Rooster Teeth came under fire earlier this year after they cut ties with voice actor Vic Mignogna following a series of allegations made against him. Those allegations weren’t as concrete as the accusers made them out to be, and Mignogna retaliated with a lawsuit. Since then fans have been contentiously scolding Rooster Teeth for firing Mignogna from RWBY, in addition to a lot of other people criticizing Rooster Teeth for the declining quality of the show, the character directions, and potential SJW influence. In response Barbara Dunkelman, the community manager at Rooster Teeth and voice actress for Yang in RWBY, told fans that if they don’t like a show they should just stop watching it.
This was initiated originally when someone posted a meme about RWBY that led into a discussion about the show being better before current seasons. Dunkelman took to Twitter on April 21st, 2019 to tell fans that if they don’t like the show, just to stop watching it so as to avoid ruining the fun for people who do enjoy the show.
Friendly reminder that if there’s a show/series that you don’t like, find issue with, or used to like but don’t anymore for your own reasons, no one is forcing you to watch it.
Let people who enjoy it continue to do so and move on.
🙂— Barbara Dunkelman (@bdunkelman) April 21, 2019
Quite naturally, plenty of people fired back that if they really enjoyed the show and began to criticize it because it was no longer good, why should that stop anyone else from enjoying the show?
They also posited that some people criticize shows because they liked the way they used to be and would prefer if they went back to being quality-made. Dunkelman retorted by asking what good would that do.
What would that accomplish? If others are still enjoying it, why try to ruin that for them?
— Barbara Dunkelman (@bdunkelman) April 21, 2019
A few other people took it that Dunkelman was telling fans not to voice criticism, especially when a show’s quality seemed to be declining in later seasons. Dunkelman responded by saying that criticizing shows that you no longer like is a waste of time, and to just watch something else instead.
Why waste your time? When I don’t like a show, I stop watching it. If someone reaches out (initiates the conversation TO me) to ask me why I don’t like it, I’ll answer and explain to that person. I don’t waste my time trying to get people to stop watching something they enjoy.
— Barbara Dunkelman (@bdunkelman) April 21, 2019
Part of what’s lost in translation here is that it’s not that people are just criticizing RWBY for no reason, they’re criticizing the show because they used to love it and the quality has declined over time. The whole point of the criticism is so that the show goes back to being the way it was instead of getting worse, which will eventually result in the show getting cancelled when enough people take Dunkelman’s advice and simply stop watching it.
So you’re telling original RWBY fans not to watch a show they grew up on and are realizing is being used for a quick buck, despite the fact they’re going a completely different style than what both Monty and his wife wanted, destroying YOUR friend’s vision and idea? Gotcha.
— andrasté✨ (@andrast7) April 23, 2019
There are some others who also attributed the issue to the Mignogna situation, noting that Rooster Teeth needs to rehire him, but Dunkelman desperately tries to veer the conversation away from that topic.
This has nothing to do with that.
— Barbara Dunkelman (@bdunkelman) April 22, 2019
Interestingly enough, she also deleted a follow-up tweet where she stated…
“And another reminder that voice actors aren’t the character they play in real life, stories are fictional, and that those stories are going to continue to be hold however the storytellers choose to, regardless of your opinion or feelings. It is their story.”
YouTuber Hero Hei managed to capture that tweet before it was deleted, and included it in a 15 minute video he published on April 22nd, 2019.
Hero Hei likens Dunkelman’s comments to the fallout that took place over the Battlefield V fiasco, where DICE and Electronic Arts constantly antagonized fans over the first-person shooter leading up to release, which included a former executive saying that if people didn’t like the game they shouldn’t buy it. So a lot of people didn’t buy it, and it cost EA more than $350 million in lost revenue.
Hero Hei pointed out that Rooster Teeth may not be in the best of places financially where they could afford to tell fans NOT to watch their shows.
However, given that Rooster Teeth hasn’t made any public statements about their finances, it’s impossible to know exactly where they stand. We do get a rough estimate of their potential earnings through YouTube via Statsheep, which puts their annual earnings from the Alphabet-owned video content platform at around $14.5 million.
Either way, it’s not a healthy practice to start telling your fans that if they don’t like the direction a show is going in that they should just stop watching, because I’m sure they’ll end up doing just that. And if enough people stop watching… well, then the show will find itself with a one-way ticket onto the Get Woke; Go Broke – Master List.
(Thanks for the news tip VLOCKUP)