Twitch's First Big Streamer - The History of Reckful

[Music] who is reckful [Music] he's a twitch veteran one of the original best streamers and a staple of his community to many popular streamers he's a friend a respected peer reckful is so many things to so many people the impact that he's had on his community the people who watch him and the people in his life is profound but not everyone knows who reckful is so if you don't then let me make this one thing clear this is not just the history of a twitch streamer this is the life of byron bernstein [Music] our story begins on may 8 1989 when itamar and judith bernstein have their third son byron the youngest after his two older brothers guy and gary when byron was two years old the family moved from israel to america his brothers more than eight years older than him grew up in tel aviv but byron would spend his formative childhood years in california his family had a great deal of influence on the kind of person that he would grow up to be his father was a lawyer a writer and spoke multiple languages his influence taught byron's value intellectualism and ambition and his brothers introduced him to a world of video games and technology that would change his life in ways that none of them could imagine when byron was only 4 his older brother guy let him play the game doom hacking the final level so that he could actually beat it they also introduced him to the super nintendo where he would play one of his favorite games of all time secret of mana but it wouldn't be until 1999 that byron would get his first taste of the massive multiplayer online genre the very same genre that would one day come to define his career see his middle brother gary had this idea of taking the pokemon ip and turning it into an mmo and in order to do that he would need some experience with playing one the clerk at the store strongly recommended that they went with the game asheron's call so they did and with that simple impromptu decision byron's life was put on a path that would one day lead to him becoming reckful he made an account under the name anti-parazzi a play on words in hebrew and with his terrible dial-up internet he was off on his first massive multiplayer online adventure asheron's call was an mmo that focused a lot on combat which of course meant fighting other players see in this game you could identify yourself as a player killer or a pk and if you were a pk then you were free to attack any other player that was also a pk and as such they were free to attack you and byron bernstein well he just happened to be a pk over time byron would become the best player in the game by far and he was known for his ability to defeat pretty much anyone that he encountered to this very day an urban dictionary entry exists under the name antiparazzi that shows this message the very same message that you would see after losing to byron in battle and i gotta say thanks to some unintentional advanced techniques the movement and battle system actually had a lot of depth to it he played asheron's call throughout middle school and high school his adolescence being shaped by the game in many ways actually the wrapping has nothing to do with the game i just wanted to show that clip by the time asheron's call began losing relevance byron was nearly a young adult he was nerdy he played guitar he liked elliott smith and he even had a girlfriend her name was jenna but all of this was only the beginning asheron's call introduced him to mmos but nothing could compare him to the impact of what was coming next in 2004 blizzard would release the world record-breaking mmorpg world of warcraft and it would be the beginning of something incredible [Music] world of warcraft took the popular warcraft series and made it into a gigantic explorable rpg game filled with quests and raids and players from around the world there was so much to do so many areas to discover so much content to enjoy and byron absolutely didn't really care for it when he first played the game byron quit after reaching level 30 because he just couldn't bring himself to complete the quests in fact he wouldn't get back into it until around three years later when a friend from asheron's call would essentially donate an account to him the account was a rogue named reckful but it wasn't so that he could play the campaign what held byron's interest was the additional player versus player mode known as arena see arena is a competitive team versus team game that takes place in an arena the goal is to defeat all of the players on the opposing team while simultaneously protecting your own teammates this gets increasingly difficult as you advance in the rating system and get matched with better players it can be played in the 2v2 3v3 or 5v5 format though the main competitive choice is 3v3 usually a team composition would include two people playing as dps's or damaged base classes and specialties and the third playing as the healer who supports the team and keeps them alive so for example a common strategy would be to crowd control the healer using abilities like stun or disorient which prevents the target from acting for a short period of time this creates a window of opportunity to focus on one of the enemy dps's and take them out while they can't be healed but of course this is just one type of strategy and an oversimplification of how arena plays out in reality it demands quick decision making a deep understanding of how players will act effective communication and chemistry between teammates when reckful started playing arena and pretty much throughout the entirety of his career he played as a rogue which meant that the teams he played on were mostly composed of rogue lock shaman and rogue mage priest reckful's playstyle on rogue was unique in that it focused on controlling his opponents in creative and often flashy ways and he was pretty much instantly good at arena in his very first season playing he got rank one and as time went on he would earn multiple rank one titles and become the first player ever to earn a rating of three thousand that was an enormous feat to accomplish and for someone to do it so quickly was pretty much unheard of it helped build up his name in the community and the other top-ranked pvp players quickly took notice there used to be this popular wow blog known as world of ming and during the 2008-2009 period they began making posts about reckful dubbing him the golden child those posts just happened to get the attention of two players named benrucky and soda who were competitive arena players for the team complexity red their team needed a new rogue player and since world of ming was singing reckful's praises they decided to give him a try impressed with what they saw they offered him a position and just like that byron became the newest member of the team complexity red marking the beginning of his career in esports [Music] with complexity gaming reckful got to compete around america at multiple mlg tournaments at their first event the team finished in third place and what's more impressive is that they defeated every single other team that had a rogue player on it between 2009 and 2011 they managed to achieve multiple top three placings at these events including a first place finish at the 2010 mlg pro circuit in dc and for many people these events were their first chance to see what byron was like in person whether that be through attending the events or through tournament coverage that would get posted onto youtube but see back then the esports industry was not quite what it is today it was a lot more common for players to financially get the short end of the stick during his time with complexity reckful earned a whopping salary of zero dollars from the team and as part of their contract they also made sure that byron was not allowed to post his own wow videos onto youtube instead complexity gaming would post them on his behalf and that turned out to be a pretty sweet deal for the organization because in 2010 byron made his first compilation video reckful one shadow dance and it went on to become one of the most viewed world of warcraft videos of all time the video single-handedly rocket-launched reckful into mainstream world of warcraft fame his follow-up videos reckful 2 and reckful 3 which were released in 2010 and 2011 respectively only serve to further increase his already growing online presence but to reckful what mattered most was the competition you have to keep in mind that wow arena tournaments were not exactly a frequent occurrence back then it's not like counter strike or halo were fighting games where each year was full of so many opportunities to prove yourself reckful only got to compete on the big stage a handful of times in the years that he was active so each opportunity mattered that much more to him and for anyone that was serious about competing in world of warcraft there was no higher honor than winning blizzcon it's the wow it's the loud players version of the super bowl it is the biggest event it is the highest paying event which is still a very low paying event but it is the highest paying event for world of warcraft all year you know you have these arena players and i think this is the same with pvp in any game but wow i think does have its own little unique brand and you know version of people that are competitive on a level that i think might be higher than a number of other games because not only are they invested in a game that they probably played for 10 years this is something that very few games can say they have aside from something like counter-strike or some something somewhat of that but to some degree i think that a lot of people and i i believe reckful was probably included in this have an emotional attachment to their character like they really care about their character so winning that is like it's the pinnacle it's the apex accomplishment of a wow pvp winning blizzcon is as i said it's like winning the super bowl for a while player in order to get invited to blizzcon one's team needs to earn a top eight spot in a server known as the arena tournament realm that qualifies them for a regional invitational tournament where the top two placing teams there go to blizzcon it should come as no surprise that in the arena tournament realm reckful and his team had earned the number one spot that season but for one reason or another reckful's teammates couldn't attend the regional which meant that if he wanted to attend blizzcon he would have to create a new team with new teammates and once again make top 8 in the server to qualify for regionals doing this meant that he had to forfeit his rank 1 title which was a big deal but in exchange he would get a chance to qualify for blizzcon and win the whole thing he finds good teammates and together they do manage to qualify for the regional the north american battlenet invitational of 2011. if they can make top two at this tournament they will be invited to compete at blizzcon first up reckful's team faces off against a team known as special tactics and right off the bat they lose but the tournament rule set was double elimination so if they can just make it to grand finals they can still secure a top two position they press on through the losers bracket and eventually make their way to losers semi-finals where they would once again come face to face with special tactics the team that beat them in round one and their rematch would live on in infamy special tactics strategy at this tournament was to abuse a rule that allows teams to win based on total damage output this rule usually didn't exist at tournaments but blizzard made an adjustment to the rules set specifically for blizzcon so while the other teams were focused on eliminating players special tactics was trying to run the clock and win based on total damage output right as each game started their team would immediately create distance and try to keep that distance for the next 25 minutes and reckful was particularly upset by the strategy to get to this moment he forfeited his rank 1 title and entered the regional with people he never usually played with just so he could have a chance to win blizzcon but now standing in his way was a team that had already beaten him once in bracket and was using a cheesy and frustrating strategy to win their match begins two long games go by each team claiming a victory putting the score at 1-1 every battle is slow and grueling game 3 starts and the mixture of emotion adrenaline and frustration becomes evident across byron's face finally after so much defensive play and opportunity arises for reckful's team to kill the enemy healer and as all this happens he erupts into a furious triumphant scream damage right there maybe this is their new strat that they're gonna work with he drops that totem but he's gonna kick on healing surgery wow no grip heal from reckful alex trying his best to peel but the team of complexity really coming out strong here on digit and dizzy going down to 15k absolutely nothing left please please kill him goes into ghost wolf into a stun out of it there's that late trick but still goes down in the middle of the ring he yells insults at them berating special tactics for using such an annoying strategy it was without a doubt a poor display of sportsmanship from reckful but it was also an incredibly exciting moment for both his team and those spectating that liberating feeling of overcoming an obstacle putting reckful one win away from being invited to blizzcon he was almost there but not everything can be in your control see the top-seeded team at that tournament was evil geniuses and they were led by byron's friend talbadar of all the teams present that day this was the one team that reckful knew he couldn't beat because their team was a counter to his team but since he was in the loser's bracket as long as evil geniuses continued to win byron's team still had a good shot of making top two unless of course an underdog team manages to beat evil geniuses as fate would have it that's exactly what happened and byron would have to face the one team in bracket that he had no chance against as expected they lost falling one win short of being invited to blizzcon it was a shattering defeat it was heartbreaking and it truly left an impact on byron that would not easily be forgotten but some [ __ ] how they beat talbot our azalen sedu i don't know how the top of the zl and cd lost that first time pissed me off and then i had i had to play against talbot or the one team i couldn't beat then the [ __ ] whole tournament and i just have to get top two and then of course i [ __ ] lose and then i'm knocked out and i don't get to go to blizzcon which is all i wanted to do and this is at my absolute peak when i'm really good i actually remember like i had this really sad face on when i had to they come like gazelle comes and like shakes my hand and situ and like they're all smiling and i'm just like i'm like this it was really sad i wanted to win so bad i didn't even know i had emotions to this that's crazy after being dealt such a crushing defeat at the age of 22 reckful retired from competing in world of warcraft the next few months of byron's life were spent playing poker and editing his father's book reckful's run a story about an israeli fighter pilot who may or may not have been named after byron's gamertag it was sad to see him retire but every cloud has its silver lining in june of 2012 reckful decided to start streaming on twitch and when he did he was welcomed to an audience of thousands something to keep in mind is that these were the very early days of streaming just having 1 000 live viewers was already a huge deal but reckful was pulling in multiple thousands of viewers naturally playing wow arena made up the bulk of what he would stream he still enjoyed the game even though he was done competing with it and it was simply an undeniable fact that people wanted to watch reckful being on stream gave them an opportunity to see who he really was and what they got was a guy who clearly loved to play and think about wow he was always laughing and having a good time on stream and it was obvious that he was a pretty smart guy the way he would explain his thought processes about the game or just life in general revealed a very logical approach to everything but most notable of all is that byron was always open book with his viewers about everything he simply shared what was on his mind with little to no hesitation by doing this he allowed his viewers to feel closer to him and understand who he really is and it turned out that reckful was this mixture of a wise teacher and a totally goofy on idiot you would frequently see him telling the chat a story from his life or opening up his trusty notepad application to illustrate some kind of deep concept he introduced his viewers to many aspects of his life and of course it was through streaming that the world was first properly introduced to his girlfriend jenna jenna had been by his side since high school supporting him as he plunged into a new world of competitive gaming and streaming and now she was making her global debut on byron's stream she instantly became a fan favorite and even though it was less obvious to his fans at the time her presence really helped bring stability into byron's life reckful was without a doubt an innovative player in world of warcraft but i think just as many would agree today that he was also one of the most innovative streamers on twitch see in 2012 you could only make money on twitch through subscriptions but byron had a better idea he famously realized that he could just link his paypal and ask for fan donations and in exchange he would display the donators message on the stream for a few seconds sound familiar that's because almost every streamer on any platform today does this but reckful was the one that popularized it and of course that eventually turned into streamers receiving crazy big donations ten thousand dollars ten thousand dollars [Music] at one point he was making over thirty thousand dollars a month from streaming which was a huge deal at the time and he was smart with his money too choosing to invest it into the stock market and further his profits in fact one of the first companies that he invested in was none other than tesla back then it was pretty common for his streams to feature other notable players from the wow community his closest friends like tabitha soda and venruki would be regulars on the stream and of course some of the most entertaining moments from that time came from his friendship with mitch jones targeted choir warlock as live streaming continued to grow in popularity reckful and his friends were all beginning to become popular content creators and with the help of an organization known as skill cap they were all able to move in together into a massive house in austin texas it was a significant moment in byron's career because it demonstrated that he could actually make a living by streaming world of warcraft and that's because people loved the game and its player base was massive even the company paying for the house only existed because of world of warcraft but he was also able to make a living this way because people loved to watch byron his gameplay and his personality and his content they were all reasons for his success but moving to austin came with a price because it meant that his girlfriend jenna couldn't come with him but regardless it was one of the most fun periods in byron's career and it's an era that many longtime viewers look back on fondly jenna i have a question what is that in two years when i'm finished with here and with that book i have to write oh no and you're finished with school yes will you marry me oh my god um duh really yes for sure you'll marry me yes no that was easy sounding harder in the movies and stuff practically married already after a little over a year of streaming world of warcraft things on byron's stream got a little shake up when he started playing a new game in late 2013 blizzard released the beta for their new game called hearthstone and it fit redfull perfectly having spent the vast majority of his years playing wow and asheron's call byron was exceptionally skilled with the keyboard but not so much with a mouse so any game that required a great degree of mechanical skill with the mouse like a shooter for example automatically put him at a great disadvantage but a card game where every action is strategic and the crux of the game is more about brain power than speed well that fit byron perfectly the game itself was simple both players start with 30 health and they can use the various cards they pick up from their deck to inflict damage onto the opposing player or onto one of the opposing players cards and each turn the player has a limited amount of energy that can be spent the game quickly became one of the main attractions of his stream and he would often play hearthstone more than he would play world of warcraft his popularity on twitch and his fame among the warcraft community came with some perks because in november of 2013 he was one of eight players invited by blizzard themselves to compete at the hearthstone innkeepers invitational tournament at blizzcon yeah that's right two years after failing to make it into blizzcon reckful was now finally attending but as a hearthstone player it may not have been for world of warcraft like he originally wanted but this was a shot for byron to redeem himself another chance for him to finally win blizzcon even if it was for a completely different game and he didn't know it yet but his performance at this tournament would be one for the ages his first match was up against day nine a notable player from the starcraft community they go back and forth for the first two games but then after that reckful dominates the remainder of their set he advances to the next round where he would play against crepardian a player who was at the time mostly known for world of warcraft and diablo 3 but would eventually become one of the most popular hearthstone streamers on twitch it was game one best of five byron with his early freeze mage deck has explosive power but a weak defense things were looking pretty bad for byron but then suddenly there was an opportunity see his opponent kreparian had 14 health left and reckful in his hand had the cards pyroblast and frostbite which deal a combined total of 15 damage so in other words by playing those two cards he could have won the game he fails to notice that he has lethal damage in his hand instead he does this and ladies and gentlemen we have pyroblast up there as well he throws out the cold light oracle the thing is he can afford to he's got two ice blocks in his hand he doesn't have to do anything right now he's gonna play a second call night oracle he's actually gonna flood his opponent's hand to maximum right there and then goes on to lose the game and that's not going to be enough gigi and riparian takes game number one here in our second semi-final in the blizzcon 2013 innkeepers invitational and then the whole set getting knocked out of the tournament by creparian all because of this really stupid mistake byron not only fails to redeem himself but also embarrasses himself in front of everybody in fact he was so embarrassed and ashamed that he stopped streaming for months now that would have been bad enough on its own but because he was a twitch streamer the unavoidable happened it became a meme well you get the idea people were memeing on him hard okay just a little more 33 so each fire is eleven eleven plus four equals [Music] realistically the mistake itself could have happened to anyone even the commentators said nothing at the time but regardless missing lethal has since become a staple joke in reckful's community a few months later in the summer of 2014 byron moved out of the skill-capped gaming house and into a new house with talbot and soda and for many this would feel like the end of an era and in many ways it would be because as he entered the next phase of his career for the first time since it all began things would start to take a turn for the worse oh zombie chow hits him for five yes oh my god i'm so wasted i'm actually drunk guys i goddamn it that game was [ __ ] that was blizzcon all over again it's very sad for everyone don't worry don't worry it's fine we'll play another one delete that from your memory oh [Music] just imagine tuning into byron's stream and seeing him being super touchy feely with a girl that's very much not jenna from the clip it seems like she doesn't want to be seen this way on camera either she continuously tries to keep her face hidden from the stream and then of course there's that last bit where she goes her name is morber please or michelle and this wouldn't be the only time that her and byron appeared together on stream doing stuff like this at that point in time jenna was still in school and quote unquote engaged to byron the two of them had previously agreed to have an open relationship so long as she got to approve anyone that he got together with and that was the justification that he used when his fans questioned his behavior on stream and yeah he was absolutely justified since she said she was okay with them being together but to put it on display like that for everyone to see well it just made a chunk of his fan base question the kind of person that reckful really was but if there was something you couldn't question it was how byron was spending his money during his brief hiatus from earlier in the year byron was earning huge on investments what started as profit from streaming and getting paid to boost other people's wow accounts was slowly becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars by october 2014 he was already making so much money that losing over one hundred thousand dollars on a company going bankrupt hardly even phased him and though his time away from twitch came at the cost of being the number one hearthstone streamer he was still regularly one of the biggest channels in the section plus he would still regularly play world of warcraft as well or at least he did until something went terribly wrong see one of his viewers offered byron the opportunity to play arena on his fully leveled paladin accounts having never had the chance to play as that class before byron was all in however this got the attention of blizzard and they did not take to it favorably they recognized it as a breach of their terms of service and as a punishment they permanently banned reckful from world of warcraft completely oh and uh they did this on christmas day merry christmas byron [Music] byron was suddenly barred from playing the game that he loved and that held so much significance in his life blizzard's reaction to all of this seemed unfair they claimed he was trying to boost the rating of an account that wasn't his but that clearly wasn't the case however on the flip side he had been quietly boosting people's wow accounts while off stream for quite some time now so in some ways he was well overdue for a suspension of some kind but a permanent ban not even the player who lent him the account that day received a permanent ban it was unfortunate to say the least especially for someone who had put so much time into that game and who contributed to its community and viewership with his streams and videos people were upset when this happened and to this day his fans want him unbanned in fact even as recently as 2019 content creators getting banned from their respective games has been a point of controversy so yeah things had been going in a slightly negative direction but what byron didn't know was that this was only the beginning of troubling times for him and the thing about this period in his life is that all the ways in which things got worse for him were always self-inflicted a few weeks after he got banned from wow reckful went to pax south a gaming convention in texas while there he hopped on an h1z1 setup built for streamers he mostly just played the game and chilled with people from the convention during his stream at some point however his chat spotted a girl in a link cosplay and immediately encouraged him to bring her on stream so he did and that would be the first time that byron met blue the moment that she played the ocarina for him byron was in love or at least what he interpreted as love she stayed and talked for a little while and they did a playful kiss or two and then she left the stream goes on byron kisses a few more people for some reason plays a little more h1z1 and then just as he was wrapping up blue comes back they talk a little bit more and then shortly after this happens all right like i'm gonna okay i'll see you after okay see you later bye byron kisses her again but this time it was much more intimate this time it felt serious the stream ends and byron spends the evening hanging out with blue okay so you're probably wondering how does this make his life worse why is this any of our business well the simple answer is because byron chose to make this a part of his public life it became everyone's business and it would force him to deal with the consequences of making it everyone's business from the perspective of his viewers it made him look terrible this time he was definitely cheating on his girlfriend of nine years in front of thousands of people and he doesn't appear to be all too remorseful about it either and in terms of his relationship with jenna this was the straw that broke the camel's back it caused many of his fans to completely lose their respect for him and some even stopped watching entirely of course what they didn't know was that byron had been growing unhappy with his long-distance relationship for quite some time in his eyes the breakup was inevitable and he just simply didn't know how to go about ending it however his viewers didn't know any of that and they were appalled by his actions and to make matters worse in what is probably one of the worst moves i've ever seen from anyone on twitch byron has a post-breakup phone call with jenna on stream and it's a nightmare i was under the impression that we were moving in together in the summer i had my heart set on that i was told that multiple times i was told multiple times that you were done with all the girls you were done with all the [ __ ] you were ready to do this with me and then i had to find out through twitch that you're dating some girl that you met two weeks ago and the worst part is that you didn't even have the decency to tell me and regardless of if you hooked up with her or not you were still had intentions there were intentions there you posted you we've been kissing you put a picture up of you kissing her and said love jenna but love this gif how do you think that makes me feel i'm away at school getting an education thinking that i'm going to come live with my boyfriend in the summer and you're off gallivanting around with other women well i'm waiting here for you how do you think that [ __ ] makes okay you [ __ ] me over you [ __ ] me over and you don't even [ __ ] realize it i haven't lied to you in this whole this whole thing going on i haven't lied to you you admitted that right okay didn't lie to you any time you asked something i said the truth you asked if we had hooked up i said yes you just read it out loud okay yes and then why say it's been a long time since i've seen you i'll see you soon and everything will be okay this was march 8th everything will be okay you told me hell yeah and i don't want to give up on you because i've supported you for nine years and all of this nine well anyway i hadn't maybe at that moment i must have not decided what i want to do yet and then a couple days later i did right you just said i'm bored with you now i found someone else hell yeah that was i mean that's really mean but i got to me telling you right nice [ __ ] way to say to somebody your girl of nine years to say i'm just bored of you i don't want to be with you anymore that's a really great way to tell somebody that you don't like them anymore jenna i'm trying to do whatever i can do to make it i'm trying to do whatever i can do to make it better i i i got you a plane ticket here so we could actually see each other face to face there is no way to break up with somebody with nine years and not seem like you're [ __ ] up she loves me she's gonna no matter how the [ __ ] i do it i can't there's no way to break up with you and you not be sad what am i gonna do i could i could fly you here and i could hug you at the airport you could cry that you're in while you're leaving you're gonna be sad as [ __ ] i could i could i could talk to you on on the phone for six hours you're sad as [ __ ] no matter what i do you think i'm lying about some [ __ ] i'm not lying about anything i told you that's not i mean you actually you admitted okay what i just i don't know what else to say you've hurt me in more ways than i can i i literally am so [ __ ] up from this from your behavior no matter what no matter how i did it though you would have been [ __ ] up it's not like there was there's no magical way that unless unless i yes i would have been [ __ ] up but i would have been way less [ __ ] up and had a lot more [ __ ] respect for you as a human being you've straight up lied to me over and over again that i don't even know what to believe anymore that's just not true hell yeah i did not point out one uh point out one single situation where i lied to you here let's pretend it's a quote a lot point out one [ __ ] situation i like you one time i'm not like don't try to trust me try and point something out grab your text messages do whatever the [ __ ] you want point out one time i lied to you in the last year i'm not dealing with manipulation okay [Music] there's not much that i can say that this clip doesn't already say for me this was reckful at his worst and it turned a lot of people against him and who could blame them i mean what a jerk but there was also another byproduct of these events because reckful's viewers cared about jenna they almost immediately hated blue in their eyes she was essentially a homewrecker and they were very vocal about their disdain and since byron had begun dating her his fanbase was quick to let her know that they didn't like her and here's the reason that this is such a big negative for byron byron hated the drama in fact byron hates drama in general but now he was surrounded by it and it was a direct result of his own actions he poisoned his own environment that is how his life got worse the stress and anxiety of his personal life challenges becoming so public was increasingly overwhelming unfortunately for byron the drama that had begun surrounding his life would later become inescapable but for now he would do what he could to find relief and so once again he took a break from streaming after his hiatus byron was refreshed and ready to start streaming again given everything that happened earlier that year byron was looking to avoid getting into any more controversies but you know he just really seemed to have a knack for it and so it wasn't long before he landed himself in some hot water due to his unprofessional behavior while commentating an online hearthstone tournament definitely when that swipe gets less sick if that knife didn't hit though he would go face and get by swipe and it would fall clear whoa what's going on i didn't see that i was playing final fantasy 7. that's interesting if you play knife juggler uh abusive and you would actually attack the keeper oh sorry uh screw it [Music] everyone will play every other team at least once or just once i think that's the the guaranteed round robin play okay well rightful is uh reckful's uh kind of preoccupied i guess right now sorry i i was asking something about no worries i got you i was like tossing it to you a little bit the sheer frequency at which reckful was becoming attached to twitch drama and general controversy started to have this secondary effect where people just assumed that his channel was the place to be if they wanted to be at the center of the next big drama so in other words it attracted viewers that were there for the wrong reasons and unfortunately for byron not only were they correct but it made everything that happened to him get even more attention than it otherwise might have and that only made it harder for him when blue broke up with him that october acting out of hurt and frustration blue got vocal about her grievances with their relationship on twitter tagging jenna in many of the tweets for the people that already didn't like her this was seen as justification to support their stance but for byron this whole situation was miserable he just wanted to stream video games and enjoy himself but instead his personal life was constantly the subject of everybody's judgment perhaps that's just an unavoidable consequence of fame paparazzi culture would suggest that this type of thing is bound to happen but i personally think it has more to do with byron making his personal relationships a public spectacle though he prides himself on his authenticity and willingness to be opened about his life it came at the cost of having boundaries that are necessary for a healthy relationship now at the time he had been doing some variety streaming but hearthstone was still his main game but he no longer dominated its section on twitch like he once did that title now belonged to a streamer named massan yeah if i picked the glyph i would have just played it right off i would not have kept it just like i have looks like hassan is just dominating the twitch tv scene 16 000 viewers massan's firing shots how can he fire shots of me i wonder what he says when he fires shots what does he have to talk [ __ ] about damn like that guy doesn't view but he should show his ad revenue page i'll show mine because the ad revenue page is just if he doesn't run any ads it's just the ads from people actually coming in your stream and it doesn't count viewbots so i'll show my ad revenue page on my stream and he can show his and uh he adds three times my viewers so we'll see if that adds up okay so yeah i only have 600 subs okay 2500 ad revenue october so you should have 7.5 gain revenue right i don't know exactly if he has three times more viewers to me but he definitely has a lot more viewers than me all all the time right so you should have a big number in there yeah 2.6k see there you go watch let me load up twitch right now twitch tv directory all who's who's the number one streamer on twitch what's on sc you know how can you not get some real viewers so you end up getting as many real viewers as like me but most of them aren't real i don't know what if what if he actually doesn't know he has viewbots in this thing and someone's viewbotting him every day that'd be interesting during this time period viewbotting was a serious problem on twitch and publicly exposing a streamer for doing git addressed a greater issue on the platform but it also said a lot about byron as a person that he would even call out massan like that in the first place he doesn't like seeing someone get away with lying in fact he resents fakeness in all of its forms especially streamers who lie to their audiences that's one of the reasons he's so open and honest about everything in the first place because he would rather be vulnerable and real than fake however it also shows that he's prideful and that it bothers him that mason was unfairly beating him in viewership eventually byron confronted mason while on stream but he continued to deny any allegations however in spite of his denials mason was later permanently banned from twitch for doing exactly what reckful claimed in terms of controversies this was the first time in a while that reckful was on the positive end and things were finally getting back to how they used to be on his stream in fact things on his stream were more fun than ever because now his close friend and fellow streamer mitch jones was regularly appearing on stream together with byron the two of them had some of the most entertaining and genuinely funny streams of byron's career and mitch was more than just a streamer friend to byron they were close friends that had known each other for years and mitch was someone that byron knew he could trust but mitch was known for doing stupid and reckless things often at byron's expense in early 2016 byron and blue were back on better terms and out of great generosity byron bought her a brand new 30 thousand dollar car learning from his past mistakes he chose to keep it hidden from the stream the only people he told were the people in his personal life you know people like salvador toes mitch jones you probably see where i'm going with this but just wait until you see how mitch jones exposes this to byron's viewers selling shirts every night we do it real nice i sold like 500 for my blues dice i got blue a car she going out to cali she said [ __ ] i don't know what happened thank you for your hell of money i put it in the bank and then i go and [ __ ] honey suck you [ __ ] i can't rap over this all right everyone stop laughing at me yo wait what why are they laughing look man look at the chat though oh my bad though i don't know what i said oh [ __ ] that's right mitch jones accidentally freestyle rapped that reckful bought a car for blue that is hilarious the reaction from his chat was exactly what you would expect it to be now byron understood that it was probably an accident and ultimately didn't get too mad at mitch but the thing about mitch is that he does stupid and reckless things and so thanks to his lack of discretion byron was once again the center of twitch drama and of course every single time that he streamed after that or every single time the blue was mentioned the chat would just start spamming 30k over and over again i feel bad dude my bad bro freckful 2016 was a year that saw his channel evolve and expand into new audiences and a big big part of that was the release of pokemon go [Music] when the game came out it momentarily took over the world and that was especially true on twitch it seemed like everybody wanted to see their favorite streamer play the game and that of course included reckful and something to keep in mind is that even as recently as 2016 twitch was a very different place than it is now one of those major differences being the lack of a just chatting section see back then you pretty much had to be streaming video games there was even a requirement that the majority percentage of the stream be of gameplay so because of that streams were pretty much confined to bedrooms or tournament venues and things like that but pokemon go changed everything now a streamer could be out on the street with their friends and having adventures in real life while still technically meeting the gameplay quota this style of streaming would later become known as irl streaming which stands for in real life and as one of the first popular streamers to be broadcasting pokemon go reckful was managing to pull in audiences of over 50 000 concurrent viewers he was literally on top of twitch and as these streams went on it really felt like as a viewer you were getting a chance to hang out with byron and his friends these streams also mark the first major returning appearance of jenna it might seem crazy to think that after everything jenna would want to be on stream with byron again especially after we've seen how terribly byron could act but i think that if anything it demonstrated how important he still was to her byron is far from a perfect person but he had since shown remorse for how he handled things with jenna and i like to think that part of the reason that she was willing to spend time with him again was because she recognized his desire to be better but back to pokemon go the game was so popular that it helped put his stream out there to an entirely new audience and it was a breath of fresh air to those who had grown tired of the same old sid at home routine and that doesn't just apply to the viewers byron himself was thoroughly enjoying these streams and the opportunity to change things up now as some of you might remember pokemon go was a fleeting fad which meant that these irl streams could only last for so long but when he was back at home he was still keeping things fun and interesting like the time he won a six thousand dollar bet against his friend and owner of tempo storm reynad by beating him in super smash brothers melee or how about the time melee all-star mango got drunk with reckful on stream i have a lot of juice here i love this is my favorite oh don't do that right away no dude let's go i killed this guy if you dropped this guy you want to give me a fireball bro no [Applause] oh byron was having some of the most fun times of his life in 2016 but of course there was still one small problem mitch jones i've already pointed out how the watchful eye of twitch chat has been problematic for reckful's personal matters in the past but what you need to understand is that for some twitch streamers it's how they stay relevant see a lot of twitch viewers love to follow any kind of controversy it happens on youtube it happens on twitter and it always gets attention and mitch jones was the kind of streamer that often catered to those crowds naturally since reckful and mitch were now living together he would get sucked into the drama that midge created now since byron hated that type of thing he had slowly gotten better at setting up boundaries for himself like for example when he was planning a trip to california to visit blue he told mitch about it privately and specifically asked him to keep it a secret from his viewers to avoid drama however it just so happened that the day he was planning to visit blue also happened to be mitch's birthday mitch assured byron that he didn't mind but then came the actual day mitch on his birthday starts up his stream and he's in byron's room something he knows byron would usually be upset about and he starts saying stuff like this my [ __ ] birthday i just turned 24. wait byron byron's with you guys right who's byron uh who's he chillin with so keep in mind this whole time i've told him where i'm going and who i'm with and he said he was gonna be fine on his birthday and this is just all i don't know what this is this is all like i watch this and i'm like what is going on dude what is it okay i mean is he is he like his parents or catching pokemon or what's up uh i mean i don't actually dude i literally woke up and the jew was gone that's all i know well he didn't even tell you i mean i was asleep all day because i've been pretty emotional i gave you one last time that really pissed me off every time i talked to him about it he's like dawg i was just being funny you know but i feel like there's being funny and then there's being funny while making your friend look like a total [ __ ] and not saying you were joking you know like what the [ __ ] i just want him if he could fess up that he like was actually being mean and sincerely and it sounds like he really means it then that's something you know look at what mitch is doing here he's taking advantage of his friendship with byron to be more relevant again and now look at how byron reacted to it he couldn't understand why his friend would do that to him later mitch would claim that all of this was just a joke but regardless it was a clear breach of trust that affected their relationship every time mitch says oh i shouldn't have said that if he could go back five seconds in time and have the choice of not saying that or saying it again he would always say it again when he casually mentioned reckful buying a 30k car that was intentionally that was not unintentional at this point their relationship was on life support and the plug was about to be pulled see mitch had this girlfriend named mira and of course she was also the starring role in her own fair share of twitch drama and byron did not like her to the point where he publicly beefed with her on stream which of course put mitch in a very awkward position however byron was very understanding of their relationship and he made sure that mitch knew that he didn't want to get in the way of it despite this the two of them would eventually break up anyways or so mitch would tell byron keep in mind that at this point his friendship with mitch was on very thin ice because byron's trust in him had been broken to make a long story short mitch tells byron he's going to visit his father but instead goes to meet up with meera by pure coincidence their housemate toze walks in on mitch and mira at a restaurant and he's shocked to see her there because she was supposed to be living in a different state upon seeing them toze tells byron via text message and mitch responds by flipping out and demanding that toes drive home and delete the text off of byron's phone before he wakes up yeah byron of course learns of all this and realizes that there's no way he could ever trust mitch again i think he wasn't really my friend the whole time and i'll tell you guys why some people might think i'm just trying to strap drama but actually i'm trying to i'm just trying to get out of it i don't want to be friends maybe with people from twitch anymore i thought we were just chilling having a good time all the time but i i just i i don't think he's really my friend i thought he was the whole time i thought he was miss jones all the time but he really was david jones guys this is [ __ ] david jones and he just pretends to be mitch jones on this [ __ ] in front of me and on his stream like what the hell that's it's so weird i don't know man he's just i i gave him a lot of times even you guys probably saw on he was he was streaming one time and i even told him look if you want to go live with me or it's fine and at one time i even jokingly said yo we know yo mira mira spilled it that you know she's going to maryland with you i said that because i wanted him to try to just admit it to me and then he was like what no no way that's not happening i need a caller that's crazy i wasn't i'm not even talking to her anymore dog like that's the one guy i thought was really my friend the whole time i never doubted anything because he just seems so innocent he just seems like you know he's just a guy who likes to [ __ ] around jump around do whatever can't trust anybody i'm just i'm just gonna cut off ties with other street like streamers and stuff i guess i just i just want to be by myself and not deal with kind of [ __ ] like this and awkwardly not know if people are really a friend of mine and stuff like that it makes me really uncomfortable i just rather have friends around who aren't involved in twitch anyway you know this changed the way he viewed his friendships forever maybe all these people he thought cared about him were really just there to use him for his money for his fame and it came with the difficulty of losing someone that he once believed cared about him an experience like that can be extremely difficult for a person to recover from try and put yourself in his shoes imagine finding out that your best friend just likes you because they're using you it hurts but with his struggles came wisdom wisdom that allowed him to better distance himself from the chaos that had been surrounding his life for the last two years and with that the viewers that only cared about drama started to fade away so what does it look like when reckful gets attention for something that isn't twitch drama well it looks a little something like this apparently there is a new way to meet and greet on social media users craving interaction are now actually watching people eat it's called social eating a live streaming platform on twitch which was known for gaming until now this broccoli does not look tasty would you eat that the funny thing is that reckful was never really a social eating streamer to begin with but that didn't stop him from becoming the cbs broccoli guy now it would be inaccurate for me to say that byron's career was 100 percent drama free after he parted ways with mitch like for example there was the time that he got [ __ ] lapped by train wrecks tv at blizzcon 2016. i could go into more details about it but honestly i don't think it's really of that much importance at the end of 2016 twitch recognized the popularity of irl streaming and decided to drop the gameplay quota and give the format a dedicated section on the website and as 2017 began this would become byron's go-to style of streaming these streams always felt like an adventure reckful would befriend strangers or take the day into unpredictable places my phone's at 11. we gotta get back to the boat operation boat wait maybe i'll just swim with my hands up we can do this we got this chat yes wow i didn't that was possible fans would run into him in real life and become part of the stream and viewers would watch with joy as they got to vicariously live through byron's experiences but what really took the irl streams to the next level was when he started traveling around the world and it all kicked off with japan [Music] one of the things that made these streams so incredible to watch was how he would begin to build a crew of friends that accompanied him throughout the trip and the fact that it was all happening in japan just made it so much more interesting like we went away from the good area have i talked to you before yeah i have wait spell it oh yeah i have not lisa liso hi lethal [ __ ] you [Music] these streams really set the tone for the rest of the year where he spent more time in the streets of various cities than he did playing any kind of video game and it was pretty clear that this was exciting for him it was a chance for him to creatively express himself in a way that playing games at home rarely allowed besides what's more fun than meeting new people and doing karaoke in front of thousands of viewers as a fan of anthony bourdain's travel shows byron attempted to bring that same sense of excitement exoticism and adventurous energy into his streams but of course this was still reckful so he would get himself into situations that anthony bourdain never would ask the ladies behind you if you can eat their ass hello they're british can you stop oh they understand they understand you guys are too loud you're embarrassing me wait you're leaving you're not i'm not done drinking speak english like well they're british i didn't know wait don't leave she's leaving at the very end of the year he briefly visited vegas and new york but the streams there were mostly short-lived and not long after that reckful would suddenly and completely disappear from twitch for over a month when he finally did re-emerge at the start of 2018 it was with the news that he was now dating becca the girl from that karaoke clip in japan she was and is also a twitch streamer and during their brief relationship she would often make appearances on his stream and unfortunately that led to a moment very reminiscent of reckful's past but anyway now that twitch supported irl streams and content that wasn't centered around gameplay it allowed for byron to get more experimental with his streaming format this time it was with the addition of his new show tea time with byron which was basically a long-form conversation between himself and a guest that took place on a fancy set while this wasn't the most mind-blowing idea for a show i feel it's worth mentioning because it speaks to who byron is as a person he likes to try new things and experiment with how he uses twitch as a platform further down the line he would experiment even more by running his own version of shark tank on his stream i'll make you an offer how much how much of your company are you willing to part with if if you guys do want a number maybe 20 25 maybe i want 40 of your company for 10 000 i think i could do that all right it's a deal but his experimental mindset with twitch became more evident than ever in the summer of 2018. when his friend raynad showed him a new card game that he was developing byron loved it so much that he was prepared to contribute 200 000 towards it and help him design the game however they ended up disagreeing on how to tackle the project and so byron backed out but the allure of creating a new game from scratch really stuck with byron and so in june of 2018 he reached out to his viewers through twitter to see if they would be interested in helping him build a game at that stage what the game would be and how it would play was completely up in the air but nonetheless it was the start of something that has never been done before because the team that would be developing the game with byron was entirely made up of people that watch his stream yeah you heard me correctly byron started developing a game with twitch chat for the remainder of 2018 byron got back into doing travel streams with his next trips being to greece and amsterdam this time he was joined by andy milinakis and greek god x wrestle do you wanna wrestle yeah sure really i'll try i mean you're obviously gonna be better okay okay my can you go really soft on me i'll get soft oh okay ready okay okay don't knock me off the bed oh yeah he's rolling up [Applause] i think that for many fans these irl streams that he started doing in 2017 and onward were some of the best streams that he ever had and that's an amazing achievement because at this point he had been streaming for over five years and where most streamers would have gotten stale reckful was in many ways better than ever as the year wound down reckful began to stream less and less until eventually he went radio silent and things would stay that way for several months it wouldn't be until the spring of 2019 that reckful would finally go live again where he was now often playing auto chess or later it's riot games counterpart team fight tactics in his short time playing the game byron managed to reach the highest possible rank of challenger which just goes to show that he was still a cut above your average gamer but more importantly it had now been a year since he had put together a team to start developing his game and now he was ready to show it off it was officially called everland and it was an mmo in the vein of club penguin the version he demoed had beautiful super nintendo style sprite work and music made by secret of mana composer hiroki kakuta dude twitch chat made this it's crazy yeah you'll have a profile and also you'll you'll be able to collect like [ __ ] for your uh furniture for your house mounts your house can look as sweet as mine someday you know we're you know very forward thinking there's no gender it's just what clothes you're wearing then you some clothes have boobs you know nobody could ever get mad it's crazy i kind of just took all the elements of things i liked and put it together so i like the super nintendo like secret amana graphics even got the composer from secretary made this song right and then uh i like mmos because i like just talking and hanging out in a world um i don't really like grinding things though so they're just gonna be like mini games you could you could get rated higher than other people or score higher than people but not you don't have to like grind something over and over and then um housing i think is cool yeah there's a casino you know i used to have it's just in-game money but you know there's poker you can play poker against your friends within the game so it's like an easy one-stop shop for doing whatever the [ __ ] you want to do it was really cool to see him come full circle and start making a game of his own of all the ways that reckful has innovated streaming and how he uses twitch this idea was probably the most amazing how many streamers can say that they built a full game with the people from their chats it was pretty much unheard of he reached out to a community that he built by himself and now together they're helping him fulfill a dream that very few people ever get the opportunity to realize that is the essence of what makes reckful so unique and so much fun to follow being a part of his community really makes you feel like you're connecting with him and that you're a part of his journey that's something that can only happen when you're as authentic and open to your community as byron has always been and that doesn't just apply to his viewers either most of the big streamers on twitch are themselves fans of reckful in some way just watch any of the happy birthday videos that were made to celebrate him we just wanted to wish you a happy birthday bud happy birthday my jewish friend hi byron happy birthday uh it has been it's dawned on me that uh today is a very special day that it is your birthday yo byron happy birthday man happy birthday hey byron happy birthday enjoy yourself today treat yourself today i love you and miss you hey byron just wanted to wish you a happy birthday buddy i hope you have a great day stop stop this isn't right there's something that i purposely didn't tell you some very serious things that are in my opinion crucial to the story of reckful of who he is and what he does the first is that when byron was just a kid his oldest brother guy took his own life suffering from depression he chose to overdose on his prescription prozac i can't even begin to put into words how difficult this must have been for byron and his family to experience that kind of loss as a kid it's traumatizing it shattered the life he knew and it left his family fractured and incomplete in his book the bone box byron's father bravely describes this tormenting loss so some of this is fictional i'll give it a little bit of preface um no i'll just go right into it i tossed and turned in bed but couldn't fall asleep as every night since my personal tragedy happened in mid-summer of that same year my son had been suffering from a severe depression for several months and i did sometime fear the worst so when my wife called me at work on that evening and said that his room was locked and he wouldn't respond to calling his name and knocking on the door death immediately reared in my mind and my heart palpitated with a pang i shouted my son is dead and i started sobbing savagely and uncontrollably my secretary drove me home someone climbed to the rear window of his room and broke it then immediately screamed to call the paramedics judy ran to guy's room the secretary following on the steps judy came out of the room crying hysterically her pain throbbing around me the paramedics came and she re-entered the room with them but they could only confirm guy's death i howled even more but did not have the strength of mind to even think about entering guy's room i ran up and down back and forth in the house i sat i stood up again sat again laid down on the floor and twisted in all forms and directions but i could not escape the terrible situation i screamed for my son and hoped that he would immediately come out of the room i saw judy breaking out from guy's room dashing past everyone in the corridor ripping out her hair and rushing to her bedroom door slamming behind her and i still twist it around in frenzy this is not true how do i get out of this nightmare in my mind raged where do i hide now for eternity at nights i could not sleep daydreaming deliriously about my son in conversation and activity with me during the day i had to face all those annoying friends and colleagues who honestly with good intentions were torturing me with the meaningless words all of them repeated endlessly as if they had rehearsed together you have your family to take care of as well as your police work be strong as if i needed to be told all this were not for these cursed obligations i would emulate god's suicide and be immediately released from the pain and anyway how could i betray his memory by tending to things as meaningless and trivial as personal achievement status and career the constant unbearable relentless pain weighing down on my chest like a hundred tanks parked on it and the need to perform work and other daily duties was now utterly meaningless to watch people going places coming back talking and toiling for reasons that now completely escaped me what is the meaning of all this hassle and tussle i am dead and these people continue their daily occupations and i have to watch them in their utterly stupid ambitions and activities to get rich to be powerful to do this and that what for as life has already ended and why is it that i'm dead and they're alive and why is it they have suds to continue their existence after they're gone and where's mine while performing my duties as a lawyer i would feel sad enraged empty-headed and exalted concurrently or altern are alternatively why can't i also depart after guy maybe i will find him somewhere but when i call him back in my dreams he only signals that it was time for him to go on with his passage and not for me i i have family duties a city's population to protect here the same population who couldn't honestly give a [ __ ] about guys death can anyone understand the city's treatment of me as the weeks and months passed black horror settled in my mind my own darkness engulfed sucked and suffocated me inescapable misery constantly bashing my heart gashing wounds of unbearable pain memories of my son melted my brain like butter and boiling vapor driving me insane and the worst was the impossibility the absolute impossibility to run away and tavares should disappear there was nowhere to hide except if blessed sleep came to me some nights after many hours of twisting in my bed no appetite for food for sex or achievement whatsoever no ambition to make even the slightest advance only the burden in my chest getting heavier every day and the nagging dread that in time i will forget god desert him and so i continued living a zomb like a zombie grieving not only the loss of my son but mainly the loss of my old securities of the confident man i used to think i was of how i imagined i could make life happen [Music] slowly i began realizing that i was separated from life because my son was my life and he would never return i lost my connection to the part of myself that i could not without my son satisfied and i mourned that part of myself which my son had reflected i mourned for me this was the unfolding of the simple realization of why i felt dead among the living i went to the kitchen took a sleeping pill sagged back inside my bedroom and sank into a welcome dreamless sleep watching byron recount that is beyond heart wrenching what happened to his family is a tragedy that nobody should have to experience but there's also another important thing that i didn't mention in this video for byron to lose his brother and have his family be suddenly incomplete like that led him down a path towards depression at a very young age by the time he was a teenager it became something that he battled with in constant cycles and by the time he was 16 years old byron attempted to kill himself managing to survive by nothing more than luck throughout pretty much his entire life this battle with depression has been an ongoing struggle for byron he'd seen therapists but to no avail and taking ssris a type of antidepressant was out of the question because of what happened with his older brother so without an answer he was left to endure that depression all on his own and believe it or not the reason he wanted to end his own life at 16 was simple he was the best player in the world at asheron's call but eventually that game had to come to an end that might sound like a crazy reason to do something so drastic but getting good at that game endowed him with fulfillments he was the great anti-parazzi without it everything felt meaningless there was nothing left to distract him from the negative thought patterns looping in his mind this is something that byron has been struggling with throughout his entire career think about all the times i've mentioned him taking a hiatus from his stream over the years while it's true that he's done it for a variety of reasons much of the time it was because he was too depressed to stream the feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing left him living in his bed for months at a time never bothering to stream because how could he entertain people while in such a state in his mind what was even the points there have even been times where he deleted his twitch channel or threatened to do so and i thought i want to get banned i realize that i don't want to get banned but i'll i prefer to get banned then to continue streaming but i'd prefer to have my account deleted understanding his past also sheds a different light on his broken friendships with people like mitch jones losing an older brother created a hole in his life and it didn't help that he never got along well with his middle brother gary it's possible that to some degree he sought to fill that hole with the companionship of his friends and at one point in time mitch jones was one of his best friends so perhaps the betrayal meant not only the loss of a good friend but also a deep reminder of what he had lost as a child but here's what's interesting about byron as you already know he's a very genuine and authentic person he wears his flaws on his sleeve and shows how imperfect he can be from the very beginning of his streaming career he's been open about his struggles with mental health he's even mentioned his brother's passing and his own attempted suicide multiple times on stream and i know for a fact that his willingness to share these struggles has meant so much to his viewers who also deal with similar afflictions i really believe that he's helped many people get through tough times just by sharing this side of himself showing his viewers that they aren't alone that he too struggles with depression and emotional trauma while simultaneously showing them that he's capable of achieving great things and finding moments of happiness and i'd also like to point out how byron being open in this way is very different from how he had been too open about his relationships in the past where in those instances he was sharing aspects of his private relationships here byron is only sharing his personal struggles that are unique to him nobody else is involved it's just byron opening up about these things that make him human and doing it in a way that is actually helpful for his viewers but it's not always easy to be a dedicated viewer of byron's fans have had to watch as his battle with mental health seemed to wear on him more and more as the years have gone by wild mood swings that have gotten worse and bouts of depression that seem to take more and more out of him with time things got dim but they say it's always darkest before dawn and the rising sun that would shine upon byron came in the form of a harvard psychologist named dr alok kanojiya together in front of thousands of viewers they took a deep dive into byron's depression which meant taking a deep dive into byron's past they examined why byron does what he does and is who he is how the trauma of his childhood had shaped the battles he would face with his own emotions and most notably he helped byron realize why making his game everland has been such a fulfilling venture for him and and this is the other interesting thing is you're finding purpose and why are you finding purpose again what do you like about what you're doing i like i like that i'm trying to give people something i wanted as a kid what is what is the who's the focus on who are you thinking about um [Music] just people haven't experienced what i did yeah so i'll tell you reckful listen carefully now your depression you're trying to cure the depression that is growing within kids outs out there today you're trying to protect them from what happened to you [Music] yeah that how does that feel that feels good yeah it feels meaningful yeah good is an understatement it's the understatement of the [ __ ] year it is vital it is crucial you must do this thing i agree with you yeah like all of the qualities when you're saying that you wanted to give people an experience that you didn't have as a kid i don't think you're talking about playing a [ __ ] video game i think you're talking about being alone i think you're talking about being abandoned and you don't want people to feel the way that you felt and so you're trying to make the world a better place maybe what are you feeling right now i don't know it's just happening automatically i am yeah i'm not thinking anything i feel like um in my body i don't know how to describe it i don't know i i feel uh i feel like i just passed something yeah and uh kind of hopeful i guess yeah future maybe these conversations with dr k help byron start down a path to healing that he was never able to find before and as 2020 began for the first time in many many years byron was actually beginning to be happy how you been man amazing really good and i think it's pretty much thanks to you i think everything started working out as soon as we started talking it's not a coincidence just everything in my life is just working all the time um i feel very confident so now as this story comes to an end it brings me back to the question that i opened this video with who is reckful when people look at him it's easy to see a lot of things his reputation through twitch or his infamy in world of warcraft maybe some see him as entertaining or maybe they see him as contentious but when i look at reckful all i can see is byron this guy that is simply trying to live the best life that he can and i can't help but find myself relating to him the way he thinks or the way he looks at life i even have a father whose books i've been editing since i was a teenager but most importantly i see someone who has accomplished great things in spite of his own suffering he's had profound influence on the world and he's created a legacy for himself across multiple communities he overcame his obstacles by putting his first foot forward that's what makes him so great we all face hardships that can seem impossibly difficult to survive so if there's one thing that we should take away from reckful it's to keep moving forward [Music] these feelings [Music] each time [Music] is [Music] you

Channel: Slush

Views: 1,304,103

Keywords: Reckful, History of Reckful, Story of Reckful, First Twitch Streamer, Reckfull, Wreckful, Mitch Jones, Forsen, Byron Bernstein, Reckful Stream, Reckful Highlights, Reckful Documentary

Id: vnavU4bk7Vc

Length: 84min 35sec (5075 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2020