NOTE: What I'm about to talk about doesn't apply to everyone in the DOA community or everyone in the FGC in general.
For those who know me, more than anything else in a gaming community, I hate, I HATE stream monsters. For those not in the know, stream monsters are people whose only purpose in chatting on a gaming stream to watch gaming events is for three things:
1) To talk shit about a game.
2) To talk shit about certain players... and even the ones who don't deserve it.
3) To talk shit about the event in general.
And they do all this for nothing other than wanton drama or trolling. Stream monsters have no limits to their social status. They could be your everyday casual player. They could be your typical competitive scrub leeching to the popularity of top players for cool points. They could be top players. Some of those very stream monsters can be people within your own community and have supported it, using that as an excuse to act as they do.
But what's even more bothersome and ironic is that despite their malevolent intentions, for some games, even they are necessary for high views in a stream. Do I believe they should be? No, absolutely not. But for some communities it is how it is.
I gotta be honest. The DOA community compared to others - as far as tournament turnouts go offline - is rather small. And for the few that participate, the mentality of most outside viewers is that unless you win a tournament or place top 3, the stream monsters will not hesitate to crucify your name with every negative slur in the book before they associate you with the worst players in the FGC.
This is what I unfortunately had to go through with people online 2 years ago in the aftermath of Final Round one week later, which at the time had a rather impressive turnout for a DOA tournament. I went from being considered a decent Christie player and suddenly am associated with the terms "fraud", "button mashing scrub", etc. And I didn't take it well. To make matters worse, the friends I once had online (or at least thought were my friends) did a 180 and also decided to talk shit about me like I was the worst thing to ever happen to them before they removed me from my friends' list. Since that time, I've been even more afraid of playing on stream, but just as afraid of stream monsters. In my mind, I believed that unless I was perfect, there was no point in me supporting the community, because then I'd be accused of "supporting the community poorly". So I kept a low profile online and didn't play as much, causing my self-confidence to go to an all-time low.
It was only because of a select few people that I managed to gain some of the confidence I have now (note that I said "some"). It took a long time to sink in because of the depth of my bad experience, but I eventually got somewhere. In the very least, I was confident enough to share my knowledge of Christie as she currently is in DOA5U. The only problem now is that I still don't have the confidence to play on stream.
After seeing some recent tournies - notably D.I.D. 10 and the tourney in France - it began to sink in that being respected and liked by outsiders doesn't mean placing at a tourney every time. In fact, you don't have to be liked by virtually everyone to make a difference. Even the top players aren't liked by everyone. It was an illusion planted into my mind as a result of continuous negative events that occurred for me personally.
So by now you're asking, "Why are stream monsters significant, and why should they matter"? That's the thing, stream monsters don't matter. But if you become too dependent on others to determine your own self-worth, this is how they can potentially hurt you mentally. I'm slowly learning that. Perhaps it's the belief that I need to be acknowledged by others in order to be considered a good player that messed me up in the head. The line between confidence and cockiness may seem blurry to some, but once you know the difference, no one in the right mind should fault you for being the latter.
At the end of the day, most stream monsters don't know what you have to go through to support your tourney. And personally, I think more people should enforce the behavior in stream chats collectively so that we can weed the bad seeds out, regardless of their social status. To hell with view counts. It should be about the quality of people's behavior in the stream chat that matters. When we can treat our games, events, and our players with respect regardless of background, skill or accomplishments, only then can we build the FGC in the right direction.
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