Comment by hwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hwillis | Hacker News Reader

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And this fits the stereotype of older generations, and indeed Americans in general, failing to read or do even superficial research. This guy streams his life to tens of thousands of people... yeah, he's gonna be a little self-obsessed. It's all but mandatory for streamers to fuel the performance.

The guy streams 70 hours per week minimum[1]. That two day -more like one day- break cost him over $100,000, and cut his following (and salary, I guess? No clue how Twitch works.) by almost 20%[2]. There's no option to pick more PTO and trade off salary. He's stuck with this. Even as a "temporary" solution, that shit will take years off your life, and there are people who do this to just scrape by.

It's illustrative of how shitty a "profession" it is that the top streamers have to put in such an insane amount of work with no compromise ever.

[1]: https://www.twitchmetrics.net/c/19571641-ninja [2]: https://kotaku.com/ninja-takes-two-day-break-loses-40-000-su...

Making $500k a month would allow you to save enough in a few years to jump off the hamster wheel and live completely off passive income. Not luxuriously, but better than most, and have all his time for his own.

To put some real numbers to this: $500k a month is $6M a year, or maybe $3M post-tax (assuming there's no way to shelter that income).

At a very conservative 3.33% annual withdrawal rate, which all but guarantees that your capital will grow faster than you spend it in the long term, after one year of work he could live on an annual income of $100k, forever, without working another day.

I guess it depends on your definition of "luxurious", but $100k free-and-clear annually buys you a much nicer lifestyle than most people have!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but any kind of stardom that nets you $3MM post-tax per year will also open the door to great investment opportunities AND a sort of residual income.

By residual income I mean things like being paid to appear at events and sponsor brands. Very low effort work. To be fair, that'll eventually dwindle away, but if he plays his chips right then he could coast on that kind of stuff for a long time.

Sure it would. But these things don't happen in a vacuum. If someone like Ninja just quit streaming one day, there would be a ton of pressure on him. His followers would constantly be asking him why he did it, when he's coming back. They'd speak rumors about him, comment publicly on his health (mental and physical).

I'm sure your answer is to just ignore it all. No problem, if you're a robot. Then there's the pressure that comes along with quitting a super-high income job. There's a voice in the back of your head saying "You are incredibly lucky to be here. Quitting is crazy. You'll never get a chance like this again."

This isn't a job that comes with a lot of security. If someone like Ninja left the scene for 1-2 years, there's no guarantees he'd ever be able to come back and have the same impact again. The odds are he couldn't.

Certainly this needs careful planning, like any big life changes.

there would be a ton of pressure on him. His followers would constantly be asking him why he did it, when he's coming back. They'd speak rumors about him, comment publicly on his health (mental and physical).

What pressure? Don’t want to feel pressure from thousands of anonymous people on Twitch? Don’t go on Twitch. Problem solved.

Similarly, know how to avoid all the negative social aspects of Twitter that so many celebs whine about? Don’t go on Twitter!

It’s the internet. It’s not real life. Why is this so hard?

This isn't some guy with a few thousand followers. He's literally a celebrity. He would need to delete all his publicly accessible social media, stop reading emails, and have the will-power not to go down the rabbit hole of reading the online discussion about him.

You act as if just disappearing as a celebrity is some easy job. Especially one in this area (Twitch), where the audience is more pervasive. There's plenty of celebrities out there who try to filter out criticism online but can't help themselves but get consumed by it. Kevin Durant is a great example. The guy has no reason to care about what some kids say about him on social media, but he still gets sucked into conversations about him online.

If you haven't been in the situation before, I think it's pretty unfair to just say "ignore it".

Being a celebrity doesn't mean you have to use Twitter/Twitch/Network-du-jour. You just don't do it.

Just like if you're a celebrity, you don't have to do drugs. Or drive fast. Or engage in any other self-destructive behavior.

This guy has a choice. He chooses to remain engaged even though he knows it's bad for him. If he's not able to choose otherwise, then it sounds like an addiction, or a mental illness.

If they care about some of their fans and their fans care about them, everyone should be understanding if they want to cut back on their hours to something sane. (And if not, they're not friends so who cares?)

Well that's my bad then, because I read 500k per year. So that's 4 million per year. Yeah, no right to complain then. Two years of that is nothing compared to 80 years of comfortable living. Still, the rest of what I said applies- this guy is obviously as far from representative as you can get, and for anyone outside the top 30-whatever streamers is having a much, much shittier time.

It's stressful and painful, and yet it's 500k a month of income. And we have sob story reference links as backup?

Then do the pain for one year and retire. How many people do you think would happily take that sacrifice? The degree of disconnect with average people by these millionaires is almost difficult to fathom.

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