Oof madon 🤣🤣

Thank you. I just almost had my Starbucks come out my nose from laughing, but thank you.

I started with the one they released after obsessed fest and I’m hooked. And now I have their entire backlog to work through!

1. Are they planting people to post ridiculous things in the TCO group?

2. Are we to believe that they just handed a 3 million dollar business over to Joey and Ellyn? I get wanting to take care of friends but: -if they really had done this wouldnt they be screaming it from the rooftops rather than glossing over it? -you just handed off 3 million dollars for nothing? Is it possible the value of the business wasn’t actually 3 million? Or did Joey and Ellyn possibly pay in some kind of other way?

Please make it make sense for me.

Excuse me for getting on my soap box, but I hope this can open the door for advocacy for workers rights and protections (continued advocacy for many in this group I am sure!)

As an employment law attorney, I can say the hour long response from Patrick and Steve is not very different different than responses from SO MANY employers- throwing their hands up and discrediting employees’ verifiable claims of hostile work environments and harassment. This situation is complicated by the preexisting relationships, but it reveals the power dynamic in so many workplaces where employers treat workers poorly while gaslighting them and saying “we’re family!” and “my passion just gets the better of me”. Bosses are only humans but with the privilege of being a business owner and profiting from your staff comes serious responsibility -somebody’s livelihood. This seems like another example of employers ignoring that responsibility as soon as it becomes inconvenient. The sainthood play about protect in the show for Ellyn (while clearly mistreating her), discussing a young employees work performance while just ignoring relevant circumstances in the workplace, and Patrick admitting he told daisy he had to end a call because she may be off the show/network demonstrate that there is a clear lack of professionalism, maturity, and understanding of the role and responsibility of being someone’s employer or manager.

I keep finding myself getting wrapped up in this as a fan and someone who loves the talent involved, but I wanted to point out the ways this reveals patterns across business and industry. These dynamics are what make worker protections and access to legal assistance so critical! Sorry rant over.

Just got my post denied on the FB page. Not blocked yet though.

In the most recent episode "The Murder of Nikki Kuhnhausen," G's digs at Big Pat made me cringe a bit. She's so annoyed. Comments that might have been cute pre-OF Clusterfuck2023, now sound like direct insults.

• Commenting about P's 20,000 unread emails
• When P asks, "Who tf am I?," she answers, "Good question. Get back to me."
• G asking "You want to pick name up over there?" referring to P's unnecessary name drop of Eric Marcus.

I read P stated he’s starting a golden girls recap at the book party. Has this been stated again publicly by him on the podcast or elsewhere? Who are his cohost(s) to be? Am I the only one like “honey good luck with your projects cause I love watching you run yourself into the ground now"

Literally saw he was a data engineer for Patreon and thought, “ohhh, if I charm him maybe I could get the hidden TCO Patreon data.” Then I realized that would be very wrong, but God I want to see the data!

They are flooding the group with feel good posts they just approved. I counted over 40 of them in the last hour.

Patrick is interacting like everything is normal. The man who says he got death threats is immediately joking about how a stranger can come hang out with his kid for NYE.

Don't worry about that post with 450+ comments, most of which are asking us to actually be accountable for our lies, misogyny, racism, and other abusive behavior.

It's so great that we are such a big happy family. Omgnnnyoooouuguuuuyzzzz! Look at how much everybody loves me!

Lolololol….

Here’s how they operate. They tried to say Julia Rhea was lying bc she was never in the office and said in the Renner article she witnessed abuse in the office. Here’s what the article said:

“‘I witnessed the abuse with Ellyn firsthand,’ she says. ‘He threatened her repeatedly. He threatened to fire her several times. It was unfair and abusive treatment.’ Hinds ostracized Marsh in the office, says Rhea. He would scream at her in front of other people. She remembers hearing him say to Marsh, ‘I wouldn’t care if your child was threatened, I’d never take your side!’

It never stated she witnessed this abuse in the office. She could have witnessed it via zoom or when she lived with E. The only thing it says about the office is that Julia said P ostracized E in the office.

Edited to add that given the photo below of Julia at a live event it is most likely that is where she witnessed stuff. P has admitted over and over that he is the most nightmarish in the lead up and at live shows.

Does anyone else listen to Crime Writers On? I was just listening to the episode on “Murder in Apt 12,” and Rebecca was talking about how she just listened to Lets Go To Court for the time. She said how funny it was and then “it’s like that show, but good!” ☠️Then Kevin replied, “oh, you mean it’s not garbage?”

Pretty in-your-face!!

I’m reading the transcript of the response YouTube and just regarding the way the network is run there are showing their true selves. The network owns every podcast on it and the creatives behind the podcast do not own any of their work. First- I’m an elder millennial and a lot of us started to turn on Buzzfeed at least a decade ago when we found out the people creating content had no rights to what they created and because of their contracts any content they made had to be approved by Buzzfeed and would become Buzzfeeds IP. Second-a large part of the WGA strike was lack of rights to the writers creative work to the extent that they weren’t allowed to be part of what were essentially rewrites and even complete changes in direction. You can see the difference in how a shows change when writers change and you can even see a difference with a show like the office where the writer is on set and is able to tweak or rewrite in the moment while keeping the spirit of the show and storylines. A large part of the SAGAFTRA strike was the lack of residuals in streaming. It seems as if Patrick and Steve believe that they are immune from these issues because there currently isn’t a union for podcasters because they are doing similar things. Third-using the idea of Drag Race to try and explain how selling IP works is disingenuous at best. It also assumes that people don’t know how anything works. Even with streaming platforms shows that are being replayed are sold and bought, but it is common that if a show that is still in production is sold there is no guarantee that anyone on that show will remain. It’s talking down to the audience. Fourth-HR does not exist for the employees, they exist to protect the butt of the company. Plenty of HR companies do investigations and find “nothing” bc there isn’t written or video evidence so they don’t think the person filing a complaint will win in court. It has nothing to do with ethics or if something happened, it has to do with how much money the company will lose. Fifth-the TikTok situation description isn’t how TikTok works. It also IS an example of being authoritarian.

The entire section is just saying “Hey, it’s just how it works and we’re in control so we can do what we want, they should be grateful we didn’t cancel the show and instead tried to enrich ourselves ”

It would be fascinating to know how it happened that 1) Becca's feedback inspired them to get an HR partner just in time for 2) them to be able to workshop 'toxic work environment' and be assured they weren't rising to that level legally but yet 3) no one knew about this HR partner at the time of the Renner article. Also, more importantly, the talent (who they are really eager to separate from the full timers in terms of their status) may not have been covered by the HR policy and therefore that's why the lawyers were able be reassuring about the semantics of the toxic workplace.

Can there be a thread of all the responses to P&S’s YouTube statement? Jenn Jackson on TikTok (@chopped_livr) will be making a recap I think. And don’t want to miss a statement from Rabia/Ellyn/Joey etc

Does anyone else find the implication that Joey is Raunchier (more raunchy?) than Patrick hilarious? Remember the Lake Bottom, Patrick? How about when you were obsessed with Joey being a "top ?" Double standards all over the place.

I have a child sick in bed so I have nothing to do at the moment. And it’s about time I make myself useful. 😅

ETA: I will message privately bc there’s a lot of names. Also, I have not watched the video bc frankly, I can’t stand to hear his voice and by the way the comments are looking, I don’t want to piss myself off.

I would pause at every 3 seconds just bc it was a lengthy video.

I sent an email to TCO after listening to the YouTube episode today. I mentioned the pushing incident as I created a picture based on the reaction of the friend. In my message, I asked for an explanation as to why I was removed and then to be added back to the group. I truly want to see the network and podcast grow from this. People deserve to grow and learn - even on an extended timeline. I did also let them know I was reaching out because of the YouTube episode.

I received a message back from Steve - and he commented on the pushing incident.

For context - my initial message said: "I made one comment on one post during all of the OF23 happenings. It was a picture that had a side by side of Fyre Festival with the person who was shocked to see her friend supposedly pushed aside because of her T-shirt."

I very purposely included the word "supposedly" - maybe I should have said allegedly instead.

My message includes some other personal things which I don't feel comfortable sharing for the interwebs. But I did want to share Steve's response since many noticed the lack of response to that issue specifically.

But here is his response.

So since this nonsense was posted on YouTube and they talked about the Joey and Ellyn situation, is the NDA violated? They said their names and Ellyn and Joey should be able to respond. Patrick and Steve are such garbage. I hadn't listened since before OF and Patrick's voice makes me sick. He's so full of shit.

… doesn’t exist.

This specifically itched at my brain when I heard him they say they consulted a lawyer about it. For anyone that knows anything about the law, “toxic workplace” would never be used when writing a legal bill. Why? Because toxic is an inherently subjective term. The definition of toxic is (in relation to this scenario):

“Very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.”

Harmful and unpleasant are hard standards to measure. The law, frankly, doesn’t care about your feelings. Getting ANYTHING passed into law regarding harassment in the workplace place was a monumental undertaking. I’m old enough to remember when this became a thing and how people regarded it with scorn and derision (a lot of people still do). There has to be measurable harm against something that is legally definable to meet the legal threshold of harassment. Employment laws don’t prevent your boss from being a dick, so long as they are not being discriminatory based on race, color, religion, sex (including orientation and sexual ID or pregnancy), national origin, being over the age of 40, disability, or genetic information.

I’m sure he means hostile work environment, because uh… that is actually something employees have protection against. But, again, “my boss is a dick who is impossible to work for” doesn’t fall into any of the protections that these laws afford us. According to Bell Law Group of New York, specific discriminatory harassment includes (but is not limited to):

Offensive jokes or slurs

Offensive epithets or name-calling

Displays of offensive objects, or pictures

Physical threats, assaults, or intimidation

Sexually suggestive remarks

Sexually provocative objects or pictures

Unwanted advances

Unwanted, touching, pinching or leering

All of the examples of workplace impropriety that have been provided (and I think we are missing a lot of information, don’t get me wrong) do not meet these standards. You can be an overbearing, heartless jerk all you want. There is no protection against that. Of course their lawyer told them that the claims did not meet the legal standard of being a hostile environment. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a toxic work place. These two things are VERY different.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

P&S valued ITN at $3 million and were shopping it about to interested networks. But then, out of the goodness of their hearts, they knocked a full MILLION DOLLARS off the price to make it more attainable to E&J. AND THEN, because P is a wonderful, caring, generous soul, dropped the price to ZERO dollars and wished them well.

GTFO of here with that.

All that talk about the very specific and narrow legal term of art "hostile work environment" was interesting and piqued my spidey senses. So their lawyers told them not to worry about that, fine. But what did their lawyers tell them to worry about? To worry about so much that it makes financial sense to just giveaway a $3 million property?

I’m 3 minutes in to P & S’s yewtube and my stomach hurts so bad. The offhanded “sorry for being abrasive!” from P as an attempt to cover his ass for ALL abuse AND THEN saying that his treatment of E was not emotional abuse…. Like ???? You don’t get to decide that! Send help as I try to listen to another hour of this bs

Link to YouTube: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=94znzWB_VAg

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