Many Welps

Well that sounds like a click-baity title….

Today, I’m writing from one of the Blaugust Prompts that related to this week’s Introduce Yourself theme. Taking a look at this list, most of these would fit the theme for this week so if you’re struggling to come up with something but want to write about yourself head over to the prompt list!

I’m working off of prompt #1: How did you get started in content creation?

I started writing on the Internet in 2014 after replying to someone on Reddit looking for people to review comic books for their site. At the time, I was just getting in to comics and thought it would be a fun way to spend my time.

There wasn’t any pay, of course, but I did get a whole slew of free comics from multiple publishers every week. It allowed me to stretch out my writing muscles that I hadn’t used since college and learn a thing or two about WordPress. It was also really cool to see something I wrote appear on a website. A novelty then and a regular occurrence now.

That project lasted for about a year. The site owners moved on to creating a Sports site which I had no interest in contributing to. The comic site shutdown a few months later just in time for me to lose my interest in comics.

A little while later I stumbled upon book bloggers. As a lifelong reader, I toyed with the idea of creating my own. Ultimately, I didn’t feel like I read fast enough or prioritized reading over gaming enough to produce a steady stream of content for a book blog. I shelved that idea but the research for it taught me how to go about setting up a blog.

It wasn’t until 2016 that I would start this blog under the name I’m Not Squishy. The Newbie Blogger Initiative was the catalyst that got me to start my own gaming blog. I heard about it through Massively OP and saw an opportunity to try something new. Up until NBI 2016 I didn’t even know game blogs existed nor the amazing community that wrote them. I had such a good time writing, reading, and meeting bloggers that year. I’ve been here ever since.

In 2017, my group of friends and I decided to start a Twitch channel. We had been playing games together for about a year at that point and collectively decided it would be a fun group project. Thus, Welpsquadtv was born.

We found some small success early on. We had anywhere from 10-20 viewers every stream. Twitch was easier in 2017.

I was really in to learning the ins and outs of OBS, tweaking my audio, and finding new technologies to incorporate into our streams. The whole affiliate program rolled out and we were affiliated within a few days. I was so excited but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go from their. I wasn’t looking to make a living off of Twitch, we already had a small community and I had already accomplished all of the goals I set out to accomplish

That was probably about the time that my interest started waning. Streaming showed me just how much time one needs to put in to be a “content creator” on the platform. I also realized I didn’t really like the whole solo-streaming thing. Unless I was playing with a friend, I get very little enjoyment trying to entertain people and talking to a live chat.

We’re still streaming, albeit, to a much smaller audience these days. It’s mostly my friend Greg who streams these days.. I still like playing with the tech and finding fun ways to use our 4 man group streams as a shtick. My favorite implementation has been using Discord screen sharing to see all of our view points at once. But my focus and individual contributions to the channel have wound down significantly over the years.