noa-nightingale

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The wait was worth it!

Travel Season, premiering May 31st on watchertv.com

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i keep saying "one last thought" BUT I KEEP HAVING MORE and i type this one out as i am in literal tears ajshshsh.

i am not going to speak for steven bc he is a grown man with his own feelings and i have no business projecting my own feelings onto him but i will say there's something i feel asian americans are really good at doing and that's holding space for others. as a fil-am i think asian americans are so very good at stamping down our own needs and desires when it boils down to surviving, to navigating tough decisions, to making sure our loved ones can weather bad storms. i feel it's something usually so ingrained in our cultures, especially with first and second gen immigrants. and i could spend time here making the obvious connection here to steven but i won't.

what i want to do is extend my heart out to the watcher fans of color, specifically the asian friends in our community, and i want to give you back some of the space you held onto this past weekend. i know there are people out there who long ago joined this fandom for fun, then last friday, saw the fan response and was hit with this large wave of burden. because people were mad. and then people were cruel, in a way they might not even have understood. and you wanted to say something but there was nothing to say that wouldn't invite the same cruelty onto you.

out of three people behind a business decision, i saw one man receive the most hate for it. and the hate was so disproportionate, so deep and personal, that you knew the hate was coming from somewhere else that's usually unspoken. not everyone felt it, and it's not something any one person can describe to make them feel it. but maybe you felt it.

if so, i am so sorry that you had to hold that space, hold your tongue, and absorb it all. of course all folks won't feel this strongly affected but to the folks who do, to the ones who feel like this community has permanently changed for them, to the ones who are still grieving something that was never supposed to hurt them in this way—i am with you, i believe your pain, and i'm sorry that people are still trying to blame you for your own pain. i don't even know what else to say other than i love and support you. you're part of what made the original community so fun, inclusive, and welcoming. i hope you know that you're still so valued as a part of this community—maybe not the same exact one as before, but the one i want to see and create for us moving forward. some people will not hold the space for us, and to that, i say good riddance. together we can hold a kinder space large enough for us all... ❣❣

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I've been saying! <3

Will definitely take part in it. If we are doing themed days again, may I suggest:

Steven's impact on the company (like taking on the business side, bringing in marginailzed voices etc)

Steven's personality

I hope y'all are doing okay. <3

the second my finals are over im making something for steven lim. not sure what it is yet, im not great at portraits, but it will be something.

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and on steven............. i can't even express how gross it felt to see the ways people reached to ruin his name and abuse him online. demonic behavior.

i didn't start watching watcher bc of steven, i'm gonna be honest. but his content, character, and yes, his mere influence on the company is one of the biggest reasons watcher came to be one of my favorite youtube channels.

i fell in love with steven and his content through dish granted, the way he poured in all his creative effort and know-how so that he could give his friends and loved ones a special, personalized, larger-than-life meal. i thought it was so sweet, and that show is actually one my favorites on the channel.

i still remember how impressed i was to hear steven had proposed to his now-wife with a lab-grown diamond ring, bc he intentionally wanted something more sustainable.

i remember steven's speech for his unforgettable gala award, the way he listed out the asian content creators who came before him, who shaped the space and influenced him. he carried himself with humility, respect, and reverence for the past, and i thought it was extremely admirable.

i remember the "making watcher" episode where shane and ryan outright said that steven was the reason for watcher's survival. how steven stepped up to handle the business side of things when nobody else could. of course the guy isn't a businessman. he's a creative. but he stepped away from his own passions to make sure their company could stay afloat.

and did you notice how many employees at watcher are asian? these folks are damn talented, damn good at their jobs. i don't have direct proof of this, but i just know that steven had a hand in making watcher an incredibly safe and inclusive place to work for asian folks and other minorities. and as an asian viewer, i could feel that influence in the videos. i can feel the care watcher takes to make inclusive content, to make content that feels like the people behind it care. for watcher, "asian" isn't a buzzword someone slaps onto a video to make it sound interesting. it's cultural, it's natural, it's loving. i can't explain it but i feel that distinction and it carries the same exact energy steven does in his videos.

so it was incredibly wild and surreal to have fans try their best to tear all of that down, because he misspoke in the announcement video and... he drives a tesla? i don't even have to touch on that because people know how inconsequential that is to the matter at hand. i don't know how else to make you believe that steven driving a tesla is not an indication of him being evil or an immoral level of wealthy. like be for fucking real, please.

i have never felt so disconnected with this community than i did watching people attack steven for business decisions made by multiple grown-ass people. i will never look at this community the same way i did before. i know all this time, people were jumping for a reason to villainize steven. and nobody can convince me i don't know why.

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We need to talk about the Watcher "fans".

These are the top comments on Shane’s IG post. Just look at the number of likes.

“Steven Lim is a greedy, manipulative evil CEO that twists his white co-founder's hands and forces the said co-founder into his will!!!” – this narrative is being prevalent in this fandom since April 19. People harassed him all across social media on every platform. People wrote nasty comments not only to his social media accounts but also to his wife and friends.

People made a Change.org hilariously dumb petitions to have him leave the CEO post.

People gleefully demonize and tear down his reputation. Twist his words out of context in to something vile. Weaponize the years old inside jokes his friends made on camera.

“This is not racism!!!” they say. “These are just the facts!!!”

No they aren’t. And here’s why:

because this

is the same as this:

Covert racism in language, or coded racism, is the deployment of common stereotypes or tropes to elucidate a racially charged idea. Rather than expressly perpetuating racist tropes, covert linguistic racism is seen as rational or "common sense", and many are not aware of its impact.

Racial stereotypes. Racial or cultural stereotyping refers to generalizing a group based on a simplified set of norms, behaviors, or characteristics.

The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror, the Yellow Menace and the Yellow Specter) is a racist color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia[a] as an existential danger to the Western world.

Fu Manchu is a fictional character created by Arthur Ward, a music hall writer and journalist in London in the early 1900s. Writing under the pseudonym Sax Rohmer, Ward had absolutely no knowledge of Chinese culture or Chinese people – but his invention of a Chinese supervillain struck a chord in Victorian Britain and became a smash hit.

Fu Manchu was the original fictional Asian villain, a trope which became embedded in popular culture and Western psyche spawning spin-offs, spoofs, pop songs, video games and even consumer goods. But how damaging is Fu Manchu and how much can he tell us about modern Asian racism?

Ward wrote Fu Manchu as the personification of the so-called Yellow Peril threat: exotic, alien and inhuman, a mastermind boasting degrees from top universities. Using sinister powers to control minds, he aimed to undermine Western civilisation.

"This led to the idea that the Chinese were deceiving – they weren't being honest, they weren't revealing who they really are as people. This spawned into stories of Chinese as cheats and liars and deceitful – never giving you the truth, always fabricating."

Seven Lim being labeled as “greedy” “evil” and “manipulative” (of his white co-founder) is rooted in Anti-Asian racism. Whether people admit it or not.

Racism is not always derogatory slurs or white hoods. Racism is also casual micro-aggressions and putting people of color in the metaphorical boxes of harmful stereotypes. Racism is twisting the narrative and shaping it into a vile stereotype straight from the 19th century.

Also, let's not forget that people are happy to jump on Ryan in the similar way for the same reasons.

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as a person of color myself, my heart hurts especially for the people of color that will never feel safe in the watcher fandom again.

for any poc that need to hear this: i fucking LOVE YOU. i’m sorry you were made to feel like you were less or worse than. you are NOT.

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Funny how all the ppl who don’t care about Steven hanging out with racists are white. Pls understand that when you actually face racism you don’t let this kind of stuff blow over as quickly

Is this still about the Here's What You Do podcast ep? Because that has been addressed and dealt with. In 2021, in fact.

I get that it is hurtful when you just hear about it but I find it a bit disingenuous to drag it back up again now, when Watcher and Steven have in fact made a response video years ago that was over half an hour long.

#watcher #steven lim

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I hope the p.o. box gets flooded with love for Steven Lim, goddamnit.

#watcher #steven lim

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Last post for today but I don't think I can see the fandom in the same light again after this. Like, the guys handled this with grace. A lot of people in the "fandom" did not.

#sorry #i am tired #see you later

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An Update

#i love you

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No thoughts right now except that I love those guys, holy fuck.

I'll take a tumblr break, I can't deal with all of the discussions right now, I am too anxious and autistic. 😅

See y'all tomorrow.

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some people are mad at steven for a moral issue, tbf. regardless of your thoughts on watcher’s streaming service he did still say he has racist and homophobic friends. he still goes to a homophobic church.

I absolutely recognise that you must have been recently introduced to The Pod Clip that the twitter teens who hate him preserved to break out whenever it's a fresh moment to rally hate against him, but I would advise anyone just receiving this clip from August 2020 being passed around with the angle that Watcher tried to hide this. I and many others were there and just know that I have a zero tolerance standard for people who show no remorse or growth when they uplift racists and bigots.

Mine and other fans who were startled by the statement hoped publicly that it would be an opportunity to clear the air for Watcher because the current political climate was just finally examining anti-blackness in everyone's biases and as someone who is mixed-African growing up in an Asian household, I know that anti blackness is and has been a normalised mindset in the Asian community.

But the thing is, months before this, Steven platformed Tammy and her colleagues to discuss how all of us can work together to stop Asian hate and one of the conversations I highlighte back then was how very clear Tammy was that allyship from the Asian community to the African-American community was tantamount to moving forward. That the us vs them rhetoric has and continues to be harmful for both parties. Ryan and Steven were very involved in this discussion and agreed wholeheartedly.

Having said that, the narrative around the podcast ep never had a chance to be discussed rationally. It really ended up skewed because Steven's response to the backlash from that clip was this

I hope that's legible to you. Many people who felt uneasy about what he said felt a lot better and his intention to say something at the top of the next episode would once again, unfortunately, get derailed because Twitter users (some who are particularly loud about loving and supporting Watcher yet constantly join in on the throng of bullying as soon as the tide turns) were adamant that they needed Watcher to post the clip and Steven's apology publicly on their youtube front page and on the main socials, to literally advertise it when the reality is that not many people were watching/listening to the podcast. For what reason would it be intelligent or good business practice to broadcast this hurtful moment so that more people could get hurt by it?

Watcher's response amid the harassment was to release a full podcast episode where they all discussed what they would do going forward to show that they are allies, not just by not being racist or homophobic but by being anti-these things. They showed that they cared about their impact. It was emotional and devastating to watch and by that time, we knew the pod was likely going to wind down. 2020 was already a miserable time and it was made worse because no matter what Steven or Watcher said at the time, the "stans" on Twitter wanted the man fired, they posted memes saying the world would be better if Steven Lim didn't exist, they wanted him shamed by his staff, and for Ryan and Shane to publicly disavow him. Many of these so-called devoted fans raided the server to yell about how Steven's alleged homophobia hurts them, most of them were white and pointedly talking over people of colour telling them "it's not your apology to accept!". It was a blood bath.

And I see waaaay too many of the same faces utilizing this completely neutral move--that of COURSE could have been executed better--to terrorize Steven, to make petitions to get him fired, commenting on his wedding photo telling him that Tammy should leave him, posting those same damn disgusting memes because you see, a whole bunch of people forgot how disgusting and evil this vendetta was to the point where even watcher's socials started to FOLLOW some of these genuinely mean-spirited individuals. They didn't give a shit about a movement or activism.

What kills me--what absolutely THROWS me--is that these same people expect to be able to return to interacting with the staff, attending live shows, buying merch and sending fan mail as soon as the hate tide winds down. All these people so concerned about a statement referencing faceless hypothetical racists and homophobes that Steven never named nor attributed any context for--as he was never given the chance--are so quick to dehumanize and caricaturize real human beings to their faces and they think this is a normal and acceptable behaviour.

You'll have to excuse me, as an older fan who has seen my fair share of normalised homophobia and racism in these communities, if I disagree.

#thank you #for all of this

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SHERLOCK HOLMES (1984 - 1994) ↳ 4x02 | The Devil’s Foot

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I rewatched the Goodbye Youtube video just now and there is one thing that Steven says that I did not catch the first time but find very interesting:

"More than 50% of our business is run by advertising."

I did not know that it was this much. That's a huge percentage. That probably also means that a big amount of their content is tailored towards sponsored. Like, I get that people are upset and sad about them moving away from youtube, I really do, but of course they don't want to be this dependent on sponsors!

God, I would love to learn more about the business side of things. Not just the decision to start their own streaming service but about the business stuff in general. I really want to know more about this.

#watcher #watchertv #steven lim

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Despite, well, everything - I am still really excited about the new content. I want to see what it looks like when they don't have to change it for sponsors or youtube. I hope it gets a lot more unhinged. I hope it will be a lot more creatively fulfilling for them. I hope they have success with WatcherTV. I really hope things will turn out okay.

#watcher #watchertv #steven lim #ryan bergara #shane madej #i think they will soon make some kind of statement #some kind of reaction to all the backlash #i can't really say that i am looking forward to it #i am very nervous #but i am also very curious about how they will handle the situation

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I’ve noticed a lot of extra hate being directed towards Steven and saying he’s being greedy and money hungry cause he owns a Tesla and yadda yadda yadda. Do they not fail to see how much money and time he’s put into lifting up forgotten voices? During the pandemic he donated 5000 to a struggling restaurant and started a whole ass podcast about the struggles restaurants were facing during the pandemic. Watcher did a fundraiser to raise money for the Trevor Project and it raised a shit ton of money and have in general been extremely supportive towards the lgbtq community. Stop hating so much on Steven Lim because it’s honestly ridiculous and probably racist.

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shots that keep me going through life—from Pro Chef vs. Grandma’s Homemade Tamales • Homemade