"Most vtubers would do better to accept this is a hobby" It's good advice that is meant to stave off the feelings of failure and exhaustion that so many of us work ourselves too. It's advice many of us should probably take. So why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to just treat it as a hobby? I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days, and I think I have my answer. Content creation requires you to wear a LOT of hats in order to succeed. Marketing, funneling, social media training, PR, video and image editing, and of course for those of us who like streaming, the ability to talk for hours at a time and be entertaining live consistently. We have to clip ourselves, edit ourselves, show up over and over and over and over again and wear a dozen different hats. We have to because the mechanisms for success are rarely in the places we want to be spending time. And for streamers, most of us enjoy streaming TO people, it is an inherently social and performative act. But in order to stream TO people you have to do all the rest. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a lot of people out there that are happy to stream to an empty chat. But I don't think so. I think our days are brightened when viewers stop by, when we form communities, when we share our moments of joy, heartbreak, pain, and all the rest. But we all know the discoverability on twitch. We all know how many people DO stream to only 1 or two viewers. We want what we've worked for. But to do so... many of us are killing ourselves. We're either cutting off sleep, proper health, money, friendship/relationships outside of streaming, or all of the above. So what does it mean for us to "just treat it like a hobby"? A hobby is something you do whenever you feel like it for a little or as much as you feel like. But if we did that, I would wager that the majority of us would essentially stop doing a lot of the things required for discoverability. In turn, this would mean a slow and steady fall off as your consistency waned, your off platform efforts dwindled, and you spent time frankly taking care of yourself. And then, unfortunately... a lot of us would not be happy with streaming with a greatly reduced reach and audience. For many of us, treating it truly like a hobby would result in losing the fun part of the hobby alongside the painful and hard parts. Treating it like a hobby when you've been trying so hard to "make it" feels tantamount to quitting altogether. And that's not even addressing the feeling of mentally giving up on a dream, admitting defeat, deeming your efforts a failure. It's a hard mental hurdle. Even writing this up, I know I probably shouldn't post it. Negativity or sensitivity are "bad for branding". But it is what it is. I like to talk, to put my thoughts and feelings into words. To share a sentiment that may be beneath the surface for many of us even if we haven't articulated it yet. If any of this resonated and you somehow made it to the bottom, let me know.