For the last several years, when you entertain your interests in fields like video games, media, art, journalism; you’ve gotten used to seeing layoffs, haven’t you?

I’ve given a lot of my history with the web out in different contexts, though I find it important to give everyone just a little more. I was barely living, only a little over a year old when a few guys in a shitty apartment bedroom started their independent entertainment website. As of now, I’ll actively be outliving it.

I have a complex history with Rooster Teeth and the associated artwork and media the company released. Of course, I have a complex history with a lot of my presence online, as my access to the computer came very early in childhood, but Rooster Teeth may be the gold standard of complex feelings.

As of yesterday, announced by their CEO, Rooster Teeth is shutting down after 21 years of operation, and more than 150 extremely skilled people are now losing their jobs. I’ve had the joy of getting to interact, even if passively, with some of these people whether they worked at the company in the past or in the present, and I grieve for them deeply. I hope, above all else, that everyone is able to get back on their feet financially and creatively.

In reflection on this particular loss, I thought it would be nice, as one last goodbye to reflect on some of my earliest moments in online communities, fandom, and digital creation that led me to where I am now. I may reference people, not by name, who I interacted with at the time though I keep close to very few of the people I met in my time within the community.

A Place of Your Own

One of the earliest things I learned on the web in some part due to the early Rooster Teeth model was having your own place on the internet, that you control, is a must. I did not participate in any internet forums out of discomfort for a majority of my childhood, however where I was not speaking, I was reading. The Rooster Teeth site, when comments and forums were available were some of the first times I learned of people like me.

The foundation of online presence would drive me to other places, of course, but I took the standard of control and ownership to heart the older I got and the more corporate the web became. In reflecting on not only the community aspect and the corporate aspect of Rooster Teeth and the people within these spaces, I realize now that some of these spaces were incredibly insular, and cut people off from other systems of support and creative exploration for the sake of fitting in with the zeitgeist and culture established by the company and community. I noticed this primarily with artists, whether they were fan artists, hopeful but naive workers, or professionals who saw Rooster Teeth as a dream job.

When looking back, we of course see that the culture of adoration and idealization of Rooster Teeth’s work culture was not healthy, for both workers and fans. People across departments over two decades of the company’s existence have spoken out over poor treatment, crunch, and mismanagement. I believe in listening to workers, both past and present, who have expressed their own mix feelings and faced their darkest days while working for them. Solidarity to the workers, you deserved better. Solidarity to the contractors and freelancers. Solidarity to the unpaid members of moderation teams. Solidarity to all those, past and present, who were hurt in the process of Rooster Teeth’s continued existence.

In moving forward, learning from Rooster Teeth is a case in sustaining healthy spaces to harbor true creativity. Where management came out of a decade of internet and pre-internet culture left a clear grain of ignorant and harmful ideologies, especially for those in the company who left under duress of harassment and bigotry. It is on the surviving creatives to form new spaces truly meant for us, and meant for establishing communities where a longstanding silent tolerance for these legacies of toxic internet environments can no longer exist.

Inspiration

Rooster Teeth and its community gave me many things. My first bouts of digital artwork I was sincerely proud of came out of my last few years being around the community. Experimentation with color, line work and texture in my early work (such as the stained-glass inspired series) would be formative for what made my art mine. Though I did not share much of my work until far later, I taught myself editing software, audio editing, and basic video editing because I thought maybe, because of places like Rooster Teeth, that kind of work was an option for me. Because of the sheer number of projects you could see at one time at Rooster Teeth, for a budding creative mind, there was a lot to be curious about.

I find the biggest inspiration effect Rooster Teeth had on me would come to their various forms of gaming news production, in particular, the work of Ashley Jenkins (Burns), Meg Turney, Kdin Jenzen, Brian Garr, Bruce Greene, Lawrence Sonntag, Autumn Farrell and many other people I am likely forgetting, for which I apologize.

My introduction to tech and games journalism through much of Ashley’s early work, Inside Gaming, The Know, and other analysis was likely the sparkle in my eye leading me down the path of journalism long before I ever worked in an sound booth, radio station, or newspaper.

While the state of the industries (games, journalism, news media) are frankly, a hellscape right now. I would not have the skills I have now without seeing Ashley roam the floors of an E3, or talking to Brian about journalism when my career was just starting. I do not know where my passions would have gone without this early love in reporting and research.

Community

To close, I center my thoughts on the people I met.

I tend to be a bit of a recluse online, interacting and vanishing out of fear of my own incompetence and struggle to communicate. I admire from afar, and I had plenty of admiring to do.

My first friend group I made in the RT community was also the first time I met another trans person my age. I was young, confused, angry with my body and existence, and through community, I found other queer people who enjoyed the same thing I did.

I took up positions, for a time, sustaining community spaces myself, moderating was one of the earliest community positions I took, and in that I forced myself from a young age to learn the complexities of what that took. While I owe it to Bria Davis and Blaseball for my interest in community management, communications and the advancement of my moderation skills, learning as a child to understand and care for the different people around me was because of the Rooster Teeth community, and is also why I left the community and stopped engaging with the company’s work when I felt their values did not meet mine.

I’ve lost connection with most of the people I found myself close to in the years I was in the community, some my choice, some by the nature of the internet. I’ve keep some of my online identifiers largely the same, I vaguely recognize people through memories, art, writing, and nicknames.

One of my best friends is still someone I know through RT, and ironically, in the wake of Rooster Teeth’s end, I’m learning that people I met far later in life have their own complex connections to it too.

I said goodbye in the social sense several years ago, not acknowledging the past years of engagement in favor of moving forward. Now, I think it’s nice to say goodbye, and hope that what blooms out of this loss is something better for every single person who was touched in some way by what was the industry juggernaut that was and is Rooster Teeth.

If you, like me, spent time in the community, now is a good time to seek out the people who created what you loved, especially those who may have been behind the camera, and find a way to support them.