Here's the deal: I will post more irregularly.

What's happened in the last few months, and what to expect going forward.

Nov 16, 2022

I started this blog because I was tired of Twitter. I’ve entered the “old man” phase of my 20’s, and don’t want to go viral. I just wanted a place where I can practice coherence and self promotion.

That was back in 2021, and the experiment went well with one major flaw: After having written 1,200 words about AD stats for Caitlin or whatever, I would realize that literally no one cared. The opinions I was expressing were only worthwhile in a context where someone would disagree with them. A context where every disagreement about item stats is presented with such self importance that you can’t help but want to “contribute” to the “discussion”.

g @stopitg

my wife (shes a good person) and i wake up every morning ( grateful) and bring our coffee(its fair trade) out to our garden(our parents helped us with the down payment) and sit and talk for hours (before we start work). it never gets old (i realize this may change). i love her

Twitter, like many of our post-modern corporate sponsored social spaces, profits from and therefore tries to encourage disagreement. The more you are arguing, the more you are scrolling past ads. It’s a forum designed to erase conversation.

Social media creates “main characters” by design. Bean dad is a psyop. Twitter wants to keep you mad. The most successful users of the platform are those for whom controversy is either impossible, intentional, or both.

So I started posting on my own terms. When I wanted to. EsportsTj.com has never had a high readership, but I’ve never promoted it either. I know from analytics that a surprising number of people choose to read the blog, and an astonishing number get to the end of posts.

I love some of the things I did with this space. The Out Of Hand podcast is my favorite career-adjacent project, probably ever. I would drag Omo into the discord call every week and have a great time. One of the blogs I wrote about patch notes contains an “sub tweet” so well written it changed a gamer’s behavior.

It was a surgical strike that would be impossible in another venue. A call-out that didn’t require a response. An argument that had the space to be well reasoned. Multiple creators have since told me that it changed their behavior.

Most importantly, I got to do what I enjoy. I like communicating and storytelling. It’s why I’m a broadcaster, and a short-fiction writer, and an occasional podcaster. This blog let me relax into a format of my own definition, and immunized me to the algorithmic horrors of social distribution.

Wild Rift: Icons has finished, and I don’t know if I’ll be hired for another season of North American play. I don’t know when that season would start.

More broadly, it’s obvious that esports in it’s current state, is headed for a crash. Every year of my career, I’ve had a mental breakdown where I think about quitting. Every year I’m headed for a crash and until this point, the industry has only been growing. It’s blatantly unsustainable on a personal and professional level.

So I’ve been slowing down my esports and speeding up everything else in my life. Which isn’t the same as quitting. I had the time of my life this year working on Wild Rift, Gundam: Evolution, and Omega Strikers. I genuinely love what I do as a broadcaster. But I’ve entered the old man phase of my 20’s.

I'm bad at this(a brief list of commitments I've made to my audience(s))

2014 | streaming counter-strike regularly
2015 | running counter-strike tournaments more often
2016 | regular interviews and analysis on my Battlerite channel
2017 | weekly Arena of Valor tournaments
2018 | regular Arena of Valor streams
2019 | regular Arena of Valor streams
2020 | regular YouTube content around League of Legends
2021 | regular TikTok and YouTube content around League of Legends: Wild Rift
2022 | regular blogs about Wild Rift

This blog quickly became irreverent to my professional goals, so I just stopped posting. But I’ve learned from the past 9 years of my life. I’ve made a promise at the end of this post that I know I can keep.

It’s obvious, with the recent explosion of twitter, that any internet professional needs to cultivate a personal platform. I want to be able to point somewhere that contains proof I can work. It’s obvious that somewhere can’t be twitter.

John Scalzi @scalzi

This is where I again strongly encourage everyone who does any sort of creative thing - writing, music, art, etc - to make and maintain their own site. This era of social media is ending (or at least, likely changing radically). Get your own space, so people can always find you.

It’s equally obvious that none of the ascendant platforms will allow for the flexibility and ownership that I found so creatively liberating while running this blog. I don’t want to post regularly on TikTok or YouTube. I don’t want an algorithm leaning over my shoulder, grading my work against potential virality.

This blog will be refocused on the unfocused and unscheduled. I’ll post sporadically but thoughtfully about the things I’m working on. Maybe that will be Wild Rift, some other game, or broadcasting more generally. It’ll become a much more personal blog, and I hope that’s alright with everyone.

I don’t love Substack, but they have the best tech stack right now. I have no intention of making money from this endeavor, so they’re losing a few cents every time I post.

My social media accounts have been pretty dead for a while, and they will probably continue to trend that way. If you have any feedback you can send it to email@esportstj.com, I’ll read it.

Thank you for bearing with me through this weird period of my online career. If you’re only interested in Wild Rift, it will likely be a part of this blog going forward but not it’s whole. I’ve got a few things in the works, and I’m very excited to share them with you. I do hope you’ll stick around long enough to give them a try.

Yours for just ¢3 out of Substack’s wallet,