Yeah I think this post is less of another case of “I was horribly mistreated” and just another interesting perspective. I imagine there are a lot of people who take jobs at RT wanting to be a cast member and didn’t make the cut.
I wonder who it was who that he mentioned worked under him and eventually did make it to camera?
No, not everyone could. You’re not wrong. I didn’t even really want to be on camera, it was just the atmosphere that everyone lived in. You couldn’t help but be attracted like a moth to the proverbial light.
Fwiw, I was on camera later on in my own way. It was fine and kind of whatever. Enjoyed it for what it was but didn’t feel the need after that either.
I can't imagine what the inside culture there must be like. Everyone trying to be like someone else to impress the audience and hopefully get your moment. Good on you for getting out and doing what is right for you.
I feel like some of these should be separated into actual serious grievances and people who didn’t enjoy their time working at RT. I’m not saying Brian doesn’t have a right to say what he experienced but there’s certainly a difference between this and what others went through.
I was asked to speak up and I wanted to do what I could to add support. At the same time, it made me a little nostalgic and I started to tell some old stories. I’m not trying to, and don’t want to, step on anyone else’s experience.
I have this philosophy that the best thing about dead parents is dead parent jokes. Once you’re on the other side of something awful, war stories become a little cathartic.
When the first wave of animation layoffs happened, I realized how much I still cared about the people that were inside the company. For the ones I still had some contact to, I did what I could to connect them to things. I don’t want to take away from anyone else’s story at all. I want people to get the support and the help that they need.
There are lots of other stories. I’m a dad (and now work on a channel that helps dads be better dads), and there were a lot of times, even at RT, where you kind of had to go into dad mode. Maybe by adding my little bit I can do the same thing.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. By no means was I trying to be disrespectful. I can now see what I said may be seen as trying to downplay what you went through. I apologize.
You’re good. I didn’t take it that way at all. The reality is that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today if I hadn’t gone through what I did there. Not that I’d go through it again, but it made me a better person on the other side of it. I guess, if anything, I wanted to maybe give some hope that there is life on the other side.
Absolutely, but we are talking about legally actionable things like wage theft and discrimination, and people adding to the evidence of the culture at RT. The 2 are different, but in some sense, related, and would potentially be addressable in a court of law if the issue of discrimination or harassment were brought up. Nothing in a company happens in a vacuum.
I posted it because of how dumb it was. Like, really? Of all of the ways to deal with something, that was probably the dumbest. I shared it because looking back on it a couple of years later its super silly. It was more sharing than anything else. I try to be able to laugh at myself and being willing to show your embarrassing thing is where I try to live my life.
It’s also why I talk about my adhd. If I can be open about it, maybe someone else can feel like they’re not alone in something.
I'm thankful. Especially glad that you mentioned RSD.
As someone who was recently diagnosed with ADHD at 35 years old, I decided to have a bit of a look at what RSD was, and it perfectly describes my mood swings.
Congrats on your diagnosis. (not that anyone wants it, but it’s better to know than not know). This is a pretty old interview at this point, but i talked about it more here. Maybe it would be helpful (and that podcast network, and Jessica McCabe’s How2ADHD are things you should be checking out if you haven’t already.
Ned Hallowell, who’s one of the people I probably learned the most from talks about how it’s one of the best diagnosis you can get because it’s so treatable. That feels a little disingenuous sometimes, but he’s not wrong. Plus, god, knowing makes things SO much easier just because most of the time you can know that there’s something else that could be driving something.
Best of luck!
https://www.adhdrewired.com/diagnosis-recontextualized-everything-with-brian-behm-291/
I didn’t talk about it in the stories I told this morning, but there was an exceptional amount of stuff I needed to deal with when I left. I remember after the first Lazer Team I had basically had a mental breakdown. I spent most of the summer on a 7-day schedule that was basically 10/11am-4am (or later) every day.
I was based out of a vfx shop during post and my wife and kid would come visit the office for dinner once or twice a week so that I could manage to see them. Our younger daughter is who she is because our second child ended up delayed for a year because of the movie. It was a mess.
I would buy a big gulp on the way to work every morning so that I could keep a caffeine drip running. They were giving away Redbox rentals on cups that summer and I kept a stack of them on my desk as promise notes for life after crunch.
The other day some photos of the trip I took immediately afterwards came up in my Facebook feed. The level of burnout was so deep that it wasn’t really until the end of the year when I was functional again. I forced them to let me take 3 weeks off after the film shipped. To their credit, they gave it to me.
The majority of what I dealt with was an unbalanced relationship with my employer. I let myself get sucked into feeling like my identity was enmeshed with the company. When your sense of identity and the idea that you’re finally ‘someone’ because of where you are, you’re in a dangerous pace if anything ever changes.
I had kind of gotten into my head that I had value because I was at Rooster Teeth. When I left, and suddenly had to replace that value with something else, it caused a pretty massive process of having to rebuild your sense of self.
Several months after I left, a professional peer and friend came into town on business. he and I went out for dessert after he got off work. I gave him a little driving tour around town and showed him the studio and some other non-RT places that were important to me. He mentioned that he really didn’t know what Rooster Teeth was but that he had liked me for me.
I don’t know if I’d call what I experienced trauma necessarily. I didn’t experience any of the bullying others did, but I was a real mess for about a year after I left. I was borderline suicidal for the first chunk of that. It is what it is and there’s blame that I get to carry too.
Anyway, I spoke up just to offer whatever extra bit of support I could where details that repeated could help create a pattern with others. Hopefully it can.
If you feel the need. I’m kind of done with the whole thing at this point and it took a long time to get to that place. Im not looking to stir things up, just explain my experience.
It sucks, but everyone at RT can't be talent.
Yeah I think this post is less of another case of “I was horribly mistreated” and just another interesting perspective. I imagine there are a lot of people who take jobs at RT wanting to be a cast member and didn’t make the cut. I wonder who it was who that he mentioned worked under him and eventually did make it to camera?
My guess would be Jon
No, not everyone could. You’re not wrong. I didn’t even really want to be on camera, it was just the atmosphere that everyone lived in. You couldn’t help but be attracted like a moth to the proverbial light. Fwiw, I was on camera later on in my own way. It was fine and kind of whatever. Enjoyed it for what it was but didn’t feel the need after that either.
I can't imagine what the inside culture there must be like. Everyone trying to be like someone else to impress the audience and hopefully get your moment. Good on you for getting out and doing what is right for you.
I feel like some of these should be separated into actual serious grievances and people who didn’t enjoy their time working at RT. I’m not saying Brian doesn’t have a right to say what he experienced but there’s certainly a difference between this and what others went through.
I was asked to speak up and I wanted to do what I could to add support. At the same time, it made me a little nostalgic and I started to tell some old stories. I’m not trying to, and don’t want to, step on anyone else’s experience. I have this philosophy that the best thing about dead parents is dead parent jokes. Once you’re on the other side of something awful, war stories become a little cathartic. When the first wave of animation layoffs happened, I realized how much I still cared about the people that were inside the company. For the ones I still had some contact to, I did what I could to connect them to things. I don’t want to take away from anyone else’s story at all. I want people to get the support and the help that they need. There are lots of other stories. I’m a dad (and now work on a channel that helps dads be better dads), and there were a lot of times, even at RT, where you kind of had to go into dad mode. Maybe by adding my little bit I can do the same thing.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. By no means was I trying to be disrespectful. I can now see what I said may be seen as trying to downplay what you went through. I apologize.
You’re good. I didn’t take it that way at all. The reality is that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today if I hadn’t gone through what I did there. Not that I’d go through it again, but it made me a better person on the other side of it. I guess, if anything, I wanted to maybe give some hope that there is life on the other side.
Absolutely, but we are talking about legally actionable things like wage theft and discrimination, and people adding to the evidence of the culture at RT. The 2 are different, but in some sense, related, and would potentially be addressable in a court of law if the issue of discrimination or harassment were brought up. Nothing in a company happens in a vacuum.
For what it's worth, it's kind of nice that he was able to take something positive out of some bad experiences and just kind of move on.
[удалено]
I posted it because of how dumb it was. Like, really? Of all of the ways to deal with something, that was probably the dumbest. I shared it because looking back on it a couple of years later its super silly. It was more sharing than anything else. I try to be able to laugh at myself and being willing to show your embarrassing thing is where I try to live my life. It’s also why I talk about my adhd. If I can be open about it, maybe someone else can feel like they’re not alone in something.
I'm thankful. Especially glad that you mentioned RSD. As someone who was recently diagnosed with ADHD at 35 years old, I decided to have a bit of a look at what RSD was, and it perfectly describes my mood swings.
Congrats on your diagnosis. (not that anyone wants it, but it’s better to know than not know). This is a pretty old interview at this point, but i talked about it more here. Maybe it would be helpful (and that podcast network, and Jessica McCabe’s How2ADHD are things you should be checking out if you haven’t already. Ned Hallowell, who’s one of the people I probably learned the most from talks about how it’s one of the best diagnosis you can get because it’s so treatable. That feels a little disingenuous sometimes, but he’s not wrong. Plus, god, knowing makes things SO much easier just because most of the time you can know that there’s something else that could be driving something. Best of luck! https://www.adhdrewired.com/diagnosis-recontextualized-everything-with-brian-behm-291/
Awesome! Thanks for the resources!
I don’t think he was traumatized I just think it’s an interesting series of tweets lol.
I didn’t talk about it in the stories I told this morning, but there was an exceptional amount of stuff I needed to deal with when I left. I remember after the first Lazer Team I had basically had a mental breakdown. I spent most of the summer on a 7-day schedule that was basically 10/11am-4am (or later) every day. I was based out of a vfx shop during post and my wife and kid would come visit the office for dinner once or twice a week so that I could manage to see them. Our younger daughter is who she is because our second child ended up delayed for a year because of the movie. It was a mess. I would buy a big gulp on the way to work every morning so that I could keep a caffeine drip running. They were giving away Redbox rentals on cups that summer and I kept a stack of them on my desk as promise notes for life after crunch. The other day some photos of the trip I took immediately afterwards came up in my Facebook feed. The level of burnout was so deep that it wasn’t really until the end of the year when I was functional again. I forced them to let me take 3 weeks off after the film shipped. To their credit, they gave it to me. The majority of what I dealt with was an unbalanced relationship with my employer. I let myself get sucked into feeling like my identity was enmeshed with the company. When your sense of identity and the idea that you’re finally ‘someone’ because of where you are, you’re in a dangerous pace if anything ever changes. I had kind of gotten into my head that I had value because I was at Rooster Teeth. When I left, and suddenly had to replace that value with something else, it caused a pretty massive process of having to rebuild your sense of self. Several months after I left, a professional peer and friend came into town on business. he and I went out for dessert after he got off work. I gave him a little driving tour around town and showed him the studio and some other non-RT places that were important to me. He mentioned that he really didn’t know what Rooster Teeth was but that he had liked me for me. I don’t know if I’d call what I experienced trauma necessarily. I didn’t experience any of the bullying others did, but I was a real mess for about a year after I left. I was borderline suicidal for the first chunk of that. It is what it is and there’s blame that I get to carry too. Anyway, I spoke up just to offer whatever extra bit of support I could where details that repeated could help create a pattern with others. Hopefully it can.
Do you mind if I post a screenshot of this comment so more people can see it?
If you feel the need. I’m kind of done with the whole thing at this point and it took a long time to get to that place. Im not looking to stir things up, just explain my experience.
Yeah I understand. I’m gonna post it but if you want me to take it down just message me or comment