I watched Nettle's video on Change the Channel, and at this point, I'm convinced that Doug Walker was a fucking saint surrounded by envious traitors.
I remember listening in on CTC and thinking that Channel Awesome was horribly mismanaged as a company, but looking back on it, it was clear that it started as just an interconnected friend group that they decided to take seriously as a business, and that's where people started having issues. The decision of the company starts to make sense when they were trying to monetize the reviewer format and buff it up as a brand, but the people running it were clearly inexperienced and overestimated the goodwill they had with the other reviewers.
Does it justify their mismanagement? No. I think they did a lot of unprofessional, if not shady, deals, but a lot of the complaints people levied on CA would be incredibly innocuous if it were just a group project of friends, like the anniversary movies.
And in the middle of it was Doug, who was basically keeping the website afloat as the website's Golden Child. With this in mind, CtC feels like the senate backstabbing Caesar, and leading to the fall of the Roman Republic. The only difference is that Doug was barely a victim in the end. Yes, he obviously faced countless ridicule since then, but the fact he is trucking along, not stopping, makes him somewhat admirable for an internet celebrity of his age, who unlike his contemporary, AVGN, never really got worse or better, despite everything, he's himself.
I know this is not a novel observation, but every single day, I find reasons to see him as a positive role model for video creation. He's slowly turning from being embarrassing to watch to someone who is refreshing in the landscape of the internet that is poisoned by irony, insincerity, and unbearable cynicism.
