So they’re upgrading the internet at my apartment and currently there’s no Internet so I can’t play most of the games I have so I figured in case this happens again, I should be prepared! So what are some good games I can play that don’t require an internet connection? I have sims 3 and 4 which I can play but I don’t really want to lol I don’t really have a preference, just want to see what’s out there

Like the title says, I'll be living in my car with only mobile data and coffee shops for internet. I also am playing on a laptop with integrated graphics. What are the best offline low graphics requirements games of the last few years?

Title says it all. I'm on a Mac, so the options are a little limited. What do you guys recommend playing? I've been playing the telltale games but have since gotten tired of them. Thanks

Can’t play with my friend

It sucks going into a game and having your opponent lag the game so it takes 20 seconds just to get down the ice. I can't quit either because obviously you'll lose, and I don't want to quit a game because of some persons bad connection. Anyways if you hate this idea(because people on here always have something to say) frig off, it's just a frustration thing

A friend of mine just sent this over to me. He's a noob and I'm a noob but in the true spirit of karma whoring for fake internet points I wanted to share and they said it's my funeral. Note we are both total retards, noobs and have no skin in the game cuz we too poor and can only afford plain popcorn, but we desperately want to see WSB succeed and Power to the Players! Do not take this as financial advice or god have mercy on your soul.
Uh guys… so we may see a crash that makes Enron look like a joke. There could be more than a short going on here, and more than firms pulling capital from other companies to cover.
I don’t mean to go all conspiracy theory on you, but hear me out.... I think everything is going so off-the-rails not because of the short, but because Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more stock than exists. This is illegal (duh) but it has happened lots of times in the past. In fact, we didn't have real laws against it until 2008. We may see some bizarre moves if WSB doesn't sell, because some people need to hide some crimes. No joke. Here's why I think this may be the case:
---------- The Background ----------
Read this first to understand how naked shorts work:
https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-alert.pdf
Basically, to short a stock, you must “borrow” the stock from another account, usually something like a margin account. This is something that typically the clearing house does on behest of the fund doing the shorting. Most people don’t even know when their shares are being borrowed by a hedge fund for the purposes of shorting.
A “naked short” is when you short a stock, but don’t confirm that the stock you are borrowing actually exists. This can happen when a clearing house either purposefully or inadvertently (ahem, sure) lends the same stock more than once. This basically clones the stock, just like an item cloning glitch in a video game. There are now two copies of the same stock in existence being actively traded… at least temporarily. Hold that thought.
Naked shorts can be devastating to the company being shorted, as not only do they lose liquidity because of the short, the cloned stocks serve to dilute the value of the real stocks being held by artificially increasing the number of stocks being traded. Especially for small companies doing initial investment rounds, this practically guarantees bankruptcy: the diluted value limits the amount of capital they can raise, as the company never sees the cash from the cloned stock.
Now, after the 2008 crash the SEC in theory made this illegal. Obviously, this practice kills companies if the short succeeds or destroys markets if the short doesn’t succeed. Either way, someone gets hurt.
HOWEVER, there’s a catch: Because hedge funds and clearing houses are permitted to operate behind closed doors, the SEC can only detect a naked short when a “failure to deliver” occurs. When someone calls the short, either because of a buy or because someone withdraws the right to loan their shares, the person shorting then has 3 days to deliver. If they can’t deliver the share (because it doesn’t exist) within 3 days, then this gets reported as a “failure to deliver”. Now, the SEC may look past a few of these because floats do happen, but too many and the SEC is obligated to open an investigation.
But of course, that never happens. The clearinghouse only has to report the net deliveries, not the actual transactions. This means that as long as there is someone buying on the day the failure-to-deliver would occur, the clearinghouse can roll the transaction forward… basically just like floating a check. The non-existent cloned stock is bought with the new buy, and the sell of real shares that should have covered that buy is left open but doesn’t need to be fulfilled for three more days. The clock resets. This is sort of like somebody-I-know used to do by floating checks back and forth between two different bank accounts: keeping the money in the air for several weeks until payday by continually writing checks to cover checks. Super unethical, but does work.
But, this can’t be continued indefinitely. There are SEC rules that make it tough to do this for longer than 21 days. IANAL, I don’t know every loophole, but that’s my understanding.
This is why after 2008 it became so important for the hedge fund to bankrupt the target company. If the company goes bankrupt, then the shares cease to be and the books never resolve. Even some kinds of restructuring can keep the books from resolving. It’s still possible to cover this without bankrupting the company if you can get enough people to sell, but it’s easier to crash the company and just make it all go away while pocketing cash from more shares than were ever real.
---------- The WSB Play ----------
Ok, now read this:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4370860-gamestop-short-squeeze
This was basically the original WSB plan back from October. Don't worry about the plan... we know what's going on here already. Melvin Capital shorted by 140% which is more than the float. Gamestop had enough cash to cover debt so it seemed unlikely they would fail unless the hedge funds forced it to. Squeeze looks obvious when you lay it out that way.
BUT, there is one chart here that is super important when folks were trying to figure this out: look at the chart for institutional ownership!
https://i.imgur.com/Jh5AI8V.png
The top three names on that chart are Vanguard, Blackrock and Fidelity. As is suggested by the author, there is a strong likelihood that the top holders already loaned out all their shares to Melvin Capital. The shares had to come from somewhere, and this is the only place they could have come.
This is why some people thought this was a good move. Not just because there was a short, but because they could see that all the shares had already been “borrowed” which would force the hedge fund to buy at any price. There were simply no more shares available to option for any other kind of fuckery.
---------- The Expected Response ----------
Okay, so WSB made their move. And predictably Robinhood and a bunch of trading platforms cut the ability to buy GME. Seems obvious enough as a strategy to stem the bleeding, regardless of whether it is coming from Robinhood or, as they claim, the brokerage above them limiting trades for reasons. Whatever. Either way, this is an obvious response.
Likewise, there have been numerous pushes from the hedge funds to either convince WSB the positions are closed, or to convince them to change their position from GME to Silver.
Despite what the news is reporting, no one in WSB appears to be buying silver. Maybe someone is, but it ain’t them. I did a site-wide search for silver, then pulled the post history for all the accounts that made the posts--of which there are shockingly few compared to what the news media is implying. The only accounts promoting this appear to be mostly bots: they became reddit premium within the last week, or they are necro accounts that have no posts for two or three years until suddenly dozens of silver related posts in the last few days. Conversely, there are been numerous long standing accounts warning others that these silver posts are bots.
None of this is unexpected. Bots and media manipulation have been par for the course for political bullshit for the last few years.
Boots on the ground, I have literally no idea where the news media is getting this story other than a change in silver pricing. I am not seeing any such discussion in related communities, and certainly none that pre-dates the news stories! To be fair and avoid conspiracy: I don’t hang out on twitter. There are retail traders outside of Reddit, and perhaps the media is clumping multiple groups together and mistaking Twitter for Reddit. Wouldn’t be the first time. Even on 4chan /b/ is not /pol/ and so on. People make that mistake all the time, so the misrepresentation may be entirely unintentional. I know the internet is a weird weird place and not everyone gets how it works.
The last expected response is the fact that many of the hedge funds bought new short positions, especially assuming that most of Reddit would sell on Friday. (Which they did not) There are additional short positions held that expect WSB to fold within the next week. This coincides with the news reports expecting people to try to collect their profits. Of course, many people don't intend to do that. They aren't worried about the profits they want to see hedge funds go down.
But all this movement leads to an obvious question: If there are no shares available to borrow, then what are they borrowing against for the short??
---------- Clearing Houses are Sus ----------
Okay, soooo…. We expect Wall Street to prevent buying GME, which they have; and to unleash bots to change sentiment, which they have; and to promote news stories to try to change the situation, which they have.
BUT, with all of this, there are two retail trading platforms that are still allowing GME trades: Vanguard and Fidelity. There is also one firm that started buying GameStop themselves five days ago: BlackRock. Sound like a familiar list?????? These are the firms that held the shares that the hedge funds were borrowing against to short.
Now, if all the funds are trying to stop the bleeding, WHY would these firms still allow trading when no one else is… much less start buying themselves?
Unless…. The shares DON’T EXIST.
You can’t float a check between two accounts without writing another check. Someone needs to buy the shares in order to push the failure-to-deliver of the non-existent cloned stock into the future, otherwise the gig is up and the SEC finds out. If Vanguard and Fidelity become the only source for Redditors to buy from, then they can keep moving the doomsday clock forward. BlackRock can do the same thing by buying the stock themselves. Not as good a position, but not a lot of other choice if they need the books to read clean. Ok, someone with more experience than me can surely explain this better as there are some gotchas, but that's the basic gist.
More proof those shares don’t exist? This academic paper from last year gives a clue:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3673531
Even if you own shares, you can’t vote in a shareholder’s meeting if your shares have been loaned out. Less than half of GameStop shareholders were eligible to vote by April of last year, with even fewer by August! There were so many shares borrowed SIX MONTHS AGO that it was affecting GameStop’s ability to hold a quorum among shareholders.
Now the paper was only concerned about how short selling was affecting company’s ability to administer. The idea that these were naked shorts never came up AFAIK. But knowing what we do now, this seems increasingly likely.
Also, for good measure beyond academia, this was in the news from last year:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-investing-giants-gave-away-voting-power-ahead-of-a-shareholder-fight-11591793863
If you look at the volume that WSB has bought since then, and the amount held in options, and the amount of shares that have been borrowed against in the last week or two as hedge funds have placed a second set of shorts… well… it sure looks like there are way more shares on the market THAN EXIST. Of course, without having the records from the clearing houses, AFAIK there's no way to know for sure. Only the SEC can do that.
I don’t mean the bet WSB played… that Marvin had 140% of the FLOAT. I mean that Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more than the TOTAL SHARES that EXIST.
That's a completely different problem and it's punishable by jail time. Not a joke. It's basically counterfeiting stock shares, although that's not the terminology used. If this is true, who knows how many other times they’ve done this. Or maybe it's not true, and they just really like the stock??? If BlackRock started buying five days ago, and the longest they can likely do this is 21 days, then the doomsday clock doesn’t run out until at least February 17th. If Wall Street can get WSB to sell before then, then they won’t get caught and won’t go to jail. But if they don’t…. well, this will make Enron look like chump change.
If enough people hold until the end of February, and this is truly the situation, then there is a chance that major parts of Wall Street are going to IMPLODE.
---------- The Conclusion ----------
Apes need diamond hands until the end of February in order to get the SEC involved, most likely somewhere between Feb 17th - 19th. Whether or not this will happen is anybody's guess, but if it does all heck may break loose!
Wall Street will probably do everything in their power to prevent that. There are too many top players involved. Crazy moves are likely because stock brokers are smooshy and jail is uncomfortable.
This may effect the market. (Duh) Bloomberg may be correct, but not at all for the reasons stated. But, that said, I wouldn't panic if it does. I think it will be fine in the long run, but that's a whole other set of reasoning for another day.
Standard Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. I am a retard and I have no idea what I am talking about. This is entirely speculation. :)
Edit: here is the link to my second attempt to post to WSB, maybe a mod can reverse the removal? The post still shows listed on my end: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/la9ms9/follow_the_crumbs_gme_exposed_the_meta/
Edit 2: Ok so don't ask me for stock advice. I don't know stocks and neither does my friend. We both think holding is the right move but beyond that we don't know and could even be wrong about that. And furthermore I don't want this to come off like we're accusing these companies of nefarious deeds. We don't know what is going on. The data is sus. The activities are sus. Google is your friend and the post tries to list sources for the research. Do your own research though! For ducks sake this is a rando post on UserSub. I'm happy to see the love but this is a one shot research dump by someone who knows nothing about this topic.
Edit 3: u/traveljg has commented that Blackrock is on the record for selling not buying but I don't know enough about any of this to challenge the idea one way or another and my friend is off on some other crusade at this point so he's worthless for questions. This is why it is SUPER important that you do your own research and not take advice from a rando.
Edit 4: I'm not responding to chat requests. If you have comments make them on the post. What is wrong with you retards?

Well folks, this recent TWAB has seemingly caused even more community outrage than what it probably set out to resolve.
The issue at hand, once again, is sunsetting. It's a topic of conversation that has continued from the time it was announced, through the time it was implemented, and now after a few seasons of it having taken effect. In this particular case, sunsetting in relation to reissued loot.
Note: If you are from /all, I left a small section at the end explaining what sunsetting is. Welcome!

Forsaken and Shadowkeep Sunsetting

Since the beginning of sunsetting, one of the top complaints was the sunsetting of loot tied to the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions. Some feedback was specific to Forsaken and Shadowkeep by name, while some said that DLC loot should not be sunset. While not the main topic of discussion here, it should be noted that some players may have different interpretations of what "DLC" includes, so keep that in mind.
Nevertheless, Bungie sunset the loot anyway, much to the disappointment of others.

Reissuing of Forsaken and Shadowkeep Loot

First, I want to make something perfectly clear here: a lot in the community did request that Bungie add new perk options to weapons if they were going to be re-issued. This is what Bungie has done in the reissuing of Dreaming City and Moon weapons by introducing them with new perk options, some tied to specific dungeons.
Yet, this still triggered pain points in players for a few reasons:

1. Players are unable to raise the infusion caps of existing weapons and armor that they have.
2. Due to (1), players having to re-grind for weapons and armor that they already have completely invalidates grind-time already invested.
3. Not all loot was reissued: loot that could be targeted via the Lectern of Enchantment was completely ignored. This leaves a lot of expansion weapons still sunset.
4. For weapons that were reintroduced, there is no guarantee that players will be able to obtain a roll as-good or better than their existing rolls.

Let us not forget the blaring issue here: Forsaken and Dreaming City loot was sunset just two (2) months ago, and the player base is now being asked to re-grind again for the sake of grinding.

Content Creator Fatigue and Unrest

In what appears to be a rare instance in Destiny's entire franchise history, the player base and content creators are more or less completely united on the feelings of sunsetting. The recent TWAB has functioned as a tipping point.
While some do not care for or do not agree with content creators, they are still very important for a video game. Content creators were responsible for Among Us going from virtually no players to having hundreds of thousands on Steam alone, and millions when considering its other platforms. The truth is, content creators function effectively like a marketing engine for games. While they are playing a game they enjoy, they are also advertising the game to their audiences. Content creators largely do not play games they do not enjoy, and do not play games their audience does not enjoy.
For the past two months now, many prominent content creators have taken to their respective platforms to discuss sunsetting, and with the exception of perhaps CammyCakes and a small handful of others, most have changed from being pro-sunsetting to indifferent or outright against it. These content creators collectively account for all areas of the game, as some focus on PvE, PvP, or both.
Some were against it from the start and had to endure loads of "internet abuse" for putting their foot down so early. Here are some examples:

• Aztecross - "Dear Bungo, your players feel ignored."
• Aztecross - In his most recent video about the TWAB, he comments his distaste for reissued loot.
• CammyCakes - "Why Destiny players HATE sunsetting | How it can improve"
• Datto - "Datto's Thoughts on Destiny Going Into 2021 - More Destiny Isn't Enough"
• Datto - "Datto Talks About Weapon Sunsetting Yet Again - Season 13 Update"
• Evanf1997 - "Destiny 2 Desperately Needs To Change" (Community feedback piece, includes feedback from other creators as well.)
• Fallout Plays - (Not much I can specifically link to here as he has not made a very opinionated video or tweet recently, but he has mentioned a few times on stream his frustration with not being able to infuse his previous Astral Horizon up to the new cap. Here is his Twitter instead.)
• Firing Range - Answers community questions, some which include sunsetting.
• Firing Range - "Destiny 2 Sunsetting Concerns - Recorded May 19th, 2020"
• Fireteam Chat - "Destiny 2's Sunsetting is Bad - Fireteam Chat Ep. 290"
• Fireteam Chat - In episode 291, they talked more about sunsetting.
• G1 Gigz - Doesn't have a particular comment about sunsetting, but it appears he believes in Bungie from a recent tweet.
• Gladd - "I feel like sunsetting isn't quite what we had hoped for [...]"
• Gothalion - "I honestly think they should reissue all gear. Get rid of sunsetting and go back to the drawing board."
• Hush - "it's goodbye for now"
• Hush - "goodbye, for now."
• iFrostBolt - "SUNSETTING WAS A MISTAKE! Shatterdive Nerf, Reissued Loot, Etc" - This is really worth a watch. He plays through old Bungie ViDocs, starting at 0:24:00. Bonus moment at 00:41:00, where he discovers but does not realize the Destiny Content Vault being previewed.
• KackisHD - Screenshot of a tweet from a Bungie developer and some commentary.
• Mtashed - "Eh. I think sunsetting + reissuing gear is the final straw for me."
• Mtashed - A video he posted after the previous tweet. A lot more charged.
• nKuch - "I'm convinced sunsetting is one big elaborate troll, or maybe like an early april fools joke."
• Paul Tassi - "Everyone Agrees, ‘Destiny 2’ Needs To Sunset Sunsetting"
• Paul Tassi - "Sunsetting Is Going Off The Rails"
• Real Gamer Hour - "RGH Episode #21: Destiny 2 is In Big Trouble"
• Sweaticle - "The Decline of Destiny"
• ZkMushroom - "I thought sunsetting was supposed to be a way to rotate guns and change the meta, not to make players grind the exact same weapons again.."
• (If you know a content creator that has spoken recently about sunsetting, please let me know so I can add them to this list!)

Bonus: In Bungie's tweet for the TWAB, there is quite a bit of feedback about sunsetting and reissued loot.
This should be a no-brainer: content creators actively criticizing the game is not a good look. Even worse are content creators announcing that they are taking breaks from Destiny for an indefinite amount of time, or outright quitting. This markets to their audiences that the game is not fun to play. Destiny should be a fun game.

Players Putting Down Destiny

Due to the introduction of sunsetting, it has fatigued players to the point that they have quit the game, indefinitely.
Joe Blackburn made a point in his "Rewards" TWAB post to the effect of wanting to make every season a good season to get started in Destiny. I feel that this goal was already partially achieved through the availability of viable seasonal loot, as well as the availability of targeted loot farms, such as Nightfall-specific loot (which is now sunset). Sunsetting has the opposite effect as intended, as any returning player will face the reality that their gear is no longer viable. Without sunsetting, they may have not had the newest gear, but their current gear could be used in the meantime. Sunsetting means that all old gear is obsolete, period. When Bungie raises the power floor next season, all gear sunset at the end of Season of Arrivals will likely not be viable even in the base Strike playlist, leaving only the Crucible and possibly the PvE portion of Gambit.
Even targeted loot farms such as the Wrathborn Hunts are no longer appealing. It no longer makes logical sense to put any more time than absolutely necessary to obtain a weapon, because any additional time is additional waste through sunsetting. I can personally attest to this. I have given up on getting a Blast Battue with Spike Grenades, Clown Cartridge, and Chain Reaction. There is no point in me wasting time grinding for a perfect roll when the weapon will be sunset. I surely am not going to waste my time grinding a Blast Battue just to have it sunset and then reissued so that I can have the pleasure of grinding it again.
Player fatigue will continue to build as seasons go on. Paul Tassi argued this point perfectly. Every single season will be about loss instead of gain. Season of Dawn weapons are about to head out the door. Will these weapons be reissued two months later with the expectation that players grind them again? How about Season of the Worthy? Seventh Seraph weapons are some of the sleekest looking in the game and work well with shaders. They are also an integral component of the ecosystem of Warmind Cells. Will these weapons be sunset? Hopefully sunsetting will be reversed by then.
We are now two seasons into sunsetting in its current state. Seven months and counting. The feedback is immense and the damage it is causing to the game is becoming irreparable with players permanently quitting and content creators seriously considering whether they should abandon ship and move on to something else.
Bungie, for once I believe you need to actually listen to the community instead of simply hearing. Sunsetting, while may have made logical sense in some respects, has been a complete and utter failure in implementation. It is time to revert sunsetting and return to the drawing board. Try something else. This is not the way. It really feels like the game is collapsing in on itself, like a black hole. As a person who really got hooked on this game in August 2020, it is a horrible sight to see.

Addendum

I am amazed and truly grateful for all the feedback and attention given to this post. It is my hope that this catches the attention of the community managers Cozmo23 and dmg04, as it provides yet another hub of community and content creator feedback.
I spent my entire morning reading all of your comments. There are simply too many stories of friends losing other friends and clanmates, one-by-one, due to the state that the game is in. Personally, I cannot even get friends to try the game in its current state. They refuse to touch it. Sunsetting has scared new players away.
It is my hope that this is the turning point for Bungie.
For users visiting from /all who are not familiar with the game:

• Sunsetting is a term used to describe the level-capping (levels being called power) of gear inside of Destiny. Since gear can only be infused (brought up) to a certain level, it will reach a point where it is no longer useful in end-game activities, or activities period.
• Attempting to use a capped weapon will cause damage dealt to enemies to be significantly lower.
• Attempting to use a capped armor piece will cause damage received from enemies to be significantly higher.

For users who think that I should have written more about the community and less about content creators:
Got you covered. This post has a section on content creators because it seems that content creators and a majority of the community are seemingly unified on this one issue, unseen since Curse of Osiris.
I wrote the following a little over a month ago, in response to the "Rewards" TWAB by Joe Blackburn: Bungie, I really appreciate the “Rewards” update, but it seems that some community sentiments were completely missed
A note about Bungie Forums:
In the Destiny 2 forums, almost every post in the top ~10 is about sunsetting. Just wanted to include a shout-out to those folks as well!

I’ve been playing Destiny for quite some time and I’ve enjoyed the community around it a lot, but the one thing that frustrates me the most about Destiny is how little the community actually knows about game development. It’s driving me crazy, so I wrote this whole thing down. I’m a game designeproducer myself, I’ve never worked on a project as massive as Destiny (not many people ever do), but I have worked on several gaming projects, some of them big in large companies, some of them small gaming apps. I know enough to explain the basics here, but I’m definitely not the ultimate authority on videogames and I’m not representing Bungie whatsoever, everything here is only from my experience. My goal here is to give you some useful info and calm my mind about this.
The Destiny community is incredibly vocal, especially this sub, which is generally a good thing, but the lack of understanding really damages not only the enjoyment of the community members but also the game itself IMO. I’ll explain some of the basics I think any hardcore fan should know here with an example and then I’ll outline some specific problems.
How Games Are Made
A videogame pipeline can be simplified into this flow: Demand from the top/the market -> top management decision -> design and prototyping -> development and feedbacks -> in house testing -> public testing -> marketing and publishing -> data collecting and analysis -> feedback implementation. It’s a circle that applies to everything from the big picture like the main campaign, to the smallest details like colors of shaders or proofreading of even the smallest posts. Every decision made in this system, even the tiniest ones, has to be debated, supported by data and expertise, approved in multiple places based on the priority, and checked multiple times after it’s implemented.
Game developers, especially in a powerhouse like Bungie, are very skilled, talented, experienced, and passionate people who always do their best to navigate that flow to satisfy the demands with a quality product delivered on time. I can’t stress this enough, developers (including QA testers, designers, artists, marketing, publishing, the whole team) are pretty much always incredibly hard-working people with a love for video games, because otherwise, they would never stay in this scummy business. They’re underpaid, overworked, and most likely overqualified for what they have to do. Some of them know almost everything there is to know about their field and they’re always improving as well.
Because video games, especially gargantuan living games with real-time action combat like Destiny, are insanely complicated, you need sometimes hundreds of experts to put them together. The pipeline needs to be perfectly planned, flexible so you can adapt to problems, and also easy enough to implement so you can deliver the product on time. All of these factors result in a tight-rope walk that never ends.
Now it’s time for an example. Let’s say during Season of the Worthy you get an assignment to create a catalyst for Thorn that would make it more popular in PVE, but doesn’t make it overpowered in PVP. Seems simple enough, right? There are dozens of posts about this topic on this subreddit, how hard can it be. The answer is, very, very hard.
You start working on your designs. You analyze all other exotic catalysts and hand cannon perks in the game - how they were made, their philosophy, psychological effects, and how they influence gameplay, you discuss everything in your team. When you create your first version, your design lead tells your whole team that hand cannons are getting a range buff and Thorn is now a 140 RPM and you have to adjust your design. After that, your priorities get shifted to helping with Beyond Light and the DSC weapons so it’s finished on time, so you put Thorn on hold. You don’t want to waste time though, so you give the art team an assignment to create the catalyst icon.
After two months of work on Beyond Light, you come back to Thorn, but now you basically have to start over because the future meta has changed so much. You create new designs and this time they’re approved by management, so you move onto prototyping. Developers are way too busy debugging and QA testing Beyond Light, so they have no time for Thorn and that task gets put into their To-Do list. You have no choice but to move onto your other tasks and start working on weapons for seasons 13 and 14.
When development starts finally working on Thorn, they find an exploit in your design that would allow it to two tap in PVP, you have to rework it again and hope they’ll have time to implement it this time. They don’t and the Thorn catalyst now officially misses its deadline and is pushed from Beyond Light. The marketing team doesn’t hear about it though, so they publish the icon you had made four months ago, leaking the catalyst coming out. This is of course your fault, but these things happen during all the chaos and there was almost nothing you could have done.
When you finally push this task through and it’s checked and approved dozens of times in different places (weapon design team, design lead, writing, sandbox team, development, QA, studio director, etc.) you have to make sure it’s published correctly in the right build, it has all necessary descriptions and marketing texts done and translated into all languages and the community managers know about it so they can get ready to collect data.
This single task took you a year to complete even when you did your best to do it fast and well and I left out about 90% of problems you would normally encounter. THIS is game development.
Community Attitude and Feedback
Now we get to why the uninformed community hurts the game so much. This sub would only see Thorn getting a catalyst and it would immediately be flooded with posts like “The catalyst sucks in PVE, buff pls”, “Bungo doesn’t care, the catalyst sucks for Warlocks” and a few “Why catalyst for Thorn, but not for Skyburner’s Oath”, completely missing the point of the catalyst and adding nothing to the discussion.
Bungie devs are way more informed, skilled, and experienced than us, the community. The only feedback they are interested in from us is quantitative - basically what we like and what we don’t like about the game. Any posts giving them ideas, elaborate reworks, or straight up negative outrage will accomplish nothing, because they already know everything about the game and discuss it daily in way more detail than we could ever imagine. The only qualitative feedback they should collect and measure is from content creators and the top 1% of the player base because those people actually know some aspects of the game Bungie doesn’t. I know it may sound like the hated “Bungo only listens to sweats and Youtubers”, but that’s kinda the point, they should be listening.
It doesn’t mean that our voices are ignored or not listened to. I would bet all of my money that all forums are constantly monitored and analyzed. The truth is, however, that the only valid opinion we can give that Bungie should consider is what aspects of the game we like, and what aspects we don’t. Anything beyond that we already tell them through data they collect from our play sessions.
As I wrote above, any change within this massive game is complicated and could take months or years to be implemented, so being upset we don’t have everything now is just useless. Bungie is hard at work to make good stuff, we should respect them more and not bring out the pitchforks every time a season slows down a bit and we can’t play for four hours a day every day for the whole year. There will always be problems in a live game and they are doing a fantastic job, I can’t even imagine how much work must go into it. So before you post about something in the future, take a moment to think about the process and figure out what exactly you can provide to the devs with your feedback, because otherwise, you’re fanning the flames on something that probably isn’t actually burning. It’s just taking its time as it should.
With all of the above said, it isn't the community's fault that we're not informed. The fault lies entirely with Bungie not educating people enough and this problem could be avoided.
Reasons Why Things Suck
I’ll close by giving my two cents on why the game isn’t perfect and never will be, just so you know where the community's frustrations should go.

1. The biggest reason that influences everything - Bungie is a company owned by a group of shareholders that will always force the studio to grow and provide more profit. With every extra dollar, the value of the company grows and the board of directors gets richer and because of the super predatory capitalism we live in now, Bungie has to justify every single decision with a monetary value. It's not the fault of the devs, they don't make much money themselves.
2. The game is massive and always online. I’m pretty confident that no other studio would be able to support Destiny for so long without the game completely crashing down. Technology always evolves and it’s almost impossible to keep a living game up to date, so some parts of the front end of the game will always suck because Bungie has to upkeep the back end we will never get to see.
3. The project has been going on for a decade, which leads to people wanting to naturally move on. Replacing team members on a living game is very difficult, which leads to problems and delays.
4. The community is not educated about the game enough, which is why I ended up writing this. The continuous cycle of negative outrage that comes from a lack of understanding damages the game because the devs are forced to deal with it without disclosing information. If people knew more, they could help Bungie, but no company that wants to make big profits will ever open up its communication because it would show just how many decisions are influenced by the search for profit.

That’s it, sorry for the length of this essay. I hope you learned something and let me know if you’d be interested in more stuff like this (takes on sunsetting, sandbox, etc.). I would like to give people more info so they don’t waste their precious time on stuff completely outside of their control and maybe educate people about the industry. I love the game and I hope you’ll appreciate it a bit more now.
Edit 1:
This post is not meant as a defense for the faults of the game or an excuse for bad decisions, it's meant as a resource to give you perspective and information. If you believe the game is not as good as it was promised to be or disagree with some design choices made, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, and there are quite a few things I myself absolutely hate in Destiny. I can't answer questions related to design on Destiny with confidence, because I don't work for Bungie and I won't speculate much on why certain decisions were made. I can give you my opinion on stuff like sunsetting based on my experience in another post, but ultimately it's only speculation with little benefit. All I will say is that there is always more stuff we don't know about the game than we do know and design should be judged in context.
When it comes to questions related to Bungie's scummy tactics when it comes to monetization and bad communication, I agree with you, as I said above. Money is the biggest factor of why Destiny suffers and the best way for us to do anything about that is to stop buying it. I know it's a cliche statement, but it's true.
And lastly, for the comments saying stuff like "shut up, Bungie sucks and you know it", please read what I said again and think about it. The devs most likely love the game just as much as you once did, if not much more.
Edit 2:
I'll add one thing that keeps popping up. It's clear that Destiny is a product developed for profit, so if your outlook is "I don't want to know about development, I'm just an unhappy consumer that didn't like this product", I agree as would most likely everybody that it's absolutely a valid stance, but that's not what my post was about. If that's how you see any product, you should tell the producer why you didn't like it if you care enough to do so and move on. The post is meant to inform people who don't want to move on from Destiny, especially those who continuously engage with the product from a place of understanding even if they don't have it, which wastes their time and does nothing for the product. If you don't like this game or any other game, it's absolutely OK and you should move on from playing it, complaining about things you don't want to understand won't help you achieve what you want and only makes the game worse. As I said above, the best way to show your disagreements is not to support the company and if you don't like Destiny, please stop playing it and take care of yourself. Your time is valuable, don't give it away to someone you don't agree with.
Edit 3
This will be the last edit on this post. I appreciate all the awards and great discussions happening below, but holy cow did this get a lot of vitriol. I expected a lot of negativity, but it still surprised me. It's partially my fault for trying to talk about so much with not enough room so I'm sure I made a few mistakes. I'll reply to a few things that I want to make clear and then leave this alone, it's way too long anyway.
If you see any malicious intent, attacks, arrogance, or "Bungie shilling" between the lines, I put none there, at least not on purpose. My goal was to inform, as I said right at the start, so if you see any other agenda, it's not there and my writing either wasn't clear enough, or you're looking for something that I didn't write. Take the post for what it is, a stranger on the internet telling you something you may not know from their experience. If you disagree with me, downvote the post and explain why, no need to insult anyone, you're once again wasting your precious time.
I didn't mention management as a problem on Destiny, because I don't know enough about it. Leadership is very often a problem on any collaborative projects but calling someone out without the necessary data is exactly what I warned about in my post, so I won't comment on it, but feel free to disagree with me. Maybe you know more about the subject than I do and I'll be happy to read your reply.
I never put myself up as an ultimate authority on the subject, all of this is just basics I thought hardcore fans should know and I communicated that. This post was already very long and I didn't have time, nor did I want to describe theory in detail, so insulting me over not explaining how scrum works in a post meant for people with no experience is not necessary. If you want to argue about production methodologies, my reasoning on examples given, and how healthy management looks like with me please feel free to message me and I'm sure we'll have a cool conversation, I'd love to hear about your experience from working in gaming.
And that's it, I hope you got something out of this. Have a great day and see you around.

Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between, strap in because we’re going to use real words for this one. I speak for myself here and no one else (and no one else here speaks for everyone else either). Feel free to DM for more facts and context.
CNBC, whether its true or not, the past 3 days have made EVERYONE honestly believe that you are truly bought out by Wall Street, in every sense. You’ve paraded “analyst” after analyst, hedge fund manager after manager, boomer after boomer, to try and demonize and deflect blame for the GameStop situation.
Firstly, your contributors need to stop pretending they don’t know short squeeze mechanics.
You’ve had dozens of people on your air whining about how no one in wallstreetbets cares about fUnDaMeNtALs and VaLuATiOn regarding GameStop. OF COURSE, we don’t care about GME’s fundamentals anymore, because we are in a SQUEEZE. We are in a squeeze in which the Shorts have DOUBLED-DOWN constantly. That means OF COURSE the price keeps going into the stratosphere. Do you actually believe your own lie that the Shorts like Melvin have closed out? I don’t, and we have data that agrees. Why would we sell our shares “’fair value”” if the squeeze isn’t done?
Secondly, most of us are well aware that GME isn’t a $100billion company, or whatever $5000/share is. I think we are all very much aware that we are in the middle of a short squeeze, NOT price discovery.
This does not mean that our interest in GME was not a value-based thesis at first.
Our most famous GME long u/ DeepF**kingValue has been in GME since 2019.(!!!). There are others here who I’m sure joined at some point way back when. If you want more credibility, the famous Michael Burry and some dudebro Donald Foss both entered large positions in GME a long time ago. These people believed in the FUTURE VALUE of GME. They saw that savage, unrelenting short sellers like Melvin had pounded the share price into the ground, actively and immorally aiming for bankruptcy. Retail bought in in September because Ryan Cohen saw enough value to buy stock. The price jumped to $13/share in November because Ryan Cohen expressed his vision for a turnaround that people saw a ton of future value in. The big spike happened when Cohen n co. joined the BOARD OF DIRECTORS at GME. Why are your hosts and “analysts” pretending that these things didn’t happen?
And the whole while, Melvin and Shorts were DOUBLING DOWN on their positions, which were already part of the preposterous, irresponsible and potentially illegal +100% short interest. And even now (as far as we know), the short interest IS STILL OVER 100%. STOP PRETENDING THAT THESE THINGS DID NOT HAPPEN. You’ve had people constantly claiming that the prices are reaching these levels “for no reason” and that the initial bullish sentiment was created “out of thin air”. The people who keep saying these things, including your hosts, are either willfully ignorant or acting in bad faith.
Good, decent people provided their Due Diligence on this subreddit. They pointed out the $6.4billion in revenue in 2019. They pointed out the E-commerce sales tripling YOY. They pointed out the ability to easily pay off debt. They even called HUNDREDS of GameStops, where we found out they were constantly selling out of inventory, AND have plans of having PC-building-stations in-store. They pointed out the rapidly expanding Gaming Market, and the ability to grab substantial market share. And yes, they pointed out the 140% short interest, BUT PEOPLE DID NOT START BUYING $GME SOLELY BECAUSE OF SHORT INTEREST. Smart or not, honest people here bought into GME initially as a value play. They did their homework. They found data. They showed proof of positions. This brings me to my third point:
In the entire time I have been on wallstreetbets, we have NEVER “targeted” a stock or hedge fund JUST to bust the shorts. Short-busting is not who WSB is. Those are the kids on TikTok, or the grifters on Twitter. Every single popular thesis on here has been backed up with research, financial analysis, and quality (depending on who you ask) discussion. Just because we talk like, stupid people, doesn’t mean we don’t say smart things. And maybe our ideas DO end up backfiring (see: $PRPL), and MAYBE 85% of the members don’t know what theta decay is, but we do not pull stocks out of thin air, as you’ve claimed.
People here genuinely believe in these stocks. People here believe in Ryan Cohen, and the potential for GameStop to be reinvented. People believe in Blackberry’s future (present) as a rock solid software company. This brings me to my final issue:
It is disingenuous and plainly incorrect to blame every. single. price increase. on the “reddit rebellion” and short squeezes. STOP saying we are going after $BBBY – there hasn’t been a substantive post in 4 months on that. STOP saying we are pumping $NOK – we’ve advocated for leap calls in NOK for MONTHS because we know we cannot wait out their giant share float. And for JPow’s sake, STOP BLAMING US FOR A[movie company]MC, EX[clothing store]PR, AND IRBT. TWO OF THOSE TICKERS ARE LITERALLY BANNED FROM THIS SUBREDDIT, AND THE OTHER ISN’T EVEN REAL TO US. WE CANT EVEN TYPE THEM INTO A POST WITHOUT GETTING AUTO-DELETED. People who try to pump a stock for no reason are BANNED. Yes, because of the events of this month, and because of the actions of groups like Citron, many people are happily engaging in one particular short squeeze. But that’s it. Yes, retail is more powerful than you may know, but we are not that powerful.
If you or anyone else reading this are wondering why there seems to be more internet chatter on that one particular movie company, hear this: SOMEONE has been creating fake accounts and BOTS to spam and pump up [movie company] and $nok, etc. to distract from GME. Ask the admins. Look at Chamath’s twitter replies. Look at ALL OF FINANCE TWITTER. There are newly created accounts and bots spamming the hell out of these other stocks in an effort to manipulate the market and save the shorts. Jeez, I wonder who is behind that? Could it be the same group of people who bought $1.2million of GME puts right before tweeting something?
If anyone in the void is reading this, thanks. The point of this post was just to fight back in a tiny way against the days and days of whining millionaires on TV berating people they literally know nothing about. It’s to point out the ignorance of self-serving boomers saying things like “the SEC needs to regulate the Reddit”, etc. The point of this post was just to get our little corner of truth out there in the world, because we all know that truth is in short supply. 🚀
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Just yesterday I hit free twitch turbo partner on twitch after roughly 5 months of streaming (somewhat) consistently. Today I'm hoping to share some decent advice and give my own (learned) opinion on some of the frequent yet not always useful tips shared around here.
Before writing this I did a cursory search through the subreddit for frequently asked questions so hopefully this answers most of the ones that I myself have any experience to answer.
My simple request: I'm not going to be posting any links to my stream or anything but if you go out of your way to find it please don't follow/subscribe to the channel unless you are genuinely interested. Thanks big boss.

Should you stream?

If I have to read another thread or comment of a person asking if they should stream I am going to scream. What do you people expect to hear? Yes, please stream the world needs you, you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams and have all the clout to have ever been cloutted.
I know people who usually type out questions like that probably don't read posts but here is a hack I've used to answer my own dumb questions through out the years. Say that shit out loud and respond to it like someone asked you the question. Nine times out of ten, you end up answering it yourself and on the off-chance you actually don't you should have a more actionable question.
Example: Instead of asking "should I stream?" you end up realizing the only thing holding you back is having no mic or something. The question then becomes "I want to stream what's a good cheap mic?". Which is a lot better and doesn't make people want to pelt you with rocks.
For those of you who ask "should I stream or is it a waste of time?" please, I BEG YOU, stop. Most of the shit you do is a waste of time, you either want to stream or don't. Make a decision based on that.

Webcam, do you need one?

This question is asked so often that I see it every time I come on the subreddit. Unsurprisingly, the answer is always the same as well, yes you do.
However I disagree.
I have never streamed with a webcam, not a single time, yet I'm still here and somehow managed to get partnered.
Now, I know why every one parrots the same advice, it is because the people making tip threads, youtube videos, etc., all say to use a webcam. Harris Heller said it once and I'm pretty sure that was enough for the people who copy and paste what he says in text threads here to become their mantra.
The truth is, all that matters is the content. Ask yourself do you do/want to do a lot of react/just chatting content? If so, you probably want a webcam since your content will focus around reacting to content. Lirik doesn't use face-cam because his content is his gameplay and commentary, not his face. Corpse literally blew up and is famous for not showing his face (even though he is still a personality).
I know the whole "Lirik doesn't use a face cam" argument is going to be met with people saying "exception not the rule!!!" but seriously, just use your head. Half the people you watch probably don't need face cams. MoonMoon probably doesn't need a face cam, Critikal didn't have a face cam until he already had over a million subs on youtube, schlatt didn't either, Dream doesn't, AdmiralBahroo doesn't, almost every DBD streamer I watch doesn't, just think for yourself.
The point I'm trying to drive home here is not just that a webcam isn't required, but also you need to look at what you want to create and decide for yourself.
Edit: I saw someone say somewhere that you need a webcam for sponsors. That's cap. I've had a sponsor and nobody has seen this ugly mug.

Equipment in general

People like saying that they need this this and that before they start streaming. This is just stalling. Until last month I hadn't owned a desktop PC my whole life. Before that it was just laptops and using my phone to read chat or look up things. You obviously need SOME equipment to start, i.e. a computer and some form of internet connection, but that doesn't mean you need to pick up a shure, a streamdeck, 4 monitors, 6 consoles, and whatnot.
Here is my setup. Keep in mind I literally just upgraded this last month after saving up for several months:

• Blue Yeti: Hell ya baby got a free game with it too so I'm for sure pleased with this purchase. Edit: I recommend shopping around for mics since the yeti isn't as much of a "get this for streaming" mic as it once was. Plenty of good options out there for cheaper
• Two BenQ monitors: Like I said, I was using my phone for chat but that got old fast. These monitors are cheap and 144hz. There are some color issues but eff it I barely notice anymore
• Streamer PC from NZXT: My old laptop was from 2016 and made editing literal hell. Averaged 3 crashes every time I would try and render (and the renders took about an hour). Upgrading to this was the most worth purchase I've ever made. Also, the streamer PC got upgraded since I purchased, so you can grab a 2070 instead of the 2060 ti like I have :)
• Red Dragon Keyboard and Mouse: I'm a cheap ass so when I see light up peripherals for like 40 bucks total I am sold.
• Earbuds: Legit don't know the brand. I stole them from my sister like a year ago. I prefer these over a headset anyway since I don't want that gamer dent lmao

For those of you who are probably saying "GROSS A PRE-BUILT" remember that part prices are actual aids right now, not to mention the availability of even finding good parts. If you have the cash go pre-built that shit is amazing.
My recommendation:
Stay with your shitty set-up as long as possible but make sure to pick up a good mic first. Big streamers (looking at you Ludwig) shit on the Yeti, but straight facts all you need is to EQ that shit a lil bit and nobody will bat an eye. You don't have to pick up the Yeti (there are lots of cheaper options) but that's just the one I and many others have gotten since it is reliably a good ass mic.
Audio <- chat engagement <- pc upgrade

YouTube

How many people have to tell you bums to focus on YouTube before you do it? Twitch sucks ass. I'll say it, i'm brave. No discoverability, especially to those of you at the very bottom. Make a goddamn YouTube and start pumping out videos, it is not hard.
Ludwig made a power point on how to be a streamer that talks about a few things but the most important point of all was what he said on creating content for stream/YouTube. This isn't the exact timestamp but it do be close: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/896089267?t=01h24m14s
That advice is coming from a top streamer who also has over a million subs on YouTube by almost exclusively taking twitch vods and editing them for YouTube.
As for getting views on your videos here is my advice from my personal experiences:

• Thumbnail and title are important but there are outliers that can thrive without doing shit. One guy I saw has their most watched video (over 250k views) with a title like "[game] [character] gameplay" and the literal default thumbnail that youtube makes. AND to top that off it was just a VOD from their twitch channel.
• Audience retention matters. There is a reason massive YouTubers have these weird zoom in pans and flamboyant gestures all the time. Lots of movement and noises keep our tiny attention spans happy and frequently cutting is usually the key to success, although don't overuse it. I do very light edits and have been growing but that's more of my personal preference rather than a growth strategy.
• Respond and engage. If you have one comment on your video and they are complimenting you, why aren't you responding? This is by far the easiest way to get someone to continue to engage with you and trust me, that is the most important thing in the algorithms eyes.

My understanding of YouTube

So obviously, clickthrough rate and audience retention are the things that are constantly brought up when talking about gaining more views and what not, but I am fairly comfortable in saying that there are other metrics that you should be paying attention to.
Let me hit you with a something that would make Dream shake in his boots. I don't subscribe to anyone on YouTube. *gasp*
The reason for that being, I almost always have the videos I want to see on my home page. I never have to go, "wonder if x YouTuber made a video" since YouTube knows I watch and enjoy their stuff. The question for most people being, how does YouTube know what people like and how does it suggest it to them? Basically, by seeing how often people engage with your content AND also what type of content you create. (although keep in mind, youtube tries to throw new videos at you a lot as well, these are usually in-line with content you engage with though)
For engagement, think of it as like affinity points in a video game but in reverse. Before you get to bang that smoking hot sim, you got to woo them. Every time someone likes your video they get a point, every time they comment they get two, every subscription counts as like 10, watching an entire video might be 20, etc. Obviously, these are made up values but I hope you follow what I'm putting down here. Once they get enough points you start showing up more in their home page.
I know this because I have a different account on my phone that doesn't have the same suggestions as my main account because I watch different things on my PC than my phone. However, I do like to look at the comments while I'm taking a dump or something. Problem was, my videos were rarely every recommended. I solved this easily by liking a couple videos. I didn't even watch them, just liked and read comments. LITERALLY NOT EVEN SUBSCRIBED AND I GET NOTIFICATIONS ON MY PHONE SOMETIMES WHEN A VIDEO DOES WELL!
In other words, by getting people to like and comment on your videos you are almost guaranteeing they see future videos from you.
Now, keep in mind, engagement is only a small portion of the whole pie. And even though you might engage with a content creator often, there is still a chance you miss some of their videos because of one other reason, the content's genre.

Content Genre

You might have noticed this phenomenon on various different creators YouTubes, but sometimes they create a video that bombs. Usually, this happens when they create something outside of their niche. This could be as simple as changing games, or as radical as changing the entire direction of the channel. Even if you engage like crazy with a creator, if they change the content enough, you won't get that shit recommended to you.
This is the main reason some creators have several channels and why some even get pigeonholed to one type of content. The reality of it is, if you build your audience on one piece of content and then want to change it, you will be fighting an uphill battle. One of the best ways to fight that is to diversify early OR better yet, emphasize your personality over the content. Jschlatt shits views and he does whatever the hell he wants really. Same goes for jacksepticeye, markiplier, Ludwig, Critikal, XQC, and numerous other creators.
That being said, doing one game/genre isn't a bad strategy either. A metric fuck ton of OfflineTv's videos are the same game. DisguisedToast played Hearthstone on repeat, then switched to TFT, THEN switched to among us, and his videos absolutely kill. Valkyrae is one of the biggest streamers period and all she does is play/upload among us and rust. Then of course we have all the minecraft streamers too.
It's really up to you to decide, but I'd recommend going towards personality content since that allows the most flexibility.

Other Social Media (Twitter, IG, etc)

Lots of people here seem to think that they don't have time to do YouTube or some other BS they think up as an excuse, so they think that twitter, instagram, tiktok, etc are all ways to grow. Trust me, they are not good ways to grow.
These are all stupid treadmills that trick you into thinking you're doing something when in reality you aren't moving the needle by much if by any at all. Posting ten dumb tweets and reposting memes on IG seem "productive" if you frame it in the light of "content creation" but the two people that see all of these things don't really give a shit. Spend that time working on a video for YouTube.
Don't give me this "I don't have time" bullshit. Do small videos and work yourself up, become better and faster. Perfectionism is a cute word for procrastination.
Ok, now that I took a shit on them so hopefully, you won't grind on them all day, these are still ways to grow and are important. Having multiple platforms for fans to communicate and engage with you is always a good idea, but don't spread yourself so thin early on when nobody knows who you are. Prioritize the thing that will get eighty percent of your results.
I personally have a discord for people to come and chat in. Thing is, I had no intention of doing so because I don't really use discord that much. The only reason it exists is that people kept asking for it in the comments on my YouTube videos so I made one.
TL;DR: Don't put the cart before the horse :)
Edit: Oh ya I forgot to mention. TikTok is trash for growth. I won't mention names cuz that's probably toxic(?) but there is someone signed on luminosity who has 690k TikTok followers and 95k YouTube subscribers who barely cracks 100 views on Twitch and has a hard time getting over 1k on YouTube. So don't go thinking TikTok leads to immense fame ya darn kids

Hosting/Raiding

Getting hosted/raided means actual jack. I remember pretty clearly when I had like ten viewers, I got hosted by someone with twenty-five or something. I think only one person ended up saying anything in the chat to me about it and although some stayed for the entire stream, by the time I went live again I lost all of the people who were in the host. This seems to be something others have mentioned as well, you won't retain almost any views from hosts/raids.
Edit: Please do try raiding/hosting or otherwise networking with other streamers at least once. Your mileage may vary and it could end up blowing up your channel. Who knows?
Edit edit: Having something that you can do during the stream is huge when getting hosted/raided. Most of the time, if not all of the time, a streamer is ENDING their stream and sending viewers to you rather than timing it for your own content. So if you are doing something uninteresting or are in the middle of something you are going to get less retention than if you did something crazy to impress the newcomers. In other words, having a strategy for hosting/raiding growth is key.

Speaking on stream

This seems to be something a lot of people struggle with on Twitch since so many people ask how to do it when nobody is watching/chatting. Coming from someone who had this problem, the answer is pretty simple, talk for the content not the chat.
What I mean by this is you should be focusing on your content more than the chat. Since I play games, what I do is just say some shit about whats happening on screen and sometimes say something that is hopefully funny. Pick up a garbage item? Say something about how garbage the item is, ez.
If you're streaming to NO VIEWERS you shouldn't be streaming to stream anyway. What you should be doing is making a YouTube video in the hopes of getting viewers to watch your stream. The only way to do that is to have good content planned out that should effectively act as your script. Again, Ludwigs stream on this is good (it'll probably be a video soon) so make sure to check it out.
A more recent problem I've had was just how much I engaged with chat (suffering from success I know). When I went to edit the videos I had to cut large swathes of the video because I was just chatting to people. Make sure to avoid this when you are actually trying to get content out for YouTube as it can mess up the flow of a video and make it harder to edit. You still can chat with people just make sure not to go overboard. Again, Ludwig is a perfect example of this, just look at his videos and streams and notice the difference between the two.

Streaming as a job/hobby

I hate this dumb argument of streaming isn't your hobby or twitch isn't your job. You have 24 hours in the day, subtract 8 for sleeping and depending on your job, 9 for work. All that extra time can be spent doing whatever the fuck you want. Want to get big and make money streaming? Do work. Want to just stream while you're playing games anyway? Do that.
IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL AT SOMETHING YOU PUT IN THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT REQUIRED TO DO SO! So stop telling people it has to be a hobby or it has to be a job. It can be either for christ's sake.

Partner difference

I have a checkmark which makes me a better person.
No, but seriously, partner doesn't really do much other than add more emote slots and some quality options. Also, you don't gain extra cash as a partner either. I don't have the mystical bounty board or god-tier split, just the checkmark to flex baby.

Opinion on affiliate

Devin Nash made a video about how affiliate is a scam, which is kinda true but only for people with no viewers. Having the sub button is huge and even when I was small small, affiliate gave me a couple hundred bucks a month for no effort on my part. Patreon is probably better though, no lie.

Twitch "grind"

If you stream 5+ hours a day without making content that lives somewhere else please form a neat line so I can smack you all. People saying they have no time drives me nuts, but when they also "grind" all day AND say that, it makes me want to punch air.

1. Stream YouTube friendly content
2. Stop stream and edit content
3. Upload and plug twitch in the video
4. repeat

That is the only "grind" you should be on. Affiliate is stupid if the 3 viewers you have are all just you on a different ipad.

Luck

You know what? Maybe PewDiePie got lucky and that's how he is such a big YouTuber. Maybe early twitch streamers got all their views because they were early adopters. Or maybe these people only got lucky because they showed up and actually put the effort in.
There are plenty of videos on my channel that looked like flops at first. They got like a couple of hundred views and didn't do well. However, after continuously publishing, a whole bunch of them ended up blowing up and becoming some of the most-watched. Without publishing more videos they would have ended up dead in the water. Consistency > luck.
I don't believe too much in luck when it comes to doing very simple things (LIKE MAKING A YOUTUBE VIDEO) but you literally cannot win the lottery if you do not purchase a ticket, it's that simple.

Editing Software

A couple of people asked this so I thought I should add it here. I use davinci resolve for my videos. Previously, I used hitfilm or something like that I can't quite remember the name, but I had to switch because they don't allow you to have split audio channels (i.e. one for desktop audio and one for mic audio).
I've literally never touched any paid software like premier or anything because, again, I'm a cheap ass.

What should you upload to YouTube?

Seriously just look at Ludwig, smallant, DisguisedToast, literally every top Twitch streamer with a YouTube. All three of the people I just mentioned are over one million subs on YT and are top streamers, so they are definitely doing something right.
In terms of off-stream content, guides are king. If you're a small YT channel with ZERO subs you can still get thousands of views by hitting the search algorithm of YT. My first 3 videos were uncut gameplay, guide video, guide video, in that order. Guess which ones have tens of thousands of views and which has less than a thousand? Guide videos are insane for small channels.
Edit: Actually, let's just call it searchable content. Searchable content is king

Ending notes

I think that's about it for this post. Hopefully, I covered everything although I doubt I did. If you have any questions I'll try my best to answer them and will probably edit the good ones into the post.

Potentially my last message
I'm writing this, knowing that I will soon be dead and forgotten.
A couple of people might think of me for years after my death, but eventually these will die too, and nobody will remember that I ever existed.
Reddit might still be a thing in 1000 years, and this post might still exist by then. However, it will not remain like that forever. At some point in the future, even the internet will cease to exist.
Humans will cease to exist, the universe will cease to exist.
Every track of me will be erased. Nobody will be able to tell that I ever lived. It will be like I didn't even live in the first place.
You're not missing out
A couple of years ago, I would have a panic attack reading this.
I believed I was gonna change the world.
I wanted to make my mark on the world so badly - so that I could be remembered forever.
Now I'm strangely okay with this.
Why?
Because I have realized that nothing lasts forever. The only constant in this world is change.
Since nothing else lasts forever, I am not missing out on anything. In fact, everyone else will eventually suffer the same fate as me.
If everyone suffers the same fate, our fate can neither be good, nor bad.
It's just the way it is.
Valar Morghulis
I'm sure you have seen those creepy gravestones:

• Remember stranger, as you pass by,
  
• As you are now, so once was I.
  
• As I am now you soon will be,
  
• Prepare yourself for eternity. (to follow me.)
  

These are surprisingly accurate.
We must all die. We must all be forgotten. We must all follow each other into eternity.
Valar Morghulis. Memento Mori.
We are in this together.
Our destination is the same
Life is like a giant maze.
We can take so many different paths.
We think that one path is better than the other.
But we don't realize that all of the paths end up in the same place.
Once we realize that our destination is the same, we can escape the maze. We can escape our ego.
We become chill. We cease to worry. Problems are no longer problems.
So what now?
Once we realize that the maze is a joke, we also go through an existential crisis.
Sure, we might not have any problems anymore, but we also don't have any goals.
What should we do with our lives then? Why even live?
I'd reverse the question and ask: Why not?
If you can live entirely without problems, what is so bad about living? Why would you want to end it?
Sure, there are things you dislike here in life. But you only dislike these things because you still believe in the maze. You believe that you must take a specific path. Once you realize that the maze is an illusion, and that all paths end up in the same place, you become indifferent about the path you are taking.
1 billion dollars in debt? Severely handicapped from an accident? Chronic health issues? Wife left you? Living on the streets? Nobody cares about you?
That's one path. It's as good as any other path. Ultimately, they all end up in the same place.
Life is like Minecraft
I'd equate life to playing Minecraft. There is no specific goal. You can't win. You can't lose. But you'll still keep playing. Why? Because playing isn't so bad, and you have no incentive to quit. You'll make up some kind of goal for yourself.
Personally, I've made it my goal to make some of the other players suffer less. Have fewer problems.
That's my path. I know it's as good as any path, but I still choose it, cause I need to move my character somewhere. I'm already playing the game. I have zero reason to quit it.
Maybe the path will be difficult, maybe it will turn narrow. Maybe I will have to abandon it. Maybe I will have to take a different path. I won't be disappointed about that. I know where I'm gonna end up.
Take your lunch now and attend to death later
As Epictetus said:
I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch
Do the same as Epictetus.
Take your lunch and eat it, while being in a state of complete equanimity.
Realize that there is nothing negative about death.
You don't have to suffer, while eating.
Chill out, and relax, my friend. We are all in this together.

I know this is long and none of you can read, but bear with me.
As most of you know, stocks can only go down to zero. So the profit for shorts is limited down to zero, and the loss for longs is limited to zero. When stocks go up, the profit for longs is limitless and the loss for shorts is also limitless, theoretically of course. So imagine being short, stuck in a massively losing position where if you push the price down, zero is the best payoff. Ironically this was the bet Melvin made before he got steamrolled by the internet.
But what about if you could go long? The sky is the limit and could theoretically cover more of your losses than trying to go back to zero. $GME closed at $193 today, so if they're still in the hole, all they can try is pushing it to zero and dig the hole deeper which seems like a dumb plan. So this is what I think they're going to do.
Yesterday, the CEO of the Nasdaq suggested a halt to trading to let institutions "recalibrate" their positions:

Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman suggested Wednesday that her exchange could halt trading activity for stocks, in the event they were targeted by internet users, to enable the exchange to investigate possible manipulation and allow investors to “recalibrate.”
https://www.mediaite.com/news/nasdaq-ceo-suggests-halt-to-trading-to-allow-big-investors-to-recalibrate-their-positions-to-combat-reddit-users/

What if a halt wasn't possible, but they needed a way to kill the momentum of retail buyers and allow $GME to fall? The best solution would be to cut off retail from purchasing/bidding up the price. That's all you need to do. Only let them sell or hold, which would contribute no pricing pressure at all or only downward pressure. This would allow hedge funds price control over $GME so they could move it lower with ladder attacks without having to worry about or battle with retail pushing against them. If anything retail would panic and sell. And thus today we saw a massive attack which brought $GME down over $350.
2.Some short covering has obviously taken place. Some Korean firm I think sold a few million shares they were long. It's a small dent but not enough to fix the problem. And the short volume is up markedly, while the short interest is still over 50 million shares. I've seen higher SI figures and I don't know how Ortex computes this, whether it includes naked shorts or not. But here's the updated graph:
https://i.imgur.com/jnf4ELe.png
So you can see they've covered some bets, probably the biggest losers shorting from like $30 or something. But they seem to have reloaded, as others here and on twitter have reported. The short volume is up massively and days to cover is at its lower point ever.
I've read that shorts have to return 30 million shares tomorrow. I have no idea if this is true, but if it is, it means the game is coming to an end and they need to close their position by buying which they will have to do eventually. So the final step after pushing $GME into the dirt and doing some short covering, is to setup positions to go long. $GME hit a low of $112 today. The best way for shorts out is to go long and to do so through derivatives, specifically cheap calls. As most of you know, the further out of the money a call is, the cheaper it is. Now I don't know what the $570 strike expiring tomorrow was trading at when $GME hit $112 (I just wish I had bought some). But it's currently less than $1k and was much cheaper earlier. And more importantly, over 12,000 of these were bought TODAY. Normally I'd attribute these 0DTE cheap moonshots to the retar, erm, traders here. But considering most of you can't buy right now, and that Robinhood has never allowed 0DTE options purchases, I have to think this was institutional buying:
https://imgur.com/DOqIA8T
Some people have mentioned holding through the weekend as calls would expire ITM. Wouldn't they want to avoid that by getting the squeeze done and over with so they expire OTM? Just a thought.
If I'm right, and the shorts have loaded up on 0DTE moonshot calls and are ready to stop playing games and exit, they will let this thing finally fly now that they can make a ton of money on the upside through calls.
The ride up will be swift and so will the ride back down. The best way for them to play this is to position themselves with calls at the bottom (today), then start the unloading of their short positions through buying and let it ride as high as they can to cover however deep they are. And once that ends, they will cash in the calls, which will cause MMs to sell off their delta-hedged shares behind those calls, shorts will stop buying any more shares, and probably short the price back down because they're greedy fucks. All of this would send the price plummeting right after a top. Fortunately we have circuit breakers now which I don't think existed back when VW went to the moon. Look at a chart of the VW Squeeze:
https://imgur.com/E5QShAp
See how the stock fell beforehand...probably to let shorts reposition themselves for the inevitable. Is that happening today? Maybe. The point is it's very violent up and then back down. The squeeze on VW all happened in one day, perhaps over hours or less. So you have to be ready.
How high does it go? I would expect anything above $500 is risky (but I dream of $1k+ like the rest of you). Whether they load up on $50 calls or $500 calls both will go up along with the price. You never know where the top is so have a game plan. The top is wherever they need it to be to get right with God (the banks backing them). So be ready and realistic. If you can't watch charts, set a sell limit (I know, I know). But please don't diamond hands major profits to nothing by going through a squeeze and not selling because you're also a greedy fuck. I've been a member of this autistic playground long enough to watch diamond hands go to zero, repeatedly. I nearly went extinct as a gay bear myself for diamond-handing puts into the summer after the market crashed in March.
Positions and disclosures:

• 19 Feb 21 $400 Call x 2
• 19 Feb 21 $150 Call x 3
• 20 shares (lol)
• -$100k or +$250k, we'll see what happens.

This is not financial advice and I'm no insider, just a retar...trader like the rest of you. Do not risk what you cannot afford to lose. Good luck. Hope to see you all on the moon, because after all the shit they've pulled with $GME, you deserve it.
Edit: I never said don't hold past $500. I think that could be the floor for when this kicks off. But I have no idea when it ends. I'm not trying to scare you to sell. I just don't want anyone here to baghold. It's always brutal to see and this is easily the biggest play WSB has rallied around.
Phone Edit 2:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝
🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜🥜

Hello Reddit! Forgive me as I am new to the online community. Just wanted to tell my story and maybe get some input. I [37F] accidentally found out last month my husband [38M] was using 'work trips' as an excuse to sleep with his also married coworker who lives across the country. When I say accidentally; he sent me a screen shot of Amazon purchases for our children and included at the bottom of the photo was a delivery to this woman. So yes, the worried wife in me checked his search history and email. It was all right there! I learned his November trip was a romantic getaway but this current one is luxurious! A spa resort complete with couples massages, couples cooking classes and monogramed bathrobes from etsy. He mailed her a box of gifts a few days ago for Christmas (how sweet), he purchases sexy lingerie, sent her money on venmo and even started planning a January trip to Las Vegas. I was furious when I learn all this but I kept my composure.
My plan: He left this morning for his 'work trip' but before he left I gathered all evidence of his affair. I spent 4 weeks collecting emails, credit card statements, reservations and confirmations. I wrote him a 10 page letter, put it in an envelope and taped it inside the lining of his suitcase. I plan on sending a group text to him and his mistress right after check in telling them to enjoy their trip. I will also inform them that a letter is in his suitcase and that I want a divorce. I wrote a special section just for her and I want to make sure she sees it so I will be emailing her the letter as well.
He is currently in the air. My group text goes out this evening. Stay tuned...
UPDATE!
His flight landed 1 1/2 hours ago. He told me he would text me when he landed and he has yet to do so. I have text him twice, they were delivered but not read. I checked our phone records and he text both me and her during his lay over. His email shows no Uber receipt from his final destination airport to his hotel. She must have picked him up. Something I probably should have clarified in my OP. She lives in the state he is visiting. So he flew alone.
I will be sending a group text to both him and his mistress in 2 hours as that will be 4pm their time and check in.
UPDATE #2
Sent pictures of our children and he did not respond. FYI he is in the middle of the desert.
My texts are going through green which puts a monkey wrench in my plan for a group text to him and his mistress. Need suggestions. Should I call the hotel? Connect right to their room. I worked so hard for this, it has to be tonight. HELP!
​
UPDATE #3
Thank you to everyone standing by and waiting. My best friend has come to my house to help me through this. It seems my texts are going through green (undelivered) but when my friend tried it is blue and delivered.
HE HAS BLOCKED ME! I guess that helps his guilt.
The plan now is to call the hotel. Will wait a few minutes after check in to make the call. Very soon. Please stand by.
​
UPDATE #4
Like most of you predicted he does not care, He had zero answers for my questions. That was. the mot hurtful part. But guess what, I have all the emotional support and economic support so i'm not mad. Every question I asked he had no response because his mistress was sitting there. I suspect when he is home alone with me, his answers will be different. I have made sure that he will not emotionally and financially fuck me because I have secured support from family and friends. He can go FUCK himself!!!!!!
UPDATE #5
Called his hotel room. Talked to his mistress and finally lost my shit. He ended up calling me a few minutes later and had zero empathy. I'm shocked, but I'm not. He said a divorce was in order and fought me on nothing. I expected him to be sad, he was not, but thats ok. I started packing up his shit, I have some great friend who helped me put everything in the garage. Good riddance? I guess so...
The Morning After
I wake this morning broken. My house is in shambles as I went on a rampage yesterday ripping photos off the wall, throwing his stuff in piles on the floor and breaking random objects in anger. Now that I've had a nights sleep I feel that I am a bit clearer in my thinking as I analyze the 'conversation' we had yesterday. He was different on the phone. That was not the man I know, but who was the man I've known? Because everything was a lie. The only thing he cared about on the phone was getting the kids. Which is perfectly ok, he should want to see his kids. But he refused to answer any question I had or admit to anything. I personally feel his lack of remorse was because he was sitting in front of his mistress. If I confronted him at home this would not have been his reaction. When he comes home Monday night I expect to see a different man. Also, in my conversation with the mistress I learned she is recently separated.
I called my mom. That was hard. While she and my dad have always been loving and supporting it was hard to make that phone call. I felt like a failure. I know it wasn't my doing but to admit that I made a poor choice in a spouse was difficult. Was this all because of a mistake I made 13 years ago? Honestly it doesn't matter. I have 2 days to empty my house of his things.
Who do I tell? Do I call his dad? Do I tell his mother? Best friend? Work buddies? I wish there was a manual on how to do this because I'm lost. Even with all my preparation I'm still humiliated.
Luckily he did not take his house keys when he left. So no need to change the locks, I'll be removing his keys and sending him on his way. I don't plan on seeing him when he gets home Monday night. Doors are locked, everything you own is in the garage, have your people talk to my people and I'll see you never.
Preparing for the Return
My friends and family have been wonderful. I am so fortunate to have such great people in my life. Yesterday they came to help me move all of his clothing to the garage. His collectibles were all packed up and sitting here, waiting to be appraised. It took a very long time and I was exhausted afterwards; but it was necessary. I honestly don't think he expects me to have gone to such great lengths to remove him from my life. Because I was so emotional when I confronted him there is a chance that he thinks I will want to reconcile. Fat chance, buddy. His flights lands a little before 10pm tonight. When he Ubers back home the doors will be locked. He told me on the phone he was just getting his car and leaving. I will be holding him to that. Something I should have mentioned earlier, the house is in my name only. He had no credit when we first started looking so everything is in my maiden name and purchased by me. Health insurance, car insurance, cell phones, utilities are all in my name. The only thing his name is on is his car. I think he realizes now that could all come back to bite him. I don't want a messy divorce, I'm willing to listen to his demands and try and meet in the middle on as many things as possible. He obviously doesn't care anymore so I'm going to do my best to not care and treat this like a business deal.
Update late tonight on his return. Thank you to everyone following and showing support. You are appreciated.
The Dust has Settled
It's been a few days since his return. For a man who so diligently planned a secret retreat with his mistress he took no time to plan for his return 'home.' He has been living in the basement since Monday. I allowed him to watch the children open gifts on Christmas but he has since returned to the basement. We have contacted 3 mediators and have appointments next week to start the mediation process. It's obviously over. We had a conversation/argument upon his return and he actually asked about reconciliation. I laughed. I laughed uncontrollably. Of course he pushed blame stating that our marriage has been over for a long time. Well, that's news to me. His actions of an affair were selfish and avoidant. He didn't want to have that hard conversation with me about counseling or divorcing and this route was easier and a lot more fun. Let's face it, he likes the attention of 2 women loving and pining over him. Well, I'm not longer playing that game. She wins, and oh what a prize he is! I have been amicable about talking about the terms of our separation. My biggest hang up is her. He may continue seeing her and I have questions about her character. What kind of woman/mother cheats with a man she knows is married and knows has children? When I confronted her on the phone last Saturday and asked her that question she was silent. I asked if she was 'sorry' and it was as if the line went dead. That kind of person I do not want around my children. People who show no remorse, especially when they are in the wrong, are not kind people.
I have found solace in friends and family and thank you to everyone's recommendation of ChumpLady. I'm half way through the book, read through the website and find it so helpful. Thank you again to everyone. I can't believe the outpouring of support. To the trolls, sorry you think I'm an unfit and inattentive wife, but cheaters cheat because they want to. Thank you again to all, not sure if you want a mediation update or if my story is over. Either way, I'm happy to have 'met' you all.
Where is the 'fault'?
If you listen to the books and advice always given about cheaters it all says the same thing: It's not you, they made a choice. MY STBX insists things were bad. While I don't think we were Pam and Jim or Lucy and Ricky, I think things were good. This process has made me review who I am, who I've been and who I want to be. Could I have made changes? Yes. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. But my decisions and actions were never detrimental to our marriage. They were more like sacrifices. And now I'm having those sacrifices thrown at me and I'm being called neglectful. Is all this about attention? A narcissistic need to be the apple of someone's eye? Him and the AP are now blissfully in the honeymoon stage. Vacations, late night phone calls like teenagers, present buying, etc. But what happens when the other shoe drops? What happens when she sees that he has very little patience with children? That he will walk past a a sink full of dishes completely blind to them? When he doesn't pay the phone bill for 2 months because he is spending money on silly gadgets? What then? While it's not my problem, I'm sure his AP will take issue with these things. Perhaps then she will be put in the situation I've been in for a decade. Should she be the glue and hold it all together or should she neglect responsibilities for his neediness? I've been told by him ( someone who is having a relationship and spending large sums of money on someone else) that I'm at fault. Perhaps, but what about the decades of cleaning up your messes? Maybe if I would have had 2 hour conversations with him every night things would be different, but to be honest, I'm happy I'm here. Now reflecting back I see how under appreciated I was. How neglected I was. All these year I thought I was helping but I was really being taken advantage of and this affair is no different.
Just a word of advice to all the mess cleaners, excuse makers, and spouse sheltering people reading this. Stop. Stop now. I've learned that all the 'helping' is simply them learning how to manipulate you. Draw that line in the sand. Prepare for an uncomfortable situation when they start to stumble under the pressures of real life. But don't lose yourself. I lost myself years ago and it's not a place you want to be.
Mediation & The Move.
We had our first mediation appointment via Zoom yesterday. It was very amicable, but only because I don't want to fight and I just want this to be over. He apparently wants nothing. Not the house, not the furniture, not what he's entitled to of my pension; he just wants to be done as well. As I've been packing up things in the house to declutter I've been offering him things, but he wants nothing. I suspect the moment our marriage is dissolved he will be packing up his collectables and clothing and driving across the country to live with her. I guess I should be ok with this as I don't want to be married to him anymore. It just kills me that he will be moving in with her and helping her raise her 2 children while mine are fatherless. It makes me so angry. Seething. The man who was abandoned by his father is now doing the same thing. Something he said would never ever happened because of the mental issues it has given him today. Well, it looks like that, as well as mostly everything else, was a lie. Again, I take solace in the fact that their honeymoon phase will be short lived. Reality will smack them both in the face and she will realize that he can be more hurt than help.
While I wish him well and hope the best, our kids deserve more than a Christmas/Easteone week in the summer father. No dad at basketball games, cub scouts, birthday parties and school plays. Meanwhile AP will have him and her children's biological father. I guess nothing in life is fair and my boys will have to learn that lesson early than I had hoped.
He's Gone.
My STBX left yesterday morning to visit her. I told him to go. I didn't want to spend NYE with him and our COVID circle friends who we celebrate with have zero interest in seeing him either. He booked a flight 30 minutes after I told him to go. My only stipulation was that he is back for this weekend as it's my birthday and I really need a day to myself. I've watched the kids for 3 weekends now while he went to see his mistress, I thought I at least deserved my birthday to relax. He text me while he was boarding that he won't be home for my birthday. Well then... He claims when he booked this he booked a return for the evening of my birthday. When he tried to change it he was put on standby, it would cost $1000 to change, it was a red eye etc. The excuses kept coming. He apparently does not realize I have access to the internet as well and flights are less than $300 with the airline he flew. I told him this and he said those flights weren't there when he booked (lies) and he will take care of it. I just want him to be honest. If you don't want to be here for my birthday, just say it. If you don't want to spend the day with your children, just tell me. I can't force you to be a parent. I told him the flights were available and affordable, it's his choice to rebook. Ball is in your court. That's all I can do, right? Stay tuned for an update on his return this weekend..
NYE Nightmare.
It was 12:40am on NYE and there was still no call from him. I was angry for no other reason than I explained to the kids that even though daddy wasn't with us he would call at midnight to talk to them and wish them a Happy New Year. I was made to be a liar. So, I text my STBX and his excuse was, 'they are with their friends, I didn't want to bother them'. Excuse me? Bother them? You mean you didn't want your kids to bother you is what you are really saying. If I was across the country on NYE without my kids I would have called and done the countdown with them via facetime. I think most parents would. But not him. He said, "If you would have told me that you told the kids I'd call then I would have." He tried to spin this on me, that I created this mess. Why do I have to tell you that you need to call your children at midnight? This small act said a lot to me. Our children are not a priority. I guess he didn't want to ruin his perfect vacation at his new girlfriend's house with her children. He has a nice new family now. Today is my birthday and he returns this evening. I told him in my NYE text that I will speak to him on the 12th, our next mediation meeting because I'm done. I tried to be civil for the kids but he is not putting forth the effort for them.
Liar Liar, Pants on Fire.
The past few days have been strange. We rarely talk (a decision on both our parts) and when we do it's about mediation, plans moving forward, or the kids. We have been civil and communicating well about those items. We are also friendly in front of the children as not to upset them. The situation is strange because we are getting along, there is no arguing, it's a shared focus to just get through mediation and divorce. That's fine by me. Last night while I was cleaning the kitchen I heard him on the phone in the basement. I guess he didn't realize the door was left open by one of the children. Not wanting to be a part of the drama anymore I went to close the door. At that point I heard him tell her how 'crazy' I have been acting. Excuse me? We don't speak and when we do it's very civil. How is that crazy? Well, he proceeded to tell her about a conversation we had and he lied about everything. While the conversation part was true he told her I exploded, I was in a rage, I was crying etc. None of that was true. He explained how he laughed in my face at my rage, also not true because there was no rage. I had told him awhile back before the NYE debacle that I would start dating eventually and he proceeded to tell her that I was bragging about guys I'm meeting. So far from the truth. I slammed the basement door. I'm sure he knows I heard. So I ask, 'Why the need to lie and make me a villain?' We aren't staying together, I have no reason to fight with you anymore, that's why we are paying a mediator. Why start lying to your new girlfriend that you love? How is that a good way to start a relationship? I don't know what is happening here...
This is my concern: This woman and him are in love and want to start a life together. Ok, thats fine, God bless and congrats. But, this woman only knows me by the stories (which I'm assuming are all lies) he has told her about me. If he does move across the country to be with her, how can I trust a woman who hates me because of misinformation to treat my children properly? I don't care if she hates me personally, I'll still sleep fine at night, but now I'm worried about sending my kids in the summer to stay with them. I want to confront him about this but I know I can't. Maybe it's not that I can't, but I don't know how. Also, he has told no one we are separated and definitely has not told people why. How come? You initiated this, you cheated, you are happy now, so why can't you tell people? He told his father that he was bringing the kids alone to visit him because he and I 'weren't seeing eye to eye at the moment.' What?! I would assume he's afraid to face the music or is just finding comfort in the little love bubble he has created. He chooses to not face reality. He has yet to look for an apartment for when the divorce is finalized but has booked another fight out to see her for Valentine's Day. He is refusing to face reality and it's so frustrating.
We have mediation on 1/12 to discuss custody and hope that we can settle everything and get the paperwork moving. I'm having a scheduled phone conversation with a lawyer today to discuss what I should ask for in terms of physical and legal custody when he moves. Update you all (if you want it of course) on mediation after the 12th.
Mediation and Empty Promises
Yesterday was our second mediation appointment. While it was amicable, there was some obvious tension. The tension was not on my end but more on his. Let me explain... During our first mediation we brought up the topic that he might move out of state. At yesterdays meeting I asked what we would do about custody if he moves to this particular state. When I mentioned the state by name the mediator was confused. This prompted her to ask him why this state that is so far away. His answer? "Well......." Then silence. He couldn't put into words the fact that he was leaving to be with his girlfriend. I had to finally chime in realizing we are paying by the hour that he was moving to be with his girlfriend. I realized later that was the first time he had semi-confessed to having an affair and a girlfriend to anyone. If you love this person so much why can't you just say it out loud? That whole situation confuses me.
Anyway, when it comes to dollars and cents I will be fine. He will also be fine. He will have enough to do what he needs and so will I. We have agreed to a physical custody scenario that allows him weekend and dinner visits. Fine by me, I want my boys to have their father. But, the situation becomes a bit more difficult when he moves. While he said yesterday he plans to stay here at least a year, I doubt that will actually happen. When he does move across the country he wishes to return for one weekend of every month to see the boys. Again, I'm fine with this scenario but where will he stay that weekend? He has no family. Will he just be taking the boys to a hotel? Again, I don't think he actually thought this through. This is a problem I/we will tackle when he does decide to move.
Lastly, the mediator said it could take about 2 months to finalize everything. He and I spoke after the session to go over some facts and figures and I brought up the tentative finalization date of our marriage. I told him how 2 months is a good amount of time to save some money and find an apartment to which he agreed. I also reminded him about his promise to not return to visit her until our divorce is finalized or he has a place to live. He quickly became frustrated telling me that he knew and tried to shut down the conversation. I told him I'm happy that we are on the same page but I'm not budging. If you leave while you still live here you can not come back, that is something we both agreed to.
Now the big question remains; Who does he break a promise with? Obviously it's a win win for me, stay home and help me with the kids while you save $500+ and move out quickly or leave to visit her and I get you out of the house sooner. I'm happy with either decision. I just want to move on with my life and enjoy my moments with my children.
Out For A Swim
When I took this dive into the Reddit community I had no idea where I would land. I thought my feet would hit shallow ground and I would be ankle deep on the banks in an uncomfortable swimsuit all alone. But to my surprise this deep ocean of Reddit readers have engulfed me into their warm waters and I am surrounded by a sea of support. For this I am thankful. I am also so touched by the droves of people who have reached out for advice or offered their own experiences as lessons to be learned. To the ones seeking advice I tell them, I am not an expert swimmer. I am merely doggy paddling through this sea of hurt and confusion. Please don't use me as a sign of strength. Because the truth is, I am not strong, I am you. I am the woman who reads because they are suspicious of late night phones call her husband takes. I am the spouse who has shouldered the entire family and is in desperate need of support. I am the woman who misses affection from her husband who is next to her in bed every night. I. Am. You. To those people who have yet to catch their partner cheating but are suspicious, trust your gut. Cheating is a coward's choice so be braver than them and face the truth. To the spouse who is 'the fixer' and takes on every challenge, take a step back. When you help (even with good intention) you are actually just hurting yourself. To the spouse who has tried everything to receive physical attention from their partner but to no avail, their affection is probably going somewhere else. These are lesson I wish I could have told myself months, if not years ago. Listen to me. Or just listen to you.
To the sharks in water who call me a 'bad mom', 'a crazy bitch', 'fake' or even just think I'm out of my mind, you will find no blood in this water. So it's best you move on and find a thread where the OP will chum the water for you. It's so very easy to read and judge, this I understand. I just hope that if this ever happens to you that you will be as brave, logical and composed as you expect others to be. If not, you will find sharks circling you as well. So I hope you are as strong of a swimmer as you claim to be.
If you are still reading, my saga/survival continues. Our final mediation papers will arrive this week. We were able to settle everything at the last meeting on 1/12 and the documents just need our signature. After that, the divorce papers need to be served and filed with the county. Then we await our court date which will be done via Zoom. Yes, a bit anticlimactic, but it will still serve its purpose of divorcing. He has started (finally) to look for an apartment but nothing is to his satisfaction. Maybe he is being picky or maybe he is comfortable living in the basement. Either way, once the divorce papers are stamped he needs to be gone. He has started making phone calls to her during the day and I can hear him giggling downstairs. I'm happy he is happy, I really am. That isn't passive aggressive. I know I will be happy one day too, he just got there first and that's ok. I feel like my life is in limbo right now. I can't move forward because I'm chained to the past. I'm hoping his move will be soon. I suspect he wants out for February 1st so he can go visit her for Valentines Day. I hope for his sake (and mine) that he makes his deadline. I will update again after I receive the mediation paperwork and divorce papers are served. I'm sure that will stir up a lot of thought and emotion so I'm certain it will be a doozy. Till then, I'll keep doggy paddling.
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