This is an excerpt from my memoir, I Was Famous on the Internet — my honest story of 14 years of internet fame and what it really cost, and why I deleted it all to choose real life.
Delete Everything
The worst part of all of it was how badly the viewership had collapsed. I had live streamed on both YouTube and Twitch, and the hate in the chats got under my skin so much that I closed the chat completely. Only people who paid to be supporters could participate. On my original YouTube channel, I barely had any supporters left. On Twitch, which I had streamed off and on since 2022, there were hardly viewers any left there either. Hours of live streaming went by, and only a handful of people even bothered to chat.
The audience on YouTube and Twitch was smaller than when I came back to gaming in August 2020, and it was by far the smallest gaming audience I’d had since I first streamed in 2016. In fact, when I streamed Heroes of the Storm back in the beginning of 2016, I had more people show up for my live streams. Standing in my studio, it felt like everything I had done online was a complete waste. My entire life seemed like a joke, one big failure.
Thankfully, I remembered what happened when I deleted my Facebook page. That memory gave me clarity. I realized that the state of depression I was in after days of binging Warzone was not just misery—it was an asset. I thanked it. I literally said, “Thank you for this level of depression, because it’s in this exact state I need to take action.” On a normal day, I feel pretty good, and the downside of that is I’m not usually desperate enough to change. But after three straight days of Warzone, drained and disgusted, feeling maximum frustration for all the effort I was pouring into videos with almost zero results compared to what I used to get, I knew what I had to do. Delete everything.
That thought was terrifying, because I had no idea what else I would do. I had already tried to unplug twice before and failed both times. Each time I found myself crawling back because I couldn’t find anything better. This time was different. I didn’t care what else I did—I hated this so much I simply refused to keep going.
I knew myself too well. If I kept creating videos online, I was going to play Warzone until I won. It had locked me in like an addict. Even though I resented my viewers, called them bots and idiots, I had become the biggest bot of all. I had to play Warzone until I won, no matter how many people watched, no matter how much money came in, no matter how bad I felt or how much remorse weighed on me. I had to win, even if it took a week or two of constant streaming. It didn’t matter that the platforms had sabotaged my reach, that it wouldn’t even be worth it. I had to keep going even if cheaters and try hards killed me 50 more times in the final circle.
Fortunately, my rebellious streak woke up inside me. I’ve never liked feeling forced to do something. I realized I wasn’t in charge anymore. My pimp was. My pimp was demanding that I keep pumping out crypto videos and play Warzone. The worst part was my pimp and tricks weren’t even paying me decently anymore. I saw clearly that the only way out was to walk away, and I knew from experience that the only way I could walk away was to delete everything because then I couldn’t come back. The one thing I had done right in dating was that I always broke up in such a way that there was no going back. I realized I needed to do the same thing with creating content online.
When I started talking about this, everyone told me to take my time, to think it over. But I knew the biggest risk wasn’t deleting everything. The biggest risk was that I wouldn’t quit. That I would linger, that I’d keep going, and five or ten years down the road I’d still be doing the same tired crap for less money and fewer followers than ever. I looked at the truth of my trajectory. It was unlikely I would ever hit the level of success I’d had before. All that was ahead of me was struggle. I began to see myself clearly as a worn-out hoe, one that couldn’t produce any more like I could when I was younger.
For years, I had believed I was the pimp, that all my viewers were working for me. I was dead wrong. I was the hoe. The platforms and the system they represent were the pimps. My viewers weren’t loyal to me—they were just there to get their fix. If I couldn’t deliver exactly what they wanted, in exactly the way they wanted it, they’d go to another hoe without thinking twice. That was the game I had been playing.
After my Warzone binge, I posted a video the next day announcing that I was done. This time, it was for real, and I said I was deleting everything. Nobody believed me. People laughed and said I’d be back within a few days, the same way I had so many times before. The difference was that this time I kept the video short—just 10 minutes instead of one of my long, drawn-out two-hour live streams. In it, I said clearly that if I even thought seriously about posting another video, I would immediately delete everything.
Part of me hoped I could leave the channel up for a while. Even though my audience had collapsed, I was still making some ad revenue. Old crypto reviews and scattered videos were still showing up in YouTube search, and the scraps added up to around $1,000 a month. It wasn’t much compared to what I had made before, but it was still good money for someone without other income streams. And besides, YouTube made it clear that if I deleted my channel, I would forfeit whatever payout was left. So I thought maybe I could just leave it up for a month or two, collect the residual income, and figure out my next move.
Unlike in 2024, I wasn’t desperate this time. After the hurricanes flooded our house the year before, my ex-wife and I had received a big insurance payout. We had tens of thousands of dollars in the bank because we didn’t go out and blow it on anything. For once, I had the luxury of not having to worry about money on a day to day basis.
Still, only a few days later, I found myself wanting to post again. I wanted to explain the pimp and hoe analogy more directly. I wanted to say it out loud: I was just a hoe turning tricks for my pimp, exactly like Dave Chappelle had described in his comedy special The Bird Revelation. He talked about how he was pimped, how the people who really made the money weren’t the artists like him, and how he didn’t even end up owning the rights to his work. I felt the same way—except at least he got paid well for prostituting his art, while I was getting scraps.
I wanted to turn the spotlight on my viewers too. I wanted to tell them they were just tricks, people living empty lives chasing instant gratification instead of building real love, real joy, real relationships. I could feel that video forming in my head. Yet deep down I knew what would happen. If I posted that, I’d end up talking about crypto again. Or worse, I’d fire up Warzone again. I saw the trap.
So I did what I hadn’t been able to do before: I pulled the plug. Permanently. I deleted my original YouTube channel. I deactivated my X account. And for the first time, it felt final. It felt over.
I left for a two-week road trip right after that with my family. During those two weeks, I did around 40 hours of meditation on one question: What am I going to do with my life next? My mind strained and twisted, trying to find an answer. I cycled through every idea I had ever entertained—massage school, hypnotherapy, writing books, making music, in-person events. Then my brain threw out random new ones—maybe I could be a garbage man. I asked everyone I met for input.
The one idea that kept tugging at me was being an author. I liked it because it meant I could still create, still build something. But my past struggles with writing books loomed over me. Every time I had tried before, it felt too hard, too overwhelming, and in the end I thought, why write when I can just make videos? It didn’t make logical sense to go from something easy for me, like video, to something I had always found so difficult.
I thought about starting a podcast instead. That seemed more natural. By the end of the road trip, I had my answer: I would do a local podcast. That was the key—local. I had always focused on the whole world online, and it had broken me. What I really needed was to be grounded. I needed to spend time with people face-to-face, and a local podcast would anchor me in my community.
I imagined it clearly. I could apply all the skills I had built from years of live streaming and video editing, but in a way that tied me to real people in St. Petersburg. I could interview local businesses, meet people face-to-face, and build relationships that weren’t based on algorithms or trends. Monetizing it would be straightforward—local audiences, local sponsors, and a built-in funnel for in-person services like life coaching or marketing help.
I had even tested the waters already. I’d done a live stream with my massage therapist and we had a great time. The energy was different—real, human. That felt like the future. I could be the top local podcast in town, building connections in my own backyard instead of shouting into the void of the internet.
Saint Pete Speaks
On July 14, 2025, after returning from our two week family road trip, I started my new local podcast with the name Saint Pete Speaks. There, I would do videos myself for my local community and then bring on guests in person. I started with the story of my 14-year YouTube journey. I created my 15th YouTube channel for the podcast, reactivated my X account, and made a new Spotify account to host it as well. I uploaded the first episode immediately and felt so depressed afterwards. I began sending the videos to a few people I thought would enjoy them but no one cared.
Over the next two days, a few people mentioned crypto to me. While I tried to tell them how bad it was, they clearly needed the full story. Thus, I made the second episode on Saint Pete Speaks a crypto video named “Bitcoin is a Lie. Crypto is Fraud. Only ICP is Real.” I sent this to many more people but the only feedback I got was my friend’s dad asking if I had heard the latest shitcoin pump news. Clearly, my two hour video explaining the shocking levels of corruption I had witnessed in crypto was 100% ineffective at getting this man to reconsider the bullshit bot promoted content he was watching that promised him higher prices on the most obvious shitcoin.
On July 17, 2025 I had scheduled a time to record with a local life coach but she canceled last minute on me. Within a few hours, my guest for the next day canceled also. He was a fellow YouTuber and texted me that “I need to stay home and work on my own content.” While that was about the coldest rejection I could have received, I also understood what he was saying. Back when I had all my views, he respected me and wanted to work with me. Now that I was starting fresh, I did not have anything to offer him and he would rather grind videos for his 500 subscriber channel than film a video for my new one.
While I had planned to keep out of the analytics on this local podcast, I checked them on July 18, 2025 to help see how bad I could feel. Sure enough, I had under 500 views combined on my more than 3 hours of videos. Nearly everyone I texted to share my videos with had not responded. That was the final straw. The only solution was total permanent annilation. I deleted the 15th YouTube channel, deactivated X, and deleted my second Spotify podcast account.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my YouTube Coaching playlist.