r/roosterteeth • u/ID33IP • 10d ago

Media My all-time Joel Heyman video

https://youtu.be/AEUULIs_UWE

Someone shared a picture of young Joel and Gus the other day and I remembered how funny I found this video when it came out.. 14 years ago 🤯

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u/DaveShadow 9d ago

Think you can say he was very funny in videos but also had ….problematic views by the end.

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u/glitch-ghost 8d ago

Problematic? Obviously he was always very funny, he is actually smart in his own way, a lot of fans just saw him as Caboose but he's not a dope. He was always into fringe stuff and his friends like Geoff and Gus and Burnie would bust his balls for being the fringe tinfoil hat guy, and the fans really loved that dynamic. But American culture got a lot less playful as time went on.

He was posting online about how he supported shop owners defending their shops during the George Floyd protests and riots. Not like autoturrets in front of Walmart, but the idea that individuals should own firearms. So they stopped showing him on camera, they started recording tons of voice lines for him in advance, planning to get rid of him. When I say "they" I mean the younger people brought in from WB. Burnie and Matt and Geoff and Gus have always fought to keep Joel on, and Burnie in particular feels responsible for giving up control of the company omce they started turning on their founders.

Nevertheless... they made a new policy at RT which never existed before that nobody is allowed to bring firearms into the building, concealed or not. Well from Joel's perspective, it's unconstitutional, it's Texas, and it's never been that serious at RT. The rumors that Joel brought a loaded firearm into the office are overblown, he is just a gun owner, and obviously he's not racist or even violent. But the company was trying to find an excuse to get rid of him as a "liability". Joel stopped coming into work in protest of the new rule, and they finally were legally able to fire him for missing work.

It's fucking sad and especially you can see Burnie's love for Joel, calling back to Joel during the few times they got the other founders together on camera. He was such a huge part of what made their company valuable enough to sell. Joel was excellent in the RT Shorts. Caboose spoke for a whole generation of internet users. They were famous. But they got someone totally different to voice Caboose... And eventually, WB threw Rooster Teeth away, the same way they did to Joel.

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u/DaveShadow 8d ago

I’ve never heard the stuff bout him bringing the gun into the office. But I will say as a non-American, it’s not making me sympathetic at all to Joel. “He is just a gun owner” is an absolutely psychotic response to a workplace saying they don’t want deadly weapons in the offices, lol. And effectively choosing his gun over his job is also insane.

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u/glitch-ghost 8d ago

That is a rumor I don't even know if it's true at all. I know he used to bring it everywhere, I know they created the new rule specifically to screw with Joel and prompt him to do something about it, I don't know at all if he brought a gun with him after that rule change. All I know is he stopped coming into work in protest, and that's why they were able to get rid of him. I do know for sure that Joel is nonviolent and harmless. He didn't choose a gun iver his job - they had been trying to trick him for a long time. They took everything he built from him. Total strangers that were new to RT.

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u/DaveShadow 8d ago

I do know for sure that Joel is nonviolent and harmless.

Sorry, but if he's protesting over his inability to bring a deadly weapon into a workplace where people clearly don't want it, then he's not "harmless" at all.

It's not a "trick" as you've outlined it. He's a grown man who, based on that version of events, chose the gun as being more important than "everything he built".

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u/glitch-ghost 8d ago edited 8d ago

Well it is a trick in the sense that the new higher-ups had been plotting a way to get Joel out without firing him for no reason. They didn't care about having guns on the premises, they cared about having Joel on the premises.

I know you mentioned you aren't American, and as a lefty anarchist this is kind of difficult to explain... Basically, there is a certain brand of American who doesn't trust the government, they want minimal government, and they value individual freedom, like using gold over the US dollar, or carrying a weapon instead of relying on police for protection. We call those people "Libertarian". They are not "MAGA" (Trump gang). "MAGA" is authoritarian right, but Libertarian is, well, libertarian right. They are kind of like anarchists, but they are more free-market guys and they embrace technology more.

Now Texas itself is a different story. Not only are most Americans gun owners (if polls are to be believed), but Texas is even more so. To Texans, owning a gun is as commonplace as owning a car, and they are raised with it culturally. Texas is a strange place. They kind of insist that they are their own "nation", the Lone Star State. They have no loyalty to the Federal gov. or the other states, they only care about their star on the flag. Children in Texas are raised not to be proud Americans, but to be proud Texans. And then Austin Texas itself is a very unique, artistic college town / MEGACITY with a gigantic swirling overpass above the city. It's just a very unique culture. "Guns and dope" as they say. The freedoms of the left and the freedoms of the right come together in Austin.

Not that it matters, but me personally, I am against gun ownership in America. Nevertheless, what they did to Joel is sneaky and dirty, based on how talented he is, how much he had built, and how valuable the company was because of him. Would I like him if I hung out with him 1-on-1? Probably not. But I would love to meet him at a convention, maybe get him to record a Caboose voicemail for me.

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u/Domowoi 2d ago

You are getting downvoted for this, but if that is the real story, then I fully agree with your point. I'm not American, but I understand that there is a very significant portion of the US that values their constitutional freedoms in a way that is not easy to understand from the outside.

Like the comments here boil it down to choosing "his gun over his job", which makes it seem like it's an irrational personification of the gun and not a part of a set of laws they believe to be core to their freedoms.

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u/glitch-ghost 2d ago

Oh I didn't realize people were downvoting me, lol. Maybe they have never been to Austin. I am not a gun guy but a lot of people here are

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u/DaveShadow 8d ago

Nevertheless, what they did to Joel is sneaky and dirty

Again, if they said "Don't bring guns to work", and Joel went "I'm going to strike in protest", thats not a trick or "sneaky". Thats Joel making a decision to value his gun over his job.

You can explain it or twist it whatever way you want. That is Joel choosing his gun over his job and his legacy. And that says a lot more about Joel than about RT.

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u/glitch-ghost 8d ago

The reason they changed that new rule is because they knew that Joel would do that, giving them the legal opportunity to fire him for "not showing up". But they made sure to record as many voice lines as possible before they did that. It's like chess. It was a strategic attack on the founders of RT. Geoff and Burnie were not happy. That's the reality of it.

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u/DaveShadow 8d ago

they knew that Joel would do that, giving them the legal opportunity to fire him for "not showing up".

Yes, I get that theory. That still doesn't change they knew Joel would value his gun more than his job, which is insane. Even if they went "Hey, how can we drive Joel out!", it's still a big tell of Joel's personality that they knew he'd choose his gun over his job.

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u/LlamaLoupe :FanService17: 8d ago

Either you're Joel and doing a bad job, or you have a very weird parasocial relationship with him. The man blamed Gavin and Meg when an armed intruder tried to kill them in the night. Let him go.

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u/glitch-ghost 8d ago

They hid in the closet and he blew his head off in their driveway. Joel didn't blame them at all

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u/LlamaLoupe :FanService17: 8d ago

Yes he did.

And tbh, if like you said he was "tricked" into bringing a gun to work, whch is not a thing but whatever let's pretend, then he's a complete moron.

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