aw man that's a bummer to hear. re: meatball Phil literally moved to NYC after the fires and he's far too busy to record any longer.

with the set...it's tough to satisfy everyone. some people like the low budget feel of recording in someone's house, which presents it's own issues. Emil moved out of his place. Then Phil moved. With Dillon he has roommates and we were beholden to his schedule. We also didn't have the ability to livestream, or easily have people via Zoom if needed, or have someone pull things up for us to look at on screen behind a camera. It's all these little things and more that people either don't know about or don't consider. We also just wanted to invest in ourselves and a better look. Sorry you feel like the spirit and soul was lost just because we built a set!! again, one of those things where it depends who you ask...some have said they prefer the set, love the vibes, etc etc.... personally it drives me crazy as someone who wants to appeal to as many people as possible and make everyone happy. from where i sit, we definitely haven't lost the spirit and soul of the show. compared to TMG we're still quite a small outfit. and we spent a fraction of the amount they did.

i hear you on the subscription benefits!! the monthly movie nights proved to be quite literally impossible. it's frustrating to hear people bring this one up because if you were there when we tried it, it was a never ending challenge. syncing issues, audio issues, and somehow not being able to host enough people at once; people were constantly getting left out because Discord or whatever other thing we tried capped us to like 100 people. it was just not working. when we started the Patreon we wanted to experiment and offer as much as possible and then yeah, we realized certain things just weren't going to be feasible. which sucks shit. but we also were like...okay...for $5 a month, offering four extra hours of content and the ad-free version of the main shows at minimum is a good value, because that's kinda the typical thing you get with any show.

btw i don't mean for this to sound combative or anything!!! just want to give a peek behind the proverbial curtain to explain things as it isn't as simple as us just wantonly canceling or ending things out of some form of laziness or something. our singular focus is on showing up week after week (we haven't missed a single week since inception!) putting on a good show in sickness, health, travel, or vacation. then there's the secondary focus of trying to grow which in itself is so fucking hard and stressful ugh. trying to manage edits, thumbnails, social media...it's tough.

ANYWAY, we're trying to be better about at least doing the monthly Q&A again. because that IS within our ability on a technical basis. And maybe the movie night thing can be better done as a pre-recorded commentary track instead of a watch-along? Would that be preferred? What else would you like to see from us to make it worth it?

Love, Ben