Tyler “Ninja” Blevins might be on top of the streaming world right now, but even he isn’t immune to being yanked back down to earth by the sometimes absurdly demanding realities of the job.
Ninja at the Fortnite Pro Am. Image: Epic
For the past couple of days, Ninja’s been living it up at E3, retweeting several thousand pictures people have taken with him and winning $US1 million ($1.3 million) for charity in Epic’s celebrity-streamer Fortnite Pro Am, among other things. But if you’re a streamer taking time off from your regular schedule, even that comes at a cost.
“Wanna know the struggles of streaming over other jobs?” Ninja wrote on Twitter yesterday. “I left for less than 48 hours and lost 40,000 subscribers on Twitch. I’ll be back today (Wednesday) grinding again.”
Most streamers would kill to have 40,000 subscribers, let alone be able to lose that many and not have it signal a sudden and devastating end to their career in the ceaseless battle royale known as Twitch. Ninja’s sub count began skyrocketing earlier this year and got all the way up to 250,000 in April.
In short, Ninja is still incredibly fortunate by most metrics that one could apply to anybody in the whole of human history, but don’t let that fool you into believing Twitch is an easy gig. Streamers are expected to be on all day, every day – indefinitely.
They might get to sit around and play video games, but if they sit still for too long, they risk fading away.
Comments
11 responses to “Ninja Takes Two-Day Break, Loses 40,000 Subscribers”
Reminds of Kramer having that 24/7 talk show on Seinfeld.
Reminds me of Krusty having that 24/7 TV show on The Simpsons. He had only been running it for a couple of hours before someone flew a plane into the stage house.
I was actually thinking of the Simpsons where Apu pulled a 96 hour shift at the Kwik e Mart. By the end he thought he was some kind of hummingbird 😀
I don’t know how many of those people we’re active followers of Ninja, but you can’t say that just because he was offline for 2 days that he’s lost 40k active subs. He might have 100k subs that are inactive and it could be a bunch of people just cleaning up their subscription links.
I follow like 7 people on twitch and only really watch OWL. Same goes for Youtube, I could subscribe to 30 different channels and only actively watch like 6 of them
Subscribers, not followers. Subs pay $5 a month and resub monthly. “Cleaning up their subscription links” doesn’t apply here.
> I don’t know how many of those people we’re active followers of Ninja, but you can’t say that just because he was offline for 2 days that he’s lost 40k active subs.
Sure you can. People rarely all clean up their list at once, they do it spread out. So you can point out when the number of people unsubscribing is higher than what it normally is. And if it coincides with a change in schedule (like not streaming for two days), you can say that the large spike that sits outside of the norm can be ascribed to that
“In short, Ninja is still incredibly fortunate by most metrics that one could apply to anybody in the whole of human history,”
To paraphrase an old phrase “It’s funny how the harder I work, the more fortunate I get”.
The dude’s doing very well, but crikey, he’s an amazingly skilled and dedicated player. And entertaining. I’m not really much of a watch streaming gamers kind of guy, but that guys skills have made even me watch him.
First world, yeah, hes fortunate, but Id say he’s more deserving of whatever “luck” comes his way than %99.99 of Fortnite streamers out there.
My heart bleeds for him…
What a tough time for him, down to just $500k from subs in the next month. Oh Noes!1! Yanked down to earth!!
Ah the me me me times, you’re a celebrity you must be here for my entertainment when ever I want.
What you want a day off from your job.
I want to watch stuff of you. You’re not allowed to take 2 days off.
Two days… 40,000 subscribers.
I want to know how many subscribers he loses if he has to go to pee… god forgive if its a #2.
10 hours a day average streaming. 2000 subscribers an hour lost… he could lose 300 subscribers going to the bathroom.
I’ve never really understood the thinking behind that. I mean, if someone hasn’t posted a video or streamed in months, then sure. But after just two days? “Oh, I haven’t seen Ninja stream in 2 whole days so let me unsubscribe and then not see any more of his streams at all.” wtf.
Also, why subscribe in the first place if you’re clearly checking his channel incessantly every single day?