Debut Stream (2)
"Aaaaah! Bros, today's stream was packed, right? Admit it?"
"Come on. Bros, I turned the stream on at eleven last night and I've been going almost twelve hours. Cut me some slack. I'm dying here."
"……."
Oh Yeong-jun, now in his eleventh year as a streamer, let out a long, heavy sigh.
Lately, the mood among his viewers had been anything but stable.
Should've just stuck to my main game. Why the hell did I stick my nose into the StarCraft scene…
Oh Yeong-jun was a streamer who had made his name through League of Legends — LoL, for short. Then the StarCraft University boom swept across Pangea TV for over a year, and after hanging back and reading the room, he quietly hopped on board.
Honestly, that kind of thing was common in the streaming world. No matter how fun a piece of content was, watching nothing but that every single day got old. Trending content always cycled in and out on a set rhythm. When that happened, you shelved your main content for a while and rode the wave — that was the golden rule of streaming.
The problem was that once Oh Yeong-jun joined StarCraft University, he caused a spectacular disaster.
First, he threw several critical matches in the university tournament. You might say a few losses weren't a big deal — until you learned that the prize money riding on those matches ran into the tens of millions of won. That alone was enough for the university's fanbase to brand him a traitor. And then he went one better.
If your skill wasn't there, you at least had to deliver entertainment value. Instead, he went full "dead serious" mode a few times, and viewers coined a humiliating catchphrase from the first syllable of his name: the vibe had "Yeong-choked."
He scrambled to put on an apology stream and returned to his main game to claw back goodwill, but half a year of StarCraft streaming had already carved his old audience in half. On top of that, toxic drive-by viewers flooded in, and the stream's atmosphere became an absolute circus.
He was managing to hold things together with eleven years of experience, but it was far from easy.
This damn StarCraft meta needs to end already so I can do something about this.
His reputation in the StarCraft scene was shot, but once a new trend arrived, that would fade too. Then he wouldn't have to keep reading the room and grinding his face into the floor like this. His viewer count would bounce back in a meaningful way as well.
Yeong-jun snuck a glance at his concurrent viewers.
One hundred and seven. Compared to before the StarCraft boom, it was cut in half. Even accounting for the empty-house hours of the morning commute, that number was brutal.
Clinging to whatever scraps of mental fortitude got shaved off every time he looked — that, too, was a streamer's fate.
Yeong-jun forced his energy up and decided to squeeze in a short talk segment with his viewers before signing off. If he could at least raise that sense of personal connection, maybe fewer of them would leave.
"Hm?"
He was scrolling through chat without much thought when something he couldn't ignore snagged his eye.
Viewer count number one? And virtual?
The combination of words made so little sense that Yeong-jun blinked like an idiot. His body, though, was honest — the moment he heard "number one in viewers," his hand automatically clicked over to Pangea TV's main page.
"Huh? Wha—? For real?"
At first he suspected a toxic viewer fishing for reactions. It was real.
Current concurrent viewers: 4,752. Number one on Pangea TV.
Of course, several strokes of luck had stacked up. None of the major corporate streamers who defined Pangea TV were live. It was what people called a historic empty house. On days like that, the mid-tier streamers just under the big names usually ran wild — but today, astonishingly, a complete newbie no one had ever seen before had locked the top spot down.
How is this even possible?
He might have been going through a rough patch lately, but Yeong-jun was still an eleven-year veteran. That meant he had weathered every storm Pangea TV had to offer. Even for him, this was a first.
A rookie hitting number one in viewers on debut day?
And not even a regular streamer — a Virtual Streamer.
Even a casual skim of the chat made it obvious: the deep-rooted hostility Pangea TV viewers held toward no-cam streams.
But there were unexpected reactions too.
Fatigue with the long-reigning StarCraft meta. Viewers worn down by it were starving for something new. Streamers felt the same way, honestly. Pangea TV needed a fresh wind.
Yeong-jun entered the stream as if in a trance. Fortunately, it was a broadcast that allowed drop-ins.
Maybe this is a new way out?
Clutching his racing heart, he stepped into the stream — and the first thing he saw was……
"Kirat~☆"
A tiny, adorable hand pose with the index finger and pinky raised. A black-haired, red-eyed beautiful girl character brought it to her cheek, looked his way, and smiled. Strangely, a glittering effect bloomed from her fingertips — as if starlight were flowing through them.
"……."
Yeong-jun's brain, fried from an all-night stream, decided to stop thinking altogether.
Whew. Kids, seriously — be good to your parents.
Making money is genuinely not easy.
Even just pressing a button to fire off a pre-programmed motion was this embarrassing. Memories of the virtual streamers I'd encountered before the regression came flooding back — the ones who put on full-body tracking gear and did sexy dances or poured on the aegyo. Looking back now, those women were true professionals.
Ahem. Or was I just overdoing it because I still carried a male identity?
I collected myself and scanned the chat.
Chat's reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Of course it was. People rotten enough to throw rocks at someone clearly putting in the work were rare.
The culture of actually preparing something for a "debut stream" was one of virtual streaming's defining traits to begin with. The existing streamers Pangea TV viewers had been watching until now just slapped "newbie" in the title and sold themselves with words alone to whoever wandered in. Naturally, the gap between that and someone who showed up with a full PPT and a short intro video was impossible to miss.
"Unfortunately, other reactions are still under development. Outfit changes are doable, but I might have to slap an 18+ tag on it? That'd kick out all the baby viewers, so I'll hold off. And Big Nose Guy? Is that the streamer who's really good at PUBG?"
I fielded the chat with practiced ease. A swarm of responses and donations poured in right after.
Humans, at their core, reject difference. The unfamiliarity of something unlike yourself triggers fear. That was why the virtual streamers who transferred over during the 720p crisis had struggled so hard with early communication. Rabbit TV and Pangea TV were different in so many ways.
But I knew Pangea TV. I knew what they liked and what kind of reactions they wanted. I fed their expectations — the ones that made them throw their hands up and shout "Do you know kimchi? Do you know Son Heung-min?" with pure passion.
"That Candy is superior to donations has already been proven by the existence of the Candy Calculator website. Pangea TV is the greatest streaming platform in the country, and I firmly believe the stock will break through the 140th floor. The 234 shares in my account are the proof."
National-pride content was a worldwide hit format. And when a four-year veteran viewer pretending to be a newbie kept playing dumb and gushing "Wow! Amazing. Sugoi!" over and over, the audience got pickled in dopamine and went soft — and those reactions started going viral on FM Community.
[Video] Kirat~☆
[Video] Pangea TV 62nd Floor Full Buy
During the stream, I checked the phone screen I'd left open and watched it go viral across the community. It was morning, so the house was empty, and the bait was delicious enough that the upvotes stacked up in rapid fire. Popular posts started getting wallpapered with my name. The viewer count climbed on its own. Before long, it had broken past 5,800.
And this isn't even the end. Because Pangea TV has its time-honored tradition of viewers.
The so-called top-bar floaters. Not content with just seeing number one, they got interested in a viewer count that kept climbing and started latching on.
Between the flood of chat and donations, I laughed without making a sound.
A record that surpassed the first virtual streamer to ever debut on Pangea TV before the regression. The first step of the royal road, planted clean and true.