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I’m going to have to stop these TLDR speeches on here. Back in the 00s, when I first started streaming on JustinTV, nobody knew anyone. The online celebrity wasn’t a thing. Everything was still in its infancy. Social media, the second wave of the internet. It was a bunch of nerds and geeks showing their passions off to the two or three people watching, and there was nothing wrong with that. Stream quality was low. Streaming gear wasn’t a thing. Camera quality was awful. I was lucky. I had a decent job in the gaming space. I didn’t need to stream. I loved doing it. I was doing stand-up in shit-hole bars in New York, then in California when I moved west. It didn’t matter how many people were in the room. One laugh. One person whose night I made. That was enough. The game has changed a dozen times since then. The narrative hasn’t. Attitudes. Online feuds for clicks. Outlandish content. Talentless hacks shoved down people’s throats off the back of reality television, and everyone convinced they can be a star. You were sold a lie. There is no golden ticket. There is no formula. It’s luck, and being in the right place at the right time, or a fluke in the algorithm. I’ve known some of the most talented people you’ll never hear of, because they bought the same lie. They focused on becoming famous instead of getting good. Real talent, squandered. Platforms and multi-billion-pound companies push that 1–2 percent, and everyone else fights over the scraps. If entertaining doesn’t come naturally to you, it is a hard road, and most people on it will not make it. That’s not a slight. It’s just how this works. You can get better at the craft. You cannot manufacture the thing that makes a stranger stay. If you’ve got a small core audience, people actually watching you, live or pre-recorded, in our tiny corner of the internet, that’s a win. The days of becoming the next big thing are gone. Focus on being self-sustainable. Make good content. Build a community. That survives the storm. Chasing a dream that will not put food on the table will not keep the lights on. You are your own worst enemy when you’re watching everyone else instead of your own work. We have a saying back home. Wind your fucking neck in. Thanks for reading. Dan ♥️