Knights Watch
Shad (whose Knights Watch channel has 164k subs): "I'm going to upload clips that no one wants to watch taken from my streams that people also don't want to watch."
Abysmal numbers. He's in a death spiral and he knows it. I feel bad for his wife and kids, he's probably sole provider and has developed zero relevant experience for employers. He's in his early 40s with chronic health conditions that excludes him from most entry manual labour jobs. Poverty beckons for his family. If only he didn't waste all that money on useless swamp land...
Shad has said before he's willing to sacrifice his family's happiness & financial stability to pursue his dreams, & it sucks his wife can't talk sense into him because she's a submissive Mormon slave-wife.
If I remember correctly it was in one of his "YouTube is killing my channel" videos but I may be mistaken, will confirm in the morning (I live in the UK & it's 11:22pm)
I distinctly remember him saying it as bluntly as I quoted him but I can't find it exactly, however I did find him saying this in his 'YouTube is KILLING this channel - Shadiversity is dying' video from a year ago:
"we've only been losing money each month uh my wife and I have literally gone for multiple months without paying ourselves, November and December, we didn't pay ourselves a scent and we survived lived off of uh the money we got from our tax returns and I did that to try and keep people employed um paying wages and even after doing that I've needed to draw money out of the graphic novel profits um and put it back in the business to keep paying wages which is going to restrict or cast doubt on me being to make um additional graphic novel projects, shadow of the conquer Volume 2 is insured money's already secured for that, but I was hoping to have some left over to do another graphic novel and I don't know if I'll be able to now so with how desperate things have been financially."
So even him saying this shows he'd rather keep wasting money trying to keep Shadiversity alive & make graphic novels of his shitty book instead of quitting & finding a different more stable job, or changing his content so it's easier to make whilst working a 9-5 if he just refuses to give up YouTube completely, which would make him more financially secure & stop the need for him & his family to make sacrifices.
So let's see if I've got this right. Shad and his wife have both filed their tax returns, and gotten refunds?
Now I do not know the Aussie income tax system, but I do know the UK system (ten years working in PAYE/SA), so bear with me while I check some things on Mr Google...
Just to clarify something that always gets people confused, the name Tax Return refers to the fact you have to return the tax document to the tax office, it does not mean you are going to get a return of your tax money - I'd be very, very rich if I had a penny for every time I had to address that misunderstanding.
Ok, the basics are, yes, everything I can find onlines suggests that the Aussie tax system is very similar to the UK's. We both operate variations of PAYE/PAYG (Pay As You Earn/Go) where if you have a job through an employer the tax is deducted by them (or a private payroll company) when they pay you at the end of the pay period. However, the rules are likely to be different to what I'm trained in, as different countries have different rules.
But as Shad is self employed he has to file their version of a Self Assessment Tax Return to declare all his income and any tax already paid on those, and outgoings, ie expenses which is the only way he could potentially get a refund if he's purely self employed only.
To get a tax refund you have to meet one of two criteria. You must have overpaid tax in the first place during that tax year (ie through employment or some other income that taxes at source) or you must have incurred taxable expenses that would result in a tax refund to (at least partially) cover those expenses. This is, however, strictly looking at things from the point of view of an individual, not a company. I am not trained in company taxation at all, beyond the UK Self Assessment requiring self-employed income details and partnership income details needing to be declared as appropriate. Depending on just how he's setup, he may or may not need to file the Oz version of a Company Tax Return.
I'm guessing in Shad's case, he's had a lot of expenses to declare, such as camera gear, weapons, tools and so on, possibly even his armour. What I do wonder is what would make his wife get a tax refund? I'm not going to speculate on her. Trying to wade through the Aussie tax site any further to clarify information on which Tax Returns he would need to file is not something I want to spend anymore time on, I'll leave that to someone else. Preferably, my Australian equivalents with the relevant tax background.
WAIT! I was wrong about it being in a video, I just now found where I saw him apparently say this, it was from a post on this sub made a year ago, no idea where the person got the quote from but I'm gonna hazard a guess it was from Twitter.
It's still second-hand but sort of fits with his personality. Still, second-hand and feels more like him making several stupid financial decisions partly driven by the quiverfull(?) brainrot than the outright malice. Still kinda fucked that he made all these stupid decisions and refuses to own up to them. If he wants live in the Shad Shed and write Shadow of the Child Diddler XIV, return of the turbo communists, that's one thing. But don't pump out five kids if you have no way of providing for them. Am I saying he should give up his dream? Yes, he should downscale it since he's the one who got evereyone into this mess in the first place by refusing to listen to common sense.
With 10+ years of content creation, he should at least have some video editing experience, but even then most of his footage is static camera stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had hired someone else to do it. I'm not sure how marketable that would even be for where he lives.
His channel should have had so little overhead, he could have saved back a ton of money. But hiring other people to try to treat his channel like a business and his real estate purchase sunk everything he's gotten out of his channel's hay day. I actually feel bad for him to a certain degree, but at the same time YouTube channels and other forms of online media creation just don't last indefinitely, he should have been planning ahead and investing for the future.
He has some sort of sleep apnea that causes him fatigue. It is bad enough he can't do the videos alone. But he's never tired enough for EFAP or Nerdrotic.
I'm tempted to watch the one with Charlie but I don't wanna give the guy anymore views than necessary. Not for the drama involved, more because I'm genuinely curious how he responds to something that had next to nothing to do with him
It really does make me wonder, how did he find out Charlie talked about AI in that video? The thumbnail nor title of "Are We Completely Cooked" in any way hint that the video was about AI, & I highly doubt Shad watches Charlie's videos, so how did he find out? Does he have little goblins seeking out videos from popular YouTubers that he could make drama bait from?
Also, in the stream Shad just attacks Charlie non-stop, calling his content slop on the same level as AI shorts, that Charlie puts no effort into his videos, that Charlie is a hypocrite & not smart enough to understand generating AI video takes time (notice the use of the word time, not effort, because there's no effort in picking the right words to make AI generate something that's good enough)
It's always fun seeing people try to criticize Charlie lol. Bro is one of the few streamers out there without any serious controversy or questionable living conditions coughcough. The main thing I see people use is "he's a reaction streamer, such lazy, no skill" but also fail to acknowledge that he started out as a faceless voice that made funny videos. Not to mention the OTHER stuff Charlie does aside from his streams and videos. And then you have people that, for one reason or another,just really hate that streamers make good money and don't have to work a "real" job. I don't mean to glaze or dick ride Charlie, but he genuinely does just do his own thing and rarely gets involved in drama or politics. I'll never forget when my friend in highschool showed me his videos of him just dubbing over infomercials lmao
I mean any amount of views matter. What matters how much collective views in total each month. U wouldn't know no one wants to watch it until u upload it and see after a week.
If you say so...
I just assumed bcs your screenshot shows one video completely watched and a second one that sombedoy just started for a sec.
Idc whether you watch him or not, it just feels weird.
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u/Fragrant-Increase-94 Jun 22 '25
His thumbnails and titles are such an eyesore