Streamer Ludwig has opened up about why he thinks the popular Reddit forum LivestreamFail is toxic for the streaming industry. The Mogul Money creator said it took him leaving Twitch to YouTube to realize the subreddit causes more harm than good.
Originally created in 2015, the LivestreamFail subreddit has since amassed over 1.4 million active members. The forum has unofficially existed as an external hub for Twitch for years, with users posting clips daily from their favorite streamers.
While the site has been criticized in the past for fueling drama culture on Twitch, it’s also helped give exposure to channels from Mizkif to even Felix ‘xQc‘ Lengyel. However, according to YouTuber Ludwig Ahgren, the website no longer benefits streamers and is actually toxic for the industry.
Ludwig explains why LivestreamFail is bad for streaming
In his February 17 upload, Ludwig claimed streamers have put too much emphasis on the importance of what is being said on the LSF forum. “I’ve seen first hand the emphasis that streamers put on this website. Multiple huge streamers pull out their phone to look at LivestreamFail to see what juicy gossip is being pushed. It’s toxic to look at this generally not useful discourse,” he said.
Ahgren hit out at the subreddit, calling it a gathering ground for toxicity. “LivestreamFail has again and again proved to be a vat of negativity. And it honestly took me switching to YouTube to recognize how small, tiny, and insignificant LivestreamFails and even my own community is in the grand scheme of things,” he continued.
The streamer then showed a graphic to show just how small his own channel is in the grand scheme of all existing content creators and exclaimed, “I’m this small and LivestreamFail is half the size of my community, yet it has the weight of like PewDiePie’s influence times 10! It seems to have become the dominant discourse in streaming.”
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The Mogul Money creator told viewers that he thinks the problem stems from streamers not having a place to actually gauge what viewers are actually thinking, and as a result, the popular subreddit ends up shaping so much of the discourse.
Ahgren also pointed out that the forum has shifted away from just posting clips from channels and is now focused on gossip and news. “It’s not really fails anymore or great funny clips. It’s mostly about news revolving around streamers. It’s less livestream fails and more select dozen of streamers we enjoy media tabloid.”
While Ludwig acknowledged that he benefited from the subreddit early on in his career, he argued that the early exposure pales in comparison to the negatives the forum brings channels beyond that.