The dumbest moments in New Media history

[Venus Spa]

EQAL did many dumb things, but hopefully the new guard is paying attention to these blunders and will learn from them. As bad as a lot of the on-screen decisions were, the way they treated their phans was the biggest issue. The wiki was one example, but there are too many others to even list. The trashed a thriving online community with a total disregard for the wants, desires, and (most of all) intelligence of said community. I doubt they will ever see anything close to what they had as to when LG15 was at it's peak. Before they destroyed it.

Total lack of respect...

So would it be safe to say Eqal got too close to the fans and when they tried to pull back it backfired?

I ask this because few shows in web or traditional tv history saw everyone involved as close to their fanbase as the original lg15. Even The Guild has always been interactive but arm's length. (Which is why in spite of the fact that they are more distant from their fanbase than ever after joining MSN the fans don't seem to feel at all shafted. Not exactly a bad thing really.)

TSIY 1. is too big of a blunder on it's own to ignore, (that and the original Bree Live Chat,) but summing Eqal's screwups with this one constant may work best when compiling everything.

[JenniPowell]

Even The Guild has always been interactive but arm's length. (Which is why in spite of the fact that they are more distant from their fanbase than ever after joining MSN the fans don't seem to feel at all shafted. Not exactly a bad thing really.)

The Guild is interactive in a very different way. LG15 pushed for you to "be part of the show", as in, focused primarily on interacting with fictional characters. Sure, a lot of us went beyond that and reached out to the actors of the show as people and to each other, but the C's focused primarily on staying behind the curtain and "being" Bree, Daniel, Sarah, etc. It wasn't until down the road that they started contacting us as themselves and by that point, the snowball was already half-way down the hill.

The cast and crew of The Guild have always interacted with their fans as themselves. Felicia in particular took the time to address fans directly, as herself, never giving herself a nickname or hiding behind a character (she always makes sure to sign her comments if she's commenting under the "watctheguild" YouTube, Twitter, etc.). There were small parts of the show that DID interact that way, such as when they called out for submissions from fans for the episode in which they were looking for a new guild member. But primarily, the Guildies always know who you are talking to when you tweet to @theguild (Brian, our marketing manager), or e-mail watchtheguild@gmail.com (Kim Evey).

The real reason that the fans didn't feel as shafted after The Guild joined MSN was because Felicia and Kim (with the help of Brian) ASKED the fans how they felt about it before implementing it, instead of just doing it and saying, "look what we did for you? Isn't it so exciting and amazing?" And some fans were mad, some fans felt like they were abandoning their roots and a lot of discussion came out of it. But in the end, because they showed that level of respect and acknowledged that what the fans thought was genuinely important to them, the transition went a lot smoother than it could have if it had been done differently.

I think the lesson here for creators is BE AUTHENTIC. As a friend of mine once said when we were chatting about online communities, "online fans can smell bullshit a mile away".

[immortal1]

I think a few of EQAL's missteps were:

1) I feel like they had a choice of either dedicating resources to "community videos" (formerly UGC) or to increasing the ARG elements. This is not to say that incorporating OpAphid was a misstep. I do feel they over committed to it at the expense of developing their video making community. ARGs have very niche appeal and they are not scalable. I know you can counter and say that no one has found a way to make money off UGC but in EQALs case since they later got into the social entertainment side of things they could have had a stable of shows grown from the community. Even if they created an umbrella and dedicated it to community videos that could have been big.

2) They should have started acknowledging and incorporating fan characters earlier. This pertains to the fan created derivative videos. Why must there be a TSIY every few months? Why must there be huge gaps of time where there is no story? There could always be a story by someone going on if they were more open to working with fans. Promise after promise and the best they could give was an integration of PaulMark (which was an EQAL created character portrayed by a fan) and the ability to create show profiles.

3) I don't get how umbrella is supposed to work if none of their sites are networked. If you got some high profile audiences from shows like Paula Deen and Level 26 having access to them would be a huge benefit. Even if just the login was at an EQAL umbrella portal instead of the individual sites it would help. Pull in the most recent content from all the sites there as well.

[Venus Spa]

Here's one for the indies from the beginning of the decade:

Troma Inc. flubs Tromaville.com!!!

This was a reported MILLION DOLLAR screw up on the part of my heroes at Troma. (Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke Em High, Poultrygeist, etc.) They built a supersite that was supposed to coincide with Tromateam.com, (now just Troma.com,) that produced independent movies and web series's as well as online comic books. It was an insanely ambitious project and it could have set the standard for a web series channel with memberships, free content and a fan network. (This was launched in 2000 with a live webcast from the Playboy Mansion that was ALSO botched.)

This wasn't just one screwup, it was a combination of screwups including a half a million dollar blunder that became known as Tales From The Crapper. This was to be their first web series as well as 2 films produced by former Playboy Playmate India Allen. Unfortunately India didn't have the knowhow to pull off something this huge and Lloyd Kaufman, President of Troma also didn't have the knowhow to make web programming work in the Pre-Youtube era and the entire thing was an unworkable mess as a result.

In the end Lloyd and the Troma Team was stuck with a virtually unuseable movie, no original web content except for a couple of Toxic Avenger fan cartoons and the original Tales From The Crapper web comic for the Tromaville website and Lloyd shut it down completely, (and the L.A. offices of Troma with it,) in 2002.

Had it at least been able to launch regular content for what was a built in audience that buys everything Troma everytime they release a new in house movie, t-shirt or tv series, it could have been the first of it's kind and created the first true web series studio with no censorship issues and a very fan friendly atmosphere. A decade after it's launch we are STILL trying to figure out how to make a concept like this work.

R.I.P. Tromaville, we hardly knew ye...

[modelmotion]

So would it be safe to say Eqal got too close to the fans and when they tried to pull back it backfired?

I would not say that being too close to the fans was the problem. The problem was that they did not listen to the fans.

The potential to be close is at the root of much of what internet communities are all about. I think we first realized that when they tried to fire Yousef who had become the archetype of how to become and "Internet star with class".

Yousef let himself become authentically close to the fans. He interacted with them in a way that set the bar high for all who followed. The c on the other hand only talked as if they were close but when it came to accepting advice or criticism they always seemed to know best. Miles has a habit of surrounding himself with only people who agree with his opinion and that limits the potential for true open dialogue.

The fact that they had the OPPORTUNITY to get close was in fact where the true potential of LG15 arose. The site was packed with highly intelligent people (some, I would guess close to the genius level). The site was packed with creative people. The site was packed with people with drive and a desire to create something great. Had the c embraced and interacted with the community at that time it could possibly have grown to be one of the main portals for Internet video today.

Perhaps it was insecurity. Perhaps it was just lack of skills. Perhaps they were just overwhelmed by the needs of production. Whatever it was they just did not "get it." They thought it was all about Bree and to a degree it was. However, under the story of Bree there was a vibrant and creative community that wanted to grow into something. The c just never fostered that development..... at least not to the degree that would have been required. It could have been done. It could have been done BECAUSE we had the potential to be close. It is that closeness that lends itself towards collaboration. So being close is not the problem. The problem came down to one of vision. The c just never shared the same vision of the future as the community and I guess that is their prerogative.

[curiousgeorge]

I would not say that being too close to the fans was the problem. The problem was that they did not listen to the fans.

Exactly.

[Mathieas]

I know I wish I'd been closer to Miles.

[Venus Spa]

Not, not, not, not, NOT, NOT going there...

[curiousgeorge]

So being close is not the problem. The problem came down to one of vision. The c just never shared the same vision of the future as the community and I guess that is their prerogative.

As much as I disagreed with a lot of BK's decisions and his OstrichWithHeadInSand (at least public...) view of the Bozos: He GOT IT and understood the "community". Add replacing him with the ShinyCrappyPhorumBozoAdmins to the list. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Double whammy: horrid software and clueless people running it.

[Venus Spa]

I'm tempted to throw the "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE" incident in there because it began the era of "freakshows" on Youtube that we are only slowly emerging from. What do you folks think?