Dear Twitch streamers,
We're sorry to write up an article like this about twitch. But we're here to inform you that you as a watcher and a streamer are human. Not machines! This may come as a shock to some of you out there. However, we urge you to please refrain from reaching up to pull the umbilical chord from your esophagus. It hurts really bad! I never thought i'd come to doing a article piece like this. But as some of you may know we're big watchers of twitch. We tune in from time to time to streamers that I know as well as spinning the great wheel of randomness to see what kind of talent is out there. As well as never clicking on the person that's being sponsored on the front page of twitch. The reason is my time goes to the person who can't get sponsored on the front page. Not to those who kissed corporate ass to be apart of the money pyramid.
Team/E-Sports Groups
At first it's fine within the world of social networks. A lot of people promoting when they will be running their stream. Some of these streamers that I have in my timeline even joined teams that help 'boost' their stream. Joining a team/guild/clan is a little cult-like but hey! If there's an audience base that likes what a particular team of people is doing on Twitch. Then why the hell not!?!? The only problem I have with team social network accounts is that they tend to get incredibly spammy and really should get a website showing off all of the people who stream underneath their banner so they can send out one unified blast instead of saying:
Check out bill he's doing a 24 hour, check out Al, he's cool! check out betty3484 because she's a he and he's got the sick ASMR make-up tutorials.
C'mon! Put it all under one thing guys!
Stream Coaches and Stream "Inspirers"
Then came these people who call themselves "Stream Coaches" which apparently run around helping streamers boost their streams with what they claim as "tried and tested" for stream growth. These people annoy me a little as they begin to start to sound like SEO drones with their catch-phrases. Promising the sun the moon and the stars if you simply join them lock-step to victory. They are under the belief that there's only one way to grow a stream which is their way. Whenever one of these people try to join a social network of mine I'll tend to do my best to throw a hard block on them as they are garbage. Always put garbage in its place on social network.
Like for like - Follow for follow!
Finally on the lowest form of the twitch food chain is the follow-for-follow crowd. We're not sure why streamers do this because part of being an Affiliate and Partner has to do with legit interaction with your channel more-so then follows. But these are the kind of people that want to increase their follower E-Penis by showing off how many thousands of people follow them. These same people will often so through their channel list and un-follow you after a few days making themselves look like their so important an elite. The follow for follow crowd tends to hang in larger channels hoping to snipe any new users which happen to come by and say hi.
Propaganda:
Despite any of the basic annoyances it's these posters that float around social networks which are arguably the most destructive. However, despite all of this bleakness one can still have a little fun with some of the stuff that's being thrown around by "Stream Boosters" and "#positivestreams". So lets check out the latest in twitch propaganda. 
To answer the question in the header:
"But it's like a job. How hard can it be??"
It's hard because WE'RE hard. So.... Very... Hard!!!! Harder then your Job! Raging Hard! About the size of a babies arm! Yeah! It's going to go like that throughout this entire blog boys and girls. But don't worry! We'll throw in some seriousness in between it all!
1. You have to manage YOURSELF.
You mean we have to wake up? Brush my teeth? Take a shower? Study for college or go to work? And still manage ourselves? Here we were thinking all of that can be forgotten upon signing up to twitch. Just roll out of bed butt-naked and sign on. Screaming as we're covered in stasis fluid:
WHERE AM I?!?!?
Then get right to playing some PubG. Shit, that game is so easy you could do it blindfolded anyways. Fuck, it's too much work. Back to the warmth of the isolation tank as it's the equivalent of being in your mothers womb. If you think we're being condescending on the seriousness of number 1 you're right. Because #1 is condescending onto itself with assuming that no one has responsibility.
2. You can never have consistency. With income, WITH VIEWERS, WITH burnout, with happiness.
.... With Typography as well. Obviously! This blog is here to help everyone. Including the guy that made the propaganda poster. So here, allow us to help:
(EDIT) 2. You can never have consistency in life. (EDIT)
Fixed your quote! Feel free to revise and no need to thank us. We're just doing our job as good net people. Life you see is bigger then a pie chart some streaming service gives you. It's bigger then the games you play or the rig that you stream upon. happiness exceeds the boundaries of binary 0's and 1's. You need to figure that out first.
3. With a job you have a set income. Less worries and you don't have to entertain all of the time.
Says who? OKAY! Lets push aside all of the Hollywood acting jobs for a moment and focus on the Americana blue collar job out there. When you're at the local bar with your work buddies guess what? You still have to talk, you still have to entertain. It's not like the moment you punch out of this stereotypical 9 to 5 job that you think everyone resides in a sleeping tube in some blown apart Neo-Tokyo Mahbo Cyber Cafe. Eat our insect protein bars, sleep and await our next shift. This article assumes that people aren't people, that people are just machines. So to rule #3 we must say "Fuck you!" immediately! You have no idea how people live their lives!
4. One big mistake can ruin EVERYTHING!
Welp! I hit the wrong key on the piano while playing the Unfinished Symphony #8. Guess I'll just set my piano on fire and break my fingers. Have we learned nothing from Bob Ross?
We don't make mistakes. Just happy little accidents. - Bob Ross
Making mistakes is what any artist does. Making such mistakes believe it or not is GOOD! Because you've acknowledged it was a mistake, that it is wrong and that you now know what NOT to do. That is a natural state of evolution. Lets take Pew-Die-Pie for example where he dropped the "N" bomb on his stream. Is it wrong? Hell yes it's wrong! Did he suffer for it in views? Yes. Will he do it again? Probably not! But he will probably make OTHER mistakes! In turn he will learn from those as well! Don't be afraid of mistakes. Even the big ones. Learning makes you a better person.. So "Fuck you!" to #4 as well! Mistakes big and small may CHANGE you. But it only RUINS you if you fail to learn from it.
5. You deal with trolls and incredibly hateful people. Not to mention CREEPY PEOPLE!!!
"OH NOES!!! ANYTHING BUT THE CREEPY PEOPLEZ! BECAUSE CREEPY PEOPLEZARE MORE SCARIER THEN TROLLS OR HATE BECAUSE IT'S IN CAPS!! PUT ON YOUR LEVEL 3 HELMET KIDS!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!" First, allow me to be the first to welcome to the internet denizen! Here you will find all forms of people just like what you will find them on the streets of any major city. They all will not have table etiquette or all wear suits and a stove top hat. Regardless of how much moderation and administration there is those people will always be there! This statement gets into the fear-mongering category because it makes a person who has never been on twitch believe that's all there is to the streaming service. Just an endless pit of despair. Lighten the fuck up and join the mosh pit!
6. It's more then twitch. It's other social platforms as well. Twitter, Insta, Discord.
Rolling back to #5. Again, welcome to the internet. Insta? I tried looking up this "Insta" social platform. Instapoop? Instaslam? Instant-Ramen? MMmm.. I'm hungry now. We know what they're referring to. But it's just odd abbreviate that.
7. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. You could do exactly what someone else did and you could never even close to THE SAME RESULT.
One day you will wake up. But you won't be breathing. Welcome to the after-life! This statement actually isn't a bad one. But it's a little flawed. You see you CAN do exactly what someone else did and leech off of a original creators view hits. It's kind of what the majority of the YouTube content creation scene does. But you have to look at creating all content as art. That as humans we draw inspiration from various sources in order to create something that is considered unique. You shouldn't do EXACTLY what someone does because eventually you'll be called out for it. So yeah, the real moral of rule number 7 is:
Don't be a machine! - S
8. A lot of your personal life is revealed with time. ARE YOU SECRETLY A HORRIBLE PERSON? Everyone will find out.
Answer: False! You could probably stream for years and not tell a single user that you killed someone and have their corpse buried into one of the foundation beams of your house. You could probably even joke about it and everyone will just go "Oh that wacky streamer. Always trying to freak out their listeners for the LULZ!" not realizing that behind that demeanor he's telling you a really dark part of his life without you even understanding it.
You have no idea how a streamer behaves in real life versus who they are the moment they smash that "On Air" button to go live. Generally it's the monsters that are sloppy with their work that get discovered. We're getting off track and perhaps we should approach this from a nihilist point of view. That EVERYONE is horrible! If everyone is horrible that means everyone is normal. Which means it's totally safe to stream! Go out there and stream party people. Rule #8 is another form of fear mongering. This time, trying to scare the new self-conscious streamer from ever picking up that microphone or downloading the OBS software. Go stream if you want! Have some fun with your life!
9. Burnt out? Hope you enjoy loosing months or even years of growth. Then somehow come back FROM THAT OK.
Rule #9 is the darkest of all rules because it assumes that your life as a human being has no value except for the affirmation of others. That in the tunnel-vision view of the person who wrote this garbage that you are a widget working underneath THIS ASSHOLE in the picture above and your life is meaningless if you don't produce. This is your boss twitch streamers! Make him happy OR ELSE! See? I can inappropriately emphasize random words in my sentences too.
Lets dial back the drama a little bit. Streamers do get burnt out and have taken breaks. As long as you have a good dialog with your listener base that you're going offline to sort some shit out on life the majority of the internet will understand. Upon your return you will find out the people that are real fans of your work will return versus the spectators that were just there for the lulz or just lurking in the corner giving those phantom views. So when it comes to rule #9 give it the double middle fingers and be yourself!
You. Are. Always. Working. As. A. Streamer.
The Period Button Is Not A Space Bar Please Get A New Keyboard
If your constantly working as a streamer then that means you'll never have any fun! If you never have any fun then you begin to question why you are even alive. Upon getting to that moment of realization your on fire burning our and crashing into an endless pit of despair. Do not idolize the hustle! Anyone who keeps talking about how awesome it is to hustle non-stop you should promptly kick them in their balls for their own good.
Poetry time!
Perhaps we're not reading this poster correctly. Allow us to put on the beanie hat and read only the emphasized larger pointed font words:
YOURSELF. EVERYTHING. CREEPY PEOPLE. IT'S OTHER SOCIAL - THE SAME RESULT. ARE YOU SECRETLY A HORRIBLE PERSON. FROM THAT OK. YOU. ARE. ALWAYS.
*finger snapping and slow jazz playing* Yeah man. I can dig it. I'm a horrible per....son.... BUAHAHAHAHA!
Retrospect.
In all seriousness. Streaming is about sharing something that you love with the rest of the world. Be is from the dark ages of ShoutCast TV. To the modern era of Twitch and services beyond which embrace newer h.265 codecs for better compression and quality. Upon sharing that favorite game or media you find others with a similar interests. From there a community is born and in it's own altruistic sense that is where happiness is. Our fear of twitch stems from where the community begins to die and like a plague of locusts the hard business kicks in where twitch hands a streamer the table scraps of fake currency saying that if you hustle just a little more you can make more and more money. It forever changes from being just a community of like minded people into a calculative business where you rate people based on how much money they pump into your stream. Where you're not even doing it for fun but you've probably ended up like the very asshole that wrote this poster and just "Punch In" to your twitch job.
Projection.
We're also waiting for the next evolutionary step of twitch where they will introduce "game-monetization" that allows twitch to pay-wall the developer from ever getting their game promoted unless they hand Twitch's advertisement department a certain amount of money. In order to maintain your top-tier partnership status you must only play games that are apart of twitch's game monetization program. Any developer that is new and starting will be completely locked out from any coverage even if they gave said streamer permission to stream. It's a little on the tin-foil hat conspiracy level of theories but sadly these types of things tend to come true when you let a bunch of vampire investors run the show.
Final thoughts.
At the end of the day. These posters and any other posters dealing with "The rules of twitch" need to die in a fire as they don't represent the beliefs of many streamers out there. Just the handful that feel twitch is a business more so then a community. This is why it deserves to be mocked and made fun of for what it is. Have fun out there when you stream! Be sure to exercise your middle finger. Make it nice and strong when a company whispers into your ear that you MUST do something you don't want to do because if you don't you'll never be popular. That middle finger should be so strong you end up using it to unlock car doors.
Be yourself and fuck the rest.
+++ END OF LINE.