Actual Unpopular Opinion Time

1. I think most people have almost shunned the idea that speedrunning should be a hobby undertaken with the goal of self-improvement and fulfilling and expressing a love for gaming and certain games. Viewers seem to think that if you don't have WR or you're not constantly angry and cussing at your game that you're unimportant. Runners seem to think the only things that matter who is ahead of them on leaderboards, and set their goals of bopping other people instead of just improving themselves. For a hobby that nearly always involves one player against one game, we sure place a lot of importance on all of things we can't control.

2. Nobody practices anymore. People learn a run and just do attempts and expect that to just work. Either that or nobody streams practice anymore, not sure which tbh.

3. Follower alerts are the worst thing to ever happen to streaming. People should not be applauded for clicking a button, much less have their name appear OVER THE GAME FEED and interrupt the entire stream just so xxDingus69xx can let everybody else know how funny his/her name is. The worst part of all of this is that it works. Sub/donation/maybe even host notifications can be done well, but rarely are.

4. Unless it goes down to tenths or hundreds of seconds, in-game time is completely worthless. For a community so wrapped around figuring out exactly who's better than who, why would you ever want to say "lol, guess we're tied." If you want to set a PERSONAL goal of cutting another minute or second of the in-game time, sure, great, knock yourself out, but don't ever say "Both of us have a :47, so I need to get a :46 to beat them."

5. Racing has gotten to the point where if it isn't a serious category of a game you seriously run, it's a meme or "casual" race. Things like the Mystery Tournament are great for having a good time trying to get through a game quickly, but that's one of the exception instead of one of the rules. The best and most fun I've had in races were in silly categories or games that I didn't know many tricks in, but they never seem to happen.

6. You wanna know what's REALLY killing speedrunning? Nothing. In fact, speedrunning is probably better than it ever has been, unless you're an old boi who hates the lack of "purity". Games are getting faster and faster, more and more people are trying their hand at going quick, and as a form of entertainment, speedrunning reaches and amazes more viewers than ever before. You wanna know what's going to kill speedrunning? All the stupid negativity that's everywhere about everything. People are so quick to kill runs, kill goals, or start drama because one thing happened that they don't like. Speedrunning, much like life, takes awful twists that screw you over often, too many people are ready to give up and start complaining after one bad thing instead of working hard and persevering.

7. We are in a weird position where there's simultaneously too much and too little money in gaming. AAA companies have to spend millions upon millions of dollars just to put out the newest sequel to Boring Game Series that Got Stale After the 3rd One. Even "indies" have to rely on million dollar+ Kickstarters and Early Access programs to put out a game that people will take notice of. Yet there is no money anywhere for anything innovative or different, if your game isn't already poised to rake in the beacoup bucks by the time it's even fully released by being essentially the same thing as everybody else, expect absolutely no press or knowledge of your game.

8. The absolute WORST thing to hear someone tell you after a bad run: "This is still better than I could do." Two reasons why I hate reading these words in a chat: A. Of course it's better than you could do, I've put in hundreds or thousands of hours into this, there's absolutely no reason I shouldn't be better that you. That's like me walking up to a concert violinist after they play a song offkey and saying, "Yeah, well I couldn't even do that." DUH. B. You absolutely COULD do this as well as I can, the only thing that separates us is that time I've put in that you haven't. Saying "This is better than I could do," sounds like you're just not going to try, and that anyone watching who might be interested in learning speedrunning should give up too. Inclusion and encouragement are what make this community great; exclusion and negativity will do nothing but harm us.

9. I really want Hitbox and/or YoutubeGaming to succeed. Right now, unfortunately, the only thing that these services do is give the illusion that Twitch doesn't have an insane monopoly on livestreaming video games. Twitch has, in my opinion, done next to nothing in terms of actually helping the viewers and the broadcasters that make their money machine churn, but keep adding "features" that make things worse for 95% of us. If Hitbox and/or YoutubeGaming take off, perhaps it will convince Twitch to finally improve that ContentID crap they were "going to fix," or add the name changing service that's gonna release by the end of 2013, or any of the other empty promises they've made over the years.

10. If you decide that you're gonna try and pay your bills from streaming or any other similar content production, you're most likely 3 to 5 years too late to the party. Unless you have a significant other, family, or some other mode of money coming in that you yourself are not actively earning, you will not make enough money playing video games on the internet unless you get EXTREMELY lucky. Content production is a cutthroat business, and YOU are your brand. The people that are already popular and making a living doing this already know the ins and outs and have established themselves so well that their advantage over little JohnnyStreamer is MASSIVE. If you're not constantly promoting and improving yourself and your stream, no matter how much success you have right now, people will move on to the next big thing and leave you with nothing, because right now, and likely forever to come, content is going to be a massive buyer's market as there's just more content than anyone could possibly begin to watch. If you aren't streaming/marketing/improving your stream more than 99.999% of everybody else, you have no chance.

11. RPG and Turn-Based Strategy games are the absolute worst speedgames. I have no idea why a Fire Emblem or similar game gets a 3 hour slot in any marathon, and why there's always a Final Fantasy or similar game to round out GDQs, they literally put me to sleep and I have no idea why anyone donates for these boring speedruns. You think 2D platformers don't require actual skill? How about a game where decent menuing is considered skillful lol.

A couple non-speedrun/gaming/streaming ones because I feel like putting it out there.

1. National Politics is the single biggest thing that ends up having nearly no impact on your daily life, yet people get SOOOOO passionate about it. Meanwhile nobody even cares about local politics, you know the people who make decisions about the things going on in your neighborhood, town, etc.

2. I will turn off nearly any music if it has lyrics. Unless the voice is being used as an actual complimentary instrument, it makes music worse. Too many songs that have great music are ruined by some screeching voice singing about nothing important.

3. Anime itself doesn't turn off too many people, what turns people off is the crazy fans that talk about anime LIKE IT'S THE GREATEST AND MOST IMPORTANT THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE EVER.

That's all for now, might throw out a few more later if it pops into my head.