#it's called and they were streamers

[im-secretly-a-frog]

Debating making a third cup of tea...

[todayisafridaynight]

[amiharana]

revalink tweets inspired by @iridescentgleam's replies in my last streamer au post about zelda insinuating that link is revali's discord kitten

[mediocre-noodle]

i hate hate hate when u bring up your special inyerest and someone else goes “oh yeah i know what that is lol. its pretty alright” and i have to just take it and pretend that im normal about it and not the most insufferable person on the planet

[skoulsons]

the father-daughter relationships where they start off pointing their weapons at each other not liking the other to literally flying home together in the span of like…two days. or less. no but really. I’m dying over here.

[alanshemper]

i did a double take here before realizing that this person is just using "bourgeois" as a synonym for "middle class"

anyway spectacular media and political economy analysis by the tumblr peanut gallery, as usual

[autisticlee]

trying to stream on twitch when you are an autistic person who struggles to talk is so hard. you can't make it on there at all if you don't talk constantly, if you don't talk enough or say the right things, if you can't multitasking and converse well with your chat, cant hold conversation with your viewers, etc. normies hate "awkward silences" and will leave your stream if you are quiet for more than a few seconds.

i try to talk but mostly repeat the same scripted things like "oh no" "oops" "don't touch me" "ouch" while playing games. or I do a kind of disjointed narration of what i'm doing like "jump!" "swimming" "aim and shoot"

when people say hi in chat I say the typical scripted "hi how are you" and then struggle to respond to anything else after that, which makes people leave as quickly as they came. I can't improvise talk about things or tell stories like other streamers. I can't have a conversation with chatters.

if I did try to talk about a thing I prescripted (I'll write down things I want to say/talk about and then read them) I have to stop playing my game to talk. people also don't like that. and it takes me like 10 tries to tell the thing even if I read what I wrote down because I mess it up and have to repeat myself.

I prefer to do co-op games in discord calls so other people can talk for me and be entertaining and talk to my chat. but struggling to talk means no one will invite me to play games or accept my invites 😭

then a while back I saw this:

twitch is apparently going to be inconsiderate to disabled streamers. we can't be "consistent" because of bad health days or even months. some of us can't "engage" enough because words and talking hard. ever since I saw this, I haven't streamed. I don't know know if they actually implemented this or are going to but 😬

I might try to stream again when I have time/stop feeling sick. I was streaming genshin impact weekly and daily stuff which might not be most people's interest. I want to stream some art and 3d printed figure painting. I can't talk while doing art stuff so I can play some nice music. but it'll be boring streams 😭 I don't know how to be entertaining and make myself talk a lot 😭

[renaultmograine]

"You're okay, it's just a single mom." — famous last words of @cosmererambles in the first Iron Maiden encounter.

[kaibump]

I dunno man between all these 'have you watched' 'have you read' 'do you know this character' type of poll accounts it really seems like people under a certain age bracket straight up barely consume a lot of media or bother to watch anything older than current seasonal fodder and it's kind of sad tbh

[minecraftdog]

I'm side eyeing sapnap cuz he's bi straight up

I'm happy there's more of us 😁

not sure who do you refer to exactly, george or sapnap? is the couple dnf or issa and larray who are not a couple? or do you mean completely different situation? sorry autism moment

[bronzetomatoes]

E word?

Endearing.

[skrunksthatwunk]

my little brother's transfem weed-high gamer friend told me I'd be a good streamer bc I'm good at entertaining impulse tangents so maybe I'm doing ok. maybe that's the final push i need to start gamer streaming. so if you want long periods of silence broken up intermittently by me poorly singing pure love in kamurocho or the entire first half great comet or babbling for like 40 minutes about character bs or mechanical minutiae over a pause screen then we might be meant to be (parasocially speaking)

side note a couple hours into talking w her and my brother she went "so you guys are both autistic" kdhsgak

[c0rpsedemon]

it's starting to really sink in for me that even among gamers, nobody knows what a vn even is

[skyburger]

im watching hlvrai cast commentary & mr. radiotv himself called sunkist a "jpeg" and well. interally i went "Well actually 🤓 jpgs dont support transparency ☝️ so that would have to be a png" and dude it is finally setting in for me how much of a nerd i am. Who thinks that shit!!! well me i guess. but u know what i mean

[blazehedgehog]

Soaking this in

If you don't know what this is, here's an explanation: Both Fortnite and Call of Duty employ something called "Skill-Based Matchmaking" (SBMM for short), and it has become the bane of a certain subset of players who very vocally yell about how it is ruining multiplayer games.

In short, the game secretly and quietly keeps track of your "skill level." Even if a game has both ranked and unranked modes, it is always tracking this skill level stat that reports back how quickly and easily you're getting kills. When you connect to a new match, it tries to group you with players near your skill level.

The idea being you start with zero skill stat, and by playing the game well, your skill stat levels up until you eventually plateau and you are forever playing the game with people that are just as good (or bad) as you are, within some level of variance.

This means if you're one of these career streamer guys or a Youtube clip compilation sort of dude (or both), then you very quickly get put into high tier matchmaking pools with all the other career streamers and wannabe esports pros. Hence the very loud, very vocal complaints, because if you're one of those guys, the idea of having a "casual match" goes away. Everybody is always firing on all cylinders and you're expected to do the same in order to keep your rank and not look embarrassing to your captive audience.

So Activision apparently ran an experiment per Charlie Intel (article here) where they reduced SBMM's effectiveness, meaning the big fish pros and the little tadpole casual players were thrown into more games together.

The result was a sharp uptick in players rage quitting matches early, some even quitting the game entirely and never coming back. The report notes that while player retention for players with a high skill rank was improved, they make up such a small percentage of the player base (apparently less than 1%; the article has some grammar problems) that servicing them really doesn't make sense.

As it turns out, low level players don't want to get hopelessly destroyed by wannabe esports pros. And those pros make up such a small percentage of the player base it doesn't make sense to keep feeding them more low level chum, even though they are the hungriest for it. As more and more low level players permanently leave the game due to frustration, it turns into a wasteland where high level players are getting mad at each other until they also get frustrated and leave as well. SBMM ensures long term health for a game's multiplayer ecosystem.

And being a Fortnite player, it's so validating to hear this. "SBMM is ruining multiplayer" was always a narrative coming from streamers and youtubers who were frustrated by having to actually TRY instead of being able to score easy clip compilation fodder on clueless newbies.

Enjoy sticking to your smurf accounts now, I guess.

[criminalamnesia]

everyone’s asking for a part two so here is more angst bc cedar by gracie abrams is perfect for this [ also inspired by what @shotmrmiller said in their reblog :)) ]

part one here

part three (aka version 1 of the ending) here

part three (ending version 2) here

it’s odd coming home to an empty house. unnerving, even. he doesn’t like it— dislikes it even more than he did your celebrations. fuck, he’d kill for those damn streamers right now.

“love?” his voice is soft as he calls out into the dark, once lively little flat. it hasn’t felt this big since before you had moved in.

he takes a few more steps inside, toeing off his boots and letting his backpack fall to the floor. by now, you would’ve been launching yourself into his arms. where were you? you’d never missed the day he came home. ever. you would have it marked on your calendar from the day he left, exclamation points and stars decorating the date.

“love?” he calls again, his voice a little louder. he keeps moving; notices there’s no smell of freshly baked goods or a home-cooked meal.

he rounds the corner, his eyes instantly finding the little note propped up on the dining table. eyebrows furrowed, he approaches. it’s addressed to him, clearly in your handwriting.

he reads it, and he really should’ve seen all of this coming.

he doesn’t cry. doesn’t even feel sad, really. it’s not like he hadn’t loved you— he had, but sometimes you made it really damn difficult to. your constant touches and words, doting on him, talking his ear off about this and that. he’d loved it at first, then came to tolerate it, and eventually he found himself hating it.

it wasn’t fair to you. he didn’t hate you, he hated the naivety. the unconditional love. partners were supposed to show each other that kind of love, were they not? so why did he come to despise it?

perhaps it was some deep rooted self-hatred. something dark and twisted inside of him that had done too much and taken life. killed and killed and killed. watched his comrades die in a number of ways. slowly. quickly. suddenly. brutally.

it hollowed him out, but it was his job. it was his job to do what he could for the damn world— get his hands dirty so people like you would never have to worry about a damn thing.

he should’ve seen it coming. you had been acting a little odd the last time he was home, he realizes now. detached, almost. quieter. he had cherished the quiet then.

now it was weird. he didn’t know how to feel.

he placed the note back down onto the table before making his way into the kitchen. some utensils were missing. some plates and bowls. the colorful dishrags you’d hung from the stove handle. the little plant you’d stationed in front of the window above the sink.

all the pictures of the two of you remained on the fridge. he could see in the photos how he slowly became detached. but you— god, you wore that dazzling smile in every photo.

he turned around and headed towards the bedroom.

——————————————————————

there wasn’t really any defining closure. you’d left the note, sure, but he hadn’t gotten to speak his piece.

would he have begged you to stay? told you to leave?

he didn’t know. all he knew was that it wasn’t fair to you, how he acted. what he did.

he also knew that if you called, or if you showed up and said you forgot something, or hell, if he saw you on the street, he’d say something. apologize at least, because that’s the least you deserved.

but you didn’t, and after a few days, he stopped thinking about you. what you’d be telling him right now if you were there. stopped thinking about how you sang when you cooked dinner. how you would reach for his hand when the two of you were in the grocery store.

how you would throw those damn ‘welcome home!’ parties.

he fell back into who he was, and your memory became nothing but a minuscule dot on a large piece of paper.

but for you? you had been miserable when you’d shown up at your friends apartment. cried into her shoulder as you told her about the note. sobbed as you realized that he didn’t care about you, and how you’d wasted so much time on this man who didn’t give a damn.

but even still, when you stirred in the middle of the night, you expected to feel his hands around your body. expected him to press a kiss to your head as you drifted back to sleep.

you woke up and expected him to be there. you forgot that he wasn’t yours. you found yourself missing him, even though you’d starting doing that far before you actually left.

it took the man you loved days to move on. it took you months— almost a year. he put you in fucking therapy, for god’s sake, because that shit messes with someone.

loving someone so completely, so wholly, only to finally realize it’s one sided? it’s crushing. he crushed you. but you picked up the pieces, and you put yourself back together.

you move on. find someone who actually cares for you— someone who communicates and doesn’t lose interest. someone who appreciates your enthusiasm. someone who returns it.

and when the man that broke your heart several years ago tries to stop you on the street one day,

you keep walking.