HealthyGamerGG - What It's Really Like to be a Creator | Part 1

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Dr. K talks to ZergGirrl, Ruby_True, _Smirky, XellTweets, and MetricSeconds about life as a creator! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I spent a lot of time checking out tons of streams and I didn't see a lot of brown people. I don't. Still to this day, I don't. When I find one, it's like finding your unicorn. Welcome, everyone. Hello. Hello. Super excited to be here. Thanks for having us. So welcome, welcome. So I'm going to start with this. So I guess in a second we're going to introduce ourselves. But before we even do that, what's y'all's understanding of what we're doing here. Like, what are we doing here and like, why are we doing it?

Does anyone have any idea? I have a decent idea. I mean, obviously, we're all like creators, right? So we all have, we all have something in common there. And there's a lot of interesting topics that we can talk about in relation to that. Sure, bring our own experiences to the table and stuff like that. Absolutely. I was under the distinct impression that you were going to be our Nick Fury and we were going to form the Avengers, but... I am somewhat of a pseudo-boomer, so I don't understand that reference.

Can someone please explain it to me? There's a 30 movies. I haven't seen any of them. No better time like the present. Who can explain... That's what I've been doing. Who can explain to me what metric seconds is saying?

So there's this there's this IP called Marvel. They have the Avengers. Okay, they have the Avengers, which is like a group of superheroes from all sorts of different backgrounds and stuff. And they come together under Nick Fury's lead. And that's the best way I can describe it. Okay. Okay. And so... It's like Smash Brothers, but in the film industry.

Yeah. That's helpful. Yes. And anyone else have something that they want to add about kind of what we're doing here or what the goal is or what you know, what y'all are, or is that pretty much something? Yeah, go ahead. Maybe to like give an insight as well into what it's like to be a creator. It's not always like the front that we put on. There's like a lot that kind of goes on behind. Absolutely. Very well said, Ruby True. So here's how I would describe what we're doing here. So in my background, which I'll get to in a little bit.

So I've been an educator in a formal sense, and I've also been a clinician. So I work with patients sometimes. And one of the things that I found was that there's like education and then there's like practical application. So you can tell someone. So I ran a program that sort of trained physicians in wellness. Okay? So we trained like 600 people in wellness. And what we sort of found is that there's a different thing.

between like giving lectures on wellness. Like, oh, like, let's talk about how to be well. Like, oh, you should meditate every day. And like, you can give people information about being well. But the translation of that information into application into their lives was very challenging. So when I think about coaching, what I really think about is a practical application of information. And so what we're going to be doing here, I have a curriculum. But thankfully, you guys don't have to do homework or work.

worksheets or things like that. So I've got a curriculum of essentially eight or nine topics, which we're going to touch on hopefully over the course of eight weeks. But instead of going through them like one at a time, okay, today we're going to be talking about burnout. Here's what leads to burnout. Today we're going to be talking about dealing with toxicity from your community. Today we're going to talk about how being a content creator means that your work is never done, right? Because how do you know when it's enough to, like you've streamed enough? How do you know when the thumbnail for your YouTube upload is good enough. Right?

So there are a lot of unique challenges that content creators face, which we actually understand pretty well here at Healthy Gamer because we've worked with about 300 or 400 content creators at this point. So we've synthesized all of that experience into something of a curriculum. Instead of just teaching it, though, what we tend to find is the most useful way to sort of really dig in and understand that is through y'all's experiences. And so as Ruby was kind of saying, and I hope that's okay that I call you that for now until we introduce you and you tell us how you're referred to, is that we're going to sort of hear from y'all's perspective, sort of hear about the challenges that you face, educate not only like your community members about what it's like to be a content creator, educate aspiring content creators, but also educate all the other content creators, right, about what is it like to struggle with? And then hopefully, in terms of as we go through curriculum, what will happen is that any creators who are out there watching can hopefully benefit from it.

So that's a part of like the AEOE healing approach that we have at Healthy Gamer, which is that we're going to work through problems together here. And in doing so, hopefully help people out in the audience. Any questions about that? Okay. So a couple of quick boundaries and kind of layout sort of stuff. So we're going to be meeting for about 90 minutes once a week for a period of eight weeks. Everyone kind of familiar with that? So sometimes on this stream we'll have interviews, group streams, things like that, where people will discuss personal things.

That's totally fine. If you guys feel like discussing personal stuff, you can. If you want to discuss issues related to psychiatry, mental health, mental illness, that's totally fair game. But just to be clear, we're not necessarily going to be looking for that. So this is not like, you know, tell us about all your deep traumas on the internet. If it applies to your job as a content creator, you're welcome to share whatever you feel comfortable with. But does everyone understand that I'm not going to be doing diagnostic assessments on anyone? I'm not going to be providing treatment to anyone or anything like that.

We clear on that? Hopefully within the next week, you guys should be getting a communication from someone on our team about if anyone feels like they do need clinical help or support over the course of these eight weeks. y'all can let us know we'll do our best to make a referral or find resources in your area or things like that but we can't guarantee that we can you know sort of we're certainly not going to provide treatment and we can't guarantee that we can find you someone but we'll do our best to help everyone clear on that there'll be more details hopefully within the next week okay thank you so everyone cool in terms of boundaries there you don't have to discuss anything that you don't want to all right so other things so

Normally when we run groups, there are a couple things that are different. So normally we'll sort of say that, like, you know, there's an entitlement to privacy, right? So what we discusses in group stays in the group. There's an obvious exception to that because everyone is aware that we're live streaming this, right? Okay. Yes. Yeah. Shoot.

Really? So this is. Hi, chat. This is the kind of thing where I want us to all be responsible for protecting everyone else in the group. So I know it sounds kind of weird. but like if someone, if you feel like someone is becoming uncomfortable with something that we're discussing, anyone here can put the brakes on the group and say, hey, are we sure we really want to discuss this? Like, do you feel safe? Do you feel comfortable? Everyone kind of okay with that?

Okay. Yep. So I'm going to keep going and we'll get to introductions, I promise. So we're going to try to like learn stuff and grow and change over the course of this group. Are we kind of familiar with that? So the first question that I have is who is responsible for change in the group? Ourselves. Ourselves. Yeah. Okay.

Wait. Zergirl, who are you pointing at? I was pointing at Zell. He was right next to me. Just pointing at anybody. So, ourselves. So hold on a second. So let's tunnel down into that.

So Zerg, girl, do you believe that you are responsible for change in the group? Do you believe that Zell is responsible for your change? Or do you believe that all of the above? Absolutely. That's the right answer. So this is something that I think is really important. Generally speaking, when we go through life, we are the ones that are responsible for change, right? It's on me. So part of why I love group is actually like this is different. I want each and every one of you to understand that there are five other people in this call. And four of those people, you are also responsible for helping. Right. So I'm responsible. for teaching y'all stuff, helping you move forward in life.

You're responsible for yourself, but you are also responsible for everyone else in the group. How do people feel about that? Sounds good. Really? Is that normal? Have you all been in a situation like that before? No, but I trust you. I mean, I just moved in with a bunch of, like, of my friends from the Twitch sector. So it's kind of like that where, like, we're all just kind of like, in this together, you know.

Awesome. Kind of same thing with this. Okay. So a couple of other things. So we ask you all to bring three things. So we have three core values at Healthy Gamer that we ask people to bring to the table. And these are going to be a little bit weird. So the first is compassion.

The second is authenticity. And the third is presence. Okay. So these are the values that we ask you all to bring to the table. So we want y'all to be authentic and compassionate and hear. So I doubt this is going to be a situation here because, you know, we're all live streaming and stuff. But generally speaking, like, you know, don't alt tab, like pay attention as best as you can. If you struggle with attentional issues or something like that, you're welcome to bring that up with the group.

But, you know, we're all going to kind of be here and mindful as best as we can. There may be exceptions if someone's dog runs in or, you know, someone's mom calls. And that's totally fine. But generally speaking, we ask you all to do that. other thing that I kind of want to point out is that we want y'all to be authentic and compassionate, but not necessarily polite. What do you all think? What's the difference between being authentic and compassionate and being polite?

I don't know. In my mind, it kind of comes down to, like, I don't know, like toxic positivity, like being, being too, like, too kind about, like, I don't know, not, not being willing to, like, open up the the door of honesty, you know, or I guess authenticity, which is the whole difference factor. Yeah. Kind of to add. Oh, go for it.

Sorry. You got it. Yeah. Being polite sometimes can, um, I'm, I'm British, so I'm really good at being polite. But also it can almost cut off or like, if it cuts off your own feelings as well, because you're just being polite. You're not actually saying, you know, you just say things to be polite. That's how you go through life, like, a lot of the time. As a Canadian, I agree. So, yeah. Yeah. So I think it's kind of interesting because sometimes, you know, what we tend to find is that as people are polite, right?

So I once was working with someone who was kept on getting into troublesome relationships. Oh, you know, like this relationship fell apart, this relationship fell apart, this relationship fell apart. everyone out there is mean and toxic. And then at some point, like, if you really want to be, like, authentic and compassionate and help someone with this problem, you've got to ask the question, like, maybe it's not everyone else, maybe it's you. And so hopefully we'll become comfortable enough with each other. We can feel safe enough with each other that we can challenge each other authentically, right,

and with compassion. So we don't want to be mean, but at the same time, we always want to be compassionate. We want to be kind. but at the same time, sometimes in order to grow, we have to take a hard look at ourselves. And sometimes we have blind spots. And so that's why groups are really, really important because as you all sort of have this shared experience, we're all content creators. You know, hopefully that'll, we'll sort of figure that out. Everyone kind of okay with that for now.

The rubber will hit the road later with this. I guarantee you it'll get messy. So a couple of other things. So I'm the group facilitator. So this is kind of weird, right? So people sort of think about, okay, what does this mean if you're the group facilitator? So I am a peer and I am a facilitator. So what that means is that I, too, am a content creator.

So I kind of know what it's like to be a content creator. And I have an additional, let's say, training or expertise or things like that. And I'll sort of be facilitating the group. And so it's going to be really confusing for a while whether I'm supposed to take care of all of y'all. Y'all are supposed to take care of all of each other. Are you all supposed to take care of me? Also, yes. Yeah, we'll see, right?

We'll see. We'll see. But it's okay to think about. All right? So another thing that I want to say is that, you know, even though I'm the peer facilitator of this group, I'm not perfect. And if anyone has concerns with anything that I say or do or I make a mistake, you're welcome to bring it up directly on stream. You're also welcome to, you know, contact our producer or other people if you don't want to bring

it up on stream and create drama or whatever. But generally speaking, I think it's totally fine. And one of the skills that we're going to be teaching in group is actually conflict resolution. So hopefully at some point, probably not the first couple weeks. But later on, like people will challenge each other. There'll be conflict. If you, you know, y'all are welcome to criticize me or say, hey, I don't appreciate what you're doing or things like that. Make sense? All right, my spiel is over. Anyone have questions before we jump to introductions? Cool. All right. Yeah. Okay, I do.

Why did you choose us? That's a great question. So I've got a weird answer for you. I didn't. Okay. So I have no idea actually why y'all were chosen. And I know it sounds kind of weird. No clue.

So this is something that I try to do. So for example, like when we do group coaching, like the coach doesn't choose the clients. Right? Even as a doctor, I don't choose my patients. And so I don't know. I'm sure y'all are amazing. I think there was a very careful selection process, but I am purposefully blind to it. Right.

So I actually know very little about, some of you all I know just because I like the work that you do, but I'm going to pretend that I don't, you know, don't. But actually, I purposely try to come into this completely blind so that I have no preconceived notions about any drama that you all have been through or that you're a good person or bad person or you play a particular video game that I dislike because I play a competitor or whatever or for example that like you know just as an example like I've been pro toss for since day one and six pool rushing is for nobs right so for all that kind of stuff we want to be like I actually have no idea how does that sound is that weird uh it's not weird at all no

Sounds good. I actually plays a third two, but, you know, random. Good to hear. Any other questions? I commend you. Can I not go first on introductions? Absolutely. Do other people okay with metric seconds and not going first?

So I want to commend two people already, Ruby, for actually asking a question. Because I don't know if you know this, but like, you know, like, most of the time, if someone's like, does anybody have questions, no one ever asks a question. You'll notice that? So I commend you for actually taking the opportunity. And you've actually opened the door. I don't know if you'll get this, but you've opened the door for other people to ask questions. Do you get that, Ruby? So if we want to really dive in before we get into it, which I can't help myself,

do you all think metric seconds would have been more likely or less likely to share his concern about going first if Ruby had not asked a question? I'm going to go on a woman and say less likely. Yeah. Right? Did you notice that metric seconds that like you sort of like since someone broke the ice, it was easier for you to break the ice? Oh yeah. Right?

So that's really cool. So like he was able to share a concern that he's got. And we haven't asked you for your pronouns yet. So apologies if I, you know, misgender anyone. But and like. No, you got it. But that's really awesome. So I think participation in the group is going to make things easier for everyone.

So strong work for both y'all. One person for asking a question and the second person for letting us know what their boundary is. Right? So now we're going to learn how to respect that. So let's do introductions. Do you all want me to go first or do you want me to go in the middle or do you want me to go last? Where would you like to go? Damn it, Ruby. This is your main thing. I assumed I would go first, but out of politeness, I gave people the choice. Then go first.

Okay. Thank you. I will go first. Other people okay with that? So what I was thinking in terms of introductions is tell us. you know, what you go by or what you want to be addressed by. Please also, this is a chance for you to tell us a little bit and all the viewers about your stream, what kind of stream you do, things like that. And I personally would love to hear a little bit about how you got to be a content creator, like why you became a content creator. And also, just to kind of kick things off, one of the challenges or struggles that you face is a content creator. So name, if you want to specify your pronouns, you're more than welcome to. Tell us where we can find you and learn more about you

if we want to see how awesome you are at streaming. And then tell us why you kind of got into content creation and the challenge that you struggle with. Is that cool? Okay. So my name is Alloak. Y'all can find me at Healthy Gamer underscore G. So I'm a Twitch streamer, but I'm also a psychiatrist by training and spent several years studying to become a monk. I got into streaming. because as I was working with gamers predominantly originally at the beginning, I realized that most of the conversations I was having with them were like I was repeating myself. So I'd work with 50 people. And like with all 50 of those people, I would explain the same stuff about stress, about anxiety, about, you know, identity, things like that.

And I just got to wondering, okay, what would happen if I have a public conversation? Could people who were watching benefit? And that's how I started content creation. One of the challenges that I have as a content creator is everything besides the content creation. So there's a lot of stuff that you have to do as a content creator, which is not streaming. I kid you all not, this is the most excited I am about streaming in like the last three months. Because I love actually like talking to people, working with people, being with people. And there's a bunch of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, which is work that I find very dream.

I think. Oh, y'all can call me Allocor Dr. Kay, whichever one you feel more comfortable with, by the way. Thank you. Who's next? I'll go next. Cool. All right. Hi, I'm Michael. I go by Smirky.

You can just call me Smirky for the sake of this. He and him, his pronouns. Let's see. I have been streaming for, I just celebrated 10 years of streaming. I started on YouTube in 2012 and then came over to Twitch around 2015, 2016, and got partnered in 2018. I am a LGBTQI-plus variety streamer. I started out streaming a game called Tune Town. It used to be a Disney MMO from way back in the day.

So there's probably some nostalgia happening right now for quite a few people. The game is still around, even though Disney shut it down, like almost nine years ago. there's like a community that's kept the community alive. So it's really fun. I always love playing Tune Town. But recently I've been streaming all kinds of other games. I tend to play games that are like multiplayer, you know, interactive. So even a game like Cold of the Lamb that's like single player,

but like you get the Twitch integration and it's like super interactive. I love that stuff. I also do a bunch of charity streaming as well. So we've raised over $65,000 for various charities since I, first started fundraising for charity, which is great. Thank you. It's really great, just helping out, using my platform for like a cause much bigger than myself. And I absolutely love to do that. I also just recently graduated college in December, like last December. So I know a lot about like streaming while you're in school and things like that, trying to like, like, how do you balance that?

And then also, what am I missing? I'm missing something else. Any challenges you face as a streamer or anything in particular that you find challenging? Yeah. Yeah, for me, I guess lately it's been the shift from like streaming specifically just like one sole game and catering to that particular audience. And now that I've like broadened my horizons as I continue to do that, starting to do more variety. like, you know, I guess kind of like both catering to that audience and also like a new audience. And then also like consistency has always been a struggle for me too, especially while I was in school,

like not really having much of a schedule. So that's something I'm kind of experimenting with right now. And yeah, that's all I got, I think. Awesome. Thank you so much. Smirky. Thank you. Yes. Anyone feel like going next? Yeah, before I forget. Hi, I have ADHD. That's why I'm sat here the whole time going, say the word. So, hi, my name's Ruby. I've been streaming on Twitch for about seven years, six years. I can feel my heartbeat. Hold on.

You got this. and wellness content. And that's kind of come around because of my own anxiety and stuff. So I do ASMR, but I base it all around more meditation kind of content. I recently qualified this year as a sound therapist. I do sound baths.

And I'm currently training to become like a meditation coach to help other people. So I started streaming, playing games because I was lonely playing games and watching other people on Twitch and I thought, hey, I should try playing games with some other people on Twitch and see how that goes. And I found it made my anxiety worse. Streaming and just like getting focused on numbers and who was watching me and growth and I got partnered while I was gaming. and doing like body paint and creative kind of stuff. I just got so wrapped up in like numbers and everything and I was really depressed as well

and I was really struggling just to go live every single day and I then trained as a yoga teacher because I wanted to quit streaming and I love yoga. I've been doing yoga about 10 years. I wanted to do something. I thought I wanted to do something to help other people, but I realized my yoga teacher training was actually a journey for myself. And it helped me. And during that yoga teacher training, I actually stayed in a Buddhist temple in London.

Every weekend, while streaming full-time during the week, every weekend, I would go and stay in the Buddhist temple for six months. and I made really good friends with the monks in there and the people that live there. And I loved getting up in the mornings and listening to their practices really early in the mornings of their gongs and everything they were doing every day and then I'd go to my yoga teacher training off in this other room

and then I'd come back out and eat with them and spend my time with them. And it was after that that I realized that I just wanted to kind of continue down that path. So I've trained as an entire yogic massage. I love doing different courses just to like meet people. And like you can always learn something. You can always, even if you're teaching, you can always be learning.

Because like nobody is perfect. And I still get anxiety. Like I think a lot of people assume that I'm absolutely fine because of the kind of content I do and I'm guiding other people, but I'm always working on my own practice. So now my aims for stream are to be in service for others and to be continually learning and growing for myself. Awesome.

Beautiful. Kind of curious, has anyone else struggled with focusing on metrics and getting depressed as a result, anxious? Okay. Yeah, been there, done that. What about people assuming you're fine when you're not and struggling to go live every day? Awesome.

That's part of the thing about being a content creator, right? Yeah. That's just part of the job. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Those are both bullets on our nine-point curriculum. So we'll see when is the right time to dive in. anyone else want to introduce themselves or who wants to go next go for it sure i can go next um so my name's josh otherwise known as zell on the internet um i've been content creating for a good while so

basically how i got into it was uh i graduated from college um and i so i went to mechanical engineering hoping to get into the aerospace industry. And that year, I was applying to Raytheon, and they put me on a hiring freeze because Congress had cut a bunch of aerospace funding that year. So I was like, okay, I kind of have this weird year where I kind of just like waiting, doing nothing. And so I decided that I was going to make content

because that was something that I was always interested in. At the time I was playing a lot of League of Legends, streaming, like before even Twitch what existed, it was back when people were streaming on owned and adjusted.tv and stuff like that. And like, and I would watch some of my favorite league players streamed back then.

And so I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then also in that time, I started applying to random places and I got like an offer to be a video producer for Team Curse at the time for their league team. And so that's kind of my entry into it was that I gave up engineering and my expensive college degree to go with my dreams or something.

So that's what got me into it. I started streaming league, and then I think most people probably know me from my time in offline TV or I used to host a show for Riot Games called AllChat. So that's probably where people have mostly heard of me, and now I stream just a bunch of nonsense. And that's who I am. As far as struggles, God, what don't I struggle with?

I struggle. I think the big one is kind of related to how people know me from, which is Offline TV and Riot Games. I feel like in a lot of ways, like COVID hit me pretty hard. Like during COVID, I kind of stopped content creating. I kind of lost my drive to do so. And then so now it kind of feels like I'm starting over and I don't. have the same momentum that I felt like I had in years past. And so there's this constant feeling of like, how do I live up to my own standards that I used to have for myself before? And like kind of

building off what Ruby was saying about metrics and stuff. Like that is this always hanging in the back of my mind that like, you know, people have heard of me, but people don't care about me anymore. And so like how do I live up to other people's expectations? How do I live up to my own expectations? And I think like that has been a big primary struggle for me as a recent. So yeah. Thanks for sharing Zell. I can go next. So I'm metric seconds.

Everyone calls me metric. He, him. Totally fine. I've been streaming almost six years. One of your mods just yelled at me to get out of chat. I'm so sorry. And so I originally

got into streaming because I had a really fun stomach illness that stopped me from going out and being social with my friends and I was looking for ways to actually be social and eventually I you know moved on from YouTube let's plays that I used to watch all the time to realizing oh there's Twitch and realizing that I could just talk to a bunch of people that liked the same thing I did.

And then I kind of thought, you know, it would be cool if more people who looked like me were streaming, because I noticed that it's not very common. And also, it looked fun. So I saved up for a computer and built it myself and started streaming. and yeah, six years in, I kind of made my name on Deathless Runs in Darkest Dungeon. I put 3,300 hours plus into that game so far. Sequels okay so far, it's not complete. But I beat myself mercilessly in that game while that game also beat me just to beat it without

dying and when I finally did it on the hardest setting, I had no idea what to do with myself. I got partnered in that time, but after that, I didn't know what to do. And the goals after that just seemed meh. like I play every other game now in variety on the hardest setting just because I don't know if I feel like I should or just because I can or I just like suffering or I don't know but that's that's what I do and I don't care how many times I die or I fail or my soul gets crushed. I think even how I present myself right now with the knives kind of speaks to that. It's like I'm very, that's my personality of I have to fight something. So now I'm like practicing to like no hit cup head or, you know, beat rimrolled on the hardest setting or I hate myself. I'm sorry, that's, that's me.

But yeah, I love, I love doing it. Like, the sense of accomplishment when you get it, that's, that's the fun part. But after all that time, those years in Darkest Dungeon, it's sort of like looking at the numbers and the viewership and everything, just drop off. I just sort of wonder like did I deserve all that success that I had back then and where am I now and is a variety of thing that I really should be doing or should I just do the thing where I do one game

over and over and then not be happy just doing that but everyone else shows up for that. And is that really any different from a 9 to 5 job where you do the same thing over and over again that you don't necessarily love? And I don't know. I don't know.

So I have days where I feel like an abject failure and then other days where something goes right in on top of the world. So yeah. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing metric. Thank you. Zerr Girl, do you feel comfortable introducing yourself? Oh gosh, I'm last.

Hey, everyone. My name is Kathy, aka Zergerl. I've been streaming on and off on Twitch for like the past 10 years or so. And it's just been everyone's like talking about all the variety games they've done. Obviously, for me it's just been nonstop StarCraft, 95% of the time. I mostly just stream StarCraft. flatter, you know, playing team games with friends or getting coached by other people. And my streams consist of me kind of going over gameplay or just like what's going through my thoughts at the

time. So that's the majority of the content that I create. And streaming was something that I picked up when I was in college at the time. That was just in TV around that long time ago. and people were just telling me like, hey, Kathy, you play this game. It's getting popular on Twitch and Justin TV. You should try sharing it with folks. And then once I started streaming, a lot of people were interested in the game and talking about it. So just kind of picked up from there.

And then I realized I can make some money off of it as well as opening lots of doors of opportunities. I would say like my streaming experience was very helpful into where I am. today. Right now I work at Activision Blizzard King, so the company that actually made the game. My background also consists of working at Minecraft as well and a bunch of other service jobs like waitressing and whatnot. And one of the challenges I have these days is kind of balancing that corporate job and streaming and trying to maximize my happiness from both. But yeah, nice to me, everyone. Thank you. So thank you all so much for such substantive introductions. Let me just explain a couple of things. So the first thing is that every day, or first couple days, we're going to actually teach y'all particular communication skills. So it's been our experience that if you want to run a group effectively, part of what you actually have to learn how to do is, like, there are certain skills that we're going to use to help each other.

learn about ourselves and to like bring sort of information out. Okay. The other thing that I want you all to notice is that people's introductions were of varying length, right? And that's actually perfectly okay. So on any given day, someone, we may focus on one particular person or one particular issue more than other people. And that's like, that's totally fine. And over time, though, over the course of eight weeks, what we sort of want to make sure that we do is we sort of give everyone their fair share or try to help everyone in a substantial way. So here's kind of an interesting question. Who's responsible for making sure that we have balanced participation? All of us, right? So that means to be a little bit careful about, you know, just being mindful of who's

participating, who isn't. And this is where things get kind of tricky, right? Because if someone's not really talking, what do we do about that? that. Ask them to participate. Participate more, Zell? Objectly. I guess not accusingly. Encourage them to contribute. And how do we do that? Ask a question. Yeah, so I want y'all to think a little bit about when do you feel the most comfortable participating, right? And oftentimes it's a question. So if you all notice that someone's like not participating in the discussion, you all can absolutely loop them in. Okay? Make sense? Any questions? So I'm going to just toss a couple of topics out and let me know. Actually, let me start with this. So did you all kind of notice any

themes between what people were sort of sharing? Like anything kind of jump out to you where someone was saying something and you're like, oh, that's relevant to me too. Like that's an issue I struggle with or I want to learn more about that. Anything kind of jump out to y'all when you were listening to other people? Yeah, when Smirky talked about switching to a variety. Okay. And the pain of it. It's, it's, yeah, I feel you.

I've had my fair share of going to panels and like learning as much as I can about variety streaming. Okay. For me, the, it was Zurich with the balance between, corporate and content creation because like I've been because now that I'm graduated I've been I've been toying around with the question like well do I actually finally get the chance to like be more consistent with streaming or should I like you know try and get a job to get on my feet but then how can I you know be a little more consistent with streaming so I don't know it's a

topic that's been floating around in my mind too in terms of my future but yeah Do both. That popped out. Do both. When I heard that, it reminded me, like, when I was working at Riot, but also streaming, and I was figuring that out. And so I came up with something that I tried and didn't exactly go super well. So I could share that at some point, too.

All right, cool. And I mean, it's kind of like, man, I just went through all these years of school. Like, literally, ever since I started streaming, like, it's been streaming in school, but school is always, like, first, right? And then it's like, oh, well, now I could like dive into the corporate world. I feel confident in myself, but also like it's kind of something I want to do a little more. So, you know, it's like, hey, society expects you to like get a job and do that. But it's like, hey, streaming is kind of something I like do too.

So do I run and chase with the passion or do I dabble in both a little bit? Do I dabble in streaming and see how it goes? That's definitely been on my mind. I think the answer, I'm curious of people. sort of resonate this was as someone said it earlier do more do more do it both do it all who's felt that way yeah yeah right so we can maybe dig into where that comes from how we handle it what we do about it anyone else kind of want to chime in with stuff that may have resonated with them yeah so when metric said do you just play the same game and then it turns into like feeling the same

is a 9 to 5. I'm sitting there thinking, I'm not a gaming streamer, but I know that. And I think that goes with like, whatever content you're making, when you know what brings the numbers, it's that breakaway from knowing what brings numbers and what brings happiness. And I try not to look at my view account and it's very hard to, like I don't have it on while I'm streaming. And in the kind of work that I do, I continually tell myself, if I just made a few people's day better, then my job was kind of done. But also at the same time, it's my job. And I want to be like, it's very, I find it very hard in what I do. I'm so grateful for what, like, position I'm in in life that I can do this and help other people.

And I, like, my emphasis is always on helping other people. and then I can get myself so busy that I forget about if I'm actually helping me and I think that happens not just in gaming like when you're playing the same game that's not good for your mind like monotonously doing the same thing over and over just for the numbers so yeah I was I wanted to let people know

that that's like a not just a gaming streamer thing sure I'm curious does anyone else find themselves is Ruby put it continually telling yourself something? Does that resonate with anyone else? For sure. Yeah. Is there a girl, I see you're nodding a little bit? What do you find yourself continually telling yourself?

That I'll get better at my game. I'll practice. I need to up that MMR. And then I lose for several hours straight. And I'm like, okay, why am I here? It's like a vicious cycle sometimes. Yeah, right? it's kind of interesting.

So I've got kind of a quick question for you all, and we'll give other people a chance to sort of share anything that resonated with them. So when we, do we continually tell ourselves things that we believe? I'm going to go affirmations here and affirming, yeah, basically. Yeah, affirming. If you continually affirm something to yourself, you will start to believe it and it will become your truth.

Okay. So, so, but that suggests that the, continually telling part comes prior to the believing part. Yeah, it does. Right? So that's kind of interesting. It does.

Because the continually telling us, therefore, sort of suggests that we don't actually believe it on some level, which is why we continually tell ourselves, right? Because we want to believe it. We want it to be true. So we'll dig into stuff like that potentially as well. Anyone else want to just share anything that? kind of resonated with them that someone else said? Okay. If something else pops up, let me know. So I have a list of like a ton of stuff. These are all the discussion topics. Eight or nine of

these are things that we've sort of prepped for. I think there's a lot to discuss here. So I'd like to actually start by sort of teaching a skill for the day. And the skill that we're going to be learning is digging into ambiguity. So sometimes if you pay attention, people are going to be making statements that are a little bit ambiguous. So I'm going to highlight, and digging into ambiguity is an opportunity to expand into what someone is saying. So I'm going to highlight two things that I've heard. I mean, all of you all have done this, but I'm going to sort of highlight two things that jumped out to me. So metrics said at some point, I noticed when I was streaming that other people didn't look like me. And so I find myself being curious, like, what does he mean by that?

What does he, how does he perceive himself? What did he see as other people? So that's like a good example of like, you know, if we sort of inquire about that. Like we can learn a little bit more about what he was perceiving. Maybe he feels like a little bit of an outsider, you know, like we can kind of get into stuff like that. Zell also, Zell kind of opened the door for us a little bit more. And he's like, I was trying to figure out work, work life balance and I tried something. And I can share that later if people want.

So that is Zell being polite, right? Do you all see the politeness there? I do. Somebody explain the politeness. They didn't want to take up our time or false information about us. Yeah, that, you know, being mindful of the, I guess, like the setting that we're in, all the people watching. Let's be mindful of everyone else. By the way, I'm a little bit on the sarcastic side and exaggerated side.

Zell has already pointed this out, right? He's like, if I want to bully people, I can say what you said. But so, so that's just my MO. And if that, you know, rubs anyone the wrong way, please let me know I can absolutely tone it down a notch. I am, after all, a content creator. So, um, so let's just think a little bit about this politeness. So like, who here when Zell said that, like, did we ask him about it? Is that because we haven't had time?

What are the reasons that we may not ask about it? I made a mental note to ask about it later. Right. So sometimes we've got. got to be a little bit careful because Zell is being polite. But I'll give you all kind of an example. So yeah, how's everybody's week going? Oh, my week is like, my week sucks.

I went through a terrible breakup. And then in that moment, I don't want to like bog down the group with my story. And then are you all going to ask me about the group breakup? If they want to talk about it. How do we know? If they want to share, you ask them. Beautiful. Do you want to talk about it?

So I can see Ruby's experience as a healer. in other parts of life really shining through here. Right? So one of the challenges that we sometimes face is that like we want to also respect the person's boundaries, right? Where it's like, does a person want to talk about their breakup? Do they not want to talk about their breakup? So this is where we're just going to have to figure out where our balances is a group

in terms of digging into ambiguity because the thing is zeal is polite, right? Like zeal is like, I don't want to monopolize the time. And at the same time, digging into that kind of stuff, maybe he's got a strategy. maybe we can together, piece together different kinds of strategy because work-life balance or balancing different things seems very important to people in the group. Right. So it sounds like it's an important discussion. So what I'd like, I'd love to do is for you all to be able to dig into ambiguity. And as Ruby sort of mentioned, we can just ask about it. So does anyone have an idea? If I wanted to dig into the ambiguity of metric sort of in the appearance issue, what could, how could I do that practically? I mean, you have. Mm-hmm. Zell, you go.

Oh, I mean, yeah, Zell, you go. Okay. I was thinking you would ask them to expand on exactly what they meant. Yeah. So you want to give that a shot? Um, so. Oh, yeah. You're asking me.

I was going to ask Zell to ask you. Okay. Instead of. Okay. Let's do it. Go for it, Zell. So, yeah, in this example, then metric, I would ask you, you know. Would ask.

You told. okay I'm in the moment okay so I'm asking you uh when you said that people who stream didn't look like you what it what exactly did you mean like physically or like you know could you maybe expand on that it's just that in from like I joined Twitch in I think 2016 um and I spent a lot of time checking out tons of streams and I didn't see a lot of brown people. I don't. Still, to this day, I don't. When I find one, it's like finding your unicorn.

It's like finding a happy delivery person. Delivery people are not happy. You ever find one? They're just not happy. You find one, you hold on to that. But, um, Dr. Kay, like, this is the first time I've ever shared a screen with another brown person. It's like my mom when I talk to her about this stream

She's like no one's gonna be racist to you are they? I'm like well I mean the host is brown So I think probably not You know it's his channel and I'm gonna use him as a shield He'll protect me But um I I don't see a lot of brown streamers um I see even less Brown partners, I know of like maybe a handful.

And it makes me sad. And it's not just to say that like, oh, you know, I'm brown, you should watch me. That's definitely not it. It's, you know, putting something forward that people want to watch. I just wonder if I would be more successful if I didn't have a face cam. I think about that all the time. That if people didn't know. So, you know, that's, that's what I mean.

So awesome. Thank you for sharing that. How do people feel right now? Sad? Yeah, it's never, it's never like enlightening when like the scale of, like, diversity and representation is not as great as it could or should. be and it also uh i guess reaffirms the um the drive for me to uplift you know other voices not just you know people that are like me but also the other people around me too yeah the the part about

your mom you know she's always having to think about protecting you in that way yeah you know and it just yeah it's I appreciate you sharing so that I can listen and just I understand from your point of view and yeah just help in any way that I can how do you feel metric

um I felt good sharing that terrified to even say it in from so many people because it feels like you know oh he's bringing up race uh because i'm don't like talking about it you you tend to get shouted down a lot when you say anything about it even if it's your lived experience so yeah and so let's just circle back to a couple things then we'll talk more about this but good job zell right so i don't know if you all remember, but Zell asked like a really nice question and look at what's happened, right? So like metric walks around every single day with this thought, like, I'm an outsider,

right? And that's something that I noticed too. I made another observation. I hope this is, okay, please let me know if this makes anyone else uncomfortable. But I noticed that brown people are underrepresented in the streaming community and also in pornography. You know, that's kind of like a weird observation. But I just like noticed that I'm not trying to, hopefully that makes, it was just an, like,

because we don't talk about that kind of stuff. And I'm kind of curious, as anyone else feel like an outsider in the streaming community? Yeah. I mean, it's weird because I think like, I think when it comes to like the biggest streamers, right? Like I think the vast majority of them are a white or Asian.

So like as another, you know, East Asian descent person, like it feels, weird a bit to kind of like conflate my issues on this one but I think like um I mean I think just in general and representation overall right like especially for like just speaking on my own experience as an Asian dude like growing up I grew up in the Midwest and so uh and I'm old so like back then it was like there are no Asian actors except Jackie Chan and then when Ken Jong came into the scene

which actor are you? Oh, you're Ken Jong. It was like, you know, there was no, there was nothing that people could relate you to because representation just literally didn't exist, right? And like the amount of times that I've been told that I am just the, you know, biggest, like, you know, the Jackie Chan's, the Bruce Lee's, the, you know, the symbols of age. And like, I think it wasn't until even more recently in terms of like beauty standards, too, for Asian dudes, like, you know, how is it, how frequently do you ever see an Asian, male Asian actor ever kiss somebody on screen, uh, in movies or whatever, right? So like, um, so I think that I totally empathize with you there that like, there is the sense of like, well, yeah, no one has any sort of understanding of who I am and what, like, I could even be related to because you've never even seen it, you know, like, uh, so I, I, yeah, I guess I, I, yeah, I guess I,

understand. Western beauty standards made me feel like constantly ugly. And the other thing is people come to my stream and say like, did you know you look like Cal Penn or that guy from Big Bang Theory or you know, it's like dude, I don't look like any of those people. I don't. Like I am coincidentally brown at the same time as they are. That's it. And then to be to be told that I look like another actor or something who is brown but does not look like him at all like nothing like me um it's like i'm sorry you only know of one famous brown person that's that's good for you and the the other thing that that i always found funny about brown representation and say hollywood or whatever is that they're always like the joke character um like the the goofy like sidekick character

that you're not supposed to take seriously and is probably also like, what's the word, sexually non-threatening. Like, you don't see them ever, like, being the, you know, main romance point or anything like that. So, yeah.

I also want to, I'm curious if other people resonated with this, where when Zell said, so, like, kind of, you know, appreciating. And I really commend Zell for sort of sharing this, that here's, metric talking about being brown when in streaming there's a bunch of Caucasian people, East Asian people. And he's like, wait, I'm an East Asian person too, but I feel like an outsider. And so I'm curious, does anyone else sort of resonate with this idea that I feel a particular way, but I'm not allowed to?

Like, did you all get that from Zell a little bit? That he's like, I'm not really allowed to complain because I'm East Asian. Right? I was sort of picking that up. I'm curious if anyone else sort of felt that. Zell, does that resonate with you? Like, yeah, I mean, I definitely, you know, like, was kind of, uh, I don't know what the proper word here is like, uh, implying that, yeah, right? So I'm curious. Do other people feel like there's a struggle that they have, which they're not allowed to have? Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing stuff in chat, like, first rule problems and why we demonizing the West and stuff. And it's like, you're not You're not allowed to criticize it.

Like, it exists. It's not perfect. But you can, everyone's got problems with it. You can be as white as white can be. You can still have problems with it. Like, no? So.

I'm curious. So somebody else said yeah too, right? Yeah, but mine just feels like so trivial compared to. No. And that's why, yeah. I'm calling you out. Yeah. So.

I'm being honest. Dr. Kay originally asked if you feel out of place in the streaming, like on Twitch and stuff. So I've had a lot of pressure when I started doing the content that I do now to not do the content I do now. To, I have pressure to do more gaming because I could get more sponsors. You can get into parties. You can get more sponsorships. you can get free stuff from like companies like oh why don't you do like a couple of gaming streams a week because then you can be involved in all this Twitch stuff because I'm not traditionally

Twitch you know I'm not what people think of with Twitch you don't and I'm not traditionally what people expect in the ASMR category either I'm on my own and It's taken me a long time and actually I've had coaching with one of Dr. Kay's coaches for about a year I did. I think I was one of your first people and it took it took a long time and it was still after I finished my coaching that I was like, okay, this is my superpower, not being like anyone else. and sticking to what I want to do. And every now and then there'll be something like TwitchCon, which I was made an ambassador this year, which kind of like affirmed that stick to the thing that is you kind of thing.

It kind of like affirmed all of that to me. But still going to TwitchCon, nothing felt like it was for me. and you know nothing not that I want the event to be revolved around me like I'm just one person there's loads of people there that do gaming but it it can make you feel very outsidery you know and as someone who's neurodivergent as well I suddenly realize why I hate parties I enjoy fun I enjoy gatherings I enjoy friends I enjoy people I just really struggle with events and socializing and just lots of noise and people, which makes sense as to, I only got diagnosed last year, so it makes sense as to why I've ended up where I am kind of in life.

So yeah, that's how I kind of feel outsiderish of Twitch in general. Is it okay if I ask Ruby a question? Mm-hmm. So in your category of streaming, do you feel like you you feel like an outsider because you might be written off as, like, some people write off women who do what you do

as like being an e-girl or something like that. Do you have to fight off that kind of thing? I have a lot of trouble with this. Not because I'm against, anyone else doing what they want to do and what they are doing, it's the assumptions that everyone is the same, which people shouldn't be doing to anyone in that category. Full stop, each creator is their own creator.

They shouldn't be assuming that anyone's doing anything. And then I get a lot of, I get treated that I'm like I'm acting, like I'm not like the other girls by other people in my chat. So you know the whole I'm not like the other girls kind of thing. Right. People come in and be like, it's so good to finally find someone not showing cleavage and licking a microphone. Oh, and like they instantly get timed out by my mods. I don't allow like, we're not going to talk about other people in my chat.

You either come in and you join in with my content. We're not there to bash anyone. We're not there to bring anyone down. That's like against everything that I do. And so they'll get a little time out. And my mods will say, well, you're here now and enjoy this. We don't need to bring anyone else down. And we're not having that discussion.

But people will try and poke that discussion out of me about ASMR and what ASMR is. And at the end of the day, my answer is everything will be made sexual. And everything in life can be made sexual. like from car sales they can make that sexy to football you know they used to have women painted up on the pitch in England and stuff and like if something's not sexy it can be made sexy everything can be sexual it's ASMR and

like that kind of stuff is like music to me you can't just listen to one genre of music one song and be like oh I hate music every ASMR creator is different and everyone's doing it their own way they're making sounds, they're creating content in their own way but yeah as an ASMR like I stream in the ASMR category doing meditation and stuff

because I don't know where else to go and it brings in the most viewers because most people are looking to relax a lot of people are in that category because they do have anxiety because they're looking for yeah they're just looking for that kind of content so yeah

sorry if I went on a bit long. You'd be sorry. It's very insightful. So, yeah, that's kind of how I feel like I don't fit in. So metric, how did it feel to ask a question? Nice. I mean, she went in depth and I found it exactly what I wanted to know. So I'm glad I asked it.

Cool. So I don't know if you all realize this, but we've been doing this for about 70 minutes. Does it? Wise. Yeah. Interesting, right? How do y'all understand that?

I mean, I mean, TBIH, like, if I'm going to be completely honest, like, going into this without a lot of info and not knowing everybody, I think a lot of it is just tied to pure nervousness. And, like, I, you know, I'm, I'm sitting here listening my best, but also at the same time, my heart and my brain are going, like, what is, what is the expectation here? what is the expectation among the other people? What do they want to hear? What do they expect me to say? What does Dr. Kay want to say? What do you think his chat will think of us? Like, you know, like, I'm in the moment, but I also, I'm also, like, racing on the racetrack right now at the same time.

So the time flying by makes sense to me because my brain's, like, going nuts here. Right? So, you know, anytime there's, like, a split silence, I'm like, what's the expectation? Is that, should I be filling that? Should I speak up? You know, like, hey, a Zergrel, I notice you're a little on the quiet side. Like, should I try to get you in somehow? Like, should I try?

But is it weird if I'm the facilitator now? Isn't that Dr. Kay's job? Is it weird if I step up to do? You know, like, that's like what my brain does. I literally finished speaking and went in my head, did I say the right thing? Is that what I was meant to say? Sounds like we got a lot of overthinkers in this group. Yeah.

Oh, really? No, never, never. No. Twitch streamers would never overthink anything. I think it gets worse here because we have six people in the call, so only one person can get their words out. So the rest of us are busy digging in their brains. So I feel it.

Yeah. Anyone else? So Zell, thank you for sharing. Let me think about whether this is a time that I should step in or step back. I mean, I think we all want to pull Zerk girl in. I think we would all like to. We just don't know how. How does it feel to hear that, Sirt Girl?

I'm done. I'm down to talk. I was just kind of sitting here, taking in what everyone's saying. I guess in terms of feeling ostracized or kind of lonely or set apart, even as a competitive gamer, I feel like I'm alone sometimes. But I think it's a little bit unique because StarCraft used to be super popular back then. Nowadays, when I go to events, yeah, there's other gamers and streamers there, but they've heard of StarCraft.

They haven't really played it. So it's kind of hard to connect with people. You know, sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, let's follow each other's channels. let's like play games together it's really fucking hard to teach starcraft to someone like sometimes they come into my channel they don't know what the game's about and they're like i'm dizzy what's going on like and then i'm just like or i miss like something that they were saying so kind of adds i can understand the loneliness part of it because it's like oh it'd be awesome if i can meet other people who stream under my category and sometimes i'm like maybe i should try out league of legends or valorin or

night and then I just go back to StarCraft. So yeah, I kind of understand the loneliness aspect of that. Yeah, me too, except just from an unsaturated directory that is Tune Town where sometimes no one is streaming, sometimes 20 people are streaming. You know, when I want to like, you know, get involved with more things, it's like I'm not doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. doing so there are only so many things I could possibly like, you know, throw my hat in the ring for. So I can emphasize with that from that perspective. Do you still stream Tootown? Yeah, I do.

I have some friends who are diehard Tutank online fans and I have to send them away. It's only fair. We were streaming Tootown front page yesterday. So very much still on the. on the list of, on my repertoire of being type. Is there a girl? I'm curious, what was behind the question? Do you have a sense?

Because Tune Town is a very old game, older than Starcraft. I was like, I wanted to get an idea. Because even if StarCraft is older, we still kind of have a community. We have tournaments going on, offline, online. So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of compare, like, the level right yeah it's very yeah it's very like small but also tight knit like there's you know i always see

like a good amount of people repeatedly within the little tune town community that we have um and it's nice to always see those people again for sure i'm curious for um metric zelle and ruby i'm wondering if y'all are feeling like this is the beginning of a conversation there's something about Starcraft and Toon Town do you all are you all kind of feeling that like what do you what do you think could be going on in Zurgirl's head like why is she inquiring about Tune Town like where could this conversation go

networking no um I don't know I mean they feel they feel kind of similar like yeah what feels similar the feelings they're both having good like about about their situations and about the game they play and what are the feelings that y'all are noticing what what's the resonance of the wavelength here the sense of isolation yeah yeah in the content

that you create um and yeah i guess like smaller communities or at least trying to like foster and maintain those communities. Yeah. I think this is probably just, you know, there's a lot of empathy here in the similar sort of situation with the games with like, I mean, as somebody who loves Super Smash Bros. Melee,

it's like a super niche game from, you know, 20 years ago. It's old enough to drive if it was a person. But like, you know, just this idea that you could be doing something that's more worthwhile, like something that's flavor the month. And like, always that tension of like, do I do this thing that is niche, but is like a big part of who I am,

or do I go after something that I know does really well? And then on top of that, it's also that like we're people, we're multifaceted. It's not like, you know, maybe you have streamed StarCraft all your life, you've streamed tune town all your life, you know, but that's not all you are, right? It's not like that's the only thing you've been interested in. And so like also collating that with, you know, your other interests. Like, it's tough as a a streamer to have to make that decision. And I think that's the kind of empathizing point that I feel like we're, uh, we're starting to hear a little bit.

What do you all think, uh, Zergirl and, and Smurkey is, is Zell metric or Ruby? Are they on, on the pulse of it? They, they, I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm, I'm going to make a slightly, metric, you wanted to say something? No, it's agreeing. Saying, yeah.

Yeah. So like, look at that, right? So the first thing I want to point out is like, How cool is that, that with just one question and a little bit of back and forth, we can see so much of what these people are feeling. And so now I'm going to make a hyperbolic statement, which is supposed to be kind of almost emotionally engaging. What do I do if I'm a streamer in my niche is a game that's dying?

That's something I had to, that question was running to my head when Disney was shutting down downtown. We had like a month's notice. and that entire month, I was like, it's like, Tune Town's your entire brand. Now what do you do? What do you, like, how are you supposed to, like, you know, because it's like you worry about your audience, you worry about like the community itself,

like what's going to happen. It, those were definitely tumultuous times. It kind of happened to me, too, when Darkest Dungeon 2 was released in early access because the hype for that was huge, but at the same time, that game is practically dead on on Twitch half the time because it's waiting for content updates and it's hard to play it right now when it's only half done um and to that end it actually

killed a lot of the hype around the first game so it's like you can't do any of it really and be as successful as you were before so now i got to go looking for other things I don't want them to be exactly super similar because I already did the same thing for 3,000 plus hours. So absolutely. Yeah. Right. So I just want to call attention to the amount of time. We've got about 10 minutes left.

With the group's permission, I'd like to take an opportunity to try to summarize today and also maybe do a little bit of teaching. Is that okay? So normally, I think I may teach a little bit more. I may ask for a little bit more time towards the end, but y'all were doing just such an awesome job of like opening things up, inquiring, resonating with each other that I, you know, I just like, got to let it, got to let it keep going. Everyone was viving. I think it was good.

So the first thing is that I want to thank everyone for being here today. I want to also acknowledge the awkwardness of it, right? So part of the group experience, I know it's tough, but like part of the group experience, is kind of sink or swim. And this is the kind of thing where, like, I was also tracking participation. And, you know, I'm paying attention to who's talking, who's not talking. And I really appreciate that y'all lifted that with me.

So we were all noticing, right? So, like, and this is where, like, Zergold was a little bit quieter, but she's also, like, giving other people space, right? Because people have stuff to say. And so, like, we want to give people space when they have something to share. and like in the process of giving people space and because silence is awkward, right? Someone's got to fill it. Someone's got to fill it.

Don't do that. Yes. Someone's got to fill it. I didn't think the silence is awkward. Oh, sorry. I quite like it. Right? Cool, huh?

So now we're going to learn. There are different perspectives. We learn something about group. So if we want Zura Girl and Ruby to participate more, we've got to figure out what's our, like, silence threshold here. because us people that like can't handle it like you know we're going to dominate the conversation unless we can learn to handle it and also what would our lives be like if we could tolerate silence you know like what would that be like if you could just be patient so i think a lot of today is just about this is the tutorial basically right we're like not really sure how to play this game i also want to acknowledge what zell was saying that y'all are you know content creators so it's very hard for us to be fully present because we're thinking about, you know, what does Twitch chat think?

Like, are we doing it right? Are we doing it wrong? Like, and that's where like, y'all are doing it right. But doing it right actually means not knowing how to do it. And this is actually, I would say, sorry,

I would say that silence is terrifying as far as being a content creator because dead air typically in most streamers' lives is no. Like, you want to run away from it? that not not always right not like you press you press go live and you're waiting for someone to pop up and chat just like hey how you

do it and then and then you just you got somebody to talk to at least right so but what when if it's just this group not being streamed I think silence isn't as scary for me but knowing that like so many people are watching

and nobody's talking that's that's like multiplied tenfold than like if I was just streaming by myself. Yeah. So. CEO, my stream, if my chat's gone quiet, I just assume they're all chilling. Like I have people come in and you, they're like, yo, hey. And they're like, why you're so quiet? There's 400 people here. Why chat dead? And the model be like, shh. Middle of a sound bath. We're meditating. And then they'll put some little like emotes in. A few people will pop up and be like, boop, boop, and then it'd be quiet again. And but it took that, yeah. Yeah, it took me a while to learn that that's okay.

So I'm noticing that metric has been conditioned, right? This is conditioning. Yeah, I have to engage at all time. So this is one of the challenges of being a streamer, is streaming conditions you to behave a certain way. And then part of the challenge of being a streamer will get to this is that then that conditioning spills over into other parts of your life. because the way that streaming shapes your brain, you carry that brain with you,

everywhere you go, into your interpersonal relationships, into your romantic relationships, into, you know, being on for your friends, and now you're a streamer, and that's how people identify you, and what kind of judgment does that come with, etc. So there's a bunch of stuff that gets tangled in.

So my hope is that we can explore this kind of silence thing. I think we're going to have to figure it out as a group. We're not saying that metric S&S. to become fully comfortable with it, but he's got to be able to tolerate it to give people space to step in. So we're going to focus on that a little bit. But I think today was the tutorial. You all did an awesome job. It's going to be awkward. It's going to continue to be awkward. But that's actually the point. Because I want y'all to appreciate for a second or think about we retreat from awkwardness. And when we retreat from awkwardness, we actually like it impairs our

growth a little bit, right? If we think a little bit about our comfort zone and like extending our comfort zone out into becoming comfortable with more things, there's that barrier of comfort between comfort and uncomfortable where like it's kind of awkward. So we're going to like figure this out because this is a weird situation. People don't talk like this. You don't meet someone for an hour and people are like, yeah, like, you know, I feel racially isolated. I feel like, you know, the game that I'm in is dying and now I don't know if I should variety stream and then like but there's a lot of common themes here right because and Ruby's like okay I'm going to do ASMR and that's my niche and that's like my journey and like it went really well and and now I'm an ambassador for TwitchCon

and now it's like you know I'm wondering if if Smirky's kind of thinking well if I keep on streaming tune town will I be an ambassador for TwitchCon one day like who knows right what's the right what's the right answer and so what I'm going to kind of leave you all with because I don't have too much time for a summary, which is totally fine, is I think next week, what I am going to suggest we talk about, but if we go off track, that's totally fine. The one theme that I heard today that I thought was kind of dominant, I mean, there's a lot actually that were dominant, but like, is this idea of metrics and numbers and making the content that you want to or selling out? Do I change games? Do I become a niche? Do I start becoming a variety streamer? What do I do

when my game isn't working? Do I lean into like, do I become a content creature? Am I an artist? Who isn't going to, you know, give in to the changes? And if I switch over to Lull, no offense to Loll. You know, or Valerent or Apex or whatever people are playing, GTA roleplay. You know, do I need to do that? And what does it mean to be a streamer?

Do I chase the numbers? How much do I chase the numbers? you know, so here's what my experience has been as both a content creator and having worked with other content creators. So this is like where the teaching comes in. So it's our belief at Healthy Gamer, we may be wrong here. And let's be fair, we're not the most successful in terms of content creation, right? So we're not like the biggest content creators on the planet.

But it's my belief that the best content comes out of like an authentic desire to make something. when you're like your authentic creative self. And when you kind of take that authenticity and then play the metrics game, that's when you become the most successful. So it's not sacrificing yourself and selling out for the sake of metrics. But it's also like we've got to be honest here as being content creators. We can't just show up and make art and ignore all the numbers, ignore all the trends and things like that. It's all about, and I think y'all have also brought this up a lot about balance, right? So how do you access those parts of yourself that are, you know, authentic? And this is where,

you know, I'm kind of thinking about StarCraft because I love StarCraft. StarCraft is the reason that I almost failed out of college. I love the game. So I played it a ton. And there's a part of me that's so grateful that Zergirl still plays StarCraft. because, like, I love RTS. Like, where is RTS in the gaming world now? It's an amazing genre. But then, like, how do you microtransact RTS? Like, we don't know how to do that.

So people don't make RTS games anymore. You can't make RTS pay to win. No one would play. And if it weren't for people like Zer Girl, or I mean, I'm not particularly familiar with Toon Town or whatever, but, like, you know, how do you, like, how do you keep this, like Zerkel's keeping it alive? You know, so how do you balance these things?

How do you balance who you are as a creator, what you want to build in life with the metrics, with the job, you know, with the like, okay, what do I do? Like, how do you figure out what this balance is? How do you invent yourself or reinvent yourself or stay true to who you are? Because here's the one thing that I'll say about content creation. What makes content creation different? from all these other forms of entertainment is the authenticity.

When you watch a movie, it's crafted, it's edited. There's makeup, there's this, there's this, it's like, processed. When you watch TV, it's processed. We even have reality TV, which pretends to be authentic. But I don't know if you all have heard of like, you know, people who've been on reality TV shows

and how actually like artificially inflated it is. Yeah. But what y'all are is authentic. You don't have the production budget to be fake. Right? I mean, literally, my roommates were like standing behind my setup trying to get me to laugh just a moment ago. Like, I can't try to, I can't fake that. And so the reason that that content creation of this kind is growing is because I think there's an appetite out there for like authenticity.

And when I think about, you know, you guys, y'all think about y'all's community. And I think the reason that you all have the community that you have is because of your authenticity. It's because, you know, you've got to play the game of trends a little bit. So next week, what I'd love to do is kind of dive into that because I think that's a lot of the essence of being a content creator is the struggle between, you know, what kind of content do I make? And talking a little bit about balance. How does that feel as a topic? Good. Sounds great.

Cool. I had something else, but I forgot. Yeah, I'm blanking. Oh, yeah, and just... I'll tell you know it's not scripted. So, Del was saying, like, am I supposed to talk? Am I not supposed to talk? Honestly, just to share this, you all, I wasn't sure either.

Because it's like, you know, honestly, y'all kind of threw me off because y'all did outperform what I was expecting in terms of authenticity, picking things up. Like, usually I have to, like, I'm pulling the wagon. but y'all were just like pushing it from behind so it was actually like kind of easy like i didn't have to mention participation people noticed it on their own y'all didn't let each other get away with it you know like ruby like like like i said at the very beginning i'm like does anyone have questions first time i can think of where someone's actually asked a question and so it's it's that energy that y'all are bringing to the table and when zelle is talking about the parallel thought

process by the way i don't know what else to call it this is something we're going to talk about as well right was as a content creator it's actually hard to be present because you've got the tricks running above. You're there creating content, but you're always kind of wondering. And then we even figure out some tricks like Ruby does, which is like, I'm going to turn off the viewer account because I want to be present. And so now it's like you're struggling because the most present and the most authentic is when you make the best content.

But you also want to know what gets viewers to stay and what gets viewers to leave because that's how you grow. and how do we balance growth and authenticity? How do we balance making the content that we want to? And if you're a partner and like, you know, getting paid because like it's hard to have a job and create content. So sometimes I'll assign homework. Nothing's really popping for me right now.

Do people want homework? No, thank you. Okay. So one note. There are two kinds of people in this world. No, that makes sense. I'm down. Other people.

Validate me. Validate me. I just, yeah, that's... How do people feel? Other people. I'll take optional homework. Okay. If my mods are watching, can you please write homework down?

So it's not going to be like, you know, write an essay about moral themes in Dostoevsky. So I just want y'all to think a little bit about... So let's pick one of two things. So we're going to focus on balance. but I'm going to give you all a choice, okay? The first is balancing like work stuff with life stuff. And the second, sorry, streaming stuff with like non-streaming stuff. So that could be work, it could be life, it could be personal relationships.

And this is the direction that the group wants to go in versus balancing like authenticity versus metrics. And like creating content for the sake of like passion and love versus like this whole like, well, at this point it's become a nine to five. And the whole reason I became a streamer is because I did. didn't want a job where I have to wake up every day and do the same damn thing. So what resonates with y'all more? I like the second one more because streaming is mostly my life. I'd forgotten the first one by the time you finished the second one. That's why I was laughing.

I was like, okay. Gigi. So the first one was, so like basically streaming, non-streaming balance and the second was like like authenticity versus metrics. The second one. Yeah, the second one. I mean, and we can always touch on both these topics if we really want to throughout the course of this whole thing, right?

So, I mean, yeah, so I'm totally down to do the authenticity side of it. Because I always say, like, I preach authenticity, like we're an authentic community. But like, it's also good to like talk about it with others and really pinpoint what that means. So. Zal, Zergirl, you all have opinions? I'm going to go against the mold and the first one I resonate with more but that said they both have things that I you know relate to so I'm also down and if we're going to get to both then I'd you know defer to the group on which we hit first sir girl did oh huh okay so I'll start

well this is the homework okay it's going to be simple so you guys could write an essay if you want to, you can think about it in the shower if you want to, you can do whatever you want. But what's the cost of authenticity? And what's the cost of playing the metrics? Does that feel okay in terms of homework? We'll start. Yeah. Awesome.

So just before we wrap up, I'd love to just get feedback from y'all if you guys want to share kind of initial impressions, questions, whatever, give you all sort of a chance. Like, no more substantive discussion, okay? But just like, admit, like, you know, how did you all feel this went? Or if you guys have any questions or anything like that. And lastly, if you all want to take a moment to tell everyone who's watching where they can find you once again? A quick question. Is because we have another participant who couldn't make it to this.

So are they going to introduce themselves at the start of the next session? What do you all think? Only there. I would think so. Yeah? Right? Yeah. Yeah.

I would think so. I just wanted to make sure. Good for you for looking out for the other people. Yeah, it wasn't my plan that if you miss session one, you never get to introduce yourself, but we have to just guess what your name is. Just this random person shows up with. It was all my mind. It was a good question.

No, it shows that you're looking out for members in the group, even if they're not there. He's a good egg. I'm going to be honest. like feedback wise I like can't even wrap my head around it because like you know we talked about kind of our goals here but it also feels like the discussions don't necessarily have a specific goal we're kind of like developing it as we go and so my brain because I'm very like I like having my objectives in front of me it's very hard for me to think of like proper feedback over you know

over this thing that doesn't have like a specific directive behind it and so I I'm like, is it going well? I hope it's going well because I feel really awkward. It's hard for me to think about what I want to save and how to handle group dynamics and all this stuff. So it's like it's a lot to handle personally. And so it's hard for me to even say if this is going well or not for me because I also don't know the specific directive like I said before.

So I'm just, I'm biving, I guess. And I mean, I'm excited to see where this ends up going because like it's hard for me in the moment to understand like where are we going? Great question. So Zell, first of all, top-notch feedback, bro. Seriously. Right? So Zell shared with us what his, like, he's like, what on earth are we doing here? So I'd love to, because you like objectives, we're going to bail you out a little bit, okay? So here's been my experience working with people. There's a couple different ways you can help people. One is you show up and you say, hey, by the way, here's an eight-week curriculum. I've never met any of y'all before, but I have all the

answers. And I'm going to give you this on week one, and it's going to help you, and it's going to give you this on week two, and this on week three, this on week four. But in my experience, that actually does not help people very much, because there's no individuality of it. Now, you can organize a class that way, but the whole point of the group coaching experience is that it doesn't have to be a class. So we have opportunities available, which we don't need a curriculum that goes from week one to week eight. Now, that makes people really confused and very uncomfortable, because that's not how school works. We're conditioned to be told what we need to do to improve.

But the whole point... I was about to say, though, but that's how my brain works. The way, like, this conversation that we've all heard today is fine for me. So they're definitely different people. The open format is more comfortable for some people, and some people are more organized, right? Mechanical Engineering degree makes sense. And also, the other thing that I'm going to share with you, Zell, is just a kind of hypothesis,

is that oftentimes when people come in with a problem, that's actually not the problem. So there's this concept that I think originally sort of came out from Carl Jung, where he said that in our psychology, we have this part of our psychology called the shadow. And the shadow is the part of our psychology that we're not really aware of. It's the stuff that we suppress. And so by definition, all of our problems come from the shadow, or most of our problems come from the shadow. And the reason they come from the shadow is because the stuff that we're aware of is the stuff that we know how to fix. It's the stuff that we're unaware of that we haven't addressed, right, because we're not aware of it.

We don't realize it's a problem. So the challenge there is that if I can see 180 degrees in front of me and I'm running into trouble, and I'm not aware that there's anyone behind me or anything behind me, then I'm going to naturally say, hi, I need help with this thing in front of me, this thing in front of me, this thing in front of me, this thing in front of me, this thing in front of me. But what I don't realize is that most of my problems are actually the stuff that I've never considered or I'm unaware of. That's the other reason why the open format actually works really well, because you can come in and say, I struggle with this, I struggle with this, I struggle with this.

But here's the thing. All we all are successful content creators. All of y'all are good at what you do. All of y'all can optimize. All of y'all have success in your past and hopefully in your future. And so if we really want to deliver the most value to you, the exploration comes before. Right? So in medicine, we say good diagnosis precedes good treatment.

I'm not going to give you all a treatment. I'm not going to give you any treatment technically, but we're not going to give you the answers on week one. And I think it's actually arrogant to assume that we would. And like I said, I've got a curriculum prepared and, you know, a lot of it's similar. But this is where I know it's going to be unusual for you, Zell, which is totally fine, right? And we're going to help you become more comfortable. But that's part of the reason that we do it this way, because you may be surprised at what's holding you back. You may be surprised. You may think, like, oh, like, do I do the metrics or, you know, I'm known for this or stuff like that?

And, like, there may be a lot of core stuff here. I mean, I remembered a couple of things that kind of jumped out to me that were sort of like, you know, what's going on with this person. And, like, Who are you? Because when it comes to like, you know, what's the right choice? Do I do this or do I do this? There's not like a right choice and a wrong choice. The choice depends on you. So we have to start by understanding who you are.

Right? So I'll give you all just one simple example of this. So we talked about the theme of loneliness. And this is the kind of thing where if you're lonely and you're making content to fix your loneliness, what kind of content would you make? Versus if you learn how to no longer be lonely, you deal with that loneliness in here, what kind of content can you make?

It's kind of a weird abstract question, right? I don't know if it makes sense to people or not. It may just be a bad question. But that's where, like, what we want to do as content creators is we want to, like, learn about ourselves. We want to, like, you know, grow as people. And then we want to be free from all of our negativity when we make content. And so it's going to be a little bit weird.

I don't really know where it's going. But what I do know is I've done this time and time and time again, and it tends to work really, really, really well. Is that enough structure for you, Zelle? I think that makes sense, yeah. Other feedback? Thoughts? From a technical standpoint?

I know I was told not to look at chat. I'm sorry, but I looked at chat. There were some people who said that they weren't sure who was who. and so like maybe in the next streams we could have like labels or whatever on everyone's camera and some people are asking for links yeah in the stream or the guest command or whatever so yeah so why don't we take this opportunity for you all to just reintrodu just tell people where they can find you and what kind of streaming you do right so for people who missed the beginning. Oh, yeah, so I can respond to somebody there. So yeah, my name is not pink hair guy,

but it's metric seconds. Everyone calls me metric. I stream at Twitch.tv.tvs slash metric seconds. Oh, my God, look at that. That's beautiful. Look at the command. That was so fast. Okay. Anyway, I was not prepared. I like to play games on the hardest settings and suffer. and I run a very open and accepting community and we focus on everyone feeling safe and happy while I suffer. That's it. I'll chime in next. Hi, I'm Smirky. I, yeah, someone said that I look like Peu-Py and on the contrary, I get that a lot actually.

So, and I would actually agree. There was one time I used like one of those like apps where it's like you compare your picture and it shows someone else's picture and it showed his. And I was like, whoa, that's crazy. Anyways, going off on a tangent here. I'm the Tune Town streamer when we keep talking about Tintown. That's me. I've been streaming for about 10 years, been on Twitch since around 2015, 2016, and been partner for four years. We do a lot of charity work as well.

and I'm an LGBTIQIA plus variety streamer nowadays. So I still do the tune towns and the fun stuff. And then I'm also trying other stuff. So yeah, we have a nice positive and authentic community over here on Twitch. And it's a lot of fun. So name is Smurkey. Thank you all for having me today. I can go next since I went last time.

I don't want to be last again. My name is Kathy and I stream StarCraft on. Twitch, my channel is Twitch.tv slash Zerk girl. I know some people ask me how to spell it. So Z, E-R-G, G-I-R-L. You can find me there. I don't stream that much these days because I work full-time at Activision Blizzard King as well.

So, yeah, that's me. I'll jump in next. So I'm Zell. You can find me at Twitch.tv slash Zell. I'm gearing up to do some hardcore rating in Final Fantasy 14. I talk a lot about anime. So if you guys are into anime, you can come and chat with me about, you know, we've been having really, really good seasons of anime recently,

so there's a lot to talk about. So I do a lot of anime stuff. And then I've been also known to talk about Magic the Gathering stuff as well. You'll see me in a bunch of YouTube channels over Magic the Gathering. So you guys are into that. I see the IAS. Appreciate y'all. And yeah, come check me out at.

Twitch.tv.com. Okay. Hi, my name's Ruby True, and I create soundbaths, meditation, mindfulness, content, using ASMR as a relaxing medium and creating relaxing content. Basically, if you want to fall asleep

or you feel really stressed or like you're really hungover or a lot of people tell me they're really high. And I'm like, cool, off you go. So I don't recommend that. But yeah, if you're really stressed and you want to come and chill out, we have a really nice community of people who openly talk and chat.

A lot of us are neurodivergent, a lot of us have ADHD, a lot of us find we have a lot of the same issues of anxiety, depression and stuff. So it's a really nice community, just a place to chill out and fall asleep. And, yeah, that's me. You can find me on Twitch.tv. Ford slash Ruby True. All right.

Thank you all very much for coming today. You know, we could literally could not do the stream without you. So thank you very much for sharing y'all's perspectives, your experiences. And we'll pick up next week, Thursday at 4 p.m. Are any of y'all continuing to stream right now? I am. Okay. Then we'll just.

Yeah, I'll be streaming. Okay. So is that regular for y'all that you all stream after this time? Yeah. Okay, so we're going to raid metric this week. Oh, Jesus Christ, really? No. Who else was streaming?

Surprise. I'm not currently streaming, so you're stuck. You got it. No, I'm not ready. Oh, get angry. Get ready. You've got about five minutes because I'm going to do my closing and then we'll send you a a rain and then, you know, we'll move on from there.

So thank you all very much. Take care. Have a good weekend. We'll see you all next week.