Latest / Papa Gut / Joe Bartolozzi The Only Streamer That Cares... Too Much?

Transcript

Joe Bartolozzi The Only Streamer That Cares... Too Much? · Papa Gut

0:00
All right, Chad, you guys voted for this Joe Bart segment, which
0:03
I think looks interesting. You know, Joe Bart's a nice
0:06
young man. Somebody said the other day he
0:07
said in his stream that he thinks I'm funny.
0:09
That's incredible. What a wonderful thing.
0:12
Tell me something I don't know. Am I right?
0:14
Anyway, another video is not going to have an intro.
0:17
OK, easier this way. The amazing August is still with
0:22
us. I don't want everybody to think
0:23
of something weird. Anyway, let's watch it.
0:26
It's from golf cart. What a name that's interesting.
0:33
Oh yeah, he did the he the last on stream.
0:35
I remember reacting to the queso one.
0:37
That was a good one too. This guy makes really good
0:38
content. It's called the only streamer
0:39
that cares. I don't even know if I said this
0:40
or not, so I'm going to say it like 15 times Guys, this is the
0:43
only streamer that cares. Anyway, really quick.
0:45
We're going to do quick plugs. Papa Gut memberships Patreon
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will be available soon. They both have the same rewards,
0:51
$2.00 a month. Small gut gives you access to
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the members only Discord. Medium gut $5 a month gets you
0:57
access to all these beautiful members only videos.
0:59
OK, I wanted to make an available option because there's
1:01
more viewers on Spotify and Apple now.
1:03
Incredible stuff. Then we have a podcast on
1:05
available on Spotify and Apple and and YouTube.
1:08
It's Robin Dan with my wife. I love it.
1:10
It's my favorite. And then I'm selling stickers
1:12
that I just closed. I'm showing you.
1:14
I closed the stickers links in the description by the way.
1:17
They're good stickers, solid quality.
1:20
Yeah. So let's watch this video, man.
1:21
Or react. We're going to react to it,
1:22
guys. Shut up.
1:23
Let's go. You know what the most important
1:27
part of any live stream is? Yeah, go and pee.
1:30
Go and pee. And leaving the the stream
1:32
unentertained for a few minutes because you got to try to get
1:34
that piss out and you got a prostate problem.
1:37
Not a big problem. Slightly enlarged the chat.
1:41
Whoa. Every night, thousands of
1:43
viewers pour into their favorite streamers chat.
1:45
I wish dude, I got maybe like 2 or 3000 overall viewers.
1:52
You know what? I'm thankful.
1:54
You got to be thankful. Together, they decide what games
1:57
get played, what videos get watched and the streamers who
1:59
keep them entertained. True.
2:00
Oh, you guys just voted for this segment.
2:02
Get paid. Wow, sounds pretty easy right?
2:06
Just give the chat what it wants.
2:09
No, you can't do that. It's so funny.
2:11
It's it's silly because you know, I'm going to, I'm going
2:14
to, you know, I'm already going to give a commentary, but it's
2:17
interesting because giving the chat what they want is like the
2:20
best and worst thing that you could ever do.
2:22
And it's so difficult to figure out what the middle ground is
2:24
there for anybody. That's why you see so many
2:26
content creators get like massively audience captured
2:29
because they give in too much to what their chat wants.
2:31
Like I will I see those video suggestions and I take a look at
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what you guys want, but there's still segments that you guys
2:38
don't necessarily love that we do.
2:40
And a lot of times those are some of the biggest segments
2:42
because like people in the stream chat aren't the only ones
2:47
that are, you know, the support, you know, obviously there's
2:49
videos that I put out and stuff too, but you don't want to get
2:51
too audience captured. You want to have a nice
2:53
diversity of content. You do experiment a little bit.
2:54
You need to make people a little uncomfortable and do stuff that
2:56
they don't like, but then you also need to do stuff that they
2:58
do like. You know what, it's a it's a
2:59
difficult game That's like, obviously content creation is
3:01
like the the best job ever I've ever had.
3:04
It's definitely easier, but there are some struggles to it
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and part of it can be like how much you actually do listen to
3:10
your audience. It'd be difficult, yeah.
3:12
I'll do more thirst traps for you guys.
3:14
One is chat never wants just one thing.
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There's thousands of people all asking for something different
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and no matter what you do, someone's unhappy.
3:20
True. The biggest?
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Streamers learn to follow the majority and keep the party
3:24
moving because stopping everything for one unhappy
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viewer is the cardinal sin of streaming.
3:29
You don't need 10,000 people hanging over.
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Yeah, it's called. It's what is it called?
3:33
Getting one guide stunlock. The single name in the chat.
3:37
But what happens when the needs of the One are a matter of life
3:40
and death? What?
3:41
My girlfriend of three years took her own life in November of
3:43
2025. Damn.
3:45
That's that's sad as hell man. This.
3:47
Is my best friend and the person I love most in the world.
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I'm feeling like my life is no longer worth living and I've
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been falling into a bad habit of a drug addiction, leading me to
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some MDMA in December. I don't want to be here anymore.
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This is Joe Bartolozi, and he's one of the only streamers that
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stops everything when someone needs help.
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If a chatter of mine is coming into my chat saying there's
4:03
vital, I am first and foremost going to read their message.
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But when you do this. That is nice.
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Thankfully I don't really have people who do that in my chat.
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There will be some people that will reach out to me like
4:13
one-on-one sometimes and say something.
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But for me, like I don't really respond to messages like that
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because I don't know if it's responsible for me to get
4:24
involved. I don't think, I don't think it
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is I, I don't think it's like super responsible of me to get
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involved. The best that I can hope for is
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that whatever advice or commentary I give makes you
4:33
happier entertainment wise. Or maybe I say something that's
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like good for you from a personal perspective or, but for
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me, like, I don't know, that's a boundary I try to set pretty
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like intensely, like I, you know what I mean?
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I simply can't do that. When you make yourself the
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person people turn to at their lowest, you're also now the one
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who has to carry the weight of it.
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It's called a grooming. Because now you're surrounded by
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darkness today. I decided to end everything, got
5:01
a shotgun, can't find it in me to love myself.
5:03
Now you're giving away pieces of yourself to everyone around you.
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That's true also, and this is nothing to keep in mind, you're
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also kind of an almost, this isn't like a any criticism of
5:12
Joe bar just reality. You're kind of encouraging that
5:14
type of behavior. You're kind of encouraging
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people to say that to you, whether it's authentic or not.
5:18
You know, like the first one or two might be authentic, but then
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all of a sudden somebody might just like be having a kind of
5:23
rough day, but they want Joe Bartolosi's attention and then
5:26
they go and, and I don't know how frequent this is.
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You know, I don't know if this guy's portraying this
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information like perfectly, like inaccurately, you know, but you
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know, you're to some degree potentially kind of getting
5:36
people to like ask for attention.
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So it's just something to keep in mind.
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That's another reason like, you know why it's not something I
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necessarily desire to do. People are genuinely asking me
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to fix their problems. I.
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Can't. Plus then there's also another
5:52
problem there too where it's like you almost take on the
5:54
trauma of other people. Like when you go into, when you
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go to school, when you go into like take psychology and stuff
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to be some kind of a social worker or something, you'll take
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classes and they'll teach you about taking on other people's
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trauma. It's like a real thing.
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It can be very mentally distressful for you so.
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Now it feels like the whole world is on your shoulders.
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Now I'm going. That's how I feel being fat.
6:16
That's a heavyweight to pick up, and we wanted to know why.
6:18
Who is Joe Bartolozi and why do you care so deeply about some of
6:22
the things that you do? Yeah, who the fuck's the other
6:25
guy? Maybe a little deep for 10:30 in
6:28
the morning. But should have made it 11.
6:31
No, it's all right. And Joe Bartolozi was born on
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February 6th, 2002 and grew up in Southern New Jersey.
6:39
Joe wasn't the kid you have picked to become what?
6:41
The fuck is southern New Jersey, NJ so goddamn small, You know
6:44
what I mean? It's basically like northern New
6:45
York. Hold on a second.
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So like I said, basically Southern New York.
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They should edit that August edit that.
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Make sure you go to the house. Obviously everybody knows New
6:57
Jersey is South of New York. Duh.
7:00
If you didn't know that, you're a fool.
7:02
How would you not know that? Of course.
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Especially if you live in the tri-state area.
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Why wouldn't you know that? You, not me.
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I knew that, of course. I'm famous online.
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He was the small, quiet kid, the one getting picked last for
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everything. I was kind of like the lanky kid
7:16
that didn't really know how to control his body, so that's why
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I was picked. What the fuck?
7:21
Sounds like Deku. About high school, things
7:24
started turning around. He hit his growth spurt, got
7:26
into lifting, and went for being the kid nobody picked to a
7:29
legitimate athlete. So by 2019, Joe's a track
7:34
athlete at a cap. Isn't an interesting one of the
7:36
biggest predictors of whether your kids going to be successful
7:38
in sports or not is if your kid starts at school later than
7:41
other kids because like you starts like, you know what I
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mean? I, I, I can't do the math, But,
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you know, if you're older when you start school than other
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people in that same cut off, you have a higher chance of being
7:51
more successful simply because you're outpacing everybody else.
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Isn't that interesting? Prep school in New Jersey,
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working part time in a GNC heading towards a completely new
8:00
life. And then a Chinese tech company
8:03
bought a dying lip syncing app. What the fuck?
8:06
TikTok is the latest app to capture the attention of teens
8:09
and young adults across the world.
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A Chinese company called Bytedance bought the relatively
8:14
dead app musically. You know what?
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This guy's trying to make me want to have Chinese food
8:17
tonight. I knew it.
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It's not my fault. Got it, rebranded it and.
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I was going to have a salad, but there's this parasite going
8:23
around. 2nd 2018 Tiktok officially hit the App Store.
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Tiktok. Now, early on, Tiktok was mostly
8:29
just the same creators who came over from musical, so all of
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those cringy lip sync videos and the reputation that came with
8:35
them carried straight over. But even with that reputation,
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Joe figured he'd try it anyway. He posted his first TikTok in
8:48
December of 2019 and it got a few 100 likes which is nothing
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crazy but. It's pretty crazy.
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I it's funny because the first TikTok I posted got a few 100
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likes too and I was like, what the hell?
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It was a post about like Ubi. The meta back then was fucking
9:00
ridiculous. The meta on TikTok from Terry
9:02
back then was to just like stitch somebody's video.
9:06
Let's put words on the screen. It's so fucking stupid.
9:12
It was so fucking dumb. It was so fucking low IQ bro.
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It was insane. It.
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Was enough to make him post another one, and another one,
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and he just kept going. Within a few months he went from
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pointing a text on the screen to actually talk ranting straight
9:24
to the camera about whatever stupid thing pissed him off that
9:26
day. Whoa.
9:27
There's no looking left or right in the urinal.
9:30
Why? What if I want to compare with
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my child is? Where Joe carved out his lane,
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he became the loud guy in the beanie who'd yell about people
9:36
who drink sparkling water or crash out over some DIY tour.
9:40
Sounds like Andrew Tatum. Are you just kidding?
9:45
By the time COVID hit, TikTok was becoming a mainstream
9:47
platform. Suddenly, Tik Tokers were
9:49
performing at NBA halftime shows or hanging with the Kardashians.
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I mean the demilios. Were dropping over or getting
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banned at 2.4 million followers. Reality show on Hulu.
9:58
It was the biggest app in the world and Joe had gotten in
10:00
early. Six months after you started
10:02
posting. If I'm not mistaken, you had
10:04
over 1,000,000 followers on TikTok.
10:09
You could literally post anything and if it got any
10:13
amount of views half the people that saw it would follow you.
10:16
So now you. Yeah, it was an interesting time
10:18
back. Then a teenage guy fresh out of
10:20
high school with millions of people watching his move.
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But what do you think this does to a person?
10:26
It's it's not the same guys as like a Disney star, right?
10:30
Because I was nowhere near that level.
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But it's just the idea of like, I was a teenager that's getting
10:37
clout, and I think 99% of the time that's bad. 100%, 1000%.
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I mean, first of all, you're going to get really full of
10:47
yourself. But I feel fucking horrible for
10:50
all the young people who got really successful during COVID
10:53
because Simply put, the views were there.
10:55
There were people were online like probably 3 or 4 times more
10:58
than they were or they are now because you know, they're home
11:01
COVID, all that other stuff, you know, all that really freak
11:03
great fun stuff. But there are people who got so
11:05
popular and so successful and then the views started to fall
11:10
off because the atmosphere changed and they just couldn't
11:15
maintain themselves. And a lot of it was like, they
11:19
don't even know why they got popular in the fucking first
11:21
place. They just did.
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And they're, and then now they're like, well, how come I'm
11:24
posting the same stuff? It's just me being me.
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But people don't like it and part of us because they don't.
11:30
People weren't necessarily liking them because they were
11:32
being them. They just liked the them that
11:34
they were being. Does that make sense?
11:35
You know, And then once they change, people were like, I'm
11:37
not a big fan of this. Or maybe they didn't change and
11:39
they people wanted to see change because, you know, if you have a
11:41
young audience, they're going to throw and they're going to,
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there's so many different things.
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It's really upsetting. And like, you know, sometimes I
11:46
look at myself and like, OK, I started, I started on TikTok as
11:49
well. And like I started the beginning
11:51
of 2020, March actually. And I'm here and I wish I was
11:55
more successful. Yeah, like I talk about this
11:58
every once in awhile. Like I'm not, I'm not afraid to
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say it. It's frustrating.
12:00
You see other people who started around your time and they're
12:02
doing so much better. Like, fuck.
12:03
Like what is it that I'm missing?
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Maybe I, I don't know exactly. Sometimes it's difficult, but
12:08
then I look and I'm like, I'm doing better than 99 plus
12:13
percent people, you know, are and it's like, OK, on the other
12:18
hand, you know, I can be, I could cry on the one hand a
12:22
little bit, but then on the other hand, I mean, I'm doing
12:28
better than so many other people and I should be thankful.
12:30
But I feel bad, especially for young people because their
12:32
brains got completely fucked throughout the entirety of
12:35
COVID. It's actually like really
12:36
upsetting for them, you know? And it's like, how do you go
12:39
back to the regular world after you got so popular so young and
12:43
you thought you had your entire life figured out when you were
12:46
like a teenager, you know? And you're like, oh, I'm going
12:49
to do this forever. And then like this just simply
12:51
doesn't exist in a forever capacity for you.
12:54
And Joe was no exception. All of those views, all that
12:57
attention that comes with Internet fame, it went straight
12:59
to his head. I went from being a really
13:02
insecure, it was like 2 polar opposites, right?
13:05
And I had to find the medium. I used to be really insecure
13:07
when I was in like middle school or early high school to a point
13:10
where like I started working out.
13:12
I started doing this and then it went like full flop to like
13:15
narcissism and it so it was like an obsession with myself.
13:18
Joe also had a lot of older women hitting on them.
13:20
I just know. Just told me that years ago.
13:23
Because of insecurity. I always think that's such a
13:25
funny fact. That then inflated my ego to the
13:29
point where I'm like, oh, I'm awesome.
13:31
And you can see it in the content from that era, the
13:33
captions, the attitude. The way that he the attitude,
13:37
the swagger, the jumping with the swagger of a black teen, you
13:41
know, carried. Himself.
13:42
So this is my proposal for any woman out there that would like
13:45
to participate in the holiday but don't have anybody who
13:48
assist them, I'm here. This is the.
13:50
Here is it up. Version of Joe that Joe doesn't
13:52
like. That person in that facade I had
13:55
to do to create. Teddy Fresh beanie.
13:57
What the hell dude? Cancel this guy, am I right?
14:00
That character actually became me for a short period of time
14:03
and I hated it. But as much as Joe hates this
14:05
version of himself, he also kind of owes everything to him.
14:08
Is that ego is what gave him the confidence and drive to start
14:11
making bigger swings in his career.
14:13
And when you're building yourself from the ground up,
14:15
those two things can be the difference between success and
14:17
failure. You see, everyone wants to start
14:19
their own thing until they realize how much work starting
14:21
actually takes. Building your website, setting
14:24
up payments, all the boring stuff.
14:26
I guess all you really got to do now is just download TikTok and
14:29
start ship posting it, see if it takes off.
14:33
It was more complicated than that, but I feel like it's been,
14:35
it's easier now than it's ever really been.
14:36
It's intimidating I guess, but. People don't quit because the
14:38
idea was bad, they quit because the setup got in the way.
14:41
That's where WAP comes in. WAP.
14:43
Oh, I hate the name of this, by the way.
14:47
OK, it's an ad. Got it.
14:48
OK. Lets you launch your entire
14:50
online business from one place, communities, digital product.
14:53
I got to get on my fucking ads, dude.
14:54
I got to talk to David and Christine.
14:58
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
15:00
It's a meme. It's a meme.
15:01
Even services whatever it is that you're building.
15:03
No more stitching together 5 different tools from 5 different
15:05
places just to accept a payment. WAP has it all under one roof
15:09
and it's not like they built it once you.
15:10
Know the deal? We always watch the ads.
15:12
Since that it's good enough. Wap's constantly rolling out new
15:14
features based on what you actually need, like better
15:17
analytics, new ways to engage your audience.
15:19
I mean hell, they even have their own tax service.
15:22
The platform. Actually kind of nice I feel.
15:24
I think my tax guy fucked me. I just got audited by New York
15:26
State and they still haven't got back to me.
15:27
I don't know, I feel like he did something wrong, but you know, I
15:30
have HI went to H&R Block and they they have a Peace of Mind
15:32
guarantee, but they don't do anything for you.
15:34
They're actually like a kind of worthless.
15:36
I'm reconsidering using them. Keeps evolving right alongside
15:39
your business and so if you've been sitting on an idea and the
15:42
only thing. Not ego confidence different.
15:43
I don't really think so. I think that the ego, it's
15:46
usually considered bad. I think ego is good, but if it
15:48
gets like shitty then it's bad, if that makes sense.
15:50
But I think ego in general is, it can be a good thing, you
15:52
know? Stopping you is not knowing.
15:53
It's just like too much of a good thing can be bad.
15:55
Where to start? Head on over to wap.com today.
15:57
Whoa, don't. Say that.
16:00
But now back to Joe and the business he was just starting to
16:02
bill. It started with diversifying his
16:04
audience because unlike YouTube or Twitch, your follower count
16:07
is kind of empty on TikTok. You can have a million followers
16:10
on there and make no money. Yeah, well, you know, it was
16:12
fucking crazy back in the day, dude.
16:14
It was so much better back in the day.
16:16
They didn't, they didn't. They have this program on there.
16:18
You only make money if you get like 1000 views or more.
16:21
Excuse me, that's simplifying it too much out of the creator
16:24
fund. Then of course they have other
16:25
things where like you can make money if you dance to songs and
16:27
it gets certain number of reviews and stuff.
16:28
But we're going to stick to the creator fund for the sake of
16:31
argument. And it used to just be you post
16:32
stuff. So I would post and there was
16:33
like, I had like a time where I was like doing real well and I
16:36
was just posting like four or five like silly commentary
16:38
videos a day. And dude, I was making like, I
16:41
think, I think the most I made it a day on TikTok was like $900
16:46
just doing that. It's not fucking crazy.
16:47
Now they have it capped. You have to do a mini a minute
16:50
or more and they have a cap that like it's basically like $3000.
16:53
It's like a soft cap. Once you hit that amount, you're
16:55
not, you're, you're making like fucking pennies on the dollar
16:58
that you were making before that.
17:01
Right now I have a new TikTok so I'm not monetize, but you know,
17:03
you understand what I'm saying. So it's like it's crazy back
17:06
then, dude. Holy fucking bazookers, man.
17:09
Because the platform simply doesn't pay its creators
17:11
anything worthwhile. Not anymore for sure.
17:13
Like I I was probably making like what, 10 KA year?
17:17
I was making less than minimum wage.
17:19
So in the summer of 2020, just before starting, well, I.
17:22
Don't even think they had a creator fund in 2020.
17:24
I don't remember when they even they implemented their creator
17:26
fund 2021. When did TikTok start their
17:30
creator fund? July, oh, July 2020.
17:36
OK, interesting. Incredible.
17:38
His freshman year of college, Joe announced his first ever
17:40
Twitch stream. I'm going to start streaming
17:42
video games on Twitch in a day or two.
17:44
He started moving viewers from TikTok to Twitch, where he'd
17:46
stream games like Rocket League and Fall Guys.
17:51
Then he'd take the best moments from those streams and post them
17:53
to YouTube. By fall of that year, Joe was
17:55
juggling multiple TikTok uploads a day, streaming on Twitch,
17:58
making YouTube content, all while managing his class work in
18:01
college. What was the schedule like in
18:03
college? There's so much going on.
18:05
How do you manage that? It was a lot.
18:08
About. Balancing streaming and college
18:11
sucked but it was so doable and I hate when streamers say oh I
18:16
really needed to drop out to pursue streaming.
18:20
Well, I think that makes sense for some people to do that.
18:23
It can be a lot. It depends on what the
18:25
infrastructure is. I mean, I think Joe's, I don't,
18:26
I don't really know what his entire content is.
18:28
I will say, like I was thinking about it the back of the other
18:30
day and this actually might be one of the reasons why I'm
18:32
taking longer to get some more successful and hopefully I can
18:35
continue to go like generally trend upwards.
18:37
But I was talking to my wife and I'm like, yeah, you know, I've
18:39
been doing so much more work than I have ever done before on
18:41
my content, even though I have two people working.
18:45
And I, I remember I used to just kind of go on and just like
18:47
react to a video and just throw it up on my YouTube channel just
18:50
because shitty ass like thumbnail.
18:51
That was just like one person on one side, the other person on
18:53
the other side. And I was like, done.
18:55
And I would just, that was it. I was done and I would move on.
19:01
And I was like, damn, like now I'm doing a lot more.
19:07
Now I'm doing a lot more. And I'm not necessarily as
19:09
successful as my height was when I was doing like my the lazy
19:13
way. But I'm like, yeah, you know
19:13
what, I was just putting effort in the entire time.
19:16
Maybe I'd be a little more successful.
19:20
That's what it, And that might be it.
19:22
Maybe that's part of the problem.
19:23
This guy, you know, I'm starting to put more in now, you know,
19:27
and I need to get a proper distribution of like where I
19:30
need the work to go. But I that's why we cut down on
19:32
the intros because like it's just, it became unmanageable.
19:34
And I don't think that we're getting like a massive amount of
19:36
quality out of it. You know, like overall it's
19:39
just, it wasn't doing it for me. And it's like the biggest thing
19:42
that I would like to review. And I'd be like, OK, like I'm
19:44
very, I'm, I'm obnoxious. My wife and I are very obnoxious
19:48
too. So like there's things where I'm
19:49
like, no, I wanted a certain way and then this and then that.
19:52
And I've got more perfectionist, which is good because the
19:54
quality gets increased. But it's, it's like, is it
19:56
really worth it for what I'm doing?
19:59
Is it the proper amount of effort?
20:02
I don't think so. But I have other effort I want
20:04
to put, especially now I'm having a fucking daughter.
20:06
I have to get my house ready. I have to do that.
20:08
I need, I need time to do stuff like that.
20:09
So you know, I'm just fucking rambling at this point, But
20:12
that's basically a pop of that video, isn't?
20:13
It I was growing and in college the entire time.
20:17
Thank you for 3,000,000 followers.
20:19
How about leaving college dude? What the fuck was he doing
20:21
online college? By December, Joe had cleared 5
20:25
million followers on TikTok, and just a few months after his
20:27
first stream, Joe was pulling in nearly 1000 average viewers on
20:31
Twitter. Like I was so upset with.
20:37
Performance. Joe was constantly stoning
20:39
social media, trying to understand what made videos pop,
20:42
what people responded to and why certain videos failed.
20:44
That confidence, it turned into a full blown obsession.
20:47
But because of it, Joe was starting to not like the person
20:49
who saw in the mirror. I'm trying to map out where the
20:53
ego kind of starts to disappear versus like, was there a low
20:58
point? A moment where you're like,
20:59
holy, I got to change. Yeah, I really, I, I, I don't
21:03
think there was like an aha, right?
21:06
It wasn't like a light switch flip.
21:09
It was more over the span of like a six month period where I
21:14
was like, I'm kind of being a dickhead.
21:17
I I hear that it do, it does happen.
21:20
Man, I was a fucking asshole too.
21:21
I mean, I'm still a fucking asshole, but I feel like I'm
21:22
much more measured now than I have been in a while or just in
21:27
general. I think I'm generally more
21:29
measured now. A lot of that's my wife.
21:30
I'm a tough person. You know, that's one of the
21:32
interesting things. Like Joe seems like a genuinely
21:33
nice young man. Hots fucking Gridge.
21:36
But I say that. But I'm tough, dude.
21:38
I'm a fucking obnoxious. I'm just tough.
21:45
I need, you know, my wife is a strong woman and she helps me
21:47
balance and regulate. But yeah, man, it's constantly
21:49
introspection because you get full of yourself.
21:50
I'm like, oh, I'm making all this money.
21:51
Like I must be fucking super important.
21:53
You're not, you know what I mean?
21:55
That mentality is like etched into my bed.
21:56
It's like, you know what? I'm not important.
21:59
I'm not cool. I want to get, I want to stay
22:01
humble. I want to stay stay woken.
22:04
Coupled with a a variety of things.
22:07
So I don't know if you can include this in the video.
22:09
That's up to you on mushrooms for the first time.
22:14
I hate when people talk about like that being a like a genuine
22:17
changing factor in their life because it's like, OK, that's.
22:20
Crazy dude, I tripped on a box that I fucking put on the
22:23
goddamn Florence to my fucking toe.
22:24
My whole goddamn toenail came off.
22:26
Cornball, like that's what made you, you know, really have that
22:29
light switch. But I think it was like it was a
22:31
part of it removed the, the grooves of life that I have
22:36
gotten into. And it made me reset to a point
22:39
where I had to kind of look in myself.
22:43
A lot of the people that I knew in philosophy classes as well,
22:45
we're sharing ideas that, you know, I may have heard but not
22:49
resonated or understood fully. It was so much like, wow, I'm
22:53
going to die one day. I should kind of treat people in
22:59
a way that's like, this is our only life.
23:01
And I accredit my viewers a lot because in that time parasocial
23:06
relationships feel a little bit, which is bad.
23:10
Maybe I remember him doing like a rant about parasocial
23:13
relationships. I think that like I mean, I
23:14
guess it just depends on how parasocial.
23:16
I think it's OK nowadays to be like a little friendly with your
23:18
streamer and to like chat with himself as long as you don't
23:20
take it too far and then send them like horrible shorts
23:23
recommendations in the and in the Discord.
23:28
That's where it goes too far. Where it goes too far, dude.
23:32
Sending horrible shorts recommendations in the Discord,
23:35
dude. That's where it goes too far,
23:36
OK? But at the same time.
23:37
I'm just kidding. But obviously there's going to
23:39
be a degree where you can become obsessed and that's when you
23:44
send bad long form recommendations.
23:45
I'm just kidding. That's the part where you don't
23:47
want to get too crazy, you know what I mean?
23:48
Time there were people coming to me for the first time, going I
23:53
want to myself. You were chatting to your last
23:56
streamer because you're editing it all.
23:57
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
24:01
If there was a. You know, it's really, it seems
24:03
like a really sweet moment that that Joe's having here where he
24:06
decides to stop doing everything on the stream and to like focus
24:09
on this chatter that's talking about taking their own life.
24:11
But he's also playing Rocket League and that game fucking
24:13
sucks. And Joe's just looking for an
24:14
excuse to not play, you know? Moment of like lock in it.
24:18
Was that what happened? One of my Subs just said he's
24:21
himself dude. Remember that happened with me
24:24
like a lot years ago. I wonder if it was the same guy
24:28
that happened at one time and I was like, oh damn, that was a
24:31
long time ago. I think that was a moment for
24:33
me. That's like, I have to not
24:35
encourage this behavior. It's fucking crazy.
24:37
Do you need help? Because I was going, yeah, even
24:41
though I'm 19, you know, there are people that actually look up
24:48
to me in a way that's like, I need to be better at life.
24:52
What's funny, I think that's why with Joe's, like how to break up
24:55
with his girlfriend, people got upset because I think that they
24:57
projected their like that relationship on to them in some
25:00
capacity. You know, maybe they didn't have
25:02
a, maybe their mom and dad weren't really together or doing
25:04
too well. They're like, oh man, this is my
25:08
example of like a healthy relationship.
25:10
But just seemed to be, I mean, it seemed like they had a
25:11
healthy relationship and a healthy breakup.
25:12
So that's also a good lesson for, you know, those young
25:14
people to learn. Now put yourself in that chair
25:23
for a second. You're 19 years old.
25:25
You started streaming to play video games, to have fun and
25:28
make people laugh. Only if I would be playing Dota
25:30
2 back then, and I'll be saying some wild shit by that I was
25:34
good at the game. And somebody you've never met
25:35
just told you they're planning their own death, and out of
25:38
everyone in their life, they picked you to tell.
25:40
I feel like no one cares and I want to end it all.
25:42
I have a date planned so you'll probably never see me again.
25:44
I want to say you make me laugh a lot.
25:45
I'm going to myself October 2nd and no one will Remember Me.
25:48
And this kept happening. I mean the well, yeah, I guess
25:51
it's unfortunately reading it, it's like an encouragement of
25:53
behavior, not like a negative way, but it's like that's
25:54
unfortunately what ends up happening.
25:56
Joe would go live. But it seems like a lot of that
25:57
is more of just like a more of just like an attention grab.
26:01
And it might be, it might be a positive attention grab, not
26:03
positive, but like where you're like, oh, I'm thinking about
26:05
doing this. And like you kind of like like
26:06
the one guy the other day, the the demon guy, the hot diggity
26:09
demon. I think that he's was
26:11
contemplating that. And I and I, it seems somebody
26:13
said that he's like not contemplating it anymore, which
26:16
is a good thing. But sometimes it's more of the
26:17
like, I'm really, I'm pushed very close to the edge and I
26:20
could use a little bit of support.
26:22
And sometimes that's what that's, you know, it's like,
26:25
it's like when you're doing the old, we call it the old gothic
26:29
barcode on your arm. You know what I mean?
26:31
Sometimes it's a it's a cry for help.
26:34
And sooner or later, somebody would show up in a genuine
26:36
crisis, typing their darkest thoughts into a Twitch chat.
26:39
Don't want to be a mood killer. I just want to say my family
26:41
basically bullies me every day and I can't get nothing to stop.
26:43
I've been thinking about that a lot.
26:45
When Joe first started getting these messages from chatters,
26:48
his initial response was the same as anyone with the hearts
26:50
would be. He wanted to help both on stream
26:53
and off of it. Joe took the time to talk with
26:55
those viewers, getting to know them on a personal level and
26:57
giving them real advice, just like you would with a friend.
27:02
Well, to me, if you need help with something like that, I, I
27:04
can try my best. So that's why I'm kind of
27:07
chilling or pausing the stream for the last like 15 minutes to
27:11
talk about this because that's important.
27:13
But there's a harsh reality that all streamers have to learn
27:16
eventually. Your viewers aren't your
27:17
friends. They can't be.
27:19
Sometimes, sometimes they can become also work for you.
27:24
I have had probably 20 people come to me about yourselves like
27:28
on live. The first two times it's
27:30
happened I have tried to like help them and then it just ended
27:33
badly in terms of them getting parasocial towards me and the
27:36
non-stop coming to me. Yep, that's why I don't as
27:40
though I don't do that. I don't really respond to
27:42
anything in private, to be honest with you.
27:44
Like that's kind of where I'm. At you see, the relationship
27:46
between a streamer and a viewer is way more complicated than a
27:48
normal friendship. When you spend hours watching
27:51
someone through a screen, day after day, your brain starts
27:54
doing something weird. You pick up their sense of
27:56
humor. You learn their opinions, their
27:57
moods, what makes them laugh, and what sets them off.
28:00
That's why you guys are all so funny.
28:01
You come to know them the way you'd know a friend, except they
28:04
have no idea you even exist. What?
28:10
Don't worry guys, I know you exist as long as you give me a
28:12
Papa got membership. I'm just kidding.
28:15
This is what's called a parasocial relationship, and it
28:18
could be a dangerous thing. Now a scary home invasion as 3
28:21
masked intruders with guns grab a popular influencer by the hair
28:25
demanding money. Three guys came into my room,
28:28
turned all the light. Oh, is that the morgue pie?
28:32
It's on. And then they had the gun
28:33
pointed at me. While most parasocial
28:39
relationships don't reach this level, there's always a
28:41
possibility that it can. 3 popular Twitch streamers face a
28:45
terrifying encounter while live streaming along the Santa Monica
28:48
Pier Kill. You right now.
28:51
If the streamer leans, what the fuck?
28:54
Is that sniper wolf? Too far one way they might come
28:56
across as uninterested or cold, but lean too far the other and
29:00
viewers can mistake an occasional reply for friendship.
29:02
Please stop following me. It's getting weird, it's getting
29:04
strange. I don't know you OK?
29:06
So please leave me alone. That's where things can take a
29:09
turn for the worst. Because now that attention can
29:11
turn into expectation. And when the expectation of a
29:13
response to the next chat isn't met, it can feel less like being
29:17
ignored by a streamer and more like a betrayal by someone that
29:19
they thought they knew. Weird parasocial relationship
29:24
that forms and you're not even aware that this person is
29:27
forming that typically until they're like about to show up or
29:30
they do show up. The gap is hard to manage, which
29:33
is why most streamers keep a barrier up around the heavy
29:35
personal stuff. My Sissy, that makes sense.
29:38
Let's try. Let's try and keep it, keep it
29:40
positive. Please don't talk about.
29:41
That's crazy, dude. That's fucking insane.
29:45
Holy fuck. For me, if someone like, if I
29:47
came into someone's chat and they were like, Oh, my father's
29:49
dead, I think that's a good thing because my fuck, my
29:50
daddy's a bitch. Out of my chat please.
29:52
This is something I just don't like to hear or talk about, you
29:54
know? And you can't really blame them.
29:56
At the end of the day, streamers are supposed to entertain at
29:59
some point. They're.
29:59
Yeah, true. Well, it's not even just that
30:00
they're supposed to entertain. It's also part of it's like
30:02
that's a lot that's like emotionally heavy.
30:06
You know, it's weird though, because I think that of at at
30:08
the at the start, I don't think it was socially acceptable for a
30:11
streamer to put up like strong boundaries.
30:13
People be like, no, you're supposed to constantly do
30:16
whatever your fans want. I think it's a somewhat new
30:18
concept or, or and it's a good boundary to set that like, oh,
30:21
you don't have to, you know, basically do everything that
30:25
your chat asks you to do. Just because somebody donates 50
30:28
Subs or something doesn't mean that you have to give them the
30:31
world. You know, there has to be a
30:32
boundary between caring about the people watching and becoming
30:34
responsible for everything that they bring into the chat.
30:37
They become too attached to you where they see you as an actual
30:40
friend that they have. So I feel like that is kind of a
30:43
boundary that you have to set as a streamer, but it's hard to
30:46
gauge where that line is. Joe had every reason to draw
30:49
that same boundary. He'd answered the heavy
30:51
messages, taking conversations off stream and learn what could
30:54
happen when things become too parasocial.
30:57
The first two times I I helped somebody with like old issues,
31:00
they just kept messaging me and then they like got upset when I
31:04
stopped messaging them. So it's it's more so bad issue.
31:07
But mental health meant too much to.
31:09
I mean, yeah, especially if they're like emotionally
31:11
vulnerable, you know, and you kind of get them at that moment,
31:13
they're going to, they're going to obviously lean on you if they
31:16
have no one else, unfortunately so.
31:19
Ignore. Tough lesson learned you.
31:20
Know boring somebody who might not make it through the night
31:22
was never a choice he could live with after those early.
31:25
That's why I see nowadays you just have to AI chat by yourself
31:28
and then everybody could talk to Joe Bartolosi, am I right?
31:30
Mistakes. Joe implemented 2 important
31:32
factors that would eliminate those odd parasocial dynamics
31:35
from coming into the picture. For starters, he removed any
31:37
one-on-one interaction. All conversations with chatters
31:40
were strictly held on stream from the Twitch chat.
31:43
I've prepared to go. Tired of waiting for things to
31:44
improve you or my escape. Thank you.
31:46
Dude. If you're if you're saying
31:47
you're going to kill yourself, don't like I'm, I'm.
31:50
I know this was 10 minutes ago. I hope you're still here.
31:52
And 2nd but most. Yeah, that's fucking brutal.
31:55
Importantly, he made the pivot from trying to be the help
31:57
himself and became the middleman.
31:59
Fine if you're depressed and you want to come to me for advice,
32:02
but when it comes to the gravity of seeking, an expert is better
32:06
than seeking Joe Bartolozi, a Twitch streamer, tech talker,
32:10
you know what I mean? For those who came into the chat
32:12
looking for help, Joe was there to give them a few encouraging
32:15
words and push them in the right direction.
32:17
I've had not so good thoughts if you know what I mean, and
32:19
listening to your advice and others has helped me even during
32:21
those hard times. If you ever have thoughts, reach
32:23
out to somebody genuinely. Go to a therapist, psychiatrist,
32:26
talk to somebody that can help you.
32:28
Whoa, but what if you can't afford it?
32:29
Dude come on, be a little more woke.
32:32
That's not the answer. Like there I'm being so yeah.
32:34
There's, there's only so much I'm able to do as a creator,
32:37
especially seeing that I don't know the person.
32:40
So that's why I try to do the charity streams for like, you
32:44
know, 988 or AFSP or Trevor Projects.
32:50
We're doing reactions today and it's a charity stream.
32:54
We raised $2700 which was matched 3X by the Melinda Bill
33:00
Gates Foundation. So dub in the chat for that goes
33:03
to a good cause. Saving lives.
33:05
And for a while, this worked pretty well.
33:06
While it seems kind of a small Joe's, brief but encouraging
33:09
words were actually making a difference in people's lives.
33:12
Been stopped for a year now and I want to say thank you for
33:14
helping me through this past year with having to deal with my
33:16
grandpa's suicide and my own personal problems.
33:19
That's fucking brutal. What the?
33:20
Hell, you're definitely my favorite tops.
33:24
I feel like I would not be able to handle that like constant
33:27
energy at me, you know, like people.
33:29
Hey, man, thanks for this. I I like what people come in
33:31
every once in a while. They're like, hey, man, like I
33:33
watched you for this and like, you know, I was oppressed and
33:35
stuff and I appreciate that. But coming in and be like, dude,
33:38
my dad fucking my granddad, fucking you, fucking Kurt
33:43
Cobain. I was struggling, but it's just
33:45
so intense. It's so heavy, man.
33:46
That's so fucking heavy. I don't know, you know, that's
33:49
just not, that's just fucking great.
33:50
That's intense, man. Streamer, and I hope you never
33:53
stop. But by the time Joe graduated
33:57
college, things had started to change.
34:00
His viewer count climbed to some of the highest in all of
34:02
streaming. Managing the expectation of that
34:04
many chatters is a totally different beast.
34:07
Like right now I average 10K. That's horrible.
34:11
Yeah. Like, yeah.
34:13
This chat is not going to be happy about that I.
34:14
Want to get into the videos I'm trying to get stressed out.
34:19
I'm starting to get stressed up. I could tell this was going to
34:21
happen at the start of stream when I got like 9 messages just
34:24
unloaded onto me. With this many viewers watching,
34:27
Joe found himself caught between two groups that wanted
34:29
completely different things from him because on one hand, some
34:32
viewers felt that he wasn't doing enough to help.
34:34
I guess even my favorite streamer doesn't care about me.
34:39
I'd say I guess so, bitch. Damn dude.
34:44
I have 5000 people in my stream that are spamming right now.
34:46
I'm also playing a video game and then I don't respond to you
34:49
and you pull this guilt trip here.
34:51
Should we do that? Should I go into Joe Bart's
34:53
fucking chat and just say, oh I guess my favorite streamer
34:56
doesn't care about me? Wow, I guess my favorite
35:00
streamer thinks I'm fucking a fat.
35:03
I'm going to do that next time I I see Joe Bart online.
35:05
That's what I'm doing. I'm saying wow, I guess my
35:07
favorite streamer doesn't care about me.
35:08
On the other hand, there was a totally different group of
35:11
viewers that were tired of the stream constantly stopping.
35:14
Jesus dude, I like watching your streams but when you go on rants
35:17
like this that's all you do all the time.
35:19
That's annoying. Play the game, do me a favor,
35:22
and never watch me again. Dude, that's so funny, bro.
35:26
I get so fucking triggered, especially right now because
35:28
I'm, I'm like back to putting in like a pretty more like a more
35:32
aggressive content strategy for short form content because I've
35:35
always done very well with that. So like I'm starting to get a
35:37
little more viral across platforms, something, you know,
35:40
you know, like I have a couple of videos on like Twitter and
35:43
they have like 500 K and these people are in there and they're
35:45
like, dude, you talk so way too much.
35:47
Nobody wants to watch this. And it's like, dude, what the
35:49
fuck? You're commenting on a 500
35:51
fucking thousand view video of my commentary about some fucking
35:54
Airbnb couple. What the fuck do you mean nobody
35:58
wants to listen to it? They won't.
35:59
They are literally you're listening to it.
36:02
It's obnoxious. Like holy fuck, dude, God damn
36:05
it, but I try not to respond to those people.
36:09
It's so much easier in comments because I just like I have a
36:11
actually, I have a pretty strict I have a pretty strict don't
36:16
respond to comments policy. And then and what how that
36:19
manifests is I don't respond to comments.
36:23
But you know, in the live stream is obviously a little bit
36:29
different because you know, it's live and I'll see you something
36:31
sometimes and I'll get a little, maybe I'll get a little one
36:33
guide, maybe I'll maybe I'll get a little bit one guy.
36:36
You know what I mean? Do me a favor and go fuck
36:38
yourself. It was a bad dragon.
36:41
No matter what Joe did, someone felt ignored and the messages
36:44
were starting to get more demanding.
36:46
Early on, people would briefly mention that they were
36:48
struggling and Joe would offer a few words of encouragement.
36:51
Well, that's like that's, it's hard to, to keep it up when you
36:53
have more people watching, you know?
36:54
No, they wanted more. Like every stream, it's been
36:57
getting more and more and more and more like involved where
37:00
people are genuinely asking me to fix their problems.
37:04
I can't. I'm.
37:05
I can guys. I'm just.
37:06
Kidding, sorry, but the hardest part was figuring out who
37:09
genuinely needed help and who was only looking for attention.
37:12
How do you balance keeping everybody happy and then also
37:16
sorting through people who are just doing it for attention?
37:19
I mean, that's the you got. To go off the vibes, baby.
37:22
Because I'm a side prevention advocate that is an Ave. that a
37:25
lot of people use to manipulate their way into being noticed.
37:29
Were speaking to me on stream. Yep, that makes sense.
37:34
And so yeah, if there's 10 chats saying there's idle, 6 of them
37:40
are fake. I'm surprised.
37:41
I would have thought there's ten shots, nine of them would be
37:43
fake. But you know what?
37:44
That's very nice of him to say because I feel like I'm right
37:48
always. That's one of my problems.
37:52
Because I do so much mental health advocacy, the amount of
37:55
people that come into my chat and fake things most absurd.
37:58
I had one chatter that came in and they say, hey, I'm the
38:02
mother of so. And so he took his own life.
38:05
I just wanted to let you know you were his favorite streamer.
38:08
Dude, that's fucking insane, dude.
38:11
Holy fuck. Holy shit, Oh, that would
38:15
fucking send me. I would be fucking pissed.
38:17
I'd probably say something nasty, like obviously that's
38:20
probably just the kid saying that to try to get some
38:22
attention. I would just be like, shit, you
38:24
did a better, better mother, dude.
38:25
You know what I mean? Like I'm not trying to be a
38:27
fucking rude, but obviously it's fake.
38:29
So I wouldn't say that. You know, that's fucking insane
38:32
that he they would unload on Joe like that.
38:34
Holy fuck, what the hell? I'm sorry that he took his, his
38:38
life. I, I, I don't really know what
38:40
to say. I'm sorry.
38:42
You know what I would ironically do though?
38:43
I I actually have a resource for this.
38:45
I would just play this for them to cheer them up.
38:50
Yeah, go away, said Stop diggling me.
38:53
Holy bazookers. Was that your butt?
38:57
Yeah, it was my butt. I told you to stop, nerd.
38:59
Wow, I didn't know your butt could explode too.
39:03
Still don't take you. Sorry.
39:06
Well, now I feel embarrassed, so I think I'm just going to leave.
39:08
No, no, no. It's OK, you can fart anytime
39:11
you'd want around me. Wait, really?
39:12
I don't mind. Really.
39:14
Thanks nerd. You mind if I maybe smell it?
39:16
No, not. Only halfway done, just to be
39:18
clear, we're we're doing the whole thing.
39:20
Well, nerd, what do you think? Does it smell good?
39:24
Is that a bean burrito from Taco Bell?
39:27
What the? No, Deca.
39:28
You know me too well. Just know you too well caught
39:31
John. I love you, nerd.
39:33
Do you want to make me smell my fart?
39:35
Yeah. Deca you.
39:36
I'd love to thank you. How was it?
39:44
Smells pretty good. Thank you, Katjan.
39:45
You're welcome, nerd. Teku, don't make that face.
39:48
You're making me blush, nerd. I had somebody, I actually had
39:52
somebody say the other day after I did that.
39:55
I haven't played that in like a month I think.
39:57
At least not publicly of course. But I had somebody say, all
40:01
right, it's not funny anymore. And it's like you don't
40:04
understand my humor if you think that that's not funny because
40:06
part of what's so funny about it to me is that you all hate it.
40:09
That's a big part of my humor is other people getting
40:11
uncomfortable. And people really don't
40:14
understand that about me. They really don't get it.
40:16
But like, that makes me laugh so much.
40:18
And that's why people don't like all my jokes because it's at
40:21
their expense. But it's like making people
40:23
uncomfortable and having to sit in silence sometimes is so funny
40:26
to me that's it's funny. That's just as stupid.
40:30
Well, I didn't play it. We could go stop it, stop it
40:32
week, a month. What's the difference?
40:35
So that's what's big for me. And people just don't understand
40:37
my my aura, you know? I hope you're all right.
40:42
I'm sorry for the loss of your son.
40:43
Yeah, go find them. Come to find out they come back
40:48
a month later and they're like my brother type.
40:50
That band is blocked in you're the chatter.
40:53
I knew that bro. I'm.
40:55
Damn, he fucking knew it too. That means Joe sat with that.
40:58
That means Joe sat with that. He was like fucking it.
41:02
It means that he, I mean, he was distressed by it.
41:05
You know, he was distressed by that fucking crazy man.
41:10
You enjoy it, guys. You enjoyed the that you enjoyed
41:12
the video thing. So now I I can't play it
41:15
anymore, man. I understand you're reverse
41:17
psychology. Shut up.
41:18
Man, that's fucking weird. This leaves Joe stuck making a
41:21
decision that's difficult to get right.
41:23
If I'm being honest, I think a large portion of people that
41:27
come into my chat and say stuff that's idle are lying.
41:31
But I have to treat them all as if they're real, because then I
41:36
could, on an off chance, not take somebody seriously that is
41:39
serious, and that's the worst thing you could do.
41:42
Ignoring the wrong message could have serious consequences, but
41:45
responding to every message was impossible and the pressure of
41:47
trying was beginning to wear him down.
41:49
I feel bad and I I've talked about this.
41:51
It's like, I wish I could help, but like sometimes I can't, you
41:55
know, like that. Makes sense there's.
41:57
There's only so much I'm able to do as a creator, especially
42:00
seeing that I don't know the person.
42:02
But there's one message that weighs on Joe the most.
42:04
It's one that he's heard over and over again.
42:07
To It's called a joke of myself, guys.
42:11
Yet for some viewers, he's the only reason that they're still
42:13
alive. Damn.
42:20
Joe Bart saved my life dead ass. I'm so freaking serious right
42:24
now. I only stopped from going poop.
42:27
Sorry once because he had a reaction coming up.
42:31
All right. That's trauma dump hashtag #steg
42:39
trauma dumping him, right? You were there when my dad
42:45
passed. You saved me from ending my own
42:47
life more than anyone should. I've realized so much because of
42:51
you. I can't thank you enough.
42:52
You unknowingly have helped me with a lot.
42:53
My life has gotten about a lot better since watching you from
42:56
your philosophy stuff. Never had a favorite trip until
42:58
I watched your streams. That kind of saved my life.
43:00
No pressure myself. You saved my life.
43:02
I did not save your life. You saved your own life.
43:04
Please get the help you need though.
43:05
If I'm the only reason that you stopped, you know, wanting to
43:08
kill yourself in that moment, you need a lot of help out side
43:13
of just watching my content. That's true.
43:15
That's true. I wonder if that's the correct
43:17
way to engage with somebody that was saying something so
43:19
vulnerable. When you hear some of those
43:22
stories, big of a toll does that take on you because like, I
43:26
don't know, I'm watching through some of their clips talking to
43:29
people like this. All the chat is asking who is
43:32
checking on Joe I, I'm. Joe Mama.
43:37
Sorry, I mean I'm starting therapy soon.
43:40
I'm not saying it's bad to. Me, my wife and I are toxic.
43:45
My wife's basically a therapist. Well she's a social worker so I
43:48
basically got therapy. She probably needs therapy but
43:50
she said that she wants to wait to unpack all of her shit when
43:53
she has time. Because when you go to therapy,
43:54
it's, you start, you get worse before you get better, you know,
43:57
cuz you have to unpack everything, 'cause when you,
43:59
when you go to therapy, you have everything packed up really
44:02
poorly, but it's still packed up.
44:03
It's like just taking a bunch of clothing and just shoving it
44:05
into your fucking closet. The first thing you have to do
44:08
is take it out and throw it all over the bed and not, and you
44:10
have to resist the urge to just take it from the bed and
44:13
throwing onto a chair and the back and forth between using
44:15
your computer and going to sleep.
44:17
So like you have to unpack stuff and then you have to repack it,
44:21
but in a healthier way. So it's actually difficult to go
44:24
into therapy. It's one of the reasons I think
44:25
people think it doesn't work. You also to be really honest.
44:28
And it's also one of those things where you have to like
44:30
actually think it can work for it to work.
44:33
It's difficult for people, Some people to be honest, they'll
44:35
just like lie to you and they'll just like placate you.
44:38
Some therapists are doing the shit and they'll believe it, you
44:39
know? Have my videos as like something
44:42
to fall back on to make you feel happier versus like I'm at all.
44:45
Your videos are the only thing that's keeping me alive.
44:47
Take a second and think about what that actually means for the
44:50
person receiving it. Somebody just told you that your
44:52
uploads are load bearing for their existence.
44:54
Don't tell me that like I, I, I'm glad I'm able to help man,
44:58
but like get help like yes. You could tell how fuck it this
45:02
is. Probably the most traumatic,
45:03
dramatic aspect of making content for Joe is people
45:06
constantly telling them, you know, that they wanted to take
45:09
their own life. Help please.
45:12
So what happens if you take a break?
45:14
What happens if you burn out and quit?
45:16
On some level, Joe now feels like he has to keep posting
45:19
because somewhere out there, somebody's hanging on by his
45:21
streaming schedule. There will be people that are
45:23
like coming to my chat and they're like, hey, you prevented
45:25
me from myself because I saw one of your videos and it made me
45:28
laugh on service level. That's great if you're me.
45:31
Now I'm going, oh, if I stop posting, people are going to
45:34
start killing themselves. And beyond the pressure.
45:37
Though I'll just censor those as well, but damn that's fucking
45:40
heavy man. Sure, there's the sheer exposure
45:41
to darkness. Oh, scary.
45:44
Joe's DMS and chat are a constant stream of people's
45:46
lowest moments, and when you're surrounded by that much pain for
45:50
that long, it eventually starts to get in.
45:53
That's like the one thing is the emotional drain, I guess.
45:58
Like I put a lot out. After every stream, Joe sits
46:05
there for an hour, just coming back down from what the job took
46:07
out of him. Like when I'm done stream I get
46:09
off, I literally sit there and. Oh you should do that before
46:13
stream. Like silence for maybe an hour.
46:17
I I need like time to decompress.
46:20
I mean, that makes sense. You know, that's one of the
46:21
things about streaming is like, obviously it's your it's a
46:23
blessed gifted job that you can do.
46:26
But after you, it's also like it can be very social, especially
46:29
if you're engaging. Like the way that Joe Bart
46:31
engages in his, his stuff is probably much more intense than
46:35
like the way somebody like like I do does.
46:38
First of all, he just has more people and more chatters.
46:40
But I think that he also makes a better point to be entertaining
46:42
for his dream. And like, I don't, which sounds
46:49
weird, but like for me, so I'm not saying Joe is performative
46:55
at all, but like, obviously there's a certain type of energy
46:57
that you need to bring to the stream.
46:58
And I do bring a certain type of energy to my stream, But like I
47:01
don't like to take, I don't like to, I don't really perform feel
47:06
like I'm just come on, like I'm fucking playing a fucking video
47:08
game right now while I I react to stuff like I'm chilling where
47:12
Joe like is a professional. He's a professional dude.
47:16
He's coming out and he's actually creating a curated
47:19
experience. And I, you know, he's like
47:20
really he's more invested in what's going on.
47:26
So you got a lot of people and it's definitely socially
47:27
draining. Even I have like some of those
47:29
too. I got like a little bit drained
47:30
afterwards. You know, you're constantly
47:31
talking. I'm basically talking to myself
47:32
now that I'm thinking about, I'm getting self aware.
47:33
I'm getting fucking anxious and weird but you know what I'm
47:38
saying? Just because that is a lot at
47:42
times it takes a toll and I've gotten used to it.
47:45
But it it, it kind of builds like they're I'll be good for a
47:49
month and then there will be a week where I'm just like, not.
47:53
Whoa, he's got his Diria. Do you know what I'm?
47:55
Saying not there emotionally, I guess, and that's like a
47:59
problem. Yeah, those are always the
48:01
worst. I actually, I mean like I do
48:02
this the same thing. Like I have like a week every
48:04
month where I'm like depressed. This last one was fucking
48:07
terrible actually, actually the worst one I've had in a while.
48:11
I mean, I guess it's like where it's a it's a pretty heavy video
48:13
topic, so I'll talk about it, but like it's fucking it's
48:17
heavy. Last last week was rough, man.
48:19
Like, like I'm having a daughter and you know, I want to be a
48:22
successful content creator and if I have to get a regular job,
48:25
I will. But you know, it goes back and
48:27
forth between feeling good and confident and not feeling
48:30
particularly confident and just feeling like, what the hell am I
48:33
supposed to be doing? And you kind of kind of figure
48:35
out what, what the content strategy is and like, you know
48:37
what I mean? It's tough.
48:39
I wind up going for a drive with my wife, the class.
48:44
It was last. I want to say it's last Tuesday
48:47
and it was, it's fucked up. I feel so bad for her, but I was
48:50
just like, I'm really hot. Like I was like, thank
48:52
thankfully you were in the car. Because if she wasn't, I don't
48:55
know, I don't know, you know, maybe she would have popped into
48:58
a Joe Bart stream and said that oh, oh, my husband, he loved, he
49:03
loved her content. But you know where you know what
49:06
I mean? I don't know, man.
49:10
Sometimes it just really gets to you, you know, because I have a
49:13
couple people who work for me and they depend on me and I'm
49:15
like, fuck, you know, and I get like, I get frustrated because I
49:18
want to obviously be more successful, but it's like, fuck,
49:20
you know, part of my motivation is for the people who are
49:24
working for me and obviously my wife and my, my, my kid that's
49:27
coming soon. And it's like, God damn it.
49:30
Sometimes you feel like you're grinding and you don't know the
49:32
answers. And it can be very frustrating
49:33
because like it's hard to get the answer.
49:34
So, and I don't even have any like real creator friends.
49:37
It seems like every creator friend that I end up the kind of
49:40
hooking onto for a bit seems to not necessarily be the best
49:44
person unfortunately in like a long term way.
49:49
And then also I'm difficult to be with in general in any
49:52
relationship. I mean, I have to acknowledge
49:54
that factor as well. I'm tough to be with, you know,
49:56
I'm kind of annoying. So I get it very strong headed
49:59
as well. So you know, it's just like,
50:04
yeah, it's not like I can ask somebody like, hey, like what
50:06
would you do here? And even if I had streamer, like
50:09
streamer friends talk to like, you know, when I was like
50:11
friends with Caleb, I wouldn't do that anyway because I'm not
50:13
trying to fucking trauma dump on somebody and be like, hey, I'm
50:15
really struggling here. I'm not going to be annoying.
50:18
I struggle to make friends too, because it seems like a
50:20
performance piece, like streamer friends and stuff.
50:22
Like I remember I watched Hobart's video about like him
50:27
and his girlfriend breaking up and I only watched it because
50:28
everybody like shitting on him. Like so it was like 5 days after
50:30
it happened. I'm like, oh man, it's really,
50:32
it's not, it's going to be more about that.
50:33
And I think it was good and productive, but I was like, ah,
50:36
man, like I would reach out to Joe, but I haven't talked to him
50:38
in years since we were on like TikTok.
50:39
And I don't want to seem like some kind of guy that's trying
50:40
to like do a clout grab. Like I don't want, I don't want
50:43
people to think that. So you guys convinced me you're
50:51
she just reached out. So I did and we talked really
50:53
very like briefly. And it was like, it was nice.
50:55
It was fine. But you know, I don't know, I
50:57
guess I have like my own weird insecurities too so.
51:00
So the obvious question is why keep doing it?
51:02
Every other streamer proved you can just let the messages scroll
51:05
and the career survives. Joe could put up the full wall
51:08
tomorrow and nobody could really blame him.
51:10
I'm not sitting here acting like I'm several.
51:11
Oh yeah, it's tough. It is definitely tough to
51:13
maintain relationship with the creator.
51:14
So specifically when you're in like the type of commentary that
51:17
I'm in, when you're in like a commentary atmosphere, like I'm
51:19
in, it's like it's, it's impossible.
51:21
You really can't. You really, it's like almost
51:23
impossible to do, you know, because you're going to end up
51:30
criticizing them because you're in their sphere.
51:33
And then it makes things weird and I really can't not criticize
51:35
them. You know, it's unfortunate, but
51:38
there's been so many different people that have, I mean,
51:42
there's a laundry list of different people, man, it's
51:44
fucking crazy. I think that what that confused
51:46
to me the most. I'm fucking going off.
51:47
That was not really going off. But I'm like I said, Brittany
51:49
Simon for some reason, because I remember I kind of like
51:52
criticized the lightly her Katy Bugs video.
51:53
And then maybe a couple weeks later I saw something that was a
51:56
follow up to a video we both did.
51:58
So I'm like, oh, let me send it to her.
51:59
We haven't talked in a little bit because after the criticism,
52:01
I don't like jump to talk to people, you know, because I know
52:03
they'd be pissed off for a little bit.
52:04
And then she like unfollowed me or she unaided me on Discord.
52:09
It's like, apparently at first it was because, oh, we just
52:12
hadn't talked in a while and like we were just streamer
52:14
people together, which was weird because I kind of considered us
52:18
friends. And then it turned into
52:19
something to do with me still supporting Destiny.
52:20
This was a years ago. And I was like, OK, this is
52:22
fairly confusing and it's frustrating because, you know,
52:25
could use your words, but I don't know, man, it's fucking,
52:29
it's crazy. I mean, at this point, frankly,
52:30
I my only real friends are my wife's friends, Dave and
52:33
Christine, right? They're not my only friends, but
52:35
I want to freak them out if they're watching, but like I
52:38
don't even really have my own friends.
52:39
I don't know. It's just like it's not even
52:40
worth it. Like my wife's my best friend.
52:41
I don't really have. I don't really care anymore.
52:43
Actually, I guess I do. I mean, some of you guys are,
52:46
but you know, I don't know whatever dude, I'm that is what
52:53
it is. I don't know.
52:54
I'm fucking it's whatever. I'm fucking into a vulnerable
52:56
today. I'm gonna have to message Joe
52:57
offline, tell him that he's OK. Nevermind, I'm going too crazy.
53:01
Role model. But if people are going through
53:03
stuff and I recognize that they're watching my content to
53:06
help them, that I want them to have some sort of guidance of
53:11
redirection, to be better themselves and also better their
53:16
own mental health in a way that's good for them.
53:18
Joe did the math. Productive.
53:20
I like that word. Productive, yes.
53:23
I decided helping people is worth what it costs him.
53:26
I enjoy making people happy more than the other aspects of the
53:30
job and that's what enables me to deal with this.
53:33
I enjoy the money. I enjoy being honest and the
53:38
money, you know what I mean? That's what I like.
53:40
And obviously the schedule's good too.
53:42
I get to kind of make my own schedules.
53:44
Like a lot of people are like, oh, push through the negative
53:46
because you make money. I think I pushed through the
53:48
negative because I can affect people more positively here than
53:52
any other job that I could possibly be doing.
53:54
But once he's. That might be true, but in Joe's
53:56
case, you know, although you know, social workers are very
53:59
beneficial to society, I will say.
54:01
What this platform could do for people at their lowest, walking
54:04
away from that stopped being an option he could live with.
54:07
Thank you. My mom was diagnosed with cancer
54:10
about nine months ago. We would watch your videos and
54:13
streams. She loved your philosophy
54:15
streams. She also majored in philosophy.
54:17
Really. A week ago I found out she has
54:19
2. Two more days to live.
54:22
Dude, that's fucking crazy bro, come on.
54:26
Holy shit, bro. It's not funny, but it's just
54:28
like sets fucked up. That's like harsh, you know?
54:31
One of the final things we did was watch one of your YouTube
54:34
videos. Your videos remind me of good
54:36
memories. She passed away yesterday and
54:37
you helped me cope just. 10 my fucking Lord.
54:41
Wanted to say thank you so much. Dude that's fuck I don't know
54:45
what I do if I got a message like that.
54:47
You help more than you'll ever know.
54:48
Thank God I just make swap, you know what I mean?
54:51
I never make any good points ever in my entire life.
54:55
Oh my God, you know that's just going to make me cry.
55:01
It's a weird job, dude. It's a.
55:03
Weird, that guy was just trolling and he wasn't even
55:05
being serious. How fucking crazy Without
55:07
paying, you know. Your job in social media,
55:11
there's a lot of but it's one of the most, like, rewarding
55:15
experiences just to be able to be someone to help other people
55:19
is something that I want to do yeah, the money's good yeah it's
55:22
fun to play video games and. That's that's one.
55:26
See, that's one of the things I bet like if I if I was playing
55:29
more video games, I wonder if I would make like if I did a video
55:32
game channel, I wonder, but I don't think I could do it.
55:35
I like to play games as like a passing the time.
55:37
I don't know if I could play video games as like my content.
55:42
Like how do you do that? Maybe if I played with my with
55:44
friends, you know, that I could probably do like I could just
55:47
like fuck around. I was actually talking to my
55:49
wife about that, just like fucking around, maybe finding
55:51
like, you know, like a like having like fun gaming streams,
55:55
but I don't know, I just I don't know.
55:58
It's whatever, you know? It's whatever, dude.
56:03
It's whatever. But like, on a deeper level,
56:05
dude, being able to make people's days is like genuinely
56:12
what I want to do, and I'm glad that I can.
56:20
Oh, was that the end of the video?
56:21
What the fuck? OK, well, that was a very abrupt
56:24
end, but yeah, that was a good video, man.
56:26
It's a nice, it's a nice watch. There's a nice little watch
56:28
there. Incredible stuff.