BECOMING a YouTuber is not all it’s cracked up to be, according to a former gaming ace.
The player – who only goes by the name of ButterflyOne6843 on Reddit – revealed the “toxic” reality of streaming, despite earning up to $10,000 / £8,000 some months.
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But the person says making a living from YouTube and Twitch is too unstable unless you become a rare mega star.
And they prefer life now in the “real world”.
The gamer said they had to put in 12 hours of work editing a day – and never took time off because you won’t get paid otherwise.
“I became burnt out being on the computer all the time,” they wrote.
“I became burnt out of the games I was playing, plus their popularity was declining.
“I became burnt out of the Twitch community and gaming in general as I grew older than the average person involved with gaming or Twitch.
“I was sick of the instability of working as a streamer, as one month could’ve brought in 10 grand, and another month closer to 2k.
“No benefits, no overtime, no healthcare and absolutely zero support from the company Twitch, either, while they reap all the benefits off of middle streamers like me.
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“My channel and mental state started declining pretty rapidly.”
So, the anonymous streamer decided to give it all up and went cold turkey.
After a good year and a half of getting their life together going to the gym and making new friends, they decided it was time to get a “normal” job.
But they had a nasty shock when businesses didn’t take them on.
“Not a single company even considered me as a potential employee for jobs I’ve been doing for nearly a decade, after hundreds of applications and a solidly written resume,” they continued.
“Not entry level positions, not mid-tier positions – nothing.”
In the end, they got some manual labour work “to eat food”.
I actually have freetime to both make money, and spend it, and have hobbies, and relationships
ButterflyOne6843
“It was quite a miserable experience coming as a somewhat mildly famous e-Kid to having an overweight Karen telling me how dumb I am for doing something wrong,” the former gamer said in a follow up post.
“That propelled me to work even harder, out of spite if anything.”
However, they decided to start studying too.
Eventually they got a full-time job as a software developer and “could not be happier”.
“Despite the hardships along the way, even this entry-level job pays more than I made at Twitch (and it will only go up from here) – while working only a fraction of the hours,” they continued.
“I actually have freetime to both make money, and spend it, and have hobbies, and relationships.
“This field lets me be as creative and thoughtful as I was as a content creator, while giving my life the stability I originally desired – and I did it without a college degree.”
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
