Essentially, last month Butch Hartman, the mind behind Fairly Odd Parents, Tuff Puppy, and a few other shows, created a kickstarter for a new network streaming service that recently hit its goal.
I’ve been of many different minds watching it all unfold, and it’s been a little weird watching a whole youtube community lash out against him.
I’m not saying he doesn’t have problematic views or that his whole kickstarter doesn’t feel out of touch; He’s concerned about the lack of kid friendly shows in a time where I feel like there’s plenty of spaces for kids to enjoy kid friendly content. There are issues for sure but I don’t see how butch is going to solve this. Elsagate and all those weird youtube videos needs more refined data science and he’s just a cartoonist.
In fact, the whole “family friendly” schtick sounds kind of like code and a dog whistle for anti lgbt and he’s definitely devoutly Christian. Often times he isn’t too transparent about his views on anything, outside one post on twitter where he wonders out loud if kids shows lately are way too political. Obviously, this is a different issue than the whole “over exposure to mature content” angle he makes on his kickstarter video and comes off like he’s more concerned about the kid shows that go against his views, rather than kids seeing mature content in kids’ spaces.
Yet, all that being said, I’ve noticed some youtubers calling him an outright scammer and scummy person for what seems to be benign reasons. His kickstarter is vague and his channel is pretty basic and banks on his prior successes but outside of his views his personality isn’t at all that bad. I’m definitely not convinced that he’s making a needed service but that’s not much of a crime.
I can’t find a throughline so I’m just gonna post my thoughts as they are and hope it makes sense.
I watched fairly odd parents & danny phantom as a kid but nowadays most of my exposure to butch hartman is through people roasting him via quote retweets because he doesn’t like anime so I don’t have much of an opinion on him.
I don’t think this is a scam & I doubt youtubers do either, starting up drama is just how you succeed on youtube from what I’ve seen.
Butch Hartman is probably being sincere with his pitch, but I can’t understand why anyone would think this product could succeed. Who is going to subscribe to a streaming service the specializes in childrens/family content? Youtube is free and kids probably prefer the content there anyways, and not every helicopter parent is going to pay for another netflix just because this one only includes the kids section.
You can pay 10 000 dollars to star in their live-action show that they will sell to other people and to you, how does that make sense? I don’t understand.
Five people each payed 10 000 dollars to be a cartoon character
Haha, my post lacked much of a throuhgline too. At the end of the day this is just a bad idea that I can’t see working out. I would be a million times more excited if it was an animation streaming platform where butch helped new cartoonists find a platform for their work. The internet right now is dying for a place that gives animators compensation on the level of the work it takes to do a 4 minute animation.
I can only really see this playing out with a Christian audience that cares about what their kids watch and feel like the shows offered for kids nowadays aren’t matching their worldview, but how many people are actually that concerned?
The tier rewards make me sad, outside of the personalized art. The idea that you should pay for a chance to have a character in a show smacks of the same “I’ll pay you in experience” mindset that I already hate so much. If you work, you deserve pay. Not the opposite. A kid would be excited for this opportunity but no kid has 10 g’s just lying around for it.
Yet, against all of what I said, it still garnered enough support to make it. I feel bad because it was only for the initial phases of this coming together and I really don’t see it doing well even now.
Just out of curiosity, why doesn’t he like anime? It strikes me as odd that an animator would dump on other forms of animation. Does he think its lesser or something?
@chrispaul92
I think its more the art style than the actual shows that are produced I probably could’ve worded that better.
There was a tweet of him saying that people should draw less anime that people made fun of him for.
@amarikaiser
Ya he might have been better off if the kickstarter failed, now he has to somehow find more funding so he can produce multiple cartoons. The kickstarter page mentions that there is also going to be a way for users to upload their own content but it seemed super vague and kinda conflicts with the whole kid-friendly vibe they are going for.
It’s not just cartoons! News, sitcoms, live action, everything under the sun. He’s trying to compete with youtube, Netflix and Disney/nick/cartoonnetwork all at once.
I don’t even know how he’s going to curate the user created stuff either, and what’s family friendly to him? I’ve harped on it before but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a story come up about how a gay prom date picture wasn’t approved as being clean/family friendly.
I actually saw this video yesterday, the whole thing was concerning. On one hand, it’s not going to be a TBN like he clarified. The level of religion that his shows will probably get would be on par with his past cartoons. As in, not at all noticeable. While he claims to have put parables in his shows they really don’t come off religious.
However, my concern about lgbt treatment is being purposefully avoided by butch in the typical Christian way. He doesn’t want to say anything because I feel like those views wouldn’t be anything a secular audience would want to hear. Yet, if you go to his twitter and read posts like “don’t you wish modern kids cartoons weren’t politicized?” you have to wonder: WHAT’S so different between the shows from his romanticized era and today? Outside of lgbt references I really don’t see much else that would be called political by anyone.
He tries to take Netflix and hulu to task claiming most of the content is to shock and not uplift, which I simply don’t see either. His whole campaign is made specifically for the subsection of Christians that are so concerned that modern cartoons are different and won’t consider the idea that maybe they’re romanticizing TV from their own times.
EDIT: Also, that bit in Hartman’s talk about how kids weren’t depressed and committing suicide in the past was soooo gross and I’m gonna leave it at that
