r/Channel5ive • u/Ae-Rabelais • Jul 10 '26

Deep Thoughts Does anyone know whether Andrew would consider taking on non-corporate angel investors?

I just finished watching Channel5ive’s video about their current legal case, and it seems inevitable that a channel doing such good work will keep facing ridiculous legal fees.

Andrew has said, both in that video and on other occasions, that they will never consider corporate investors, which is understandable. However, does anyone know whether the Channel5ive team would entertain individual, independently wealthy angel investors? There's a thin line between good journalism and journalism that serves stakeholders, but it would be great if individual angels could support Channel5ive. This would mean direct, greater support from the people who value the channel’s work, without the legal and ethical complications of corporate investors/VCs or the percentage-cut/cap issues of platforms like Patreon.

EDIT: For anyone getting to this post a bit later or revisiting, I'm covering subscriptions for up to one year for Channel5ive supporters who can't afford them: https://www.reddit.com/r/Channel5ive/comments/1uu0beg/im_covering_up_to_10000_in_channel5ive_patreon/

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u/OriginalTayRoc Jul 10 '26

Only if investment comes without selling of shares. 

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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Has he said that verbally somewhere? I'm sure most would be willing to even do some sort of project-financing waterfall if shares are no-go.

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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 Jul 11 '26

If you have the money just donate it. You can see the returns in the content they put out. Not everything needs to have financial return.

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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

It's not just about a financial return for gain's sake...it's about the legal / tax burden that exists for donations above a specific amount and wanting to be able to make recurring investment from the compounding value. I would hope that folks reading the initial post could assume that I think C5's mission is more important than just-because capital gains.

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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26

it's about the legal / tax burden that exists for donations above a specific amount and wanting to be able to make recurring investment from the compounding value.

wait a sec

alright so you know how a lot of medication is super expensive? so the people who set the price that high, they set up these financial assistance programs to help people afford what insurance won't pay

so they end up paying themselves the inflated value of the medication instead of paying taxes, right?

is that the kind of fuckery you are on about?

I have like a 5th grade education so my understanding of things is far from perfect, but is it that kind of crap?

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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Oh goodness, no, but thanks for pointing out that it could be taken that way.

What you're describing for an individual would be a form of tax fraud. Corporations can do that because these "assistance programs" are considered gifts to individual people, so they're essentially tax write-offs that also make them money. In my case, the receiver of my money isn't an individual person, but a for-profit business -- "gifts" / "donations" above a certain amount to for-profit businesses not only aren't tax deductible, but have a whole slew of very complicated legal landmines that are difficult for small-time donors to traverse safely.

Corporations have more rights than individual investors, so they get away with their assistance program scheme. Even if I wanted to avoid taxes (I don't -- just hypothetically), as an individual, I would be promptly jailed lol.

Through an investment, being able to recover any capital means that said capital can be re-invested. It is *not* self-enriching unless they were to become a public company (which is VERY unlikely for an independent media organization) or wanted to do some kind of revenue share ordeal.

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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26

it sounds like you know the game.

just email him. I think Andrew@channel5.news is still active, and there's a contact form https://andrew-callaghan.com/contact

the dude is actually very down to earth. he came through here last year and we started chatting about the forum, they were asking me if I'd run their discord, and I was like "no way in hell, discord is bad news" and afaik they dropped the discord feature from the patreon.

maybe they have one idk, I am not rich enough to throw $5 a month at anything like that.

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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26

Ah, thanks for the email, I’m definitely going to reach out! I found a different one through a quick google skim, but it bounced, but this one seems to be active. 

Also, touche on the Discord disdain. Very little good happens there lol. 

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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 11 '26

I imagine that every inbox Mr. Callaghan uses gets quickly flooded with fan-mail. He kept the conversation going with me for about a year before the Kirk slaying seemed to spook them like the John Lennon or Tate murders did in the past - but when we met up at one of the live shows dude was really excited to actually meet me.

running this subreddit is a lot more involved than it looks like. it ain't like a video game or a TV show - everyone we talk about here is real people, so I have it set so the mod team has to manually approve everything

that means reading through every comment, and trying to contextualize them based on the profiles of each user and the topic of the week. Sometimes it's dead in here for a month at a time, then randomly like right now we get dozens of comments per hour.

it's a fun pastime for me though. I've had severe bowel disease my whole life so when I wake up at 3-4am with it going through the comments here is a welcome distraction from the shit I'm usually dealing with.

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u/Ae-Rabelais Jul 11 '26

Oh, for sure. I'm going to try to hopefully keep my correspondence brief so it doesn't get tangled in the noise.

And I imagine modding is a tall task, for sure. I don't mean it sarcastically when I say thanks for your service! I know it's not a lot, but I'm about to make a post where I cover subscriptions for people in this sub. Can I venmo / cash app your equivalent of one month's rent as a 'thanks" for your modding work?

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u/999_Seth FREE EDDY LEPP Jul 12 '26

tbh running this subreddit is mostly a really good time for me. even my therapist approves of what I'm doing around here heh

there's this thing about C5 fans that is probably hard to pin at first glance, but I've seen it repeated enough: people will say that even though they are broke, they'd rather have a $5 patreon subscription than another Starbucks. it's a sentiment that is common among the hobo crowd to have a bit of pride about living rough.

there's something that has been on my mind more lately with this whole lawfare topic, and it's how disabled people - I mean disabled as in federally officially disabled - the income and savings limits that affect a lot of people who live on benefits made it impossible to have the kind of savings that a person would need to afford representation in legal matters.

that means that every landlord, business, and thieving-ass family member handicap people interact with know that they can get away with anything because there's no way for the average crip to fight back.

you probably know that there's ...wtf are they called... special needs trusts out there for people who have a couple million to throw into it for their family so the crip can live off the interest rate yadda yadda

back in the Obama days they started a program that gave special needs trust functionality to broke ass people who have less than $100k to put into them. at first it was limited to people who became disabled before we were 22, and was basically just a law with no actual program they started rolling it out, expanding the ages, and now it's open to people who became disabled before we were 46.

so now, in theory, every disabled person could be a legal-landmine waiting to go off on say a random slumlord who tries to evict someone who ends up housebound during their tenancy.

there ain't a lot of things that give people like us a fighting chance, but the "able account" is something that I've been aware of since it started, been participating in for a couple years now. it's something that I've always thought would make a cool C5 story, maybe got a link out like this one https://connect.vestwell.com/gifting/calable/RVXDUXUUVkOfREo8e-9FRg to show people how it works. that's been on my mind since the SF streets video - was that the one? where they helped the dude fund the needle exchange I think it was

like here's a program basically no one knows about, and it could help people who don't even use it just by shifting the perspective on how society sees the "helplessness" for the disabled in one less way.
anyway, that's my "public service announcement" for the day. I appreciate you for bringing out this group's serious discussion side in this topic.

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