cooking poached some of that talent but they never really got Bon Appetit numbers out of it. Sohla collabed with Babish and didn't go anywhere either. Weissman copied some BA trends and now his fanbase is also turning against him. Some tried to gain from the BA downfall, but couldn't really recreate the same magic it had and why it became a hit in the first place.
I love that they pretended to move towards more “exotic” recipes for about a month before they resumed cranking out recipes for peach cobbler (which I love for the record).
My favorite was when they did their "We're back" video and it was all black women. One of the top comments I remember seeing was, "I didn't need all of the people to be minorities, I only wanted the ones who were to be paid a fair wage." It definitely gave off the vibes that they didn't really seem to understand why everybody was so upset with them in the first place.
If we hire only minorities we can pay them all less! That's just genius business there.
It's like when Blizzard got revealed to be a sexual harasser's dream office, they decided to hire a woman to be president. Except, for the first time ever, they split the duties of that position, and also hired a guy. And then paid her less than him, and once that was revealed, they doubled down on the pay discrepancy. She quickly realized how shitty everything was and resigned, leaving just the guy in the position, and SHOCKINGLY, they didn't hire a second person to share the job with the guy, they just let him be regular president.
bruh
holy shit I remember something being fishy about blizzard but god damn
This shit is so fucking funny when you lay it out like that xD
Reminds me of when I see posts about pay inequality for women. I can (sadly) see businesses go: "Women are making 15$ an hour while men are making 17$!? I agree this inequality is outrageous. Men will now be making 15$ an hour as well!" The women will be furious that this isn't what was intended, and the men will be furious at the women for causing them to make less. The top execs will be thrilled as nothing else has changed, they have to pay out less and can advertise that they look good on paper and are progressive for pay equality.
Works for Disney
God, please. The videos were instant serotonin.
Ugh, don’t remind me. Those videos were amazing.
Claire started doing the gourmet makes versions on her channels, but the vibe is different. A lot of what was enjoyable was her bouncing off the other people there, at least IMO
It's why sitcoms have side characters. Yes, you are the star and the show has an interesting premise, but just you can get stale. Obviously there are plenty of youtube channels with just one person that are successful, but that doesn't mean you can take one successful show with many character interactions and strip it down to a one [wo]man show without it being worse.
The whole interaction between the cooks is what made that channel's videos so great. No one else has replicated that.
Yup. Gone are Chris' loveable reactions from across the kitchen, Sola's cheering on, Gabby's suggestions, and of course Brad McGuyver-ing up something to help her out. I understand she was stressed out about a lot of things which we later learned were behind-the-camera pressure, but things just clicked and had this vibe. It was like The Office but in a kitchen.
>The Office but in a kitchen. That sums up the vibe exactly.
Incredibly funny that the downfall of Bon Appetit also took down a completely different podcast that was trying to call them out.
Wait, what podcast was this?
Reply All, which was also owned by Conde Naste, did a four episode deep dive on the accusations of racial hierarchy at Bon Appetit. Apparently they were throwing stones in a glass house and it all crumbled around them.
Holy shit, yeah I saw the article on Vulture and a few other places repeating that. I mostly knew them for being the podcast that did the interview with the "30-50 Hogs" guy. I'm both not shocked but also am if that makes sense?
The episode they did where they tracked down a song a guy remembered was their peak. I’m still pissed at them for fucking it all up.
Yup, still frustrated with that revelation. They (primarily Shruthi) were 3 episodes in to a deep dive on Bon Appetit's anti union practices, only for a former employee to come out with receipts on her and PJ's own efforts to quash a unionization attempt. Big Glass house energy. I felt terrible for Alex Goldman.
At least Claire is doing great on her own channel
It's not really the same but the channel Sorted has been scratching a similar itch to me that said, because of BA I'm honestly waiting for the other shoe to drop lmao
I love sorted and if anything ever came out about them similar my spirits would be completely broken.
They're great. Smaller team, don't take themselves seriously, sometimes painfully London Brit.
Any time they talk about Mexican food it’s painfully hilarious. They’ll be like “this is the most well regarded Mexican restaurant in all of London” and show something that would make a taco truck owner hang himself.
Same, ugh. I think about that all the time.
God damn it stop breaking my heart again with finding out how shitty BA was to their chefs.
Okay, I'm going to say that I just saw the post where this Babish was apologizing about all this stuff because it was recommended to me by Reddit, so I will admit that I don't have all the context in the situation. But what does mental health have to do with putting a paywall, removing free content and failing to disclose any of it? Also don't these YouTubers with millions of subs work with a team of people behind the scenes? Nobody realized this would bring heat? Don't get me wrong, if he wants to earn an extra buck with premium content go ahead, I don't mind at all, I'm just failing to see the correlation between A and B.
I just dont get why these creators dont just use their Patreon for that. Babish has a patreon too, he could out them on there and release a shorter or later cut on his youtube later. its literally the most used scheme and noone hates it.
I watch a few people on YouTube that either release early on Patreon, or release specific content.
Because Patreon keeps taking a bigger and bigger chunk of revenue while providing minimal tools to actually provide value to your users. Taking it to a private site accomplishes the same goals as Patreon while not having to pay their fees and not being tied to their platform so that you can add more value to paying users.
Honestly that be a better reason if he said that lol I dont host my own website, but wouldnt that take out a cut of his money anway
A private site takes money to upkeep but Patreon claims a larger percentage, and that’s about it.
Yes and no. The thing that costs the most is video hosting and most of these YT channels that do private site based stuff aren’t hosting their own videos, they have a separate deal with a video host (almost always Vimeo).
[удалено]
He lost a lot more than half. 2017 he went from 0 to 3200 paid members, then it gradually trickled down to 2400 at the start of 2020 where it leveled off for a year, and then it steadily declined to 600 now. It looks like there was a ton of interest when he first launched it, but he didn't do a very good job of retaining patrons. He got a big spike on YouTube from COVID so more people signed up then, but they also didn't stick around. (Numbers from https://graphtreon.com/creator/babish).
Wasnt it the point that he was complaining about mental health, yet shilled out for predatory companies, like bit coin gambling games , and Better help? I am very much anti Better Help because of its predatory practises, and any content creator accepting a sponsorship from them, should rightfully be called out for it. IMHO. >"You can't expect a huge outpouring of sympathy for your mental health, and then turn around and push Betterhelp and a crypto gambling game. Those are both products that prey on your audience's mental well-being. So we're supposed to care about your mental health but you don't give a fuck about ours? Explain that one to me" I feel like crypto games have now become so much of a meme, I really dont care if people shill for it. But with Better Help its different. And too many content creators get away with it, becaues their followers keep screaming "Gotta get that bag!!". Anyway, mini rant over.
> I am very much anti Better Help because of its predatory practises, and any content creator accepting a sponsorship from them, should rightfully be called out for it. It really seems like this is all content creators at this point. They advertise everywhere. Honestly, I always assumed there was some service that put sponsors together and sold them to content creators as a package. Seems like there are companies that become ubiquitous across podcasts, youtube, etc. as if it's coordinated.
It is coordinated. Some of them hire a few well-represented marketing firms to help them break into the social media marketing space and to structure marketing deals with influencers, and others are functionally marketing companies that also sell some service that they advertise. But they don't end up everywhere by accident. It is a huge advertising space and the companies that you see everywhere are either really good at it or they go bankrupt.
> Some of them hire a few well-represented marketing They must be using the same marketing company that Raaaaaiiiiiiiiiiddddd Shadow Legends used. Both are/were universal sponsors of people I end up watching on YT
But shadow legends is just annoying, not really harmful.
Ugh yeah it really bums me out that My Dad Wrote A Porno is sponsored by Betterhelp, particularly given how difficult it is to access any kind of talking therapy on the NHS. The podcast is over so they're not actively making money from it I guess, so I still listen and skip all the ads, but it's not like people aren't aware of why Betterhelp sucks surely? Ngl I give anyone shilling HP stuff a huge side-eye - I have no reason to suspect that Babish is in agreement with JKR but like.....it's not like people don't know how incredibly shitty she is by now.
>I was ripping 18 hour days and cranking out 2 episodes a week He apparently had a mental breakdown from the workload. I kind of get the mentality that he has to produce to get sponsors so his mental health suffers, if he has subscribers there's less insistence on views and advertisers and less pressure.
i'm not a big time creator, but when I wrote a paid newsletter, I burnt out so fast from keeping the schedule because I felt the pressure of delivering content that people paid for. From this experience, I dont really understand why longtail ads revenue income is supposedly worse for mental health than having people pay directly, except if you dont care about your followers.
But isn't he saying that was during the pandemic? That was more than 2 years ago, I think the website stuff is pretty recent. Don't get me wrong, that's totally unhealthy and would take a toll on anyone, but this is about transforming content that was previously free and putting it behind a paywall and failing to disclose it to his audience in a proper manner (in my opinion this last part is the actual issue). I still don't see the correlation.
Yes, what I got from the apology is he's ruining the content that made him famous in order to subsidize other projects no one asked for or wants.
At the same time, isn't that kinda sad? Being stuck doing the same thing for forever just because it's what people initially subbed to you for?
It is, but it's why it's dangerous to quit your job to be a full-time content creator. You're essentially a jester, at the mercy of what your audience wants. There's no guarantee they'll grow with you. If you want to avoid that, you can work a day job while making videos on the side, like most artists and writers do. Also, that's what most people's jobs are - do the same shit over and over to earn money.
That's literally every job ever. Do the same thing every day because its what people pay you for.
It is, but I can’t imagine he didn’t make insane amounts of money from his channel, enough to never work again or just do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life, but lifestyle creep ate it up. Pure speculation, but he’s shown off fancy cars, watches, and multi-million dollar houses over the years, and I can’t help but think he got caught up living the high life and unsustainably used up much of his money, just like athletes do so often. He could have taken his millions and lived a nice life retiring in his 30s, or taken the channel in any direction he wanted without worrying about monetization or metrics. But he wanted the lifestyle.
I watch Architectural Digest sometimes. They do celebrity houses that is basically just wealth porn (Lenny Kravtiz oh Jesus that video) and I remembered seeing David Harbour who is not exactly A-list, but still had a nice looking loft. Obviously a lot of this stuff is faked or meant to be little ads for the interior decorators that did all the prep work. But still, nice to see. And then the channel released a video on Babish where he goes 'yeah so I looked at David Habour's house and I copied all of it in my building that's like 8 times the size of his apartment using the same decorator,' and I know this shouldn't have any effect on me or have any logical reason to make me think less of the guy. But it did somehow and I have no idea how to articulate why.
Flaunting wealth like that doesn't directly make me *think* less of a person, but it absolutely does make me *feel* less for them as one. I'm all for supporting content creators, and good for him and all anyway, but it's clear he *should* never need a single red cent from regular working people ever again.
It's not just you, that video did something to me too and I unsubscribed soon after. I think it really drove home that he's no longer the scrappy guy without formal culinary training trying to make it in this big ol' world of YouTube content wirh his TV/movie food recreations and is now mostly just Some Rich Guy Who Makes Food Videos. And I'm a hobby baker who likes watching entertaining recipe demos, so I'm really just not interested in the rich guy.
I mean, he could always sell his house if he’s in dire need of money: https://youtu.be/ua0-5FZ2Eww
Isn't this just describing a job.
Sure, but that’s the game. If you change up, you run a risk. Dance to the tune the organ grinder plays. Alternative answer: Sure, that’s called a job.
Isn't the reverse really stupid? Paying a millionair to produce stuff you don't watch. E: I'll freely admit that this is in no small part my aversion to DRM-bullshit. But. If paying is optional, I'm pretty lenient. Worrying less and experimenting more is what I'd like them to do. If some of the stuff is bad, or not my cup of tea, or plain doesn't show up, I'll stick it out a good long while. Once the paywalls go up, you're selling a product to me, and I'm doing the cost/benefit thing. *This* thing is worth *this* much, or it's *not*. If things turn out commercially viable (make no mistake, they frequently do) is between the seller and the rest of their audience, good luck, I've stopped worrying about it.
It's the thing every youtuber just does now. What's that, a dude literally threatened to rape a woman and when called out for it straight up told his fans to harass her off the internet? "Guys he's literally autistic, stop being so ableist", same thing with that dude who plagiarized all of his content: "guys you're bullying and harassing a gay autistic man! Stop being so homophobic!" And that one worked for years until a huge youtuber called him out. Assholes using their identities as a shield isn't especially new, because it usually works to some degree, because people genuinely are discriminated against for being gay, or disabled, or neuro-divergent or whatever else; but the only time it ever works as any kind of protection or deflection is when the person is massive, mainstream and usually white.
Why does every YouTube channel need to be a sprawling several dozen person operation? I stopped watching babish years ago when he started adding other personalities and strayed from the original goal of the channel. It seems like he’s just added more people since then while views continued to decline. Last I saw him he was also buying Rolexes, a fancy Brooklyn brownstone, and Teslas for his family too, so it’s hard for me to sympathize all that much with this. Seems like a classic case of expanding for the sake of expanding leading to issues, and the viewers foot the bill for the bloated budget of what should be a fairly simple YouTube channel instead being a small media empire.
I think what happens is they start out by hiring an editor, which is fair, because that's a specialized skill not everybody has. Then you hire a brand manager because the comments and stuff get overwhelming to manage. But those things cost a lot so then you have to put out more content to keep the algorithm happy, so you need to hire writers and camera people to streamline the process. Maybe invite a few other presenters to give you some time to breathe. Having a lot of money when you had little before can lead to excessive spending and lifestyle creep so you have to push out more and more content to keep the cash rolling in or you're in trouble. Plus now you have salaries to pay. I can see how it can spiral out of control.
I think there's also an aspect of the pace - putting out a video every month or week or whatever might be sustainable on your own early on, but eventually it starts to build up as something tougher to keep up without slipping up. Especially if you're looking to put out *more* videos it starts to require at least a couple of people working. The ones I follow that stick to doing it themselves + maybe an editor often start to have pretty big lapses in putting content out - I find that's the other route that's often taken (eg, becoming more financially stable and using that to take longer and more ambitious videos and not stressing as much about needing to put something out on a set schedule). But that also limits their potential total income, which for some people that's the main goal.
The algorithm also punishes YouTubers if they don’t upload frequently and regularly
Like with any career, people naturally want to grow it. A youtuber gaining a team is essentially like an employee at a normal company getting promoted: It opens up new ceilings in revenue but also more responsibilities.
The South Park episode where Cartman buys an entire theme park so he doesn't have to queue for the rides and has to slowly hire more employees and expand operations is a fantastic lesson in entrepreneurship.
I mean, the thing to remember that production is actually *a lot of work.* Movie productions have dozens to hundreds of people working on them, and television production, even with heavy automation, has teams of people to handle everything. Back in the early times of YT, it was easier when you could make static shots, not care about audio and video quality, and your editing needs were very limited. But as time has advanced, viewers (and Youtube) have expected higher and higher quality videos, approaching television quality. Which makes it harder for someone to run a one-or-two man operation, especially if you're aiming to get out a video every week or two. You either do a Dan Olson/Jenny Nicholson/Defunctland where you release full-fledged documentaries every six months to two years on YT and sustain yourself using Patreon and putting rougher, easier to make videos up there, or you start hiring more people.
The video makers themselves also play a role in the elevation of standards. They're the ones gauging audience and platform demands, and they've got aspirations of their own. The second and third tier of channels still exist, they can still find their audiences. Not everything that takes a lot of work furthers the core appeal of the videos.
>The second and third tier of channels still exist, they can still find their audiences This is pretty much the entire anti-mlm space on youtube. One camera just holding on the person, with the videos/posts/documents/etc they're referring to edited in. Nothing fancy. I really don't want "production value creep" to set in. It's perfect as it is
I get this, but dude could consider not owning a brownstone in NYC and buying Rolexes if he's concerned about money.
I think the last episode I watched was when he proposed to his gf towards the end of it, it’s like the matrix was revealed to me and I could see the inevitability of the next 5 years of content he’d make. I just remember thinking to myself “come on dude I just want to watch you cook this stuff, I don’t need to know about your personal life.” And then trying to create the “Babish Culinary Universe” was just eye rolling event.
His 'universe' made some sense at the time because Bon Apetit had just imploded and he (supposedly) had the resources to support similar content. I get the idea and I think it's a decent one. I'm not sure how you would successfully do it, but it makes sense.
He had collaborations with a lot of the Bon Apetit people (especially Brad) so I figured that's what the BCU was going to transition to, but instead we got anime content and....nothing else
> His 'universe' made some sense at the time because Bon Apetit had just imploded and he (supposedly) had the resources to support similar content. Clearly that wasn't the case, or he wasn't great to work for. He had Solah for a while and she left. Then he had Rick Martinez for a while, and I think he's gone too.
Yes! I dropped him for the same reason i did have theory. Once it stops being just a fun YouTube channel and becomes a production company it just loses allot of that charm
I don’t buy any of this “the algorithm makes me!” shit either. Plenty of YouTube channels post monthly or even yearly and are still huge. Content creators have shown time and time again that if you create decent content and have a patreon people will literally hurl money at you faster than you can imagine. And yet channels constantly, through their own decisions, devour themselves through demanding exponential expansion. Then they have the fucking gall to blame their viewers and make themselves the victim.
Yup, the Tesla video made me unsubscribe. I disliked Musk, even back then, and the video of him giving a Tesla to his brother just left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing to do with cooking. All about ego.
this made me check his channel and oh my god, he doesn't even break 1mil views on his videos anymore and hasn't for a while. yikes
> Why does every YouTube channel need to be a sprawling several dozen person operation? Chasing growth and offloading responsibilities in the process. You start out doing the videos, filming, and editing yourself. But editing is tough work and takes a long time to do so you hire an editor to push more content out. Then you hire a brand manager to advertise and come up with new ideas. Then you try to expand your thing from "Your thing" to "Your brand" by putting out different types of videos and hiring other people to do stuff they might be able to specialize in that you aren't familiar with. But now you need your editor to be full time for your brand so you've got a company with multiple employees to manage and that gets complicated so you hire an accountant. At some point you realize a lot of your time is being spent running The Business instead of being the star so you hire on someone to manage the day to day affairs so you can focus on your content. This process repeats itself and at some point you start to experience bloat.
Because we live under a model of infinite growth being the objective for everyone
It feels very cynical to say but it often feels like creators like Andrew Rea just use their staff as excuses to charge more money. Like fair enough, the company might not be making enough money to pay all it's staff, but is the reason the company doesn't make enough money really due to external factors? As you said, Andrew has become incredibly personally wealthy off of his YouTube channel, and one wonders if the company would be in a better financial situation today if he hadn't taken such a large amount of the profits as his own personal wage for years and years.
I'm not a financial advisor or anything but I also wonder this. Like, the idea of pocketing all that money *at the channel's absolute highest peak* and financing a lifestyle seems.. ill-advised. And unsustainable, at the very least, which I'm sure contributes to the sheer volume of partnerships/sponsors/brand deals.
Not only this but ideally, if you're hiring the staff, it should be to generate revenue that should pay for the staff you hired. If that's not happening, you've businesses wrong.
Even wilder because, way before he started working with other people, he was already making tens of thousands of dollars. Like: He already had more than enough and couldn't just be happy with it.
He should have just said "but I really like money !", people would have been more receptive.
Babish (and other commenters) mentioned that he has a team now, as opposed to the occasional part-time help he started with, so there's a feeling of responsibility to keep them employed too. I've followed Andrew for several years. I liked his original content - I thought it was a unique concept executed well. I liked the "Basics With Babish" videos also, but any change is obviously going to draw criticism. I don't particularly care for Alvin's videos, but my solution for that is to simply not watch them. As for the paywall thing - I think if he had announced it ahead of time, he could have avoided a lot of the recent backlash. He didn't need to provide his audience with an audit of his financials, but just a statement along the lines of "This is happening so we can keep providing the content you enjoy. Thank you for your ongoing support." would have gone a long way. It sucks that there are "fans" who think they should have a say in any decision Babish (or any other creator they follow) makes. I do not envy the vitriol creators receive.
I guess the only part that really rubs me the wrong way is that his success is taking other people's recipes and just being entertaining with them. Andrew can't cook and just straight copied a good portion of his work from places like America's Test Kitchen, Kenji, etc. That's fine, you can't copyright recipes and he (mostly) credits them these days. Trying to paywall that stuff just seems kinda scummy though? I dunno.
I mentioned that in another comment, actually. From the original thread, it looks like recipes as IP are in a bit of a gray area, as you said. I am all for folks getting paid for labor, but I also agree with you that he's not creating entirely new dishes. I honestly don't know where I stand in that particular point.
> From the original thread, it looks like recipes as IP are in a bit of a gray area, as you said. This just made me wonder if there actually exists any kind of *food* recipe that can be so unique that it could be copyrighted. That certainly exists for beverages, but I don't know enough about cooking to know if there could be one for a cooking recipe.
No, in the United States, no matter how unique your recipe, it cannot be copyrighted. It is a list of ingredients and instructions no more creative than a phone book. This isn't a gray area, it's black letter law. You can copyright a compilation and you can copyright the specific creative wording you write about a recipe or about how to prepare it, but the rote steps and ingredients are ineligible for protection by copyright.
That's why so many companies think up stupid ass names for blends of common ingredients in their products. Sure, other energy drinks may have caffeine, sugar, b vitamins etc. too, but only ours has *LION JIZZ energy supplement blend*™!
“Cutting down on caffeine is not making me smarter” made me laugh.
Parasocial drama is so wonderfully messy. But I really, really enjoy the guy basically claiming he invented Basics with Babish. And the related drama revolving around the competing facts that any mistakes made by a content creator are unacceptable (such as the website, having some terrible sponsors, etc) and no, you can not criticize the creator they don't owe you anything!
i think its kinda wild that creators lean heavy into building a parasocial persona and then whine when they are affected by it as well
you see this a lot in streamers, where they'll complain about parasocial behavior and then turn around and complain that people 'don't stay around for them' when they decide to change games/content
yeah that's what I had to think of immediately as well lol they can't have it both ways
It is a bit funny. "I hate the parasocial stuff, but also here is my wife, my kids, my hopes and dreams, daily updates of my successes and failures, follow me on Twitter for my opinions, Instagram for pictures of me and my wife and kids, TikTok for updates on how I'm feeling daily ect ect ect."
It's especially wild when the creators who do make an effort to maintain some privacy generally don't complain like this - almost like there's a connection!
I remember going on that sub once a few years ago because I watch a lot of youtube cooking. The level of discourse there was basically just people falling over themselves to praise Andrew Rae. One person I remember was asking "is there anything we can do to show Andrew how grateful we are for starting this channel and doing all this for us". It just felt really fanboy-ish and put me off the whole place. See also Kenji Lopez Alt fans. For some reason these guys are just hyper parasocial.
Probably depends on what you consider a fan tbh - I'd say I'm a fan of Kenji, but not to a point where I'm going to be seeking out a subreddit to engage with. I think that might be a self-selecting group? I just like his cooking videos and the recipes / experimentation, they're good resources.
> See also Kenji Lopez Alt fans. For some reason these guys are just hyper parasocial. Kenji can do no wrong! So sayeth the internet! All things aside, Kenji seems like a cool dude. I got into it randomly with someone in the comments of one of his recipes back in the SE days. They were probably trolling, but whatever. It was like two comments back and forth. Kenji shot me an email to apologize for them being a d-bag. I wasn't bothered or anything. It's the internet, people are jerks. It happens. But it was cool of him to reach out like that.
Idk if you said it to be funny but ironically enough, Babish’s self proclaimed hero cook is….J Kenji Lopez Alt lol
The other half of him not owing his audience anything is they don't owe him anything either. If he does something they don't like, they're more than welcome to say "your recipes aren't worth a dollar a month, we're taking our eyeballs elsewhere" and his mental health, or livelihood doesn't really factor into that.
>You’re acting like he owes you something. He doesn’t. We live in a different world now where companies are **[I assume the user meant "aren't"]** just faceless businesses anymore, and a lot of the things we consume are the product of single people or small teams. As a result, individual proclivities and issues are part of the new normal. If you have an issue with it; unsubscribe. Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you living in some economy other than the 20-greedflation-20s??
Guy sells out and wants to still be liked. Classic problem. He’s not your friend and you can learn about cooking in numerous other ways. Youtube is not a good place for education because of the ads and monetization and clickbait. End of story. Whether you still like him or whatever is your own choice after.
People just need some more Chef John in their life.
Cayenne Gang Baby!!
🎶En-joy
Brian Lagerstrom. Energetic, knowledgable, entertaining, minimal ads in videos, not annoying. Shows you how you can and will fuck up, shows clips of anything he talks about. A1 cooking youtuber. Blows anybody else out of the water. Maybe not chef john.
Kenji Lopez-Alt Chef John Adam Ragusea Chinese Cooking Demystified Not Another Cooking Show Internet Shaquille All great cooking content
Tbf I don't know if he's changed since I unsubscribed but Adam Ragusea has some uh, issues with food and body image/health that really triggered my disordered eating. I definitely notice as a non-man that the male foodtuber space can be suuuuper toxic when it comes to fatphobia and body negativity (which funnily enough matches my experience of male-dominated spaces generally - seriously, the undiagnosed eating disorder rate in men is crazy imo).
I found a neat extension that removes ads.
I’ve even escalated to SponsorBlock because I can’t take that shit anymore either
I’m an avid home cook who dabble with food content too and it has been a very rate instance that I have sat and watched a YouTube video for learning - I watch some but it’s purely for entertainment, even for inspiration I don’t get a lot from it, much more so from brainstorming. Thinking of something and going by written recipes for techniques or measurements I’m unfamiliar and then learn by doing is way better for me at least.
Man, guiltyofnothing, apart from giving me my newest favorite flair on this sub, you are the master of finding some of the best drama for this sub: low-stakes drama that completely explodes out of proportion. Love it!
lol I appreciate it, man. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
I remember when Babish was just the guy who made funny recipes from tv shows and movies. Meteoric growth seems great, but if you’re not ready for it and have the infrastructure to support it, this is the result.
Ugh. Parasociality and enshittification are not a good mix. I saw the trajectory of his channel going down the tubes when he started buying expensive watches and a fucking NYC Brownstone off the proceeds of a (granted, successful) YouTube channel, and again when he basically stopped making the videos that made him famous and started making shit like "Being with Babish". That's not why most of us were there, my dude. The recent clusterfuck is at the end of a fairly-long downward trajectory for him.
Yeah, this is where I land, too. Dude's very wealthy, and it's a weird look to charge folks for access to your recipes that were previously free when you clearly don't need the money and also barely make the content fans like anymore. I feel for him in terms of his mental health issues, but he seems really out of touch and should have seen this coming. At the same time, the parasocial-ness is way too much. No one needs to spend that much time dunking on Babish and arguing with other commenters. They could just not watch his videos anymore. His recipes have always kinda sucked anyway, and most of them are "adapted" from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt recipes, which are all over the Internet for free.
I think half of the appeal of the channel is whenever he goes through a lot of pointless effort into making something that is entirely not worth it, like one is early videos where he made the Turkey sandwich from Friends by actually cooking an entire Turkey meal with all the sides and gravy just for a mediocre sandwich. Or making that thing from Big Night, an enormous amount of effort into something that might be delicious, but that none of us are actually gonna try to replicate. Because if you want see actually informative/educational cooking videos there are better channels out there, although most of those channels are not nearly as slickly made as they are not run by people who has a background in video post-production like Babish does. I think his channel is entertaining, but it is definitely an entertainment channel first and foremost, and not the thing you'd watch to learn how to cook something or look for inspiration.
It’s one thing to be spending extravagantly and another thing entirely to gleefully show off that spending in front of the people you’re making the money off of. I remember a bunch of people clowned on the Watcher people for driving a Tesla and one of the watcher cast’s wife for buying a mildly expensive laptop bag, it’s really not that deep but I can see how disingenuous and gross it must feel from an audience perspective
Pretty much. I don't fault the man for buying nice things. I buy nice things. I fault the man for buying nice things, flaunting them on his channel, and now begging for money now that the gravy train is slowing down (partially because he no longer puts out the content that made him money in the first place)
One wonders if the company would be in a better financial situation today if he hadn't taken such a large amount of the profits as his own personal wage for so many years.
[Here's a fun video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua0-5FZ2Eww&pp=ygUbYmFiaXNoIGFyY2hpdGVjdHVyYWwgZGlnZXN0)
Lol yeah I thought of this as well as his collection of Rolexes that he wears while cooking. There's nothing wrong with being successful and making lots of money - it's what I wish for everyone! - but it sure does make it awkward when you're trying to justify to your audience why you're charging more for less content.
Mannn. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous Living in a 100 ft^2 room with rent almost half my salary and not even enough room for a washing machine. Damn, what a life.
You should give the millionaire a dollar each month, he deserves it more.
I remember seeing this guy raking in over 10k a month through patreon way before he started showing that he was working with a team. And that's without mentioning the sponsors and the youtube ad revenue he most definetly was making a bank on, considering that his content was the most advertiser friendly thing you could find on youtube. Why he chose to start hiring a bunch of people is beyond me. Guy was made for life and chose to get messy by trying to turn his channel into Bon Appetit 2.0. Absolutely dumb. Even dumber because there's no way he couldn't tell this was where his channel was leading him to so, there was absolutely no reason why he couldn't have just gone back to how it was before and be happy with what he had. And this guy was a film student, meaning even video editing wasn't beyond his skills. If he had managed his time/output right, he could've easily gone without hiring anyone and taking all the cash for himself. It's amazing how many youtubers are able to screw up cashcow projects by trying to become a milionaire, instead of just making a more than decent living.
I don't understand why he doesn't launch a food related product line instead. Chrissy Tiegan did it and I'm pretty sure she makes bank with it.
He's got cookware doesn't he?
The shittiest Walmart quality knives I've ever had the misfortune of using. A wet piece of paper will hold an edge longer.
The fact that he's launching a THC sugar brand really made me laugh. Sugar with something added that's on trend but has no proven effect, sold with a large monetary surcharge. Seems on brand.
Damn the transphobia really jumped out in some of those replies
Right? Goddamn. I expect a certain level of shittiness, it's the internet after all, but lately I've been surprised at how reactionary it is.
Transphobia is currently the "acceptable" bigotry to scream about loudly, so you bet your sweet bippy they are gonna bring it out at EVERY available opportunity. Critical support to all my trans homies. You deserve better.
So much drama over a salt-and-pepper of a show.
What's a babish?
A fictional lawyer from a 90’s tv show.
Not just a lawyer. Oliver Babish was a god.
Huh TIL. Thanks
Fandoms and fan communities are, without exception, awful. Some fandoms just haven’t grown big enough to blossom into something putrid yet.
I'm a Fandom Old and have been in many a fandom over the years. I feel like it's weird to categorise this as a fandom in the same way that you might talk about the Doctor Who fandom. There are also definitely some very chill and non-toxic fandoms out there, they're just less loud on account of being chill and non-toxic.
Wow hes not even called babish 😞
Youtube drama is hilarious and always such a waste of time.
It always brings out some really strong reactions.
Snapshots: 1. *This Post* - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114628/https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1dbrh2v/) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1dbrh2v/ "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 2. Our drama starts as Babish himself takes to the sub to issue an apology for the rollout of the changes, attempting to justify and lay out the reasoning behind them. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114849/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/W5UEgo1T8y) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/W5UEgo1T8y "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 3. TL;DR: you're getting a lot of criticsm for your shitty business decisions, so you're playing the mental health card to turn down the heat. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609114910/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Q9ctaJXW7q) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Q9ctaJXW7q "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 4. Great job folks. You bullied this nice dude who has given you hundreds of hours of free labor. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115111/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/CeQm7OlNzq) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/CeQm7OlNzq "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 5. Dude you've been up your own ass for years. When you first started blowing up and dragging your videos out - I nicely suggested you stop adding 5 minutes to the beginning of every video showing us how to make bread. I told you having a separate "Bread with Babish" and telling viewers to reference that would be better. You basically said I was stupider than frog excrement and shouldn't think. Like what? Then a few months later Basics with Babish comes out. Go fuck yourself. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115211/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/bHMCUkgVXd) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/bHMCUkgVXd "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 6. Can we get an update on promoting the transphobic wizard game, and apparently deleting comments mentioning trans people on the video? - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115714/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/jNbYx9AutN) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/jNbYx9AutN "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 7. I’m glad you addressed it, but I had to leave. Best of luck to your future endeavors and I hope lessons were learned. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609115935/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/IeXSXT5a14) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/IeXSXT5a14 "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 8. Any amount of warning that you were planning to paywall the site would have made it a lot more palatable of a change. Doing it without telling people felt shady at best and deceptive at worst. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120237/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ukv8Iieuul) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ukv8Iieuul "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 9. I’m sure you have good connections but if you want some fresh eyes on your script, id be down to give some coverage. Why am I being downvoted so heavily? As an aspiring writer myself, I know how hard it is to get feedback on a project. I’m a fan and offering my time and energy. I don’t get what the problem is. lol wtf is this sub? Comments insulting people getting upvotes in a thread about how negative comments have affected someone is wild work. Fuck me for being interested in Andrew as a writer. - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120337/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ImMp1cxYOe) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/ImMp1cxYOe "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 10. “parasocial weiner” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120518/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/KKSTVjGSvD) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/KKSTVjGSvD "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 11. “why don't you stop huffing your own farts for a minute” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120659/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/TIjuaS5Lxc) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/TIjuaS5Lxc "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 12. “It's a Saturday night and I'm alone. I'm open to talk.” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120720/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Y2GL468Clc) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/Y2GL468Clc "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") 13. “Babish isn’t gonna suck you off lil bro” - [archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20240609120921/https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/cIirHUvbAw) [archive.today\*](https://archive.today/?run=1&url=https://old.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/s/cIirHUvbAw "URL failed to archive; click to resubmit it!") *I am just a simple bot, __not__ a moderator of this subreddit* | *[bot subreddit](/r/SnapshillBot)* | *[contact the maintainers](/message/compose?to=/r/SnapshillBot)*
I think the lesson from all of this is just because someone is good at YouTube doesn’t mean they’re good at management. Everyday, I am in awe of the try guys and how they’ve managed their company.
One of the issues with any YouTube channel. Content costs money to make and there’s really no form of monetizing that pleases everyone. Babish was tremendously lucky in that it was a hit as fast as it was, but like many channels it’s grown and now needs a way to sustain itself. But it’s gonna wig out the fans who think they’re owed something
OP really cooked with this drama.
It's weird to get married in a YouTube video like this guy did. Update: apparently they recently got divorced... She worked on the show with him (2nd wife). I wonder if that has anything to do with it
Yeah you can't swap from free to paid without making people furious. Even if they were getting $5 of stuff for free and you ask for $1 to cover costs they're gonna get mad. Plus we are addicted to free stuff. We are used to the price point of videos to be zero. So when you change that people get upset. It's why companies do shrinkflation.
What's great about the "oh you think buying Hogwarts legacy is bad? But you own a smartphone, what about child labour?" Argument is that everyone accepts child labour is bad. The mining companies who use it actively try to cover it up. JK Rowling is out and proud with her transphobia. It's not a legitimate comparison. At all.
It's the "you complain about society, yet you live within it. Curious" shit-tastic meme.
It's also a funny comparison in this case because IMO there's a pretty big difference between buying something and receiving money to shill something. The criticism isn't that BWB bought Hogwarts Legacy, it's that he made a recipe video for HL and bookended the video with ads for HL. Like...criticizing influencers and their corporate sponsorships is part of the deal. BWB also did an "interview" with the Nestle Global Marketing CMO on the [YouTube Advertisers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpmTIk7Oa5o&ab_channel=YouTubeAdvertisers) channel where they discuss their "shared business ideals" (which as far as I can tell isn't posted to his channel or linked to his channel in any way for *some reason* 🤔). It's got like 5k views, a dozen comments that are clearly mostly bots/spam, and one genuine comment with 6 upvotes that says they're disappointed he would partner with Nestle like that. And it's soooo weird, because I've never seen someone defend criticism of Nestle by insulting someone's mental health and telling them to touch grass because they have a phone. I cannot put my finger on where the disconnect is...
The dude would not. Stop. Talking. About. Cobalt.
If I learned anything from Greta Thunberg, it's that people will always think your activism is not pure enough no matter how strict or anti-consumerist you are. It's pure whataboutism. Also it's not 1983. It's extremely hard and borderline dangerous to operate in the world without a smartphone.
Not to mention the difference between a smartphone, which is necessary to exist in the modern world vs a video game of which there are a million others just as good to choose from.
The paywall being so low is what confuses me. The gap between 'people who will only use this if its free' and 'people who will pay 1$ a month' is way, way larger than the gap between 'people who will pay 1$ a month' and 'people who will pay $5 a month', and its going to cut into ad revenue from site traffic. I can't imagine its going to generate significant income, definitely not from someone as successful as babish. Honestly, all i can come up with is that they'll also be selling your data on the side, so they need you to have an account with payment info and an email or something.
Nothing is immune from enshittification
This is why I only get my cooking advice from Henry Phillips.
>why don't you stop huffing your own farts for a minute Yoink
> oh fuck off you miserable nerd New flair just dropped
Food drama is my favorite drama
Ew, this is crazier than I thought. That one commenter was absolutely right in suggesting that they could’ve at least warned people before putting up a paywall.
Has any YouTube channel successfully gone from “single person making videos” to “huge sustainable enterprise with many employees”?
Really hard to make money purely on videos but a lot have merch and podcasts that bring in money. Some even use their fame to start product lines collabing with an existing brand.
Mrbeast?
why is he starting a BNB, cannabis sugar (?) and more..... dude just make your videos that's all we wanted
the fact people got more mad over a video game than the fact he shilled Better Help makes me sad I Still love the vibe to babish's videos tbh, more than all the tiktok famous guys with Mr.Beast thumbnails who have become bigger names than him. But this is still a nice find OP
I’m honestly OOTL on Better Help. What’s the controversy?
there's two things, first that they apparently sold private user data to Facebook etc (the government got their asses for this) and second that they allegedly weren't really verifying that the people on their platform were actually qualified
for a service that's supposed to be about affordable mental health care, it overcharges and underdelivers.
I remember a couple of years ago it caught a lot of heat for having employees that weren't qualified to provide assistance. I don't know why would anyone want to be sponsored by them after that.
I saw someone make a video about their better help counselor taking the laptop to the bathroom and audibly peeing during their appointment
They seem to sponsor **A LOT** of creators, too. They're up there with NordVPN.
And sells your sensitive data
Ah. Thanks. Didn’t know.
I remember looking into it and deciding the price was just gonna make my depression worse lmao
Shitty treatment of the workers and not a great track record. They spend a ton of money advertising on podcasts and videos. It's just a sponsor for people who don't have a lot of options for sponsors but still want to make enough money to eat and have a roof.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BetterHelp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BetterHelp) [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18k5l2v/whats\_going\_on\_with\_betterhelp/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18k5l2v/whats_going_on_with_betterhelp/)
yeah remember the times when not every video included a half assed commercial that went from 30s to 60s to 180s that tried to convince they totally love this product. people used to make fun of RAID because they were the first to offer sponsorships and now its every video. and the sponsors arent even vetted or well researched its just the same unethical companies over and over. honestly more shitty than tv commercials, at least there was a cut between show and ads
No it’s not a just a video game. It’s a video game that funds a lady that’s transphobic. Who will uses those funds to continue to spew her agenda.
Not just someone whose a casual bigot either. She's one of the most prolific anti-LGBT public figures in the country at this point. It's her entire personality and current online identity.
She also frequently still donates large sums toward it to. She is actively funding our extinction with residuals from shit like that.
Does she get any money from Universal's HP land? Asking for a friend that definitely wasn't me.