The Streamer's Wife

Chapter 1

“Okay guys, thanks for all your support. That’s it for tonight. I hope you will join me tomorrow for another day of chill interactive fun. Have a goodnight and peace out.”

Emily watched on as the streamer known as TFD brought his stream to a close and shook her head in disbelief. There she was, slim, young, attractive and decent at playing video games, decent enough to start her own streaming channel, at least she thought so. Yet she was struggling to make $50 a stream whereas this repugnant, balding slimeball of a man had just raked in hundreds of dollars for the second time that day, and it wasn’t a fluke. TFD was as unlikeable as you could get, he cussed out his viewers, raged at games and bad-mouthed developers constantly yet he managed to make thousands of dollars a month and Emily just couldn’t figure out why.

Feeling bold, if not a little jealous, Emily decided to reach out to TFD to see if he could give her some pointers on growing her own audience. What she wasn’t expecting was an email back from TFD accusing her of being a troll and telling her that he had “been in this business long enough to spot a fake when he saw one.” and that she should “get fucked!” She should have been appalled at being spoken to in such a manner by a degenerate like TFD, but she was desperate for his knowledge and remained humble in her follow up email, even sharing her personal phone number and LinkedIn profile to prove she was who she said she was.



A few days later she received a friend request on her Discord. It was from TFD, and he was blunt and to the point, “If you are who you say you are, you’ll video chat with me right now.” Emily hadn’t long gotten out of bed and was looking a little dishevelled, but she couldn’t let that stand in the way of gaining insight into TFD’s seemingly inexplicable success. She tied her long red hair into a ponytail and started a video chat with TFD.

Instantly, TFD’s demeanour softened when he saw he was he was dealing with a legitimate person. He apologised about not trusting her and blamed trolls for his actions, Emily got the feeling he was only being kind to her because she was an attractive, younger woman but she couldn’t let the icky feeling TFD gave her stand in the way of finding out his secrets. She told TFD how she wanted to be a huge streamer and make loads of money, something that he resonated with her on.

Unfortunately for her, his secrets wouldn’t benefit her very much. He explained how most of his income came from several die-hard fans who he openly questioned the intellect of. The rest of his money came from hate watchers bumping up his revenue from YouTube ads. Disheartened, Emily thanked him for his time and endeavoured to try and put his knowledge to good use.



Over the next few months, Emily continued to stream and tried to use TFD’s advice. Whenever anyone contributed to her streams, she tried to make them feel like they were the most important person in the world for those few seconds, but this only garnered her so much success. It seemed that the revenue of the few fans she had was finite and it didn’t matter how nice she was to them, it didn’t have a major effect on her earnings. She even let her money frustrations show on screen once or twice, begging for tips like she had seen TFD do on a daily basis, but this just brought her scorn and ridicule. She was at her wits end; the rent was past due, and she was coming to terms with the fact that she was going to have to quit being a streamer and go get a real job when she received an unexpected offer.