Stream Monsters

I have a problem with the term "Stream Monster". I completely understand the idea of the term, the concept of someone who is not a streamer/speedrunner and is just in stream or at an event to meet and potentially hang out with streamers/speedrunners. At events, they tend to flock towards the big runners and want to tag along with them to everything. Outside of speedrunning, those are just called fans. In eSports, variety casting, regular sports, movies, TV shows...big names have fans, not (stream) monsters.

Speedrunning still has a massive stigma of being an elitist community, not accepting of new members. Calling fans "stream monsters" is a perfect example of this. We are demonizing the concept of being a fan of content creation which is ridiculous. And by content creation I mean just speedruns, not even creating YouTube videos or anything.

And the step from there, which I know is a touchy subject in the speedrunning community, is that it demonizes making a living or having income from a stream. Hell, from what I've seen the speedrunning community has the most liberal usage of the term "sell-out". If people want to give you money because you're entertaining or good at video games, god damn good for you. This does not make them a stream monster, this makes them a fan.

The only distinction is that there can be a lack of social awareness for some fans, causing them not to realize the boundaries of meeting streamers/speedrunners. They can want to follow them around or tag along to meals that are intended to be for the streamer/speedrunner's friends only. This is common in all of the outlets I listed above, it's a matter of the person who is aware setting boundaries.

tldr; talking about stream monsters is similar to stigmatizing selling out and contributes to the shitty elitist environment we have today