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Comment by bitreality | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?)

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

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