Howdy Paizanos,
Please find enclosed the first of potentially infinite videos about the history and impact of Newgrounds. I accidentally made another main channel video just for patrons again! Making this required me to revisit decades of internet history, so just getting this one done generated pieces of script for about five other videos, some of which I'll put in the next patron poll...
and one of which I'll post in the next few days! I initially covered something so juvenile (and filled with cartoon blood) that Kat asked me to cut it because it was harshing the vibe of the rest of the piece, which was much more relaxing overall. I'll finish turning that part into its own video in a few days.
I'd also like to give an update on what has been going on here lately.
After the last video was finished, I spent some time in January recovering, then Kat and I set about trawling through the remaining James Somerton videos, trying to find everyone he had plagiarised, in order to reach out to them all and offer them their portion of the ad revenue from the video. We assumed, optimistically, we had found most of it in our initial research, and the total number of plagiarised authors would be around 40-50.
The final number was...over 130. This posed a much larger logistical issue than we had planned - finding up-to-date contact information for people who wrote something sometimes decades prior is quite difficult! We're about to hire a third person to help handle all the correspondence, to get the important part done as professionally as possible without slowing down video production any further.
As some of you might be aware, earlier this year a number of events happened related to the Plagiarism video, with one leading to a frantic call for a wellness check, a monthlong harassment campaign, and a lot of reworking how we protect our community spaces. Kat went on partial leave, in part due to burnout from managing the chaos and aftermath, but she’s returned to continue overseeing the ad revenue distribution project. On the upside, the video's success means we have more to pay out than we'd hoped!
At this point, business should be returning to normal, and we’re looking forward to making more calm, celebratory videos for the sake of everybody’s mental health this year. I promised myself I'd get to make a donut this year and by jolly I'm gonna do it.
Working on this video revisiting old stuff that inspired me in my youth has been extremely cathartic and rejuvenating, and I can't wait to get onto the next thing!
Happy Pride Month (YES! I'm just under the wire, it's still June in a few time zones, I win),
- Harry