can we please stop accepting and going along with the framing that supporting the community and smaller streamers is some kind of charity?
"giving back to the community you came from" has a nice ring to it, especially since it's indirectly true, but it's not what this is about
it derails the conversation into a moral argument that is besides the point
it's not about some underlying moral obligation and shaming people or considering it cringe. that's a sure-fire way of deflecting any argument without addressing anything
it's the other way round. bigger streamers benefit by supporting the community, especially when sm64 is your main-content
a healthy and thriving community that grows will give you back much more in return over time than some short-term revenue boost that harms the community AND your own stream (unless you decided that you are done and try squeezing out some money before you leave)

To puncay and other big streamers who see this: don't put that off as some lofty ideals people just say for the sake of it
Really think back about when your streams were doing their best, when there were tons of community events, people interacting with each other constantly, being engaged with each other and sparking interest for new viewers and runners
Healthy and organic growth and the financial support came with it naturally too in form of subs, donations, ad revenue due to higher viewership and even funded prize money for events. Most of your long-term supporters are from that time too most likely
As for the harm it does to big streamers specifically, not just small ones. For one, i decided not to raid people who raid into their 24/7 streams after talking to other streamers around my size and they told me they are doing the same. While it may seem neglectable, those numbers add up
Also don't underestimate how appreciative smaller streamers are if they receive a raid from you. I have seen many times when they would raid a bigger streamer after receiving a big raid from somebody else to give something back to them when they have the chance
There are countless other ways they give back to you too. Some of them have a stable income and stream mostly for fun, they might support and thank you financially via donations or subs, or their viewers might since you supported their favourite smaller streamer
Some become and active part of your community, which will make chat interaction more enjoyable and engaging for the streamer and the viewers if they are able to talk to the same people frequently in your chat
Others will connect you to other communities they are a part of, increasing your reach beyond your original circle
All of that is invisible most of the time and you won't even notice it's missing, you'll just see a downwards trend and wonder what happened and try to retroactively find reasons for it
Like: "People moved away from Twitch after the pandemic", "Huge streamers stopped playing sm64", "Interest in speedrunning declined", "I'm not a WR contender anymore, so naturally people won't watch me", etc.
Those seem appealing since it has been somewhat of a factor, but it has way less of an impact than most people make it out to be

It's about the general culture shift that has been taking place and from my view it's about to get a lot worse if we don't correct it. I'll get to GSA and the 24/7 streams later
But let me take subathons as an example first because they share similarities with the 24/7 streams and they have been around long enough to see the impact of them and the long-term implications to see where it will be heading
People tend to copy whatever is popular with little consideration what it's actually doing. I mean it's popular, so it should be good, right?
I do remember ludwig's first subathon. At his size he could probably do whatever and it would still do well, but the novelty of the concept gave it a huge boost
People started copying it after that, including in our community. They did well financially in a short amount of time, especially for the bigger and established streamers. Then naturally smaller streamers started to do them too
I'd say even those did well when it was their first one. I get that "doing well" is a subjective metric here and people have different viewpoints on what that means for them personally, but that gets to my point
Then everyone was doing them, it became saturated and wasn't too special anymore. In the meantime i saw how it took a toll on a lot of streamers who were doing them, including non-sm64 ones. I can't even imagine how draining a long subathon must be
They had to take an extended break to recover, but the financial boost made up for that break and then some, so it's fine right?
Then they come back and naturally, numbers decline after a long break. The support does too of course for various reasons
The viewers spent their money previously to support the big event that was the subathon, others have just spent it on another subathon for another streamer. Then there is the viewers who moved to another community after the long break and didn't come back.
Then there are the viewers who are still watching the stream and are committed to supporting the streamer, but they are saving up for the next subathon. Why spend it now when there is a more suitable time for it in the future.
Then there are people who don't enjoy subathons, they still follow and see the icon of the stream being live, but don't bother to click it because they assume it's some afk-content while the streamer is gone or sleeping or some random filler content to bridge time in the subathon
I personally missed an entire PACE event because i just assumed there was the usual 24/7 content and i didn't see an announcement about the event and i stopped watching runners who i used to watch all the time, remembering being excited to see them on
Not because i actively chose not to, it just happened over time
In the meantime the streamers are having a hard time because of that decline
The overall community seems to be doing well, but they've been out of the loop because of the long break and even before that during the subathon since they were a 24/7 stream with little interaction with other communities
So they question themselves what they are doing wrong and searching for outside reasons why this is happening. It's hard to not compare yourself to your previous peak even if it's non-organic and artificially forced through a subathon
Because of that motivation drops, they stream less, might even get depressed and soon the financial burden is creeping up again even though they were doing incredibly well during their month of their last subathon
Their normal streams aren't enough to stay afloat, so they either have to give it up or do another subathon even though they remember how grueiling the last one was
They still love streaming though, so they give it another go, but of course because of the changes and the event being yet another subathon, it's not going as well as hoped, but it's enough for now
Until the next one that might have to come even sooner now...
I've seen it too many times at this point. And even if you don't spend an ungodly amount on twitch like i do, i wouldn't be surprised if you could point to similar examples yourself.
It's not sustainable. Now would the stream have been sustainable if it was just a consistent regular stream? Maybe, maybe not. I think it's more likely, but regardless you would have a much better idea if it was without having to put yourself through that toil.
The point is that there are a lot more factors at play that aren't apparent, opinions on how much impact each one has will vary, so will the actual impact.
But to come back to the culture shift. After years of this there is a general notion for some people that this is just the way it is. Subathons just being a natural part of full-time streaming even though it was barely a concept not that long ago. And people new to twitch will just adopt it.

Now to finally bring it all back to GSA and the 24/7 streams
I can't stress how harmful this will be for the community. Are we just going to accept this to become the new norm?
I don't expect somebody who makes his entire livelihood from this business model to acknowledge it
But for the people in the community who think this is not a big deal and overblown
Think about what makes our community so great and alive despite the odds of being such a niche game for so many years, while speedrun communities of other once very popular games have essentially died out
community events, constant interaction between streamers big and small, the social connections it builds to keep people in the community and bringing other streamers to pick up the game and their viewers into the community
There are so many viewers who are watching many sm64 streams everyday for years, many not even playing the game. It's beyond just the game, the speedrun or one particular streamer at this point
And now think about all the possible negative impacts those 24/7 streams could have on this, especially long-term. Assume the worst case scenario too because once it starts spiraling down, it's not going to stop
This is just the very beginning. Now that they formed a company around that concept and writing streamers left and right, there is a lot more to come
If you watch any mid-sized streamer in the sm64 community or even just adjacent to it, streaming it occasionally or a game similar to it, they probably got an offer
I know several people who declined flat-out, but i can imagine there are people on the fence about it and are probably waiting to see if it's socially acceptable, which it will over time if there isn't significant push-back, before accepting it since it's "free money" on the surface
Just like we eventually accepted how the GSA stream is run as a 24/7 rerun stream and tolerate it now
I've been holding my tongue about that because even though i didn't like it, it's something they built, so as long as it's just one stream i tolerated it
It wasn't just the huge waisted potential for the community of having a competetive speedrun event stream, especially with the following they built when they were still actively running events, but it also made it less likely for other competetive speedrun event streams to emerge since the slot appeared to be taken already
At least when they were still a hybrid stream of mostly 24/7 with the occasional online-event
It's so sad to see what GSA has become. I've been following it since the first plans were made years ago, when it finally got announced, then enjoying all the speedrun events they were hosting
I would even watch tournaments of games i have never played because i enjoyed the competetive format and it was still fairly rare in speedrunning
Then the 24/7 reruns started and i still remember the inital backlash even defending it and milo in the beginning because i was still naive enough to believe there was some greater purpose behind it to fund events etc.
But i got disillusioned time and time again and everytime i saw milo defend it and the tone he would talk about it, it would become more clear what the true intentions were
There were other incidents with GSA that confirmed it to me, but getting into all of them would be too much for now

So let me ask you directly, Milo. What are you doing here and why do you keep pushing for this? Do you not care about the sm64 community at all?
You have been around before i started running. You know exactly how this works, what keeps the sm64 community together and what impacts this will have on it
I still remember watching you back in 2017, when you were actively running. I was watching your huge 120 x-cam grind with your spreadsheet on the side. You were one of the first to do it
I remember how we talked about sm64 lacking tournament events and how everyone got excited to build something, throwing out ideas in the discord. You were firmly a part of the community of the game we put so many hours in to speedrun
So what happened? Why do you keep pushing things you know are harmful for the community, while doing the minimum amount to pass as acceptable, so you can use the community you have been a part of as tool for your own gain. I guess that's what they teach in business school after all
Honestly i don't even understand why. Is the fact that you are able to live entirely off of passive income really that important to you?
With how established GSA was, it would have only taken a bit of work to run semi-regular online events. The community would have done most of the work for you, while you just had to give them a platform and supervise things.
It would have grown into something beautiful and long-lasting. You would have benefited a lot from it and so would have the community. Instead you turned GSA into a 24/7 ad-farm and built a business around making other people do the same.
And yes, there is PACE. I just so happen to have been a part of organizing many offline-events for years before and while i started speedrunning. I know that it is non-stop work throughout the entire event and the days leading up to it.
But that's 2 events a year, what are you doing the other 11 months of the year if you are solely living off passive income?
Surely PACE is not just for keeping the ad-farm for GSA running. You probably enjoy meeting everyone regularly at the events and interacting with the friends you made. So why not do more of that, it would benefit everyone and be fulfilling doing something worthwhile.
Or is your new 24/7 channel business a push for ditching even that?
You built your livelihood around this at this point, but i think we should push against this hard.
Those 24/7 streams are not good for anyone in the long run, not the community, the viewers, small streamers and even big streamers, except maybe the ones that already have an isolated community of their own, in mario i can only think of chrism. But even they will probably feel the impact eventually.

I usually never do those long texts, but this has been on my mind for a long time and felt like it was important enough to spend the time writing it.