My way as a streamer and my time on Mixer.

While cleaning up my X/Twitter account I sort of got the idea of writing this out and putting it somewhere on the net for people to read. It’s also meant to reflect on the journey have taken since I have started this content creation venture of mine.

I don’t know when I started streaming, it was either 2018 and 2019. I like to think it was in October 2018 but everything is extremely hazy during that time. All I know is that I started streaming after being in the clinic for attempted suicide (it’s something I don’t really get into that much, so if that surprises you reading this, yes, it was a thing). I wanted to do something for myself. I needed it, I needed to show myself I can create something “successful” (the metric on that is variable).

So I started doing this “for real”, not just occasionally with pop up streams here and there. I had a schedule and I was a professional streamer – I swear! Of course I didn’t chose any of the obvious available for streaming like Twitch or YouTube when I first signed up, oh no, I had to go with the ill-fated Mixer and with that came a unique set of issues I do get into peu a peu.

When I started out for reals I was still pretty green behind the ears (heh) and I was looking for people to hang out with. I think this is like a natural instinct or stage almost every new streamer goes through. Like you have no idea and want to belong, or am I wrong?

Anyways I found a group of people pretty quickly and we were “vibing” – as the kids say – excellently together, though I still somewhat remained the outsider, a common theme in my “career”. So we were forming this content creation team called MC2, our tagline: “Breaking the Mold” – cringe as fuck and by doing the absolute bare fucking minimum.

See, on Mixer it wasn’t really normal to find “well produced” streams that had their shit in order. Roughly 90% of the entire platform just broadcasted directly from their XBOX, no cam and also most likely no mic and if there was a mic, it was the standard XBOX mic that you’d plug into your controller. The tech savviness was pretty low to be honest. So we tried to “break the mold” – I cringe at this shit today, tbh. But I didn’t knew better.

So, here is the thing about Mixer: it was a lot of follow for follow (F4F from now on) and support for support (S4S from now on) going on this platform, even if no one wanted to acknowledge it, it was even in our hotshot team. And this was essentially baked into the entire platform of Mixer and this is way it failed, so let me explain.

Mixer had this feature of “hosts”, those would be different from raids. You could create a hostlist for your channel, select who would be on there and even prioritize them. So these people would get channel lurkers as 1:1 to viewers to their streams. “But Orco, why would people lurk on your channel?!” you might want to ask now and it is a legit question that I want to answer!

So how this worked was, the longer you were watching stream, any stream really, you’d get a currency with which you could do various things in every stream of the site, such as sending gifs, sending stickers or using it to activate certain triggers the streamer put up. There was even a custom bot that pulled certain infos and basically made a individual Twitch integration for games or you’d use MixItUp (still exists to this day) to make your streams livlier. All this was done by one currency you could use site wide, not just on one channel. So people were incentivised by staying on the site as long as possible to idle currency, and that is how people would stay on your channel and lurk, throwing tab up 24/7. Some streamers actually monetized their top spots on the hosting list. The biggest gem donators (Mixer’s answer to Twitch’s Bits) would get the priority for a month. Our team did at least never dabble into that. It was still bad though, but I didn’t care. I had a CCV of 130 and I was on top of the world.

It wouldn’t last as we all know. It shut down either the day after my partnership with the platform was granted, or on the same day, again memories are hazy. I and the MC2-Team drifted around. Trovo, Dlive, YouTube, even Facebook Gaming, since they bought Mixer and the technology, we tried all the platforms but finally settled on Twitch and got our very rude awakening. Because we couldn’t break the mold there anymore, lol.

Long story short: a lot of people were (somewhat rightfully) hurt, because their partnership they “worked” for (they didn’t really, it was easy on Mixer, with the incentivised S4S and F4F in place) was gone and so the team was in a rough spot. So, as humanity goes, we started arguing and finally breaking apart. Not content with giving up, I trucked on and founded a new team with a splinter group of the team, the Crimson Coalition (cringe), ill-fated as well, but that is a story for another day.

After the team broke apart, we also kinda drifted apart. A lot of the old Mixer people, whether it be team members, team adjacent or just acquaintances stopped streaming after a while, mainly because they never found the same traction they had on the fake website Mixer. A lot of the “friends” I made, fell off the wagon and stopped being friends or supporters. They went back to their lives outside of streaming and stopped engaging online. Sometimes I ask myself what happened to them.

Then I remember I trucked on and honestly… don’t care that much in the grand scheme of things, because the people who wanted to stay with me, stood by me. Wether that be JellieRose, MrsTrashPanda, Himdwnstares or others. They stood with me and I stood with them. It’s so fucking crazy I know these people as long as I did.

So what what the is the moral of this entire story? Well, firstly: I am grateful to anyone who is still with me after all this time and supports me, either directly or from afar. You rock and you are awesome. Second of all, I want to kinda warn new streamers: streaming teams (and I count Vtuber agencies as streaming teams) are absolute trash. You will better off on your own in the long run. Even if you don’t believe me yet. Third and last: despite all the negativity, I am endlessley grateful for the experience I made on Mixer. It might have been all fake and bullshit and from my 130 CCV, only 10% were actual real viewers, but the rude awakening afterwards on Twitch did give me did lot for me to actually understand that all of this was just a fever dream and I need to do better. As my good friend MrsTrashPanda always says: Mixer was streamer college and now we graduated and are out there in the real world.

I am gonna continue my journey because I am still having way to much fun doing it and last but not least: my YouTube channel shows to me that I have a modicum of talent. Yes I am not making content for the current zeitgeist but I also do not care. This is a hobby for me after all. I will build the smallest legacy possible and I will take you all along for the ride :D.

Next time: I am going to talk about what happened to Twitch and why I left Twitch for YouTube. Thank you all for standing by me, no matter how long you did. Whether it be 1 day or 10 years. I am grateful and I wish you an amazing 2025! May your dreams come true!