My friend is trying to be a full time WoW streamer, and it's ruining his life

[Lavivrus-shadow-council]

@Hodir-bronzebeard

I have a friend whose channel I won’t shout out because I know some of you will go spam his chat, but he averages around ~30-40 viewers and his constant need to become the “next Asmongold” is starting to ruin our friendship.

Tom (my friend) and two others in our group (Jeff, Liam) have been playing games together for the better part of a decade now and when Tom lost his job a year ago he decided he’d try to become the next big streamer and has spent nearly all of his savings on buying $500 - 1k USD equipment off Amazon to fund his new career choice.

Is this truly his career choice? Or is this just an extreme hobby that he wants to work on with some really good equipment?
Realistically, becoming an Asmongold in the wow community is “possible” but you’ll end up seeing the same results that Asmon has seen with his previous friends, and moving on to more game focused friends who can fulfill his requirements and needs.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

The problem is that the only game he plays is WoW, and the only method of him getting new viewers is spamming Trade chat daily on our server with various messages promoting his stream.

His idol ofc is Asmongold, so he went and found every single addon/sound effect that Asmon uses for his UI and stream and his screen is near identical to Asmon’s screen.

Coming from brief experience of wanting to do something similar, I drove a lot of friends off and didn’t find the success I wanted on either end. I have since re-united with a lot of those friends, but some are gone forever. And those can’t be changed. I still talk with a few of them from time to time, but the relationship I once had with them has never mended.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

His need for attention has ruined a lot of gameplay time for us, because Liam has a demanding job and we can only play so often so when we do play he forces us to have impromptu Transmog Contests for his 20 viewers and he will literally bail after making plans with us to go back to old raids to Mount Farm in order to get reactions from his stream.

It’s time to say “no” to him and explain why.

Unless he is willing to pay you for your time spent investing into his stream, it seems like it’s not worth it for you or your group. If he is however willing to pay you for the assistance of content creation, that’s a deal you can work out on the back-end.

Additionally, this isn’t fair to “Liam” given his current work schedule. While “Liam” is on, more focus on what he wants to do should be given to “Liam” instead of “Tom”, ethically speaking of course.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

Tom has a girlfriend as well, and she’s equally as annoying by spending her time grieving out her annoyances with Tom to us and she’ll constantly complain how he will set up his stream camera and room to resemble Asmongold by keeping it dirty and unlit as well as taking on different mannerisms of his down to using his catchphrases and facial expressions in daily conversations.

I would say to have a discussion… or even an intervention… While it’s fine to have a personality that you portray on ttv or any other streaming platform, it needs to be YOUR personality, not something you’ve stolen from another person. This appears to be borderline abusive given how you’ve written it, and if that’s not the case, it’s definitely on the obsessive end and should be dealt with on a clinical level if possible.

If he’s attempting a parody stream, he’s in the wrong market.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

Liam and Jeff have all but given up on Tom, I am at my wit’s end with this guy because he just won’t stop obsessing over this Stream thing as he truly believes he will become the “next Asmongold” in his own words and I have no idea what to do.

Does he have the following:

• The knowledge Asmongold has about how the game works, functions, and evolves?

• The knowledge Asmongold has about transmog, gearsets, and exploits?

• The knowledge Asmongold has about each expansion and past experiences to back it up?

• The time investment that Asmongold has?

• The skill level that Asmongold had when he was pushing content?

• The back end supportive community that Asmongold had when starting?

If any of these are not a “yes”, some serious help needs to happen. Weather that is him finding a community to help back him with this information, continual support from his current community (which doesn’t sound fruitful at the moment), or direct connections to people who have been successful while streaming, is all up to him and his current community, and if they are willing to continue backing an effort such as this.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

How do I get my friend to drop the streaming thing so we can go back to enjoying WoW like we did?

Sad fact is, he needs to realize what is happening on his own. It seems you’ve made your mind up about how you want to handle this moving forward. Open up to him with everyone involved, and openly express how it’s making you feel. Make sure you have his attention directly with no distractions if at all possible to make your statements have the most impact they can have.

@Hodir-bronzebeard

I even tried to send his job applications through a fake email in hopes that he sees it and it knocks some sense into him but nothing works.

See the previous statement I made. Talk to him.