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Butch Hartman controversy


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Here's a quick rundown on the events that have transpired. For those unaware, Butch Hartman is a well known content creator most known for his work at Nick, creating beloved and iconic franchises such as Fairly Odd Parents, Tuff Puppy, and Danny Phantom. A few months back he left nick for some unknown reason and decided to go indie. A few days back, he started a Kickstarter for his own channel/stream service on the claim it would be a family centered service for content creators(and of course Butch himself, who id assume would be creating the bulk of the popular content released on it.)

Tl;dr: Kickstarter shadiness that makes Inafune look brutally honest, implications of homophobia and bigoted views towards the lgbt community based on his religious background, dodging questions pertaining to the topic, his use of the term “family friendly”, etc. DESPITE his claim that this endeavor of his would be one for all, speculation based on a recently uncovered video that it’s a service meant to convert children to Christianity or lean them in that direction without telling anyone, deleting negative criticism, and money seemingly finding its way into butch’s Kickstarter at last second. Oh and the guy is cocky, egotistic, and brags about himself and puts himself on a pedestal above others who criticize him.

Needless to say, I find him a piece of shit and it’s sad to see how far and how fast he fell from a beloved creator to...this. Safe to say his career is stained by this point, and can’t say I sympathize. Maybe he’ll eventually have a change of heart and apologize and work toward building goodwill with people and be more clear about what he wants instead of lie and laugh as the money comes.

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Okay, so I watched the entire video. I don't really know much of anything about Butch Hartman and I'm not going to take this one video entirely at its word, but it does paint a very ugly picture. Some of this things, particularly concerning the vagueness of this Oaxis platform and just hours shadily he's handling it, can't really be defended. I'm gonna take a punt and say that yep, he's an arse.

The one thing I do want to mention though is that building a platform around his Christian values is not a bad thing. A religious platform that's clearly identified as such is fine. If it's meant to teach children the merits of Christianity and encourage them to follow it, that's fine. What "Christian values" might entail though, especially when it's only being vaguely alluded to as "family friendly", this looks like it is a problem. Whether it's for or against, theistic or atheistic doesn't matter; religious content needs to be clearly signposted. Butch's behaviour is covert and shady that brings his motives, moralities and principles into question.

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I became really apprehensive of the guy when I saw MrEnter’s review of the FOP episode “Love Struck”. I’d never noticed as a kid how disturbingly heteronormative that episode was. Like, the sexist implications were bad enough, but the buttload of other implications...jeez.

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This guy does a really good job showing the points in the video of him revealing the true nature of Oaxis where he says some of the most stupid and uncomfortable stuff.

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Being a Christian platform in itself is not a bad thing nor is being a Christian in itself a bad thing. Not all are going to chase you with the good book trying to hit you with it contrary to what a lot of young people today think because the things they teach runs counter to how they want to live. But to back anything I'd need a clear message of what it is. Though I've yet to back any bad kickstart......besides red ash

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Also, he glorified the 70's and overlooked issues, shows little understanding about suicide and mental health, made a 'joke' about a friend of tara strong who committed suicide and his youtube likes consists of things like SJW owned, BLM is nonsense, etc....yeah. Not to mention liking tweets of breitbart....

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Oh for sure, I don’t think inherently a service built around Christian values couldn’t have merit. However yes, the problem is Butch’s history and things said(or not said as with ignoring the questions of LGBTQ inclusiveness) compounded with his choice of wording, and his lack of divulging key aspects of the service to us, which makes this sound shady as fuck.

god what is with Nick and shitty writers/creators lately? *sigh*

Also I’m still wondering, is this supposed to compete with Netflix or something? I mean netflix HAS child oriented service on it, and that from what I recall is still inclusive on top of things. 

4 minutes ago, ShadowSJG said:

made a 'joke' about a friend of tara strong who committed suicide

Yep, definitely someone that should be touting a service based on family values and Christianity 

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this sucks. this really sucks.

to think this guy, someone i used to respect for the series i loved when i was younger is secretly trying to convert kids to christianity with oaxis when he could've just, y'know advertised it as a christian streaming service in the first place is honestly upsetting.

he used deceptive tactics and made sure his crowdfunding campaign didn't include that it was a christian-oriented service specifically for christian programming so he can get people of different faiths to fund a platform for a certain audience and a certain audience only. no matter which way you look at it, this is just really scummy.

it wouldn't even be bad if butch just sold this as a christian streaming service, with strictly christian content. but nope, he just had to dupe a lot of non-christian people into supporting something they wouldn't be even remotely interested in!

i hope karma catches up to butch, and i hope oaxis doesn't get anywhere. this entire thing was a scam.

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I'm incredibly disappointed with Butch here. Given all of the things I learned about his new streaming service, it saddens me that he isn't the same person as he was before. What really upsets me is the fact that he takes down videos with footage of him that criticizes him, and he should know better than that. I sure hope he learns the error of his ways before it's too late.

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It just shows that with social media, we get to find out what some creators are really like because they can't keep themselves to them self anymore. While it was only Johnny Bravo that I watched so I don't have much attachment to the co-creator, its his personality that is rotten. Egomatic, not understanding serious stuff enough that can be upsetting for someone, joking about suicide and connections to politicians too. People who are into his shows would be upset including those from the LGBT community who might have liked them but not anymore on the grounds of the creator. It also seems that many cartoonists from that era seem to be either in similar backgrounds or involved with dodgy business with similar personalities regarding their ego. Wonder who else would come out of the woodwork...

As for the thing itself, having a Christian focused streaming service is a good idea however it was his approach to the idea that was slimy and despicable. What he shown was dishonesty and misleading people especially those who aren't part of the faith to be involved as well as insulting minorities and communities. Family friendly could mean anything from stuff that has no violence to acceptable for the age group and if it is religious, then it should be listed as such since those have different standards than something that can be shown to a kids channel. Besides some of his work could have been considered offensive even by his target audience and his association might poison the ones who do want a service but not with his personality.

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Butch is clearly a bit of an idiot. Aside from being completely out of touch with reality, (I mean, "suicide wasn't even thought of"? Depression has always been a thing.) and being a compulsive liar, I suspect some serious mental issues. Could be narcissistic personality disorder, or something as menial as his planet sized ego being incredibly fragile.

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My brief visit and we learn that someone who's work I loved is a jerk.

Reminds me of that infamous blue ranger controversy from the early days of Power Rangers.

Congratulations, Butch. Now many of your former fans will refuse to watch your stuff from now on!

Now I'll have to stop performing Mr. Crocker spaz outs...

(Sarcasm) He must be so happy to have forcefully cut off the time he'd have support from fans...

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I think the worst thing about Butch's massive ego is that things he did was never even particularly good beyond maybe Post!Channel Chasers for FOP. Danny Phantom (Which is a show I absolutely adore) was handed by a different writer entirely for the first two seasons, which was considered the best of the show, and involved some of the fan-favourite episodes, including Ultimate Enemy, Reality Trip, and more. Butch took up the reigns for Season 3 which in the DP fandom, is considered the worst season. Personally, while a few episodes is good in my eyes, the season is far far far weaker than what came before.

Beyond that, T.U.F.F Puppy was meh, Bunsen was shit, and later FOP was absolutely atrocious. Even some of Butch's newer ideas were absolutely horrifically awful. One he tried to hype up was an entire spinoff based on Poof from FOP as he went to Fairy School. He did a test episode in the show itself, like he did for Crash Nebula and it was one of the most boring episodes of the series to date. Butch quite frankly should not even be waving around his ego when part of said ego involves Bunsen, the show that died after literally one season.

But beyond that, the other sly shit he did. This kickstarter, the fact he tricked people of different beliefs into supporting something they most likely aren't alright with, the sheer fact the guy has the ego to claim he's the "guy who created your childhood" (Which newsflash Mr. Hartman, Fairy Odd Parents and Danny Phantom aren't the only shows ever created, and the other stuff like Dexter and Johnny Bravo, you only had a part in making, while others arguably have done far more for it). 

But with all that said, to find out Butch Hartman is a scumbag kind of sucks. Because when I was younger, his shows were legitimately some of my favourites. I remember a time where I'd try to wake up at 6am because that's the only time Nick UK ran Danny Phantom at points. I used to love Fairly Odd Parents, I used to love the FOP movies. I remember loving that show even more than Spongebob in fact. Yet here's the creator who ended up butchering his shows after a few years sitting here with a massive ego, and doing heavily shady things while also potentially being discriminating and more. It's hard to believe that in this year alone, so many people who built Nick's lineup in the 2000s are massive scumbags, and now it appears Butch is no different.

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It's remarkable reading about how much the guy really went off his rocker as time went on. He basically tried to retcon the ghosts in the last season of Danny Phantom into being aliens (what?!) because he considered their original concept to be blasphemous.

I don't really care if someone makes a Christian streaming service, but to basically scam your backers by hiding your intentions to try and convert kids is just despicable, and certainly not Christ-like. Also, his attitude towards LGBTQ people and his "joke" to Tara Strong is just terrible.

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14 hours ago, Candescence said:

He basically tried to retcon the ghosts in the last season of Danny Phantom into being aliens (what?!) because he considered their original concept to be blasphemous.

Can't really blame him there. 

But yeah, I really should have picked up on some of the red flags with the guy (the whole him asking people to trust him with their futures for one).

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I never knew much of Hartman, always thinking he was a chill guy to any degree. So it was a bit surprising to discover he's quite a dick really. Everyone has already spoken of how he's a bloody scammer and a weasel with all the Oaxis crap, but I'm quite displeased with his comments about depression and suicide. 

It's pretty clear he doesn't have depression or has felt legitimately depressed or convinced he was going to die of suicide a day in his life for him to give the "oh, walk it off, you're all such whiners" attitude to the whole thing. What he says isn't close to true about how when he was a kid 'suicide wasn't even a thing'. Look up some suicide statistics. Annual suicide rates were actually higher among certain age groups in the 1970s then it is presently in the United States. He even gives the generic "the media's to blame" for suicidal children and adolescents. 

He sounds like one of those guys who moans on about how everything was better in the 1950s (not the real 1950s mind you, the generic Leave it to Beaver incarnation of it), when there was nothing better in life than the white suburban nuclear family unit including the breadwinner father, the housewife, the popular jock son, and the innocent little girl, with a picket fence who were all simple happy god-fearing folks who ran off to Church every Sunday, and if you were gay or depressed you were either swept under the rug or a freak, as a danger to society.

Also it's hilarious how caroonishly egotistical this guy is. 

What a miserable old has-been piece of shit. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have to wonder if we expected him to be an actually decent person when the man admires Donald Trump and follows a ton of Right Wing Pundits. 

I mean, this was a thing: 

Not even going off as a bad guy, just randomly being Trump for... whatever reason. I'd also talk about Danny Phantom and it's... well... unsavoury depictions of Romani people, trans/drag people, fat people shaming, extremely clear stereotyping of teenage youth and goth culture and PoC and so on and so forth. It's not a show I look back very fondly on so yeah uh... 

6a5.jpg

 I think you could say that Butch has finally pulled a full TenNaple or John K (look up his sexual harassment and cases where he was dating underage women animators and having them call him "Daddy") here. For disclosure, TenNaple? He's written for Breitbart. I wish I was joking but it would be hard to doubt it for a man who made a character named Professor Monkey for a Head as a dig at people who believe in Evolution. My love of Earthworm Jim quickly diminished upon learning that. Right Wing Conservative "Christians" are not kind people. 

It's pretty easy to go back and watch the shows and realize that none of those guys made anything good and the only good guys in animation late 90s and early 2000s animation were John R. Dilworth, Danny Antonucci, Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Lauren Faust, and Jhonen Vasquez. The team at Klasky Csupo was pretty alright too and I respect Craig Bartlett and Joe Murray quite a bit. It's easy to see where people like Pendleton Ward and Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones Quartey are coming from. They respected the actual greats of the animation industry who were worth it. 

But a person like Butchy here? His time is over. It's time for him to get lost now. 

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So I just went through the Hartman controversy evidence (articles, videos, posts from real humans) and I'll let the following video tell you what's going through my mind right now in regards to Mr. Hartman (pardon me for the language)

 

 

Seriously he is not helping his case. I might have enjoyed a couple of the shows in the past just a little bit (Fairly Oddparents through Channel Chasers, Danny Phantom's first two seasons) but now I would not even go back to watch to riff on due to the taint.

 

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The controversy in and of itself and the way he talks about the people who have concerns is troubling enough.

However, I had a bone to pick with this guy before the whole Oaxis thing started simply because of how bad his Youtube channel is. I know it's a petty thing in comparison but it really does outline some of the biggest issues with the guy. 

All of it is heavy clickbait. You can see it the thumbnails he's using. "Butch Hartman working at Disney", "Butch Hartman working at Cartoon Network", "Butch Hartman working at Marvel", and the other videos of that ilk were posted at around the time I recall him explaining why he left Nick. Anyone seeing the thumbnail would likely assume he's working at one of those new places and click on it, anticipating the next Fairly Odd Danny Phantom to be on CN or Disney.

"The REAL reason WHY Chester and AJ Left Fairly Odd Parents" is a recent video he made that he stretched out to 8 minutes that was basically just him saying "They never left. We ran out of ideas for them." Which... duh. 

"How Poof Saved Fairly OddParents from Cancellation" is him telling the same story he's told a thousand times about how they were going to be cancelled but then the network called and said "put this new character in the show or we out" and he did. 

"Addressing the Danny Phantom CONTROVERSY", a video with CONTROVERSY in ALL CAPS and a thumbnail with Butch looking seriously at the viewer is an 8 minute and 40 second long video of him telling us that in the theme song the guy rapping says "Young Danny Phantom" and not "Yo, Danny Phantom".

There are some videos of him reacting to stuff that he didn't work on but it's pretty tame and safe as you'd expect. Desperately trying to be funny. Playing with a Batman mask and what not. 

A guy who relies so much on clickbait to gain views doing something like this shouldn't have surprised me. It shouldn't have been expected, necessarily, but it shouldn't have been that surprising either.

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10 hours ago, Cobalt_Bolt said:

Seriously he is not helping his case. I might have enjoyed a couple of the shows in the past just a little bit (Fairly Oddparents through Channel Chasers, Danny Phantom's first two seasons) but now I would not even go back to watch to riff on due to the taint.

I mean, to be frank. As much as I think Butch is a complete and total scumbag, I'm not going to let it ruin shows that I love, especially Danny Phantom because that's one of my all time favourites. Is there things wrong with DP? Well, yeah. Of course there is, and I'm sure Butch has put in absolutely idiotic shit that's untrue and in general just makes you facepalm when you see it, but the wide majority of it, at least the first two seasons are still really good. 

I mean, it's not like Butch gets anything from me having enjoyment of something he made. Nick owns the series, and has no plans to release it. Butch apparently tried to regain the rights to Danny Phantom awhile ago but Nick refused them, and with Nick in full-on resurgence mode, maybe we'll even see it rebooted under Nick. The important thing I feel should be kept in mind is that Seasons 1 and 2 of Danny Phantom are pretty famous for the fact they weren't made by Butch. He contributed a few ideas, but Seasons 1 and 2 were actually written by a lot of other writers, and Butch didn't really write many of them, and the episodes Butch did have a hand in for the earlier seasons are in fact the more shaky episodes in terms of quality (Mystery Meat, Splitting Images). The most well-regarded episodes are actually done by a different writing team altogether and they made some of the more iconic episodes like Ultimate Enemy, Reality Trip, Kindred Spirits, and other such episodes. They left after Season 3 and Butch was forced to take up writing entirely, leading to what many regard as the worst season, which I agree with honestly. There's a few good concepts and episodes but the wide majority kind of sucks.

But that's the real point I'm making here. Butch actively gets near-nothing for you watching the likes of FOP and DP because Nick is the ones with the ownership, and the only thing I could possibly see him getting is merchandising royalties, which even then I have no idea how Nick run things in that regard. But either way, I'm ultimately not going to stop enjoying a show I do really enjoy because this prick created the base concepts, especially when at the end of the day, Butch was nearly completely hands-off Danny Phantom in terms of writing and creating, so the wider majority of the show doesn't even have him to thank. 

8 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

The controversy in and of itself and the way he talks about the people who have concerns is troubling enough.

However, I had a bone to pick with this guy before the whole Oaxis thing started simply because of how bad his Youtube channel is. I know it's a petty thing in comparison but it really does outline some of the biggest issues with the guy. 

All of it is heavy clickbait. You can see it the thumbnails he's using. "Butch Hartman working at Disney", "Butch Hartman working at Cartoon Network", "Butch Hartman working at Marvel", and the other videos of that ilk were posted at around the time I recall him explaining why he left Nick. Anyone seeing the thumbnail would likely assume he's working at one of those new places and click on it, anticipating the next Fairly Odd Danny Phantom to be on CN or Disney.

"The REAL reason WHY Chester and AJ Left Fairly Odd Parents" is a recent video he made that he stretched out to 8 minutes that was basically just him saying "They never left. We ran out of ideas for them." Which... duh. 

"How Poof Saved Fairly OddParents from Cancellation" is him telling the same story he's told a thousand times about how they were going to be cancelled but then the network called and said "put this new character in the show or we out" and he did. 

"Addressing the Danny Phantom CONTROVERSY", a video with CONTROVERSY in ALL CAPS and a thumbnail with Butch looking seriously at the viewer is an 8:40 minute long video of him telling us that in the theme song the guy rapping says "Young Danny Phantom" and not "Yo, Danny Phantom".

There are some videos of him reacting to stuff that he didn't work on but it's pretty tame and safe as you'd expect. Desperately trying to be funny. Playing with a Batman mask and what not. 

A guy who relies so much on clickbait to gain views doing something like this shouldn't have surprised me. It shouldn't have been expected, necessarily, but it shouldn't have been that surprising either.

This, I agree with. Now, to be fair, I did enjoy some of his videos at one point. His YouTube collabs, or the 10 Years Later stuff, or even a few of the side stories like how he got the idea for Danny Phantom. But it all just completely fell apart more and more into pandering bullshit and clickbait. As you said, the "controversy" is the most outrageous because at best, it's a misconception, nothing else. 

But the worst thing is that a few of his shows did legit have some controversy. There's a few banned episodes of Fairly Odd Parents in certain countries due to their depictions. According to the Fairly Odd Parents Wiki, Twistory for example was forced into extremely rarely rerunning in the US due to the depictions of certain figures, and such. That would've been a decent "controversial" topic to discuss, because it's an actual episode that might as well be considered banned due to the content, and could be interesting to get the creative side of the episode's creation and the like, but nah nah, real controversy is "yo danny phantom". 

This ties into a bigger issue with Butch. He claims these clickbait titles with massively large implications, like his YT channel dying, Danny Phantom Controversy, saving FOP etc, yet it's the most insanely light crap. "Oh lol it's just my channel moving into 2018!", "oh it's just yo instead of young!", "oh poof saved us because new character!". It feels like he wants to try lure us in about some massive revelation about a show we like, and then it turns out to be stupid and non-consequential. It really is just a whole bunch of clickbait stupidity.   

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i saw a lot of the controversy spreading around on facebook and i find it highly disappointing finding out that butch is homophobic and transphobic (from what i've seen and heard) as just a few weeks before this i binge watched danny phantom on hulu (as it's one of my favorite tv shows he worked on and i'm extremely disappointed it didn't go for more seasons) but.. as someone said above, i'm also not surprised as a lot of the later episodes of FOP were very... odd and just.. i don't know the word for it. not good, for lack of better words, and a lot of his youtube stuff was clickbait, sadly enough. ah well.

i'm just disappointed. i feel like a lot of my childhood has been ruined.

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18 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

"Young Danny Phantom" and not "Yo, Danny Phantom".

 

This.

This right here?

This is some fucking bullshit.

That dude totes said yo. They prolly just told Butch it was young cause otherwise he'd scrap the whole song for not using proper decent white guy english.

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I don't know, I don't particularly mind Christian media in general. Even if it can be pretty abrasive. But you gotta be interesting with it, it's why I still follow some Christian themed webcomics. Even though I'm bisexual. And an atheist.

I just don't particularly buy that Butch Hartman can do something interesting that has anything to do with Christianity. I mean, his premier shows featured fairies that used magic and had someone who could turn into a ghost to battle with the afterlife. I don't think that those are particularly good examples of Christian shows, I'm pretty sure just about every baptist priest would him with a bible.

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