I have been thinking about writing for a long time. The recent discussions about girl streamers on Twitch and my own personal frustrations have led to me starting this blog. I apologize in advance if some of you see this post as overly negative but it is just the state of my mind lately.

I have been streaming for over a year now and the hardest part has been not giving up. You would get the super highs that would make you feel on top of the world and the major lows where you think of never streaming again. This will be no surprise to my viewers but lately I've been in a slump. This is because of a variety of reasons. Namely, I'm under a lot of personal stress and I've had trouble seeing improvement in my own game play. When you feel like your stream is growing slowly or "dying" you search for reasons why you are inadequate or what you are doing wrong. You also look to other streams and wonder how they are growing faster than you, why they have more positive support...etc etc etc... It is easy to get lost in what your stream should be instead of being yourself. It is hard not to notice that the community often values the size of your boobs or how much skin is showing, rather than what your game knowledge is or how much you care about the community. There have been times where I considered "selling out" to help my stream grow faster and build a larger community. My ultimate goal was to make friends in DotA and maybe have the opportunity to meet some of the pro players and other big names in the scene, so I felt like how the community viewed me was very important. Maybe this is naive thinking.

On those days where I felt inadequate and saw certain kinds of streams growing while I struggled, I questioned why it was so important for me to remain true to who I am as a person. What was more important to me? Being myself or building my stream? Every time someone came into my stream and compared to me someone else, it hurt me more than I cared to admit. Twitch creates this illusion that if you do not have the viewers and followers then you are not interesting enough or good enough. I'm sure this is especially hard on women as our looks are a huge part of whether we get viewers or not. Mostly I am just disappointed. I thought after I demonstrated my love for the game and showed my true self that more people would embrace my stream and me as a person. Unfortunately, streaming has left me feeling inadequate.

Early on in my streaming, I thought it would be a great idea to make friends with other girl streamers and build a network where we could all grow together. I have been lucky enough to meet a few great girls (who I can't wait to meet at TI5). But I have also experienced some behind the scenes sabotage and drama. There was a time where I would host people regularly trying to support their stream and grow together. Unfortunately this opinion was not shared by everyone I supported so now I limit my open encouragement to people who have been genuine friends to me. I think this is really sad. In an environment where women are already getting harassed by the community we should be trying to buoy each other up and be strong together instead of tearing each other down. I'm still searching for those people.

I want to just end this post with that. I have lots more "musings" for you guys down the road. I will try to post semi-regularly and maybe you guys will have the chance to see the real Mackenzie.