Asmongold TV - China has a LOT of "homeless" streamers.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

China has a LOT of "homeless" streamers.. Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. --------- Keywords: asmongold, game reviews, esports commentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shit's bad. You thought it's bad here in the U.S.? Over in China, every single girl, like there are all these girls in China that are trying to make it as the next big content creator, popular, like, influencer in China. It is insane. If you walk around in a Chinese city at night, you might come across something like this. Rows of people, mostly young and attractive, sitting or standing on the streets in front of rows of phones and ringline. Oh my God.

It's singing and talking and sometimes dancing. They look like streamers, but they also look homeless. Indeed, they do gather around places where homeless people tend to be. On the sidewalks, inside tunnels. Yeah, this is like, so if you replace this microphone with a syringe, that would basically be San Francisco. Bridges or under bridges. There was even a bridge that became so famous for this type of gathering that people started going there just to watch the spectacle.

Oh my god. There was so much foot traffic under the bridge that at one point, it started to look like a local festival or rock party. It's ridiculous. You can see people dressed up impugably while dancing in the mud or carrying a heavy jar of water while dancing in the mud or downright rolling in the mud or basically doing whatever it takes to get attention from viewers. Is that Wu Kong?

No shot. That's a Wu Kong cosplay. Oh my God. Wow. from viewers online. Now if you're seeing this for the first time, you probably have a few commonly asked questions. Yeah. What are they doing? Where are they doing that? Money. Are they streaming? Are they homeless? Where are they streaming outside? Why can't they stream from home? Where are they all together like that? Why can't they just stream by themselves? True. Why do they seem so desperate? What's pushing them to go this far? I know why they're desperate. Why is this happening? Why are we here? What's the meaning of life?

Oh shit. No. Oh, oh. Oh. Okay. I got you. In this video, I will talk about. this phenomenon of homeless streaming in China. I'll talk about what it is and what cost it. And this will do in paint a cautionary tale of what can happen when the attention economy goes too far. Now like these streamers... The problem is

that there's too many hoes and not enough simps. That's the issue. There are a bunch of girls out there, but there's only so many simps that can give them money. I'm a content creator, so...

I feel a personal connection to your struggle. What? What? You might not be a streamer or a contact reader. I'm just saying. And that's okay. Because the lessons here are applicable across culture and geography and can be useful regardless of your particular. I talked to a girl that she came from China. And I talked to her a lot about this.

If you think that Western streamers and these streamer girls in the West are caddy, like the China and Taiwan shit. That's on a whole other level. I didn't even realize that. Like, it was crazy. It's ruthless in China? Yes, it is. The other domains of human endeavor.

So join me as we dive in. Savage. To the rise of these homeless streamers. Now, first of all, yes, they are indeed streamers, but no, they're not homeless, or at least not usually. So why are they out there on the street in the middle of the night? Well, they come out at night because nighttime just having. to be a peak time for streaming traffic in China.

Most people would have finished work at that point and are now online seeking entertainment. So night time naturally has the most stream viewers and streamers in turn get online at night to capitalize on that. Many streamers also have day jobs and would only have time to stream at night. In terms of why they do it on the street though, it's mostly because it makes for engaging content. You're probably seeing TikTok dancers do this, viewing their content in public, sometimes to the annoyance of other people. TikTokers can and do film their content in private spaces, but there's something interesting about the real world chaos. The cars and the cityscape and the social pressure of other people watching that can make the content more engaging to watch.

I think that's probably true. He's right about that. Many streamers stream in public to capture some of that same engagement on their stream. Additionally, for some streamers, this is also an attempt to appeal the pity. The idea is that if viewers see them sitting out in the cold or one in the morning, they might feel empathy towards the streamers. This is one thing that happens with people here in the U.S. too with streamers is that they try to act like they don't have money or like things aren't this way. And like this is kind of, it's not as big as it used to be, but I always thought this shit was cringe, bro. Like if you've got people trying to like, you're trying to make them think that they, that's you.

What do you mean? It's like me. Didn't I show like how much money I made like yesterday? Like what the fuck? That's not me at all. No. But it's this entire. idea of like trying to be relatable and it's just farming losers that's what it is

as a result become nicer to them and donate to their stream more often now i acknowledge that this looks kind of insane in fact when i first started researching this topic i had to do a sanity check and contact a few people in china to make sure that they've actually seen this with their own eyes and this is not just a i generated footage and unfortunately it is real wow in fact you can watch the stream from the streamers right now. You need to use a Chinese streaming platform, and here's me trying to do this a few weeks ago. I just searched for street streaming

and found one after just a couple of scrolls. What was shocking to me was that I was watching this. That's like one of their most popular like places. Like that's like that's one of their big websites. That's like their TikTok basically. The 140 in the afternoon Pacific time, which would have been about four, almost five o'clock in the morning.

in China. So this poor girl was on the street at basically five in the morning while it was kind of raining and streaming for the 46 people who were watching the stream. So the question is, why are they going this far? And sure, streaming outside might make for slightly better content, but compared to the comfort of streaming from home, what's pushing these streamers to go out in the cold in the middle of the night? Well, it's also probably so they can attract, like, all you really need is one or two simps. Like, how many of you guys have seen, like, smaller female streamers that are pretty much completely supported by like three guys. I've seen this a lot.

Whale scamps? Yeah, two or three loaded samps, exactly. Most of all, there is a macroeconomic reason for this. After the COVID lockdown, China's economy has not rebounded as strongly as one would have hoped. The rate of unemployment is still relatively high, and even those with jobs might not necessarily be able to afford the cost of living in major cities. Streaming, on the other hand, has a low barrier to entry. Basically, anyone with a phone and an internet connection can do it. So naturally, streaming becomes something many Chinese people do to supplement their income.

According to CCTV, there were more than 15 million professional streamers in China by the end of 20. That means roughly one in every 100 people in China were streamers. In other words, the streaming industry has become incredibly competitive. It's therefore a necessity for streamers to go. go the extra mile to stand out in a sea of people making similar content if they want to make money. In my opinion, like this is just the way I think about it is that I think they go about it the wrong way. They're not thinking about it the right way because like you really want to go and make money and you want to be successful, et cetera. What you have to do is you have to do something

different. Like oversaturated? No, that's not oversaturated. You just go in there. You do something funny and you're still going to come out ahead. Winners win and losers. lose. You always have to keep that in mind. This entire mindset that you have to follow the crowd and follow trends and everything like that, that's what losers do. Effort to come out to the street is just one such example. But there are other factors that exaggerates the sense of desperation in streamers and push them to work harder. One of these factors is baked directly into the mechanics of Chinese streaming platforms and it has to do with how Chinese streamers get paid. Now, many streaming platforms,

platforms in the West, like Twitch and YouTube, have ad revenue sharing programs. While streamers are qualified and accepted into the program, even if the viewers don't pay them, that'd be crazy. Streamers can still get paid from ad revenue. Chinese streaming platforms, on the other hand, don't have ad revenue sharing, or at least not yet at this time. So streamers' income has to come from the pocket of the viewers. That usually happens in one of two ways. That's why it's a bunch of pretty girls.

That's the reason why. They're trying to farm one or two simps, and that's all they need. That viewer donation. Viewers can tip the streamers directly through these virtual gifts. This is one of the most common ways for street trainers to modify. The second way is live commerce. This is basically infomercial, but on streams. Streamers would talk about the product,

and there will be a button at the bottom of the screen for viewers to buy. When that happens, the streamer receives a commission from the sales. Now, regardless of how it happens, The fact remains that streamers don't get paid unless viewers take money out of their own pocket and give it to them in one way or another. This creates an incentive, if ever so subtly, for streamers to be a bit more desperate.

They seem more needy because they do need something from their viewers. This is the way Twitch used to be. It's like there used to always be viewers and like streamers. Like streamers would use to hide their wealth and like hide the amount of money that they made. and this is something that happened really until COVID. And I think that COVID, because it was such a multiplier on like the, I hate using this term, the influencer economy,

it multiplied and it got so many people engaged that it was now impossible to hide the fact that these streamers were like multi, multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires, right? And so like you, no, no, not like me at all. Like I didn't like I didn't even really, I don't think it was. like me at any way, right? At the influencer? Yeah, I mean, that was never like me. But all the streamer incomes got leaked during COVID. Yeah, I was number eight. Remember that? That was a good day. And so, but yeah, there were a lot of people that had that happen. And so then, like, that came was that that was the disillusionment. Because do you remember how many viewers were, like, really angry and

upset whenever they realized that so many of these streamers made such a tremendous amount of money? Like, that was one thing that I thought was really, really surprising is that people got really, really upset about that. There were memes circulating on Chinese social media that compares the street streamers, the beggars. Here's one such meme, and the top here says old school beggars, and the bottom says new-age beggars. Now, I can see some resemblance, but to be fair, streamers do provide some form of entertainment.

They do sing and dance. Well, so to crackheads. And so on. So a better comparison might be to street performers rather than beggars. There's another thing that sets streamers apart from beggars. And that's the fact that many street streamers are often parts of a business or company that specializes in social media content creation. These companies are officially known as MCN or multi-channel network. Yeah, this is a big thing on YouTube back in the day.

They're basically streaming agencies or influencer agencies. They provide streamers with training, equipment, help them broker-sponsor relationship and with other logistical tasks in exchange for a cut of the streamer's revenue. Pretty simple. Now, you might wonder why any influencer would want to. give up a portion of their revenue to join an agency. You've got the smartphone and a data plan, so just point the camera at yourself and hit record, right? Yes. How hard could it be? Well, there are actually a lot of things content creators need to do that has little to do with creating the content itself. For instance, I just spent a week filing my taxes. Even though my channel was

monetized for less than two months last year and made about 200 bucks, I still had to include that business activities on my tax filing. Of course. Because there's apparently a difference between cash-based accounting and accrual-based accounting. And if you don't know what any of that means, I didn't either. So that's how I spent a week. Thank you for asking. Now, no offense to the accountants You got like royalties to 99s. It's like a totally different system. And like the tax forms that you fill out are different. You're employed differently. You have to shift to your taxes. Like my taxes, I think last year were like this much. It was a lot. This is fascinating stuff. But as a content creator, it's probably more efficient and relevant for me to spend a week researching for this video topic

instead of learning how to depreciate a capital asset at fair market value. The idea of a company taking care of these kind of things for me sounds like a great value proposition in theory. But in practice, joining an agency, especially in China, usually means giving up on some degree of creative and career freedom. And depending on how ethical the agency you're working with is you could be giving up on a lot of freedom to the point that you are trapped contractually. This is what happens with a lot of MCNs and a lot of other networks. And this is especially true with V-tubing. And it's like at least historically true, is that you have a lot of these companies that end up basically the people don't even realize it, but they're signing a Faustian pact, a deal with the devil.

And they don't realize that like Tifu was a victim of this with Faze back in the day. And I think that you also had other instances of this happening also, like Nidja Sanji had a lot of drama about their contracts also. And in general, people lose, they become slaves. Yeah. And those are like two different examples. There's Gura. There's like why she rebranded to Saba and everything. Like, why is that people aren't, are like, you're never really going to know, but like people kind of put two and two together and they assume that to be the case. And so, and I don't want to give up like a lot of names or like, say, anything specifically, right? Because I don't want to get sued, to be honest. But it's fairly well

known that a lot of these deals are just simply not always advantageous to the creators, and they are sometimes at the expense of the creators. That's another great example. All gas, no brakes. Remember Channel 5 used to be all gas, no breaks. And because they had sold that IP, it took them a long time to retain that. And Andrew recently got that IP back in the last month or so. dokey bird another good example yeah that was nijasanji so this is very very common and and i think also it's predatory in the case that a lot of these people that run these companies they know that they're dealing with people that are categorically unfamiliar with certain spaces like accounting or things like that and so or like intellectual property or anything else like that and that's what happens

joining an agency in China, streamers might face restrictions on what kind of content where and when they have the stream and quotas like how much revenue they must generate per week. And keeping mind that Chinese streamers don't make revenue until viewers give it to them.

Failing to me these quotas could result in fives. And if streamers try to leave the agency before their contract completion, they could get sued. So it's easy to see how these restrictions can intensify desperation and push streamers to hustle

ever more frantically to avoid breaching contract terms. For example, you might have seen clips like this circulating on the internet. People have called them influencer factories, and these would have been operated by influencer agencies. Not all of them look this bad, though. There are some with better conditions like this one based in Indonesia. But the business idea is the same. That's the better one?

It's to streamline the content creation process. Man. Training to film into distribution. Oh my God. Look at this. So the content This is so dystopian Manufactured like commodities in factories

And many of these street streaming gatherings Are just the other side of the same coin Now some street streaming gatherings Are formed organically From independent streamers But we know that many are organized by agencies Because there are hints in the footage that review this For example here the streamers are all using the same ringlights

And nearly identical setups You can also sometimes see tech support staff assisting the streamers. There's even a continuous red carpet that are laid out on the ground sometimes, indicating that the team had come and set this up beforehand for their streamers as part of an organized business operation. Regardless of how these gatherings form, there is something off-putting about them. They look almost dystopian, like something out of a black mirror episode. Yes, it is. One of the reasons it looks so jarring is because it juxtaposes a series of polar opposites that really shouldn't belong together. For instance, it juxtaposes the appearance of wealth and

fame to poverty and obscurity. These streamers are all dressed in glass. And you can see that like there are some guys, but it's like a 10 to one ratio. Emerous clothing with beautiful makeups in front of spotlights and cameras as if they are celebrities. Yet in reality, they are out on the street, like homeless beggars. It also juxtaposes human connections and loneliness. On one side, viewers from all around the country are connecting intimately with their favorite streamers, a modern miracle. And also these girls, a lot of them, you. use like face filters and all kinds of other shit too like they might look one way but like whenever you see them on camera it's totally different yeah it's weird yeah exactly and uh super filtered yeah

they've got AI filters and and all this other stuff no i'm not gonna name any name like there's i mean there are some girls like you will meet them and like damn this bitch is hot right like she actually looks the way she does on the camera but like a lot of them like i've had i've had situations where it was like who is this what's your name I don't even recognize you by the internet on the other side everyone is alone most viewers are probably in a room by themselves staring at a screen while the streamers sit just inches apart from each other yet never interact everyone is locked in the prison of your digital worlds appearing to connect yet never really do it juxtaposes collectivism and individualism as well China

has a collectivist culture after all. So by and large, people prioritize social cohesion and group well-being above their personal ambition. These street gatherings seem to trend towards this kind of collectivism. Everyone is sitting in front of the same equipment while doing the same things. It looks like they are one unit working towards the common goal. I think the problem really is that it's so inauthentic. Like, why would somebody watch or like get attached to this whenever they realize that it's like, You know, are you going to get attached to like, you know, the dairy cow number 943 on the farm?

Probably not. And so I think a lot of these people, they go into it. And this is the other big reason why is that my understanding is that China has like another similar problem that we have, where a lot of people have high unemployment. It's hard to get a job. And you have people even in China. And this is also true in other Asian countries that have basically just totally given up on life. because they realize that they can never gain unemployment in a way that's like meaningful.

And so, yeah, wealth and equality is going hard, like everything like that's going super hard. But the reality is quite the opposite. It's hyper individualistic. The streamers aren't working towards any sort of collective well-being. Rather, each streamer is out for themselves. Yeah, exactly. ...to take a slice from a pie that is only so large. And you can see this too on Twitch.

Like this is one big difference between Twitch and YouTube is that on YouTube there are so many viewers that there's an abundance that people don't feel the need to cannibalize each other's viewers in the same way that they do on Twitch. But on Twitch there's a lot more competitiveness because the market is more limited and discoverability is based off of popularity. So for an example, like if I look at like my stream right now, where is it? Let me say, I can just pull this up on Twitch. if I look at it, it is beneficial for me. And I gain a passive advantage right now because we have the top stream on the entire platform. This is a big thing. And so there's a snowball effect that continues to happen.

You see kind of what I'm saying? Jibia Max, St.K. viewership. What I'm saying is that the more people come in and the more people watch, the more you get discovered. So it just builds on itself and on itself and on itself. So yeah. It's also in real time. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So many viewers on the platform.

And so that increases the amount of competitive behavior. Chinese streamers are regional though, Twitch's global time zones. Yeah, but do you think like they're still fighting for the same simps? You realize there's only like maybe a handful of simps in China that are willing to give some random pretty girl $1,000. So they're all fighting over that same guy that wants to give a pretty girl a thousand dollars. That's it. Each of them with only so much budget for tips. For one streamer to gain a viewer's attention and tip is for another to lose it.

And this individualistic zero-sum competition leads to the last juxtaposition, the appearance of individuality and its complete erasure. The point of streaming is supposed to be genuine connection. It's a platform for streamers. to show their authentic personality and uniqueness for their fans to connect with. And each streamer here appears to try to do that. They're all dressed up, enthusiastic, and entertaining. But in reality, they've lost their individuality in their very attempt to show it.

The reality is that they're all doing the same things in front of the same gears. This process of mass production of content has turned content creation into a commodity. And each streamer is but one of many identical. Cox in the content creation machine that turns out the same sort of... This is the same problem that we have here in the West. There's a lot of streamers. Like if you scroll down and you look for Fortnite streamers that have 70 viewers, you're going to see a lot of the same person.

And it's the same thing as like ASMR streamers or anything else. Like they're all basically doing the same thing. Because this is one other big issue that happens with streaming, is that because it's such as EuroSum environment, people try to copy each other and do the same thing better, rather than take risks with more avant-garde content because of the nature of the fact that discoverability, popularity equals discoverability,

and discoverability equals popularity. So you always are focused on farming metas, and you're always focused on doing things that are kind of already proven successes rather than anything else. Bridie's where it's at. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. MP4 files onto the influencer factory conveyor belt. Now, what's happened to the Chinese content creation industry is something I'll call

rat racification. That is not a real word, but I'm going to use it to refer to this process of transforming otherwise creative and productive pursuit into zero-sum hustle. Content creation was a cool thing initially. It was a venue for creatives to share their work, and people who resonated with them could start following them. It was sort of amateur and underground and Asian parents had yet to agree that it was a real job. And then people started noticing how much money was in it and began to flood into the industry.

There was enough financial reward there for some people to be willing to go to the extreme to win. Yeah, like I've had a lot of people tell me, like they see like the fact that like my stream does well and they're like, oh man, maybe I should stream too. And like I always tell people like if you want to go and start streaming, go ahead and try it, right? I mean, like, you might as well. I mean, if you think that you can do a good job, like, I thought I could do a good job and I did. And so, like, there are going to be other people that do that too. But it is pretty hard to do that. And I think also another big issue is that a lot of the people that are successful do things that a lot of people that want to be streamers don't want to do.

Like, for an example, for me, I'm live every single day. I cover topics that I think are interesting to me, but I also focus on doing things. things that are interesting to my audience too. I try to follow trends. I try to listen to what people are saying and I try to be entertaining all the time. I don't just simply turn on the camera and start playing a video game. Other people do that and that generally has a lower rate of success. So really, when you want to succeed in something, you have to exceed your competition and you have to do something in a way that's more compelling or interesting than other people. And so he said not to follow trends 10 minutes ago. Well, and that's the thing is that a stupid person would say that like, oh,

but I said don't follow trends, but now you're saying do follow trends. A stupid person wouldn't be able to understand that distinction, but a person who will be successful will. And so that's not really my fault. That's yours. The point that I'm making here, though, is that in a lot of these cases, these streamers do have this problem. And they have a lot of problems like this. and a lot of them don't really have the opportunity to really grow, and they also don't take the necessary actions in order to grow. They're not, like, they don't do what they need to do in order to succeed. Basically, like, what I'm saying is that if you took a streamer counsel of me,

XQC, soda poppin, Kai, and Hassan, and you put the five of us together to evaluate what, streamers are good and which streamers are bad, we would have a lot of the same opinions. Because there are commonalities that exist across all markets and all types of behavior. I'm just telling you, like, that's it. Lost me in Hassan. You might not like Hassan, but it's undeniable that Hassan has built himself a large audience, and he's successful at streaming.

He is. And he does a lot of the same things that I do because I see him do it. You might not notice it, but I do. The whole endeavor became a zero-sum rat race, something that isn't so different from the traditional rat race, like working at a bad office job with an exploitative employer. So you can sit in your street cubicle and do streaming work the same way you sit in your office cubicle and do paperwork. Just a different flavor of soul sucking, but your soul is getting sucked either way. This doesn't just happen in Chinese contact creation, of course.

In the West, for instance, you can find courses online that teach you how to turn out basically. garbage content quickly or even in an automated fashion so that you can extract easy and fast income or even passive income. That's what people try and do all the time. And this is like with repurposing and reposting clips and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's extremely, extremely common. And like what I'm saying is like a lot of the people that are bad streamers, the reason

why isn't some sort of abstract luck reason. It's actually extremely defined. and very easy to identify. Why someone isn't successful? Limited to the content creation industry either. Rat racification can and has happened to many industries. But personally, as a content creator, it is a shame for me to see the rat racification

of my industry in real time and its effect on people. Since I started making content, I've made many YouTuber friends who have since quit making videos. Many of them have come to content creation with one expectation. And when that expectation wasn't met, they soon burnt out. Now, this is just a personal theory of mine. Happens to a lot of streamers, too.

It's super common. But I think the rat race is a choice to some degree. I believe that it's possible to not participate in the rat race, even if the industry wind is in real time. In other words, just because other people in my industry are rat racing out of control, doesn't necessarily mean that I have to do it too. Now, I'm not giving... That's true.

I think that you have a lot of streamers that exist outside of that spectrum. I think one guy who's a great example of that is Northern Lion. Like, he does follow trends to an extent, but he's not constantly trying to collab with every new streamer and do all this other new stuff. He kind of just stays in his own lane and does his own thing. And I think that if you want to build a long-term level of success, Forson, Forson's another one.

who does that as well. Lyric is another one. You don't have to, but Lyric, obviously, and all of these guys will capitalize on trends sometimes. Like, you know, Forson, if there's a new game that has open voice chat,

and it's an open world game like Atlas, you can guarantee Forson will be playing that probably on the first day. If there's a new, you know, video game that's like a single player game, you can guarantee Lyric will probably be playing that on the first day. Maximilian, Max, if there's a new fighting game that comes out, Max is going to be playing that.

And so all of these guys, they're not necessarily inside of the rat race, but they still have their areas of, like, I wouldn't really say expertise, but their areas of being prolific in, where like they very commonly make content in this way. It's the same as I used to be with niche. Yeah, they have their own niche as well, their own branding. Like, I used to be like this with MMOs a lot. I've become less like this, but even now people still associate me with that, for that reason. Career advice here, and I'm not saying what I'm doing is the only way, but just to use it as an example, I had a friend who asked me this once. He said, Lewis, look at these big YouTube channels, like Mr. Beast. They have much bigger budget and teams of professional writers and editors.

All you have is a camera and a keyboard, so how can you? possibly compete. Well, it's always critical. It's again, like it's defeatist attitude. That's a loser attitude. Losers think like that. Winners don't think like that. Losers do.

Just my take on it. I don't think I am competing with Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast makes great content, but the content he makes looks nothing like the content I make. In fact, the only commonality between our content seems to be that we're both breathing, while filming, and maybe speaking in English. I'm looking for. something more specific. I'm looking to create content that falls in the intersection between

what I love making, what I'm good at making, and what people like watching. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. And a lot of streamers live inside of one of these circles or two of these circles, but success exists inside of all three of them. Intersection will be different for different creators, almost by definition. I learned this from listening to Neval Ravicon, although I think might actually be a variation of the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai. So feel free to look into these sources further if you're interested in this idea. I adopted the idea for YouTube, but the original is much more general and can be applied to pretty much any industry. The idea is that you should pick an endeavor that falls in the intersection of what you love doing,

what you are good at, and what people are willing to pay you for. Now, if someone is exclusively motivated by money, they will tend to ignore. what they love doing. You push hard on what they are good at and what they'll get paid for. And that is one way that you could get yourself into a rat race. And you also burn out that way too. I see a lot of streamers do that where like they constantly try to chase trends and do things in order to like get the most viewers. And then eventually it doesn't pay off for them. And then they get frustrated and stop streaming. thing. ...and hustling, then you're not getting anything intrinsic out of the experience. And that's a problem not because of some romantic notion of this, you must do what you love, cliche.

It's bullshit. The reason is much more practical. Exclusive outcome orientation is a problem because it's a competitive disadvantage. If you're good at something but hated... You're self-motivating. Someone else who is also good at it, but love it, will outdo you. The trick is, therefore, to be ambitious enough to follow your passion. but never be so idealistic as to lose sight of what you're good at and what people will pay for.

Now, I'm not saying this is easy. On average, this is actually like this right here should be mandatory listening for anybody who is wanting to be a streamer. This insight is exactly what you, this is exactly how you should think about things. Takes a lot of time and countless trial and error and success isn't guaranteed. For example, I'm still iterating to find my sweet spot in the intersection between these three circles. regarding my own effort on YouTube. My channel hasn't made enough revenue to cover what I've spent since I quit my job, so I'm still in the red so far.

And it remains to be seeing whether it'll work out before I run out of savings. I am ready, though, to take my resume back to the job market if it doesn't work out, and I'd probably keep making content on the side and try again while I have enough savings. Because I remember what it was like to push myself to do only what people are paying me for when I worked as a corporate consultant for a few years. No, I'm not saying. all jobs are bad, but that particular one just wasn't for me. It was a grind and created a lot of unnecessary human misery.

So I think it's worth it. There's a lot of people also that like they, there are days where like I'll be honest, there are days where I don't really want to stream, but I go live anyway, because that's what I do. And I know people want to see me to go live. They want to see the content. And that's, that's it. Like there and again, there are times where I think treating content creation as a hobby is effective and times where treating content creation as a job are effective. And too much of one and not enough of the other will create a distortion and it will hurt your content.

But you're no longer dependent on this. Why still do it? Because it's what I do. It's what I like doing. And there's a lot of reasons why. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reasons. Like I like doing it. I think that's number one. But there's a lot of other things besides that. Do you ever experience burnout?

Yeah, sure. Sure. I'll get tired of something. I mean, I've been really, I mean, I'll be honest with all this stuff with my dad and everything. It's been really hard for me to go live recently. It has been. I've been super stressed out. I've been sleeping all day.

I haven't been able to like do anything else besides that. I have been fucking like absolutely out of my mind. been awful, but it doesn't matter. Like, I mean, everybody has problems. Like, there are plenty of times you probably had to go to work whenever you had stress at home or in your life. Like, that's just the way it is. Like, and so the more that you give in to weakness, the more you become weak. And so the more important thing to do is to focus on being able to overcome challenges and being able to work through them. Because the more that you indulge yourself in weakness, the more you practice being weak.

And so that's it. To take some time to figure out a way to avoid that, even if it takes a long time. Especially when I know that it's possible to avoid the rat race, as I've seen people succeeding at it, and even in something as competitive as Chinese streaming industry, there are examples of people who have figured out ways to navigate it while maintaining their sanity and passion. Sure, a lot of people have. Sort of get-rich quick stories that streaming agencies often use for recruitment. I'm talking about stories like this one, where a streamer,

figures out a path over time to create useful products and services and uses content as a way to find the people that can benefit from them. Exactly. Now, this is not a report of someone who's becoming insanely rich, but maybe that's not the point of their journey, and their journey is still ongoing, so who knows where it will end up. And the point is that it looks like they are enjoying their journey so much that it's already fulfilling, regardless of its destination. Now, I want to acknowledge the possibility that some industries can be so toxic that the

The only way to compete is to rat race and one might rarely have to switch industry to get out of it. I'm not saying that it's easy to find a sustainable and meaningful career. I've always found that rat racing sometimes can be enjoyable in itself because it's like a competition. And if you don't enjoy any form of competition at all, you're going to have a really hard time existing in a free market. And so if that's your mindset, I would say, probably should try to reevaluate how you see things that way. Yeah, if you win. Well, sometimes even when you lose, you learn why you lost.

Or like, let's say you get third place. Okay, well, that's not eighth place. That's it. This is wrong. Yeah, a homie could have film for a camera, the drawline. Yeah, I know. But I can't stand competition would rather hermit. Yeah, and it's hard.

How would you reevaluate? Well, it depends on what it is. I'm not saying everyone will succeed. at it for sure. I'm not trying to dole out baseless motivation here, as you may have noticed. A lot of the topics I cover are quite depressing. At some point, we all need to connect with reality, and reality can be unforgiving. These haunting footage of rows of street streamers is one manifestation of that stark fact. But it is precisely because the consequences of succumbing to the rat race are so dire that it is important to not give up,

looking for sane and meaningful ways to navigate it. So I hope that the story of the homeless streamers did not make you jaded. It's crazy, isn't it? As a reminder, to tread mindfully on your journey to find meaningful work. So that there might be a source of sanity, at least from your corner of the universe. The world seems to need that right now. So thank you for your efforts and best of luck. This is a really good video.

I do. I think this is a very, very good video. and especially the ending of it. I mean, I think the ending of it, the beginning was very informative for like streamers in China, but like the ending definitely is like more of a content creator-focused thing

and it can be applied to a lot of other ways of looking at things too. Yeah, I really like this guy. He's only got 20,000 subs. Louis Zau. I'll give him a like, give him a sub. Let me thank you guys his channel here. And yeah, I mean, this video he did,

I guess he put it out two months ago, has like 300K views. It was really, really well designed. He was about to take off. I mean, I hope so. I hope to see that. And that's it, man. He makes good strategies.

Yeah, it's smart. And there's a lot of streamers, too, that, you know, they do things for money. You're not dependent on streaming daily. So do what's in your best interest. And that means you're competing for the top YouTube spot. Not streaming daily works for that. Well, I mean, I, if I want to be more popular on YouTube, the main thing that I should do is stream less.

That's the truth. Like, if I wanted to be more popular, popular on YouTube. Like I help people make strategies and I help people like off stream figure out how to create outcomes that are beneficial for themselves. So what I generally do in a lot of cases is I look at basically what I do in order to solve a problem is I break down how this problem exists, why it exists, and basically what the problem is. I understand what the problem is. because if you can't understand what the problem is, you can never solve the problem.

And so once I understand that, I create a system for how to address that problem on a personal basis or on a macro level, right? And so whether that is playing a video game, farming an item, streaming, or I don't know, like doing something, like making a garden, you have to understand a process

and then deconstruct the process and then figure out how to take advantage of that process and then look at what other people do that are successful. Like for me personally, when I first started making content, this may come as a big surprise. Spoiler alert, it's not. My big inspirations, Croparian, Wreckful, and Athene.

That's right. You would have never guessed, huh? Especially if you look at my old content. And so that's exactly what it was. And so I looked at what those guys did. And I said, okay, well, they're doing that really well. I want to do that, but I'm going to do this part differently and I'm going to do this part differently, right? Athene, a Pog?

No, Athene used to be a legend. Athene was the man. Like, who, I don't care about like some drama that he's involved in now or whatever. Like 2007, Athene was the pinnacle of content at the time, okay? And so I'm not really trying to get into any of that bullshit. So my point is that if you know how to solve profit, that's what will really help you more than anything else. Yeah, and that's the weakness that I think a lot of people have,

is that they don't know how to solve any sort of problems, and they don't know how to approach them in a way that's beneficial. And they also, and I think this is the main thing, is that this is with streaming and with anything else, people are unable to overcome problems because they can't identify them. And I think that if you can't identify where your weaknesses are, you can never overcome them. You can never get better at them or anything like that.

And so a problem is most people just don't want to solve their problems. Well, and this is another big issue that a lot of streamers have. A lot of streamers do what they want to do. And you know what? Sometimes that's not the right decision. Sometimes it's better to do what other people want you to do. And sometimes it's better to do what's better for your stream. And that's the way it is.

That's the way every job is. Definitely. Yes, exactly. People have ego, stubbornness. Exactly. There are times I do stuff that I'm like, oh, maybe I don't really feel like doing this today, but everybody really wants to see it. I'm going to do it anyway, right? And it doesn't mean you have to like hate it or whatever. And to the extent that you do hate it, you're going to be a failure. You have to learn how to do things that you don't want to do. The big problem with streaming is that a lot of people and content creation is that a lot of people want to get into streaming and content creation because they don't want to be told what to do. But the reality is that if you're a successful entrepreneur, you'll know that there's no harsher boss on yourself than you. You never are off the clock. You're always thinking about your work. And the people that are successful have to consciously delegate time away from that. And like for me, I'm thinking about this all the time. Yeah, exactly.

That's right. Yeah, at least it's yourself. And yeah, and there's always, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's positives, right? Like working at the IRS, if I could make the same amount of money streaming, working at the IRS, there would be a number of days that I would probably rather work at the IRS because I liked that job. It was enjoyable. I didn't have to talk all day. And I could just focus on doing something. It would tell me exactly what to do and I would just apply that job. That would be it. And so, like, of course. Now, I certainly wouldn't do that with Sam's Club. Holy fuck. I worked at

Sam's Club. That was awful. But yeah, what about the advice of just doing it instead of stalling? well yeah and that's how much did you make i don't know like like 15 16 an hour but this is like over 10 years ago it was a great salary and so yeah boring job is the best job yeah you clock in and clock out exactly and so yeah and we talked about how in pieces come back yet no i don't like covering drama with my friends sorry to say i know some people like i and also i don't want to i don't want to give people the run around with that where it's like oh i'm not above i'm not above drama i just don't want to cover drama with friends of mine why because i'm

biased. Because I'm biased. I don't want to do it. Yeah, that's it. Like, if Nick and Donut Operator and Brandon and Tectone and all of them and Raw Alerts want to get in some internet fight, this is not my fucking problem. It's not my fucking problem. I am biased. I know a lot of the guys involved. I've talked to Brandon. I've talked to Donut. I've talked to Nick. I know Techtone. I even cover Raw Alert's content as well myself. So I'm going to be biased. I'm going to give you my take that has insight that is from behind the scenes. In my opinion, I think that I know what the problem is. A lot of other people don't know what the problem is.

I do. But that's private. That's it. NMP would farm hate on you, though? No, we wouldn't. What do you mean? What do you talk? That's not even...

true. There's this weird thing that's happened with some of my viewers that they think that like Nick, because Nick has been friendly with Hassan before and then Sena said that thing about me in the car that Nick is like some kind of a rat and he doesn't like me or he's trying to make me look bad. I talk to Nick on a regular basis. Like I see where, like I've talked to even, I even talked to Senna about that clip and I see where she's coming from. It's not a problem. A lot of people insert themselves into streamer relationships, but you have to understand that I've known Nick for eight years. Nine years. I just looked at the clock. Nine years. That's it. People think Yeet posting NMP is him farming you? I don't know what he's. I don't know. But either way, that's it. Yeah, and chance. Same thing. Yeah, exactly.

So are friends that are my business? Yeah. And so what was your first meeting with Nick? Through like, well, I met it in like, wow, but like IRL with like Train and and Mitch. Back in the day. So yeah, that's the way I feel about it. And I just don't like, I don't like commenting on drama for my, for friends of mine. And that's just it.

I just, I don't want to do it. Nick doubling down red. It was fucked up, bro. I didn't even see that. I'm going to be honest. I didn't see that. I don't know about that. I have no idea.

But I know a lot of people want me to go in and talk about all that stuff, et cetera. But it's just total, total, total, like, not something that I want to deal with. Your bias, so any take from you would seem disingenuous. Exactly. So, like, if I, if, and that's the problem is I've realized this about myself, is that this is something that I think people like, I think pirate software. should realize is that sometimes you can be right in your mind. You can have every bit of evidence in your mind. It can be proven. Everybody knows that this is like this is true, right? In your mind, but people will not see it. I am past the point in my life of trying to make people see it.

That's it. And so if I realize defending pirate again, I'm not defending pirate again, if anything I'm criticizing pirate. I'm saying that he doesn't realize that. He thinks that he can reason people out of certain positions and he can explain certain things. There are a lot of people that even if he proves them wrong, 100% will still say that he's wrong. It doesn't matter. And so when I see something like that on the internet, I realize when to cut my losses. I say, okay, I get it.

All right, let's move on. That's it. Yeah, you're saying right, yeah. You can show a graph right in front of them. They won't care. Yep, there it is. And I was true. I always assumed someone's guilty the moment that they're accused.

Ask them, what's something you tell yourself in your late 20s? Um, man. I think that just reminded me I'm not in my late 20s and that was a while ago. That's crazy. Wow. Wow. Holy shit Brush your teeth

Oh no bro They were cooked from like 23 onward Okay Like I had my first teeth My first teeth pulled out Whenever I was like 23 years old It might have been 22 It was 22 or 23

So yeah bro They were cooked all the way back then No I wouldn't really change A whole lot If I could go back Better go back When you have your energy your 20s I feel like in general, I feel pretty energetic even now, right?

I mean, I don't have any problems at all. So, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. Pores get teeth pulled instead of root canals. True, true, true, brother. Exactly. Bro, it's wild. I'm same age as you and a 17-year-old girl was helping me at work, and I realized I was literally twice her age, rough.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot, bro. Like, that's just a lot. Like, I think about that. Like, that's like, what the fuck, bro? Like, what is going on? yeah that's a whole lot that's rough buddy i know you're not that old come on not even the golden years yeah sure and uh would you tell yourself to to play more single player games no i wouldn't

tell myself i would say keep doing it yep just keep doing it uh i don't really uh i feel like in my life i don't really have a lot of regrets i have no regrets in my life really that i can think of there are like minor things like oh i wish i had done this differently or whatever but in a general sense i don't have any regrets i don't if i could go back in time i wouldn't really change a lot of like pivotal moments in my life or anything else uh it's just i i think it's just it that's like a childish way to look at the world buying bitcoin early is my only regret not buying it no because if i if i bought bitcoin early and i ended up with like let's say 10 million dollars worth of Bitcoin, then who knows what kind of problems that would have created in my life.

And I might not have ever pursued anything else that was challenging or meaningful. So, like, I mean, I don't even think about it in that way. It's just, it's silly. You have sold way before now. Maybe I would have. Maybe not. I don't know. But either way, that's it.

No, why torture your brain over that? Yeah, I never think about any of that stuff at all. Wouldn't it become a streamer? Maybe not. Yeah, I don't know. There's a butterfly effect? I mean, I remember watching that movie growing up, and I always thought about it from that perspective, too.

You're definitely right. Let's see here. But I'll talk about this. Would you have tried to get your mom healthier? No, it's because that's not what she wanted. She was an adult. She's going to do what she wants to do. If she wants to smoke cigarettes, eat Taco Bell, drink Pepsi,

all of her life. That's her life. She's going to do that. She's entitled to that. And also, I tried to help, but that's it. That's the way that she wanted to live. That's it. Like, I mean, again, like respect. Yes. You cannot save a person from themselves. You cannot make a person care about the things that you care about. You can't make people see things in the way that you see things. It's totally, it's so unhealthy to do that. You can't control a person? No, you can't. You cannot do it. And yeah, that's the way I see it. Anyway, you can't change old people. Yeah, exactly. No, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I

don't regret anything and I wouldn't change anything if I could go back.