You’ve probably heard the expression about doing something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Streaming is just a hobby for me right now, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent plenty of time thinking of what it would be like to do it full time. I mean, if you love playing video games and are comfortable behind a camera then why WOULDN’T you want to do it full time as your job? The problem that most people overlook is the level of effort that needs to go into building everything up to make it a viable source of income to support yourself in the same fashion as a more conventional full time job. A large part of that effort is often spent behind the scenes and can be very overwhelming if you don’t have help, and part of that help can also come in the form of networking.

In the couple of years that I’ve spent streaming thus far, I noticed a funny, yet sad, trend. This trend has been run into the ground and people the world over have already covered it in tweets, blogs, and vlogs of their own so why should I be talking about it on my own? Simple. I finally wanted to speak my mind about the topic after having been contacted a couple different times by different parties looking to accomplish this very activity for themselves.

The first time this trend of “networking” cropped up for me, I saw many different tweets from all kinds of people all pushing similar messages.

“Let’s all support each other and help each other grow! Follow everyone that responds to this tweet and go show each other some love.” or some such nonsense. I thought it to be absolutely dumb and tuned it out as a waste of time.

Eventually, someone replied to one of my tweets suggesting I join their Discord server for streamers with mutual goals to help each other grow. I was curious, primarily of the account that replied to my tweet. What I found was this Twitter account was replying to many tweets with roughly the same canned verbiage, but prefaced by a sentence relating to the tweet in question. After discovering that fact, I just couldn’t take it seriously.

The most recent example, and the one that helped me finally write this all up (admittedly, I had this topic in draft from since I started the The Dragon’s Grove) involved someone coming into my stream while I was live and say the following.

“Hey I just followed you, you should follow me back.”

I couldn’t believe it for a moment and had to process what had just happened. Someone had actually come into my stream and tried to casually request a follow for follow. Only thing that came to mind for me to do was to thank them for the follow but that I don’t believe in doing that follow for follow shit. I found out almost immediately after that this person was actually live on their own channel at the same time! THAT was upsetting, and was the straw that broke the dragon’s back. (Yes, I went there.)

So, why is all this upsetting? Why would I bother going through that rant? To help illustrate parts of why I don’t buy into the idea.

The Follow 4 Follow/Host 4 Host trend is like a shitty version of a Pyramid Scheme, with the exception that nobody “wins”. It’s all artificial. These people have replaced viewbotting with empty follows and hosts from real people. Sure it looks great when a channel has several thousand followers, but that number means NOTHING when you have nobody actually watching your stream. It also means just as little when you have those same exact people hosting you because chances are they share the same follower It’s just a collective of artificially inflated channels that are empty and devoid of content and community. It’s a waste.

You want to grow your channel and build a community? Don’t waste your time with that Follow 4 Follow garbage. It’s fake and yields nothing of actual value. Say it with me: Follow for Follow is Hollow.

Now, don’t waste my time peddling this idea in my channel or on Twitter. Do something that yields productive results and stop trying to find the easy way to success. WORK FOR IT.