Time Bomb
Wednesday, December 21st.
There was a crew that got the jump on everyone — completely out of nowhere.
Wait. Could you even call it a crew?
Maybe it was better classified as a project-type crew thrown together for Christmas carols.
Rinko, Seo Chae-i, Sae-dalkom, and Han A-yeon had banded together and dropped a Christmas carol. And it wasn't even a cover — Rinko had written and composed the whole thing herself, which made it all the more of a talking point.
Well. That talking point never really escaped the virtual-streamer bubble. The members' name recognition was still far too low to break into Pangea TV's mainstream.
Even so, the first carol song to hit the scene reminded every virtual streamer whose attention had been monopolized by Rena World of one simple fact.
Every other crew was preparing a Christmas carol too.
Ahh. What a dopamine-drenched gold-cup topic this was.
With Freeca at the head of the pack, Pocotin, Decrescendo, and Mercury — formerly Rena Universe — were all lined up to drop their own carol songs. And of course, that included our V-Live crew as well.
Already, down in the underground galleries, people were jockeying over which crew's carol would rack up the highest view count.
As if that last comment had been some kind of summoning ritual — Ori-koong held a "Drill Show" that very afternoon.
A "Drill Show," for the uninitiated, was a stream titled something like "I Have Something to Drill Into You," used to promote a product or pull aggro. Big-corp streamers had popularized the format until it became a full-blown meme.
"Everyone, I mentioned before that I'd interviewed a fourth member prior to the, uh, server, right?"
[PokoServerIsTrash has been forcibly removed.]
The chat was already a dizzying mess. But Ori-koong was a battle-hardened veteran, tempered by years of community wrecking-ball streams on Rabbit TV. She didn't flinch — she announced the new member.
"Pocotin's fourth member is none other than Yume! Everyone, please give her a warm round of applause."
Yume had already ended her contract with the company after a string of conflicts with Rena-ttang. Joining the Pocotin crew posed no legal issues. Pocotin wasn't even a corporate entity bound by formal contracts in the first place — something like this barely registered.
The real problem was fan opinion. With disappointment over the Poko Server still raw, could they absorb a change this big?
Fan opinion was more positive than expected. They could feel it too — after the catastrophic failure of the Poko Server, the crew was hanging by a thread. They needed a breakthrough somehow. Maybe bringing in a new member would be a masterstroke?
More than anything, the key was that Yume wasn't some random nobody — she was a virtual streamer with real name recognition. In terms of weight class alone, she was someone who could actually help Pocotin, which was more than enough to fuel optimistic daydreams.
Tsk. At this point it's almost pitiful. How does every single choice they make turn out like this…
I couldn't remember the exact date, but before the year was out, Yume would voluntarily resign from the Pocotin crew. The spark that set it off would be Hiyori's call-out. Once again, Pocotin would slam into a reef and lose all momentum for growth.
Adding insult to injury is the perfect phrase for this. The Poko Server alone left them in tatters — and then, ten days later, a brand-new member walks out.
Pocotin's stagnation only sharpened the two-power structure of Freeca and Decrescendo. Sure, our V-Live was in the mix too, but the rest of the crew still lacked the weight class to match — myself excluded. Unlike us, who were mostly rookies, Decrescendo had several streaming veterans in their ranks.
But Decrescendo won't last much longer either… In the end, the ones who survive to the finish are the winners.
Every time I watched the rise and fall of crews that had once been flying high, a bitter taste mixed with a sudden jolt of fear. I trusted my crew members, fundamentally — but controversy could ignite from even the tiniest slip-up.
And I need to be careful too. Fans and haters are two sides of the same coin.
I received the first completed cut of the Christmas carol video.
From the song itself to the visual production, the quality was seriously impressive. Of course it was. Do you know how much money I poured into this?
Everyone had chipped in 20% each for a combined 60%, and I'd covered the remaining 40%. Their financial situations still weren't great, so there hadn't been much choice. Once Rena World started properly taking off, things would improve a lot.
"Whoa! This is so good. This is really our carol song?"
"Technically speaking, it's not our carol song. It's a cover."
"Still, it's great. It's our crew's first official video."
Unless you had songwriting and composition talent like Rinko, who'd already released her carol, an original track was a pipe dream. We weren't a professional music crew anyway, and we didn't particularly need to be. What mattered was producing satisfying quality even as a cover video — and the specialists I'd commissioned had more than earned their paychecks.
This is why money matters. Virtual streaming is technology — and technology is money.
Miho and Mayo were chattering excitedly, but Lucy was strangely quiet. When I asked her what was wrong, she answered in a trembling voice.
"I don't really know either. I was just staring at it blankly. It just… feels good. Really."
"…"
Suddenly I remembered the YouTube video that had first brought Lucy into my life. Crude production values, fonts so ugly they made your blood pressure spike — and yet that voice, seeping in like a warm spring rain, had completely captivated me. Maybe this was the kind of streaming direction Lucy had been chasing before the regression.
"This isn't the final cut yet, so if anyone has revisions, get your feedback to me by today. I need to pass it along to the video editor."
"Okay! I'll send mine right away."
"Mayo will send after stream ends later!"
"Mayo, you better not be late. I can't compile everything and hand it off to the editor until you send yours."
One thing I'd learned as crew leader: even the smallest tasks had to be personally managed, and coordinating the members was exhausting in ways that defied description. It felt like being the permanent group-project leader for a university assignment — as a passive skill.
I'd only managed this well because my time in field sales, eating every kind of verbal abuse and power-tripping client, had forged my mental fortitude. Most people would crack under this kind of stress.
Is this why so many crews fall apart?
Fortunately, our members were relatively good at listening and quick on the uptake. When I called a meeting, nobody showed up late.
On the flip side, there are crews that can't manage even that. And that place would be…
Everyone following the flow of events might have assumed I meant Pocotin. Up to now, whenever something went wrong, there was a high probability it involved the Pocotin crew. But the culprit this time was Decrescendo.
We had a crew meeting scheduled for 3 o'clock today,
but my friends aren't answering their messages.
It's not the first or second time our friends have done this,
so why do they keep doing this T_T
Park Na-na's notice had gone up out of nowhere. She'd phrased it politely, but reading between the lines, you could tell she'd finally snapped after holding it in for far too long.
I especially felt it — 100% — because I was a crew leader myself. I had my own personal schedule, and when crew members kept breaking promises, it shredded your mental health. Looking at the post, this clearly wasn't a one- or two-time offense.
Park Na-na already has trauma from this kind of thing.
She was the one who'd run the Seol-le-im Club in the past, only to shut it down after conflicts with her crew members. And now she was getting stressed out by her crew all over again?
With the recent Poko Server mess on top of everything else, Park Na-na looked to me like a bomb that could go off at any moment.
If something just gives her a reason… she might actually explode.
Tick-tock. The timer was running.