We roam the Internet in search of the human side of things. We resort to big social networks to store and collect our humanity. We’ve been wrong all along… Big social networks keep your social experiences, but never give them back. That’s why online communities are here to save us from this atrocity, and the Rooster Teeth community is in the vanguard of this online battle.

THE NOT SO SOCIAL NETWORKS

Like a real community, a successful online community can only exist as an active group of people with one main or many shared interests or characteristics. However, the Internet has become a convoluted mess with a lack of curated experiences. The clutter of social media is evidence of this.

The social realm of the Internet is something we are still experimenting with and interconnectivity has made it easier to be ‘close’ to people that you would not be as close to in real life. I have 750 friends on Facebook but I only usually talk to a select few and keep in touch with a few others once in a while.

There is a gap in the market, and in social networks it is filled with poor social experiences. The current state of my Facebook News Feed is not social per se; it’s riddled with viral Vines, 9GAG memes and LAD Bible posts that I already saw on Reddit two days ago.

Indeed, social networks provide you with filters and tools that allow you to only receive updates from all the different activities, brands and people you are interested in, but this mixture is not that ideal.

Back in the non-virtual world you meet different kinds of people and behave differently depending on the particular environment you are exposed to. I doubt many would like to mix the ravers they met at that music festival in Miami with their colleagues back in the insurance company they work for in New York.

So how can we adopt different social realities at a time? You simply can’t, which in my opinion is what has already caused the downfall of the ‘social’ aspect of big social networks.

Today, social networks end up being reduced to spaces of efficient content distribution and information gathering, and at the end of the day, the sole beneficiaries are the companies that learn about the users. This is why Facebook bought the popular instant messaging service WhatsApp for US$19 billion, because of its 500 million active users; because of monetisation based on scale. To put this ridiculous price into perspective, US$19 billion is higher than Iceland’s GDP, the cost of building the large hadron collider or the aggregate value of the top 20 football (the one where you mainly kick a ball with your foot) teams in the world. For more of these, check out thingsthatarecheaperthanwhatsapp.tumblr.com.

For social networks, engagement is a number, not a social reality, and as such, the bigger the number, the better it is for user information gathering. This user behaviour research is then sold to advertisers or monetised in some other way, which is why big social networks cannot focus on one niche and rather create platforms that combine everyone’s interests.

Online communities, however, lean towards an engaged niche with platforms that develop real social experiences for like-minded people. Focused content and engagement increase the probability of great online social experiences. Even ads displayed in online community platforms rely on a target audience defined by the community’s interests themselves, so they are less likely to be annoying and tiresome. In fact, you might even find those ads useful.

SCALE VS. ENGAGEMENT

With my firsthand account of outstanding online social experiences through the Rooster Teeth community, I can safely say that the social outlet of the Internet rests on online communities. Rooster Teeth is following the right track with their community-building skills based on engagement rather than scale.

Rooster Teeth Productions is an independent production studio specialised in creating animated and live action shows and machinima — animated shows based on video game engines.

“The social outlet of the Internet rests on online communities.”

Since its birth in 2003, Rooster Teeth has been widely recognised for many milestones, such as for creating the longest-running web series in history, Red vs. Blue, a machinima based on the Halo series; for their anime-influenced animated web series RWBY, which was just announced to be distributed by Warner Bros. in Japan; and, also just recently, for starting the production of Lazer Team, Indiegogo’s most successfully crowdfunded movie.

Rooster Teeth is less renowned, however, for being at the forefront of the online community sphere. Whilst other online communities — whether they are based on forums, YouTube channels or virtual universes — focus on numbers, Rooster Teeth looks at engagement and loyalty.

The founder of the company, Burnie Burns, touched upon the scale vs. engagement debate when talking about Rooster Teeth’s record-breaking Indiegogo movie crowdfunding campaign.

Burnie acknowledged how daunting it is for anybody starting out online when they see other companies’ numbers in their monetisation indicators. “When you talk about our campaign, the first thing you talk about is the grand total of the amount of money raised,” Burnie said in one of Rooster Teeth’s latest weekly podcasts, “it seems unobtainable, but you’re looking at the wrong number.”

Rooster Teeth has 16.8 million subscribers across their YouTube channels; however, when the Lazer Team Indiegogo campaign ended after 30 days, it raised a record-breaking 2.5 million dollars thanks to only 37,591 funders, meaning that there was an incredible average contribution of 66 dollars per funder. This also showed how only 0.002% of the people that follow Rooster Teeth are the ones that drive content and make things happen.

“[37,591] is a fraction of a percentage of people that are participating; that are breaking records,” Burnie asserted. “I think everyone can wrap their mind around that and that’s definitely an achievable thing for somebody even just starting out.”

But the Lazer Team Indiegogo campaign is not the only proof of Rooster Teeth’s unique social engagement through its online community.

REAL LIFE PROOF OF ONLINE COMMUNITY SUCCESS

Everyone knows that the Internet is prone to being a dehumanised space of anonymity, cynicism and just general ‘trolling’. If we were to take the top commenters of any viral video to a room, you would not be able to distinguish it from a nursery school full of kids crying their lungs out over each other. However, if we were to put 30,000 members of the Rooster Teeth community in a building you would get RTX, a three-day convention that has been held every first weekend of July in Austin, Texas.

RTX is the exact definition of a real life online community; it is for the hardcore fans from around the globe that cannot get enough of it from behind the screen. RTX is proof that online communities can be translated into real life communities.

What began as a small gathering of 400 fans in 2011 grew dramatically to a fully-blown 30,000-attendee event in 2014, where people watched panels and live shows which featured their favourite Rooster Teeth and non-Rooster Teeth producers and Internet personalities, along with other important names from the video games and online entertainment industry.

“RTX is proof that online communities can be translated into real life communities.”

Just like RTX continues growing, Rooster Teeth as a company keeps expanding, not because they want to, but because they have to. More and more fans ask for more online content and more seats at RTX, and Rooster Teeth keeps satisfying their needs as a company that cares about what its community wants.

RTX is about the community; about meeting other like-minded people with whom to share your opinions regarding Rooster Teeth, video games, and other associated ‘geeky’ topics. This year, I am extremely glad to have been part of this.

BECOMING A COMMUNITY MEMBER…AND A ZEALOT

My first point of contact with Rooster Teeth began by watching some of their Red vs. Blue episodes on YouTube around six years ago. At the time, I never imagined how much following those videos had. I must have watched hundreds and hundreds of their videos before I started to feel part of something.

I noticed that Rooster Teeth’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts were just an access point and a secondary distribution system for their content. The content felt human, but the platforms did not, so I approached their website: RoosterTeeth.com. I created an account and lurked around the forums, social groups, interests, and before I knew it, I was contributing; writing journals and posts on forums, submitting content, becoming part of groups, sharing interests and talking to people that also did the same thing.

Like Patrick Hanlon put in his book, Primal Branding: Create Zealots for your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future, I was stuck into something larger with a ‘magic glue’.

To also reference Hanlon, Rooster Teeth is able to create a ‘sense of meaning’ by sharing a ‘creation story’ — who they are and what they stand for as a ‘creed’. I know that they started up in Austin as a bunch of filmmakers that liked video games and so they created the Red vs. Blue web series. I also know that they are still aware of their roots and that they have always stood for the same things since the beginning — comedy, gaming and community — despite having grown so much since the creation of the company. Rooster Teeth is genuine and inspirational.

For community members, there is as well a sense of exclusivity that comes from ‘rituals’ and language employed in their content that make you feel like an insider. In other words, these are actions and phrases that evoke a feeling that make you feel close to the company. Some of the Internet personalities repeat unique phrases and actions that connect so much with the community that the company has even dedicated a lot of their time in designing t-shirts about them.

For instance, if I yelled “Mark Nutt!”, an outsider would not know what I was talking about. A Rooster Teeth fan, however, would know that I was referencing Gavin Free’s scream of the name of his competitor for archery in the London 2012 Olympic Games video game that he played along with other members of Achievement Hunter — the part of the company dedicated to playing video games with additional comic commentary. Within the company and the community, a lot of what has required the aiming ability inside or outside a video game has had the “Mark Nutt” reference attached to it. This, like many other rituals, is performed almost subconsciously, as a habit learned from being so integrated in the growing community.

After years of absorbing this content and being an active contributor, I became a ‘zealot’; a loyal member of the Rooster Teeth community. I had always wanted to go to Austin to their RTX event since it started, but never had the opportunity or way to finance the travel costs.

TESTING THE LIMITS OF THE COMMUNITY

Flying over to the US in the summer of 2014 to work for CNN in Atlanta gave me the chance to be closer to Austin, so I snatched the opportunity and talked with some of the Rooster Teeth community fellows that I knew lived in Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs, or OTP (outside the perimeter — being the I-285 beltway), as Atlantans like to say.

Yet again, another proof that Rooster Teeth is a fantastic community — within a heartbeat, two days before RTX, I was able to find a place to go on a 15-hour road trip from Atlanta to Austin with three other community members. We drove across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to finally arrive at our destination — the Lone Star State’s capital city of Austin. It was an adventure with three very interesting people that I had never met before in real life, but with whom I was able to enjoy spending some time with, given that they shared very similar interests with me. We talked about Rooster Teeth and video games, listened to Starbomb, discussed American and British culture and got to know each other quite a fair bit. That, together with the high-spirited, edgy vibe of Austin, made the road trip already worth it. We were witnessing the Rooster Teeth community in action.

It all sparked from an impulse to go and meet Rooster Teeth’s staff and community members, whom I shortly met at an indoor go-karts charity event that they organised, not even 6 hours after I arrived in Austin. As I said, Rooster Teeth is an amazing community, so it is no wonder that I was able to openly meet-and-greet Gus Sorola, Michael and Lindsay Jones, Jack and Caiti Pattillo, Ray Narvaez Jr., Gavin Free, Dan Gruchy, Kerry Shawcross, Miles Luna, Brandon Farmahini, Caleb Denecour, Patrick Rodríguez, Kdin Jenzen and Gus Sorola. Many of you do not know them, but I am sure there are quite a few Rooster Teeth fans reading this right now that are envious and full of vinegar.

If certain things confused you in that last paragraph, it is because you don’t hold the insider knowledge that I was talking about.

But my story is just one of the millions of stories that other engaged fans have lived, and this focus on engagement becomes extremely evident in the RTX event.

Gavin Free, famous for his slow-motion show The Slow Mo Guys, talked on the Rooster Teeth podcast about how interesting it is that people still use numbers as an indicator of engagement compared to seeing the actual people.

“I was talking to some member of my family about a video that got a few million views, but it wasn’t until they saw the video at RTX of the 500 or so people who came to throw water balloons at me when they were like, ‘Holy crap, you got a lot of fans!’,“ Gavin said, “if I put a video up that got 500 views, I’d delete it.”

Barbara Dunkelman, (the best) Community Manager at Rooster Teeth, said, “You see the engagement. It’s not just seeing numbers on a screen. That’s why I think RTX is so cool.”

AN ORGANIC COMMUNITY THAT GROWS AS NATURALLY AS A TREE

Possibly, the most significant move made by Rooster Teeth happened just recently, when it was acquired by Fullscreen, a global network of content creators and brands on YouTube. Here’s an an extract from Burnie Burns’s statement:

It was clear to see over the last decade that all media was slowly moving online. It seemed an inevitably. In the last two years, that steady movement has become a sprint. Now, everyone is running this direction. The inevitable has become imminent. The strength of Rooster Teeth’s and Fullscreen’s combined resources will mean we can stay not just competitive in this exploding digital marketplace, but that we can continue to drive the direction of the industry.

Needless to say, the Rooster Teeth community, and myself included, went haywire when we heard about this acquisition, scared that our favourite company would lose its essence. Thankfully, a Rooster Teeth community manager posted the following on Facebook to clarify Burnie’s announcement:

We know a lot of our audience might see the word “acquired” and get freaked out. We all want to assure all of you — this is an amazing thing, not only for us, but for the audience. Nothing is changing. We are not going anywhere. Everything about RT is still operating as usual. Now, we just have more resources to make MORE and BETTER content in addition to everything you know and love.

Being scared of big changes, however, goes to show how much we care about Rooster Teeth. To everyone’s relieve, this acquisition actually meant that Rooster Teeth would still adhere to its creation story — to its roots — whilst still branching out further and further within the competitive world of online media production, not just for the company, but also for us, the community members.

At the end of the day, Rooster Teeth Productions is a company like any other. Their intensive interaction with the community and their unconventional form of content delivery makes us not see this fact. We know them very well, perhaps too well, and so we don’t see them as content creators, but as friends. But the growing demand for content and increase in staff numbers makes Rooster Teeth feel the need for resources—a safety net in a highly dynamic industry. I fully trust that Rooster Teeth made the right decision because it is Rooster Teeth, an online community to which I belong and a part of my life. I know I am not the only one who feels like this—there’s millions of us now.

Happy RT Community Day to all of you.

“They have always stood for the same things since the beginning — comedy, gaming and community — despite having grown so much since the creation of the company. Rooster Teeth is genuine and inspirational.”

If like me, you’re a Rooster Teeth zealot, this is my Rooster Teeth community profile: roosterteeth.com/hernromero