I think I just honestly need to disconnect from some communities entirely—even if it ruins any chance I ever have of making a living streaming—because there’s too much goddamned negativity to the point people who mock toxicity have created toxic environments.

It’s terrible for my mental health because I’ve spent the last seven years in an online environment that rushes to attack and harass anyone they disagree with, overloads itself on snark, and refuses to engage in honest discussion about even trivial things.

Anyone who’s known me for any period of time knows I do the exact same shit. And I’m aware of it. And I hate it. And that’s why my engagement online has steadily decreased over the years.

I used to have a 10:1 tweet ratio. Now some days I can’t even be arsed to type anything because I’m worried who’s going to intentionally misinterpret it for outrage, who’s going to screencap it out of context, who will I be upsetting somehow somewhere with no idea at all.

I used to engage on several online platforms.

Now, I have a Reddit account almost solely to post tech questions rarely, my only social account is twitter, and I barely participate in my own discord server.

It just feels like I’m spinning. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know why I’m failing at what I’m doing. I don’t know how to communicate anymore because even without a track record of upsetting people, I’m constantly worried everyone who knows me hates me or pities me.

Shit, I’m like 99% positive my own family hates me and wants me dead most of the time, thinks I’m a big fucking joke because I’m not devoting my life to being a farmer and dying in this place like all of them are, thinks my mental problems are lies, thinks I’m just a lazy POS

And part of it is absolutely confidence because what do I have to be confident about? Shit, I’ve been seriously streaming for two years and in that time I’ve earned just enough to cover half of what I’ve spent on the basic things needed to stream in decent quality from a console.

Part of it is probably the constant sense of my life being over not long after it began. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to actually live on my own before my 40s, and my resume at that point will say “I spent over a decade taking care of an old man.”

And so many people are like “but you’re doing a service!” Yeah and that service is that I become homeless the day he passes, with my only money in savings being from stimulus checks, and people still thinking I’m lazy despite telling me I’m doing something good.

i got into streaming for two reasons:

1. Only real way I can make money while being a 24/7 nurse
2. I like to show games to people and talk to people

Yet now I’m at a point where I feel guilty when I stream because I’m not streaming a super obscure indie game or streaming for charity (tho I do have charity links auto-posting to my chat via bot!).

and like, I’d love to do both! But it’s not something everyone can do!

Streaming for charity is awesome, but I have animals and an old man to take care of, and I can’t do a 24 hour stream because he has things that he needs and I’m in an eternal battle with my sleep schedule and hey I tried the charity thing twice already and nobody showed up!

And part of me wanting to show games to people is I like the games that I like. I like the fantasies final, the strikers persona’d, the dragon dojima’d, the frontier saga’d, the automata nier’d, the snake solidified, and so on and so forth.

I venture outside of that zone sometimes, as evidenced by me somehow not being total trash at bloodborne all the time. But I *like* my comfort zone. And I try to be ethical in that comfort zone, such as not buying some AAA game sequels that were follow-ups to games I liked.

(Which was frustrating because some big names who you would expect to not support those games went on to support them wholeheartedly but that’s a different discussion)

hell, I even tried to dive into an obscure indie, and was excited, and streamed it, until I found out that oh hey the devs of that obscure indie did some hella erasure of islam in India, and deleted the game off my system.

Which is also a contributor to why I’m hesitant to drop a bunch of money on a bunch of indie titles, because these are devs I’ve never heard of, know nothing about, and I’m not smart enough to know if there’s shit happening that I didn’t pick up on because I’m not smart enough.

But again, I feel like I’m shamed for liking what I like. And like that has negatively affected any chance I have to make streaming at least a side hustle.

BUT HEY HERE COMES THE VOICE IN MY HEAD:

Maybe I’m externalizing my own failures and people don’t flock to me bc I suck?

Because even if I like what I like and want to show it to people enthusiastically, nobody cares because what I like sucks, or I suck at showing it to people, or I’m somehow actually super offensive to everyone without knowing it, or I’m a toxic fuckwad and don’t know it?

(Jokes on you, I know I’m toxic and most Tims I post or tweet something toxic I immediately delete it and spend the rest of the day yelling at myself internally)

I just don’t know, y’all. I don’t know what to do day to day. Because I’m nothing but endless self doubt. But I honestly think part of it is because even our anti-toxicity, “we oppose capital G gamer culture” culture has a ton of negativity with with less slurs and it’s hurting?

Or maybe it’s because I’m so damned involved in politics and politics is nothing but endless toxicity as well? Honestly the two aren’t that different. Shit, just look at the gun debate that spawned yesterday, and how if you don’t own ten guns you’re a shitlib.

Probably oughta just delete this thread. It’s competing rambles from my head trying to get out instead of staying locked up where they belong and for as much as I’m complaining about negativity I just dumped like 50 tweets in your feed that are negative whining about my life.