
CollegeHumor shuts down - rahuldottech
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/09/collegehumor-shuts-down/
======
ErikAugust
CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself:

“In words that I’m sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will
soon become the new majority owner of CH Media,” said Reich, a longtime
executive at CollegeHumor. “Of course, I can’t keep it going like you’re used
to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless
losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose.”

Dropout, its streaming service, will continue for at least the next six months
while it churns out content already slated for release, Reich said. The future
of CollegeHumor itself, and other humor sites run by the company, are less
certain.

“In these six months, I hope to be able to save Dropout, CollegeHumor,
Drawfee, Dorkly, and many of our shows,” Reich said. “Some will need to take
on bold new creative directions in order to survive.”

The CH Media staff contracted from more than 100 to between five and 10
employees, according to Bloomberg News.

~~~
Waterluvian
I don't follow. How is that not "shutting down"? It's contracted to life
support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses.

Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus kind of thing. They get rid of almost all
employees, empty the pipeline, and then retool. What's left of College Humor?

~~~
dwild
> It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to
> minimize losses.

Is it really life support? Or simply, what is always should have been?

Do you really need 100 staffs for College Humor? For the production side, sure
you may need quite a bit of staff for each individual production, but once a
production is done, you no longer need them, but you still have to pay them.
How long you'll have to pay them will be mostly based on luck (what are the
odds that you can always produce something that require each individual staff
qualification...).

It makes much more sense to have a minimal team, and then hire on a
contractual basis based on the production needs.

~~~
tmpz22
I'd be surprised if many of these "employees" weren't actually contractors or
part-time roles as is typical of institutions which lean heavily on college-
attending employees who need to work around their class schedule or are purely
entry level on their way to a more traditional career.

~~~
gowld
Nothing about College Humor or "professional video we company" is particularly
reliant on college student labor.

------
echelon
CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers.

This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture, and it won't be the last.

We really need to de-platform or find a way Facebook can't steal value.

~~~
rchaud
Platform giveth, platform taketh away. There used to be a time where you
actually had to go to collegehumor.com to watch the videos. Once everyone
turned into sharecroppers on FB, Youtube or whatever, this was the risk they
took.

~~~
RandomBacon
IF Facebook didn't fake their numbers, then I would be inclined to agree.

~~~
jsight
Does it really matter? Why switch just for view numbers without a revenue
model?

~~~
maemilius
View numbers _were_ the revenue model. Eyeballs make money for advertisers.
The more eyeballs, the more money.

~~~
jsight
If they were selling ads themselves that might make sense. But since they were
planning to rely on the platform for ad revenue, I'd think they'd want to know
others revenue experiences first.

Ad revenue and eyeballs don't correlate well across different platforms, as
some are better at selling ads than others.

------
sitkack
CollegeHumor had same damn well written, well produced comedic satire. I hope
all of their material is archived.

One thing to watch out for is if this posted under their Geuite account to
YouTube, when the gsuite bill isn’t paid, all the YouTube videos will get
deleted, leaving a cultural hole.

Of all the Google crimes, this one is accidental but the most damaging to
society.

~~~
dmos62
> the most damaging to society

While I agree that content archival is important, I would strongly argue that
lost content is not on the same level as for example anti-competitive
practices, even in terms of cultural impact.

~~~
badrequest
Especially not CollegeHumor content, most of which was scattershot hope-
something-goes-viral bro humor.

~~~
madamelic
I disagree strongly.

Maybe some of their skits had bro humor but it always seemed like either
generic humor or geek centric than anything.

~~~
z3phyr
What is bro humor? Just see random memes on initial google search.

~~~
gowld
"bro" means "anything I don't like, that leans male."

------
yincrash
This is a misleading title based on even the article. CH still has an owner
(Sam Reich) and still has content that they are still airing (D20 with the
McElroy family among other things) through Dropout. Basically they went to
being an externally funded company to turning into a startup that has to
bootstrap, but still has an entire video subscription streaming infrastructure
built out with Dropout and some content to stay afloat.

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/eBzkmT](https://outline.com/eBzkmT)

------
unwiredben
Title isn't completely accurate - WP article says that the site was sold to
Sam Reich, one of their execs, and some servicess will continue for a while as
he works on retooling the site.

------
jedberg
Presumably Sam now owns the rights to all the content. He could shop it around
to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I’ll bet one of them would pick it up and maybe even
give him a budget to hire some of the writers back and make new content again.

~~~
geddy
Putting it all behind yet another walled garden? Before you know it, 90% of
the internet will be gated behind paywalls or signups.

~~~
jedberg
Seems like a better business model than ads. And Netflix is worldwide. So
really it’s a question of do you want to pay for the content with money or
with your personal data.

------
Domenic_S
CH used to run a facebook competitor called "Campus Hook". I met who would
later become my wife there in the early 2000s. Online dating was yet to become
mainstream, so we made up a story about how we met lest we look like weirdos.
Now that app dating is a thing, we can just tell the story as it happened.

Thanks, CH!

~~~
jlodwick
That's amazing! We started Campus Hook in 2002 (I think) but the timing was
bad for a few reasons: 1\. A few years early in terms of college student
adoption of internet 2\. A few years later in terms of founders' ages (we were
seniors and didn't really care about campus dating anymore)

So happy to hear you met on there, and, apparently, are still married! Perhaps
it wasn't a failure after all :)

~~~
Domenic_S
> apparently, are still married!

10 years now, and 2 kids! Thanks so much for building it, in our eyes it
wasn't a failure at all :)

------
awillen
I remember when CH was just a site where people uploaded funny pics, and once
in a while they had a well-written article. How far they came - sad to see
them shut down.

~~~
_the_inflator
Yes, was one of the sites I bookmarked back then.

------
lgleason
The did a great parody of many startup pitches that I've heard over the years.
Hopefully they can save it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4)

------
Raed667
Sad to see CH fall like Cracked did. Facebook single handedly killed both
these very entertaining companies.

------
brianbreslin
Wasn't Vimeo a byproduct of CollegeHumor or am I mixing up my 2000-2005
internet history?

~~~
chx
Jake Lodwick co-created Vimeo while working as the inital web developer for
CollegeHumor.

------
8bitsrule
"You have to learn how to stay in a good mood as you overthrow the sour,
puckered hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality." \- Rob
Brezsny

------
tomaszs
The situation is already so heavy that one tiny thing can cause a snowball
effect. We all know it. Now one knows when but it is happening

------
40four
Unrelated... but on the Washington Post I clicked through to the page that
sells subscriptions, only to find that they hijack you back button and do not
allow you to go back in your browser history.

What a joke. Makes me want to never visit their site again. That is
unacceptable.

~~~
MisterTea
The bigger joke is a web page can hijack your browser.

~~~
3xblah
This joke must be too highbrow because no one seems to get it.

[https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020](https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020)

~~~
gknoy
"Web coffee protocol" \-- I'll admit, this one surprised me.

~~~
40four
LOL you got me :p

------
emodendroket
The speed these behemoths fall is incredible, isn't it?

------
antidaily
NOT ace.

------
bhouston
I can not read the source article.

But I guess its costs were too high such that if it just distributed it all
via YouTube it couldn't make any money?

~~~
jannes
They are also blaming it on Facebook:

> “In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so
> [CollegeHumor] pivoted to FB,” former CollegeHumor writer Adam Conover
> presciently tweeted last October. “So did Funny or Die, many others. The
> result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated."

~~~
ASalazarMX
I don't understand this. Did they abandon Youtube for Facebook? They could
have easily managed their followers in Facebook while continuing to upload to
Youtube as usual.

~~~
irjustin
A large problem is content stealers. They'll post the entire video without
attribution. Also Facebook for a very long time didn't do anything to prevent
content stealing even with takedown notices there were too many. FB didn't
have an automated system.

College humour was basically forced to put their entire video just to retain
views.

~~~
blackearl
Not sure why I was flagged, @fatjewish was popular on twitter/ig/etc. and was
nearly given a comedy central show until comedians complained that he stole
jokes.

------
IanDrake
PC comedy isn't funny. Who knew?

~~~
mkane848
THAT'S what you gleamed from this article?

------
yoz-y
Why does the article start with a false premise that "internet used to be fun"
and "bygone era". Come on, if you don't want to follow Twitter drama just go
to some other place. Ugh.

~~~
echelon
It's not a false premise for many of us.

I miss the indie internet, before big corps and big tech started taking over.

I miss IRC and forums and personal websites. I miss the time when Digg was new
and hadn't taken over, and memes weren't the most upvoted content. When
websites weren't all Javascript and Google wasn't Yahoo.

MySpace and LiveJournal and Xanga were never as sterile as Facebook and
Instagram.

The internet that appealed to the Technorati got put on dopamine-fueled
monetization rails and turned into a bulk commodity that maximizes engagement
over the population.

~~~
xamuel
When I was growing up, I played on MUD games, which were text-based massively
multiplayer games 100% free to play, with no ads or any other kind of
monetization, with full staffs of admins, programmers (!!), level designers,
and moderators, all 100% volunteers.

Reading that now, it sounds like I'm describing some kind of crazy sci-fi
utopia that couldn't even get published because it's too unbelievable.

~~~
Shish2k
Realms Of Despair ([http://www.smaug.org/](http://www.smaug.org/)) is still
running - last major update 2002, last update at all 2010 :P

`nc realmsofdespair.com 4000`

A CLI interface with no readline support; an MMO where you need to manually
save your game to avoid losing progress whenever the network glitches for a
second; very nostalgic :D

~~~
xamuel
Ah, that's one of the main MUDs I played. I even built an area there. I did
tons of runs there (even participated in successful runs on Hastur and Divine
Retribution) until I got balzhur'd for cheating :P (I was just a high school
kid back then).

------
sirzarmo
When Jake and Amir was canceled I was quite disappointed, When they made an
awful soulless return in the form of an anti-trump video, my fury was immense.
they held out for quite a while making original content and as of recently
once in a blue moon they made something interesting but the company became
very corporate, and their main product was incompatible with that,
compatibility is a feat I think only Adult Swim can manage today...

~~~
skinnymuch
Really? You’re just butthurt over the Trump Jake and Amir video? It wasn’t
even that bit of a deal. It was also mocking people in general as much as
Trump.

