I happened across the https://outdoorirl.com/about web site linked from an IRL streamer and read all the policies about getting listed and partnered and I was rather confused. Here’s the mission statement:
Our mission is to expand and promote Outdoor IRL content to a broader audience. We strive to lower the barriers of entry for live streamers interested in exploring this content, whether they do it full-time, part-time, or during special events. Our collaborative initiative plays a significant role in bringing together the outdoor IRL community, facilitating networking opportunities through our website and, if they choose, participating in our collaborative streaming events.
Additionally, our network aims to provide abundant resources to all dedicated outdoor IRL live streamers, including learning materials and access to sponsors. Access to sponsors is of utmost importance to the network and streamers who work closely with us. Running an outdoor IRL live stream can be costly, particularly on a regular and full-time basis. Therefore, ensuring stable revenue streams through sponsorships is essential to ensuring the longevity and healthy growth of outdoor IRL streamers.
In order to understand my confusion you have to read the few paragraphs before this outlining how you can be “partnered” with this “network”:
Our content selection excludes blacklisted streamers, either by their own request or due to reasons like DMCA strikes. We feature both whitelisted and greylisted streamers. Whitelisted streamers receive priority for website showcasing as they have provided video approval to the OutdoorIRL Network, allowing us to feature their streams and content in our YouTube videos. Greylisted streamers are contacted for approval, but some may not respond. In a few rare cases, I have included some greylisted streamers without seeking permission, purely for experimental analytical purposes.
Additionally, we have showcase labels for Guest Streamers. These streamers are usually suggested by their own viewers to be added to the website for outdoor IRL content, or I come across their streams on Twitch. Guest Streamers are often gaming/desktop streamers on vacation trips, temporarily engaging in outdoor IRL content. They may not intend to continue outdoor IRL content regularly, and once they return to normal gaming/desktop streams, we remove them from the network. For these streamers, we do not seek explicit permission due to their short-term stay on the network, especially when dealing with larger streamers.
The first warning sign that this is something I probably won’t want to be involved with is the actual grammar of the paragraphs. The author shifts from “we” to “I” a lot, meaning that this is probably just a single person who just really loves OutdoorIRL streamers, which is awesome, the mixed pronouns not so much.
All the language about “whitelisting” and “greylisting” is about approval, and “blacklisting” can be done for whatever reason this person wants. In fact, one second they talk about “getting approval” and another the concede they have “just added people anyway”. My concern is that, again, this is one person with an agenda and all the power to decide who gets listed and who doesn’t.
This isn’t the first time I’ve run into these little power-hungry for-the-good-of-the-community people. One of the biggest dicks I’ve ever had the displeasure of interacting with on Twitch went out of his way to attack me and my community when one of my community members opened an issue on his https://infosecstreamers.com saying that I would be a good addition.
Rob doesn’t hack or stream hacking content. Rob mostly talks. A lot of talking and a lot of opinions. Or fish screensavers. No hacking though. EDIT: Of course he streamed hacking content the last two days. Statement still stands. This list is a carefully curated list so that when people visit it, it has actual hacking content, not fish aquariums.
https://github.com/infosecstreams/infosecstreams.github.io/pull/104
Anyone who actually knows me immediately sees how flawed this statement is. I had nothing to do with people submitting those tickets. In fact, when someone brought it up to me as to why I wasn’t on that list it was the first time I had heard of it.
Several of the people on that list have very publicly said they would not have started streaming and maintained their commitment to such streaming if I had not encouraged them to start. Others use the same techniques that I used when I first started (including use of Retroterm). But apparently, I’m not worthy. This goproslowyo is a fucking idiot has no idea who I am and hasn’t streamed in months. But when completely unsolicited people from my stream suggest I be added, some of the most respected security people in the industry, come forward of their own accord this asshole finds a way to justify it as me “sending my mob of 12 year olds” after him. If he had read the list of accolades from actual people when considering my inclusion in his list he might have thought otherwise. Instead, he doubled-down on stupid. The people opening those issues are respected, professional cybersecurity experts and educators, not fucking 12-year-olds. So this piece of shit decides that “this is a highly curated list” and tells me to “make my own”. I didn’t ask for any of that shit. I didn’t even give a fuck. One of my member’s pulled me into this by simply making a suggestion to the list owner drawing out this person’s true opinion of me.
By the way, those long-running streams of “fishies” where not “abuse of Twitch” they were by demand from my community who wanted to collaborate and communicate when I wasn’t around all the time. They used IRC backing Twitch to communicate. But I seriously doubt that goproslowyo even knows what the fuck I’m even talking about. I’d bet money he hasn’t even used IRC from the terminal ever in his fucking life, nor knows that IRC is where all the true hackers spend most of their collaborative time. I wonder how much time he has spent monitoring and communicating with the Russian hacker community in Russian outside of Twitch? No I don’t wonder, I know, zero seconds. But I am definitely not worthy of his stupid, little “infosec” list. And yes, it does piss me off, but not for the reasons he thinks. It pisses me off because I allowed myself to care knowing better in the first place.
And then there was that time when a bunch of people with Twitch influence got the Game and Software Development Category created and I ended up getting black-listed and banned by pretty much everyone there for “disrespecting the category” after making fun of the dogmatic joiner-ism that was motivating people spamming my streams constantly with distractions that were completely off topic:
I’m not kidding. It was like a bunch of wild cultists attacking me for staying “behind” in the Science & Technology category, mostly because, well, I was streaming mostly science and technology, not “game development”.
To this day I still get questions when I stream in the Software and Game Developer category from beginners who ask “what game are you working on?”
I’m like, “The game of making money and doing my job!”
Whoever decided that completely brain-dead category name mixing game developers with software engineers is a FUCKING MORON! (See this is why Twitch partner approvers hate me, because I say things like that. I get it.)
I’m not surprised that the list-makers are also those who have the least amount of actual participation in the community that they are trying to break into. It seems to be a trend. They can’t make it based on their own content, so they create a super-special category list to make themselves feel special and included (when no one gave a shit about them before).
The pattern is easy to identify. You find this all over the place, not just on Twitch. The “awesome” lists that are anything but, the Twitch groups full of exclusion drama (despite all Twitch’s empty words about “building inclusive communities”). Humans have a deep-seated need to join something (and exclude others). It’s why religions and wars exist. There is some great research on why this is in the book Sapiens (which has other stuff I’m not so in agreement with). This book also suggests why “gossip” has evolved to be the most important human communication topic. It helps establish the health of the group/family/community. So it’s no surprise at all that we behave this way on Twitch. There are even Twitch streamers who will tattoo a person’s Twitch ID onto their body for the right amount, and people actually pay this because that drive to belong is so strongly ingrained in us.
Hell, Twitch was forced into creating Just Chatting instead of banning people for producing IRL content because of this same communal protectionism. For years the Just Chatting category and content would blacklist anyone creating it. But the people kept doing it (a good case for civil disobedience) and Twitch relented. Now Just Chatting is the biggest category on the entire platform dwarfing most of the other gaming categories combined. See how stupid Twitch can be? At least they learned from that one. And that’s the point. We should learn from all this craziness.
So, no I’m not going to “make my own list”, because making any category list without taking into account the tagging of specific streams is fucking idiotic. The best streams (and streamers) stream much more than any isolated topic or game. Smart people actually understand this. People who have worked in knowledge careers that require domain modeling and organization understand this. Stupid people don’t, and so they continue to make these things promoting exclusion and drama because the system is inherently flawed. Any system that doesn’t take this into account is just broken and always will be.
And, by the way, did I mention that Twitch has likely black-listed me from ever getting partner? Every partner request gets denied within 10 minutes (that is not an exaggeration). Why? Because I produce too much content lowering my total average viewers even though I can cite dozens of examples of people who very definitely do not average 70 viewers. Twitch’s criteria for selecting partners is completely asinine. I’m punished for producing too much content.
The important take away is that any system of categorizing anything (or anyone) is flawed. In fact, this is a good example of why tagging always beats categorization, and why things like the Genius, Phylum, etc. organization of species falls on its face. Nothing every fits a specific, singular category, ever. There is always going to be something that makes that thing fall out of category for some reason. It is always better to tag things that have particular properties which often change over time.
If the person who put together this OutdoorIRL site had the design sense to add filtering to the criteria for “featuring” on their web site then my problem would be completely addressed and I would feel good submitting myself “for consideration” despite the drama likely to ensue. I could be safely listed as a “white list” streamer because I produce way more than the minimum number of hours and exceptionally high-quality IRL outdoor content, but I likely would never be listed in this system because I stream 5-8 hours of coworking content as well, and I stream dancing, and reading, and educational sessions, and art, and (yes) occasional hacking.
See the problem? The base assumption that a particular type of streamer can be categorized and given essentially a rank about their worthiness for any community is just absurdly broken. And buying into any such system just ends up being an waste of time and productivity. Word of mouth (the basis for my entire company with no advertising for almost a decade) will always win over someone’s random list.