Life in the Fail Lane: Channel Awesome

What's this? A massive failcow of epic proportions? It must be my birthday!

Oh yeah, it is. Well, Happy Birthday to me, I guess.

Before I begin, I'm sorry for the lack of updates. Life has been more and more busy, so sadly I just haven't had as much time for DA as I used to. Just know I appreciate all of you who have been supportive of me over my many years here.

So yes, today we are talking about Channel Awesome.

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Now, if you've been on the internet as long as I have, chances are you at least have heard of Channel Awesome, or That Guy With The Glasses -- often abbreviated as TGWTG -- as it used to be known, even if you've never watched any of the content.

That's because ten years ago, when TGWTG was first established, it took the internet by storm. Many people, myself included, were there from the site's earliest days, watching and enjoying a variety of content from the various contributors of the site.

And the main attraction of the site was the guy with the glasses himself, Doug Walker, a.k.a. The Nostalgia Critic, who reviewed various movies and TV shows from his childhood.

Other notable old school contributors included Noah Antwiler, a.k.a. The Spoony One, Lewis Lovhaug, a.k.a. Linkara, Lindsey Ellis, a.k.a. The Nostalgia Chick, Brad Jones, a.k.a. The Cinema Snob, and Kaylyn Saucedo née Dicksion, a.k.a. Marzgurl, to name just a few. Later on, many other contributers would join, and the site was eventually renamed as Channel Awesome.

And while I enjoyed most of the content by the various contributors, I personally jumped ship from the site after Doug Walker decided to retire his Nostalgia Critic character to make other shows -- all of which failed massively until he reluctantly returned to the Nostalgia Critic reviews. Many others jumped ship as well. I never watched his later reviews as I had outgrown them. So I had no idea about all the insanity that quickly spread over the internet until very recently.

Some of the former contributors released a Google document which listed each of their problems with Channel Awesome and why they left. And it is damning. While on the surface many things seemed fine with the site, behind the scenes there was a lot of drama involving contributors clashing heads with Doug and Rob Walker, and Mike Michaud, the CEOs at Channel Awesome (with the latter being far more of a problem than the former two -- although none of the CEOs was innocent of blame.)

Now, there are not enough words I can personally type to go into all the issues these people list in the document. So I will post a link to it at the end of this journal.

I will say the most damning thing in the Google document was that a former female contributor, who has been labeled as "Jane Doe" to protect her privacy, was a victim of grooming and sexual assault by a former male contributor. And all of the CEOs knew about this, but did little to stop it, aside from eventually firing the male contributor after more allegations came to light.

After all of this went viral, Channel Awesome released some weak response to the document, wherein they proceeded to more or less confirm the stories to be true, but tried to shift blame to the victims instead of admitting fault.

And in their weak response, the CEOs of Channel Awesome more or less also revealed who the groomer and sexual predator was, because of their awful Photoshop "skills."

And it turned out to be Justin Carmical, a.k.a. JewWario, a former contributor who committed suicide back in 2014. This was later confirmed in an interview with Fredrik Knudsen to be true by Liz Skochil, a.k.a. IronLiz, a former contributor who had helped the victim in dealing with the abuse.

Fredrik Knudsen did a live reading of both the Google document and the flimsy response from Channel Awesome. And even though they're very long videos, I highly recommend you watch them.

The Google Doc - [link]

Live Read of the Google Doc - [link]

Live Read of the Response - [link]

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Until the next fails...