A Head Mod's Paycheck Starts at a Few Grand
I was nervous.
"Hoo..."
I set my hands on the keyboard and started to write. First thing had to be a title with some aggro in it.
"...Hm."
Too soft. Seven years a Mod, and titles like that were lying around on every board you walked into. I swapped it for something with more of a kick.
"Tss... this one's still a little off."
Provocative enough, but not there yet. I thought, and thought again, and changed the title one more time.
"Good. This is the one."
Why the Mod is a woman. Found the Mod's real photo. Too complicated, and too dull. From ancient times it has been said that the craftsman's virtue is to say a complicated thing simply. I wasn't going to prove I was a woman through some convoluted argument. I pulled proper aggro by announcing that I would show them mine — the Mod's tits.
Of course.
"Mm. As expected."
Maybe I'd gotten too used to it, but the mood was pure yeah, sure, whatever. Well, it couldn't be helped. Far too many misunderstandings had stacked up by now.
...Except thinking about that incident this way was making me angry all over again.
"Why did I have to get caught back then, of all things..."
It was a few years ago. I'd finished my shift, come home, and settled into my usual crawl through the boards.
That bastard had been flaming me — my playtime was too low, I wasn't a true gamer. One lunatic who picked fights like that whenever something didn't suit him. And because of that one lunatic, I got heated and cracked open my Vapor library.
The result was a disaster.
A hundred hours minimum. If they'd been ordinary games, that was the kind of playtime you could wave off — huh, played a decent amount. But if every one of those games was an ero game? And not just any ero game, but the kind whose content makes even other gamers click their tongues?
...And just like that, against my will, I was recognized as a true gamer.
"Haah. Seriously..."
Just thinking about it brought the regret back. Why hadn't I checked one more time before I hit post? And before that, why had I taken the screenshot like that? I'd come home from my shift dead tired and already furious, and the mistakes had landed one after another. But spilled water doesn't go back in the cup.
From then on, I started getting mentioned constantly around the streaming community. I can't say I cared for it. And why would I?
They were poking at me like that, right out in the open. How was I supposed to enjoy it? My feelings made no difference to the gallers. They cheerfully kept every piece of bait with my name on it rolling.
Then it blew up.
The Streaming Gallery regulars had been tossing me around as board bait when one exceedingly distinguished gentleman happened to catch it. He wrote a post about me on the spot, and that post caught fire and spread like mad.
...Honestly, I never thought it would get that big. Consider it reasonably. I hadn't even posted anything truly braindead. I'd just gotten into a spat with a single galler, some time back, and the fight had ended more cheerfully than you'd expect. At most, it was bait fit to be chewed on as a joke of the moment.
But... a true gallery user is built different, starting with the pen.
It wasn't a callout. But in another sense, it was a post that put me in a very awkward spot.
A development I hadn't seen coming. And so the silent pressure started, from both the Streaming Gallery and the Ero-Game Gallery: hurry up and hand over the ero-game list.
...Honestly, I had no idea how I was supposed to walk this back. Wait. My ero-game list was that important??? Then again, it wasn't entirely beyond understanding. Back when I was a man, I'd been plenty interested in that sort of thing myself, so I knew exactly how much ero games matter to a guy. Factor in that a community like this skews male, and the way the mentions were snowballing was something you could understand, if you worked at it.
But that didn't mean I was about to make my entire list public. How do I put it — it would feel like I was getting dragged around by these assholes. They were already mocking me over my game list. If I published the whole thing, how much further would they take it?
So I was casting about for a way to solve this when I remembered the web novel I'd been reading at the time.
...This might actually land.
A way for me, the Mod, to shut down in a single stroke a situation where I kept getting brought up. I immediately wrote a post so brazen that no one could possibly believe it.
Namely.
Even looking back now, I can say with pride that I wrote that thing with my soft-girl energy cranked to the absolute ceiling. It was not, however, for these bastards.
Well, of course nobody believed me. Think about it reasonably. Right in the middle of the bait rolling about the Mod's monstrous ero-game list, the Mod says I'm a woman, so I'm sensitive about this, please stop rolling it? And this, after a list that had impressed even the Ero-Game Gallery had already been exposed?
Right. Of course it didn't take. And that was exactly what I'd intended.
Once I put up a post that defied all sense, what became of the gallery? Surprisingly, the result was this.
Yeah. That, in the end, was the gallery average. And with that, I was able to restore my honor as Mod.
But it produced a different side effect.
...These bastards really don't think I'm a woman. Not even one percent.
At first there'd been a little back-and-forth, half in jest, but my ero-game list sent that bait crashing in an instant. And so, among the gallers, not a single person was left who thought I was a woman. Not one. Truly.
It got to the point where I caught myself thinking the entire Streaming Gallery had fallen into one enormous misconception novel. At any rate, that was how I — a woman — came to be received as a man on the gallery. Well, as far as I was concerned, it was a good thing. The mocking over my ero-game list had stopped, and I'd picked up a way of working the boards that only I could pull off.
Just like now.
One aggro title, a handful of AI memes, and this many users pile into the comments. Sure, I had my doubts about whether it was really fine for AI bait to be rolling on the Streaming Gallery, but what can you do. A person can't make a living off just one thing.
I was grinning away to myself when a doubt suddenly surfaced. Why was the bait I'd tossed moving this well? Normally this was worn-out bait that couldn't scrape five comments... I checked the state of the board at once, and smacked a palm to my forehead.
"The fuck? The Streaming Gallery, and there's no streaming bait rolling? How does that make any sense?"
This was a problem. Everything actually moving was stocks and games. That was the entire spread. I couldn't understand it. Streaming, worthy of the name, is one giant living tank in a seafood restaurant — it does not have an off-season.
Faced with this unbelievable situation, I went straight over to the streaming site. Frolik, South Korea's untouchable number-one streaming platform. I jumped onto Frolik and checked what state the broadcasts were in.
"I knew it..."
Where on earth had they all gone? It was only nine in the morning, and the site was completely empty. A few streamers had any real size to them; everyone else was small fry. The future of the streaming industry was bleak indeed.
"And here I am, doing my duty as Mod from nine o'clock."
Even a mod like me was rolling bait however I could, for the peace of the gallery — and streamers who made more money than I did were this lazy.
...Hm? You're about to say a head mod earns more than they do anyway, aren't you?
Ah... to think there were still people who believed that. The claim that a head mod pulls in a few grand a month is, in truth...
...Mm. I won't say any more. I mean, you could call it a dream, couldn't you. A little romance. For the sake of their romance and their dreams, I will not mention the truth.
"Anyway, it's a shitshow."
I sighed and set my phone down. And it was the moment I did.
Ding—
"...No way."
There was hope. My favorite streamer. None other than—
"You showed up, Choe Seohyeon!?"
Choe Seohyeon. The immovable No. 1 of male streaming, its undisputed emperor. At the appearance of my favorite streamer, I immediately opened the streaming app on my phone.
And right away...
"Are you fucking kidding me—!!"
How does that make any sense!!!
I couldn't believe it. A man who would normally put a notice up days in advance, dropping one the day of. Reading it, of course, I understood. If it was for the wrist treatment he'd been getting, there was nothing to be done. For someone who streams games, a wrist problem is a very serious matter — all the more when you're talking about one of the best gaming streamers in the country.
But understanding is one thing, and feelings are feelings. And so I headed straight for the gallery.