From TI8 →TI9 I worked 21 DotA events without a home address. At least a hundred flights, fifty cities, twenty countries, and a mind-fumblingly large assortment of couches, guest rooms, hostels & hotels that I called home for a night or few. Needless to say, it’s been a ride.

If you’re a DotA fan, by now you’re quite possibly very sick of hearing from me; a perfect time for me to write up what amounts to a long-ass, glorified blog post.

Anyway, here are the first (and hopefully not the last) Musings of a Moron.

I’ve never been huge on streaming, really only go for it when I’m bored/I want to, but I think I finally understand the specific type of burnout/stress that your favorite Twitchers go through. Working shows, you are constantly trying to be your “best self”. You’re selling it, actually. I love what I do, but it’s difficult. The event ends & you want to enjoy the time off, but socializing (especially with strangers) sometimes seems like a Sisyphean level challenge. Couple that with the innate disposability of events; after it’s over, it’s over. There’s never going to be a feeling of “growth” or improvement, because truthfully the community doesn’t notice you unless you’re missing from their screen. Not to mention my personal predicament; being “homeless”, I’d often immediately dash to a friends house, or go exploring with a mate somewhere nearby, and find myself strangely silent. I WANT to ensure that I & whoever I’m with enjoy this vacation, but it became increasingly more difficult to do so throughout the year. It’s hard to be your best in your personal life when your work demands you strive for that day in, day out… eventually you’re just out of juice/mojo/gas.

Anyway, moral is, I’m a moron in more ways than one and I will be ensuring I take at least a couple days a month to truly “fuck off” and live as a hermit for a bit so that I don’t run myself ragged. Cut your go-to streamers a break when they TAKE a break; this shit hits everybody, and I imagine it’s even harder to convince yourself to plan time off when your best earnings windows are realized as you get later & later into a streaming session. It’s not a typical day job; 80 hours in a week might net you 5–10x income, not 2x, in comparison to a normal 40

Megafon Moscow

This season I spent time in London, LA, NYC, Miami, Paris, Amsterdam, Moscow & Shanghai. Excellent cities all, tons of food, fun and festivals to be found. HOWEVER. DO NOT LIVE IN THEM. Visit. If you wanna be an actor, sure, you probably need to go to Hollywood; a chef, eventually, Paris; A comedian, perhaps NYC. BUT if you don’t have a REAL reason to be located in a major capital city, I IMPLORE you, just visit. If there’s anything I understand it is VALUE, and there isn’t much to be found in these cities. Bear in mind, this is not a slight; If I was a millionaire, I’d likely have a flat in Camden Town. Another in Noord, maybe a loft in Brooklyn. But I am not. And most likely, neither are you. What I’d pay for a shoebox apartment in LA I can have a 2bed2bath with a butler on a beach in, literally, 20 different countries. Take a page out of the DJWheat playbook; go somewhere with a low cost of living & high quality of life. You can find amazing food everywhere guys. And sure, perhaps the burritos in Gdansk won’t be as spicy as the ones on Las Olas, but you won’t care because instead of scrimping to survive in a closet with three shady roommates, you’ll be living luxuriously while still SAVING MONEY.

Obviously, this is geared more towards people working remotely, but honestly, if I had an 18–26 year old kid who didn’t know what the fuck he/she was doing with his life, I’d say do just that. Find a way to make $1000–2000 a month on the internet (it’s really all you need in a variety of incredible places), pack a backpack, and GO. I just met a girl who spent 6 months in Asia after leaving home with 800 euros (workaways are amazing). Humans all around the world have certain things in common; we appreciate song, dance, food, drink, merriment, connections. In many ways we’re all still looking for what we had back in our caves; gatherings around the fire to share a meal with our loved ones. You can do this anywhere. It’ll be delicious everywhere. Try it somewhere you don’t go broke on one missed paycheck.

(There are some incredible tools for the above; nomadlist.com (and the whole group of websites founded by @levelsio, notably hoodmaps.com & remoteok.io)).

MDL Paris

Speaking of geolocation, I’m not sure I’m buying this move to bring players from all around the world to the same facility in America so that you can make “content”. I’ve yet to find any group I give a fuck about enough to watch them explore a Walmart together. Exceptions can be made for teams that have pivoted to be more lifestyle/personality driven brands (100T as an example) as there’s certainly a prestige to being young, rich & famous in California and it is definitely COOL. But …flights, P1-Visas, lodging, increased cost of living, all for….what? So we can learn how to do a dumbbell curl with our favorite mid player? Put our CSGO and Fortnite players in adjacent rooms? The same bootcamp in Brazil, Poland or Malaysia would cost 15–25% of what it does in a major US city. The amount of money teams are burning is INSANE, and likely outweighs even your most obscene estimate. I don’t necessarily think this constitutes an “esports bubble” however; traditionally the money made on sports franchises/teams is collected at exit (buy team →operate at a loss but industry grows →time passes →sell team →profit$$) & what NFL teams are to billionaires, esports teams are to millionaires. It’s fun. It’s cool to be able to talk shit to your rich friend about how your team just dumpstered his, to have celeb access to stadiums crammed full of fans at whatever’s world championship. Gaming isn’t going anywhere & I’m not worried about the health of the “scene” as a whole, I’m just curious as to whether this strategy is fiscally viable. End of the day, I could be totally wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Regarding the above, man, nobody’s making money right now. Teams aren’t, TO’s sure aren’t. The only entities getting rich are gambling companies (think Pokerstars pre regulation), big streamers/pro players, and the publishers. The publishers most of all. Traditional sports have a single critical advantage over us; Nobody owns baseball. If the MLB started to abuse their margins, well, we could go make a new league. Can’t do that in Call of Duty. Whether it’s Activision Blizzard, Valve, or Epic they are Judge, Jury, Board & Commissioner of their games ecosystem. Don’t want to pay tens of millions to buy in to a franchise? Well, guess you aren’t competing in the title. ALL traditional sports cut deals to exclusively broadcast their games on specific channels & platforms, but if you’re running a tournament for a Valve game that’s a no-go; cause they said so. Shit, in DotA you can’t even sell your tournaments live data for the true market rate because the pro games spit out the live kill score regardless of delay. Why pay for premium information when you can get something passable for free. Viewers also don’t want to watch ads and refuse to pay a penny for the privilege. Somethings gonna have to change.

ESL Birmingham

With all that said, FUCK guys are we all lucky. This industry is incredible. There is no other field filled with as many driven, passionate humans. Don’t take my word for it; ask someone from the previous generation, a Carmac, Redeye, Wheat, 2GD….get these dinosaurs a little drunk and just wait for them to bring up Quake. Or their first LAN. The car or couch they slept on to try and make some shit happen in gaming. Watch how their eyes will STILL light up, twenty odd years later. You can’t fake this shit. Sure, they’re old people with careers now, but it all started as some idiot kids trying to make video games cool. Simply because they loved video games.

Meanwhile, my generation…we know what is was like to piss away WAYYYY too many hours raiding for progression, or chasing gladiator in WoW after sneaking downstairs to switch the modem back on. Or maybe it was the all-night HALO LANs when Mom dropped you off with your personal CRT, Xbox, & 2 gallons of THE DEW. The N64 you unwrapped on Christmas morning that provided endless hours of entertainment. Or …Neopets. ALL of esports is built upon this incredible authenticity, and the beautiful thing is that the community (mostly) understands. Because the people that built esports ARE the community. Business isn’t usually like this, people don’t give as many fucks about the scene as a whole like they do here in esports. It’s why you can’t force memes, why big brands can’t bully their way in and buy influence with ease. NOTHING will ever make us respect Comcast. Real recognize real.

So enjoy it while it lasts; This shit isn’t underground anymore. A lot of the newcomers aren’t buying into esports, but e$port$. The thought leaders of the future aren’t going to have the same bona fides, our scene isn’t going to preserve its authenticity and accessibility forever. I’ll miss it when it’s gone. Still…goddamn it’s cool that we get to live through this era of the internet.

I got paid for this

Pivoting away from esport, I am so fucking sick of Starbucks. For $5 you can have what amounts to hot cardboard with a dash of caffeine, or make it $7 and add sugar/syrup that amounts to a double helping of dessert in calories. It’s a testament to the brands absolute market dominance & my lack of principle when working 10+ hour days that throughout the season I must have consumed at least two gallons of the swill. A friend recently introduced me to the REAL shit, the pour over cold brews, ristretto espresso, low temp brewed brazilian blends with notes of chocolate and citrus, jesus it’s made me appreciate the stuff much like your granddad does his whisky. I know most of you love the sweet nectar, do yourself a favor and find some OG.

The more I look into it the more I become convinced that at some point Tesla is going down as the Enron of our generation. Which is a shame; I feel Elon Musk is the type of iconoclast we WANT to remain a billionaire. Space exploration, a push for (while recognizing the dangers of) semi-conscious AI, renewables, these are all amazing ideas I wish we could get some of our obscenely rich geriatrics to give a fuck about. HOWEVER….the numbers don’t add up guys. If not for the cult-like veneration of Musk I doubt they’d have made it this far. There’s just too many question marks; self-driving cars are still FAR from becoming realistically reliable, the SolarCity factory fiasco in Buffalo, 20+ exec level employees leaving within the past 12 months, solar panels & cars randomly combusting…the drying up of government subsidies, increased competition from other major automakers that have far more production power. I say all this, yet I’m still rooting for Elon to succeed. I recommend your own reading/research, but as a warning it’s a helluva rabbit hole to go down.

In March of this year, The US bond market hit something called an “inverted yield curve”. In layman’s terms, that means the yield (interest rate) on the purchase of a short-term bond is higher than that of a long-term bond. This is arguably THE hallmark sign of an upcoming recession; the same phenomenon occurred in late 2005. In 2008, my family, and many others like mine, found themselves totally underwater on their mortgages & in danger of losing their homes. We lost ours. In many ways I still see the effects of that crash on my present habits; I’ve never taken out a loan, I didn’t get a credit card until I was 26, I have no plans to have children or any sort of dependent and uh, I just told all of you to avoid living in some of the most wonderful cities in the world because it’s just too expensive for you to save money. I live my life frugally & would not balk at living on a couch with only a suitcase full of belongings. In fact, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m not sure if there’s a financial position I could reach where I felt “safe”. I don’t mean to fearmonger, but I’m worried for my friends and for my country (for more reasons than this one). A couple people I’ve talked to have told me not to worry, but oof, man, that’s exactly what they said in 2007.

I went in for my routine testing recently and while laughing with the doc about some shit he’s sick of explaining (almost everyone’s got hsv, abstinence only education is laughable, condoms are dope, hpv vaccines are amazing) I went whoaaa hold up what do you mean. HPV Vaccine? I haven’t heard of this. Short version, HPV is by far the most common STD. There’s some hundred different strains, and most people will inevitably get one and never know. The majority are cleared by the body with no symptoms. Two, in both genders, can cause warts on your nether regions. Uncool. HOWEVER, this is the LOW RISK strain of the virus as it’s ultimately harmless. High Risk strains? Culprit behind over 70% of all cervical cancer in women & capable of causing numerous other forms of cancer. As a guy, you could carry one of these strains and never know, you’d present absolutely zero symptoms AND there’s no approved test to see if you even have the virus. The only way you could be sure is if your dick started sprouting mini cauliflowers, and again, that’d be the low risk version.

Professor Nahaz thinks you should take your sexual health seriously.

ANYWAY. The point is. There’s a vaccine that covers almost all of the strains that can cause cancer along with the ones that produce genitaflouras. So I got one, and I think you should too. You need three doses over a sixth month period (~60%-90%-99% immunity). It may or may not be covered by insurance, do some research, figure out the facts. Obviously you shouldn’t blindly trust anything you read on the internet posted by someone who dropped out of community college….

To lighten things up a bit, a couple travel tips. Roll your clothing when you pack it & never forget your moisturizer (also SUNSCREEN). I also ask that you won’t be the special kind of twat that leaves one-star reviews at incredibly delicious hole-in-the-wall mom and pop restaurants for reasons such as “no english menu”, “understaffed, slow service”, or “impossible to order vegan as they couldn’t guarantee non-cross contamination”. Motherfucker this is a gorgeous six table korean bbq spot TEN THOUSAND MILES AWAY from your home, run by what is quite obviously a MOM AND POP (and one son). If you wanna travel inside of your bubble take the bus to the town over and go hit up the nearest Nando’s you uncultured fuckwit.

ALSO — I know what you saw in Lord of the Rings, but elephants do not have load bearing backs. Please do not ride them. If you have a photo in your profile of you on top of an elephant, well, you’re an asshole.

Goossefrraba. Alright.

I got into esports because I wanted to see the world. I’ve been blessed with some fairly incredible luck and I get to live my life doing just that. So to conclude, I’d like to profusely thank far more than a few people.

Jake & Alex — Y’all are two of the most uniquely talented people in esports & your words to me @ TI8 were ultimately what gave me the final push to go Talent instead of play. It was the right choice for me, cheers guys.

Silviu — For giving me my first gig without a moment’s hesitation, and many more afterwards.

Blitz — For helping me relearn what a friend is.

In addition, ALL the humans/organizations that ensured I didn’t ever have to sleep outside. Notably: Sheevs & Owen, Ioannis & Daniela, Mom, Pop & Christina, Sujoy, Shannon, Pie & Pinda, Tobi & Amy, Will, John & Ena, Maincast, PGL, ESL+Mafia Crew, London Trip Squad, Starladder, Orrin/Phil/MET, Dreamhack, Valve, Epicenter, WePlay, BTS, MDL, CSL, and the thousands of other humans that help make events & my life possible.

It’s really been a helluva year and I owe it all to the above. Thanks everyone.

Singapore

Food Explorers in Kyiv, Ukraine

4AM Mumbai Mafia Squad…and yes that is the girl that made the sign

If you’ve read this far I commend you. If you’d like to discuss, disagree, or find fault in anything I’ve written above feel free to educate me. If there’s anything you need to be nowadays it’s willing to adapt, change & admit you were wrong.

I’m wrong often :).

— Kyle