Call of Duty Warzone: How I Got Famous Streaming and What It Cost

Yes, I became famous playing Call of Duty: Warzone, at least on Facebook Gaming. Around Christmas 2020 I was the top streamer on the platform while I was live, with thousands of people watching at once. The fame and the money were real. What I did not see coming was how completely the game would take over my days. My answer to the question people ask most, was it worth it, is that it paid, but it became something I could not put down, and I would not build a life around it again.

It was not a plan. In the summer of 2020 I had sold my studio and all my equipment, I was living on credit, and I did not own a gaming system. Friends mailed back an Xbox and a microphone, and I bought a $600 PC and a $200 camera for less than $1,000 total. The idea came while I was bouncing on a fitness trampoline, after I asked my Facebook followers what I should do next. I could suddenly see myself making real money playing Warzone. My trampoline vision post tells that story from the lockdown side.

My head start was a verified Facebook page I had earned in 2016, and the platform wanted live video badly enough to push it. Viewers could send money directly through Facebook during the era of stimulus checks. In I Became Famous Playing Call of Duty I tell that story from my memoir, along with the part I like least: I was one of the few big streamers playing clean, and I watched top Facebook partners appear to cheat without consequence.

The early months were the fun part, and I was not good at first. It took me more than eighty solo games to win my first one, with a long string of second- through tenth-place finishes in between. Viewers loved that I was having a good time and was broke and open about it. Streaming to Blow Up on Facebook Gaming covers how the audience grew, including the stunts I pulled to stop the scroll and the partner invite I finally received.

Then it turned on me. Once I could win three or four games in a stream, the wins stopped feeling like wins. I was number one on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2020, and I still had streams where I placed fiftieth and felt like I had not gotten high that day. I sold three-hour sessions for $300 where a viewer played with me live, and within about a year of that trampoline idea I was making $5,000 to $7,000 a month and was miserable. Top of Facebook Gaming, but Warzone Became My Drug is where I admit that the game was producing a jittery high I kept chasing.

Two things pushed me to change direction. I resented losing to cheaters while the top Facebook streamers seemed to get away with it. And the game that paid was the only one the algorithm would push. Magic: The Gathering Arena and Rise of Nations streams flopped. In July 2021 I went back to retro games, and a GoldenEye stream I ran with a friend earned $3,000 in ad revenue in a few hours. That was the moment I knew I had found something new.

The recent highlight posts show the other side. On August 2, 2026, I ran two solo wins in under two hours, with prox mine kills and a vault run every game. The same day brought a $305 co-stream, a $310 session with back-to-back wins, and a 12-kill solo win. They are fun to watch, but they are the same loop I described above.

If being trapped by a game sounds familiar, I wrote about my history on Video Game Addiction: Quitting, Relapse, and Recovery, and about stepping away from pro gaming on Leaving Pro Gaming and Streaming. Every Warzone post is in full below, so you can read the whole arc. If you want a personal video review from me about something you are stuck in, request one at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

Jerry Final 12 Kill Win (August 2, 2026)
Scarface Pop Your Head Up Stream Highlights from Warzone Solos (August 2, 2026)
2 Warzone Solo Wins in 2 Hours Stream Highlights! The look in his eyes when we're self reviving (August 2, 2026)
$305 Co-Stream Highlights with Im2freshent (August 2, 2026)
$310 Back to Back Dubs with Wink248 Stream Highlights (August 2, 2026)
A Trampoline Vision Pulled Me Back to Warzone (June 21, 2026)
Streaming to Blow Up on Facebook Gaming (June 21, 2026)
Top of Facebook Gaming, but Warzone Became My Drug (June 21, 2026)
Call of Duty Warzone: How I Got Famous Streaming and What It Cost (October 30, 2025)

Jerry Final 12 Kill Win

From my video published August 2, 2026.

Let's go — 12 kill solo win! Let's go, baby. People can be mad if they want, but really, I can't make anybody mad. That prox mine got it done for me on one of those kills — it didn't exactly give the guy a chance to say no thanks. Just nice.

Creeping My Way Through the Lobby

Early in the match my bounty went off, and then — oh, there's two dudes in here. Yes. I was creeping so hard. And there was still another person in the building after that. Oh my god, I was creeping hella hard. That was pro-level creeping right there, exactly. Even the shotgun actually worked for once — it basically never works for me, so I'll take it.

Somebody compared dancing styles mid-match, and honestly, his dancing and my dancing are just as good — it depends on what you like. And here's a real point in the middle of all the fun: we've got all our drugs to help us be fun, and I'm here to show you that you don't need them. You can be courageous. You can stand up to criticism. When you see me doing something bold and it feels offensive, that's usually your mind telling you that you can't do that yourself.

Why I'd Pay Thousands to Play

That brings me to a story. There was a streamer I was willing to pay thousands of dollars just to play with. Braxton dropped 5,000 stars on my stream just the day before this, and we actually got to 1v1 him — let's go. I blew him up in solos, too. The way I figure it, if that streamer charged for games, he'd have to charge at least a thousand dollars, if not more, to make it worth his time. And I don't even have an issue with a streamer who won't play with his followers — it's his stream, why the hell would he play with his followers if he doesn't want to? But in my experience, there are games where you can end up building a better relationship with someone than with the person who originally promoted you.

The 1v1 itself was wild — I didn't even realize he was a good enough player to jump down in there like that. How did you get down here, dude? I didn't even know you could do that.

Loading Up for the Final Circles

Back in the match, I kept thinking this dude was going to come over and make me pay for a play I made near the tower. Then it opened up — this is way too open, we need to get out of here. So quick: annihilated that dude. I just outplayed you, dude. I'll play you real good. That whole sequence worked out for me — he wasn't looking the right way, and he wasn't happy about it either. It went my way that time.

Then I actually killed the vault camper and got in — and there was a loot box in there too. Dead Silence, nice. Give me all of that. Give me that Specialist — let's go. Stopping Power rounds — let's go. Everybody in this whole area knew I just grabbed an LC10, sweet. Get all that cash and bail.

The next spot looked nice because there was almost nobody around — except there was actually somebody in there. Just in case anyone was ghosted, I threw a stun up top, and I had prox mines to put all over the place down below. You can get in trouble up on that cliff, but if somebody actually made a run for the house, it was going to be very easy for me to pick them off. And yep — that's exactly how I was playing it. That was a nice play; he was not expecting me to come from behind right there.

Twelve Kills and the Solo Win

Somebody was out in the open — reload, finish him. Ah, good job, he confirmed my kill for me. Nine kills. Who wants some kills this game? We got kills going down. Then — oh, he's behind me! Dude, High Alert just saved my butt. That High Alert, let's go. Ten kills now, and I could see where two more people were at, too. Oh my god. Alright, we got played up — we're going to make this play.

Twelve kill solo win! Let's go, baby. That's for all the lovers, and that's for all the haters. Let's go. That was a sexy final circle play — an amazing play, such a good play right there. Good game, and thanks for that win. That's how you win solos, baby. Oh my god, that was good. That was so good — that was orgasmic. If you want more wins and highlights like this one, check out my Games playlist.

And then? Let's go again — we went right back in going for back-to-back wins. Forget about all the money stuff. This is why you want to watch me play: we have great gameplay here. This was an amazing one.

Scarface Pop Your Head Up Stream Highlights from Warzone Solos

From my video published August 2, 2026.

Alright, let's do this, baby. Let's get in these solos and get pumped up. We're gonna slay, we're gonna pray, we're gonna play — let's go. We're going for our fifth win in season three, I believe it's the fifth. You've got to stand out if you want to get people to click on your stream, and this to me is an authentic way to stand out, because I don't give a fuck.

We're not running an HDR and a Vex Lord over here — it's like one shot. What the fuck are you doing to me right now? Pop your dick head up. Pop your dick head up. Let's go. Pop your dick head up. Oh! Pop your dick head up! Yeah, I appreciate that dude helping me make that highlight right there, because without him helping me make it, I couldn't have made it. He popped his dick head up at just the right time.

Alright, what? I'd like another loadout, but I have a feeling there's somebody else over here. And you just got to trust those feelings — or get wallhacks, either one. Go play. Oh, I'm out here missing stuns up in this. You burned my ass up.

Back In for Season Five: Going for Win Number Five

Alright, let's go back in for Warzone solo season five. I'll show you how to win — we're going for win number five of the season today. I'm gonna sweat it out with these kids up here. Take that kill and dip. This dude's got a gun. He crept up here and I missed him. Shit — let me just make some more noise. There you are. Holy fuck. Oh my god, dude, I missed the shit out of that. Still got him, though. Oh my god, how did that dude slip around me? Damn, this thing is hitting hard on him now. Duck! Oh, he got me back there. Good shots, Jonathan. Good shots, Jonathan. Good shit.

Alright — would you rather have your shoes too small or too big? Shoes too small or too big — which one?

You Spot It, You Got It

That's one of my favorite sayings: you spot it, you got it. Whatever you say about someone else — if you can spot that about someone else, that means you know how to look for it. And if you know how to look for it, that usually means you've got experience with it. Like, I can spot another alcoholic easy. I'm like, oh, you've got a drinking problem, my dude. People come up in my chat calling me a pedophile for what I'm wearing, and I'm like — you spot it, you got it.

Oh shit, there's a dude fucking off right over here. Oh yes — that's why your boy snipes. That's why I snipe. Wesley Snipes. Get off in the final circle. Alright, who the hell else wants some of this? Come on. Come on, let's go. That's our shit right here. Okay, go. Oh, I'll let him get up — fuck it, I'm playing with my food. I'M A PLAYBOY! MY FOOD! LET'S FUCKING GO! I'm a play with my food too. Yes. Let's go.

Going for a Second Win in the Same Session

Alright, we're going for a second Warzone win. I already dropped one win, so we're just gonna get in and slap kids. Beat this fucker off. Here — see who else is coming? Alright, that went in my favor this time, which from my point of view is great. Get up in this shit. Come out, come on. Fucking boss, come up here — you're about to suck a dick up here. My dude joked on me and got shit on! Let's go! I'm gonna snipe you out and fuck your hole. I'm gonna fuck your pie hole, dude. Come on.

Oh, I can't believe I missed that shit. I can't believe I missed all that shit. We're gonna stun this dude — when he runs over here, we're gonna stun his ass. Do I stun over the wall? Fuck yeah. Oh shit! Oh yeah! Oh shit, he's got a C4 — the trophy system just ate that up. You're fucked up now. Come on. Oh shit. Oh, you're done now. You're done. Come on — give me all your fucking bullets. Come on. Good! How'd you like that, huh? And you drank beer at home and put on 50 pounds and then fucked me. Nice. I guess I don't talk that much shit about fat chicks.

Is this dude still lurking? He's gonna give me another dick in the face. He gave me one more dick in the face. You've got a fucking prox mine — you've got a troll-ass motherfucker right here. Goddamn, how many prox mines? This motherfucker had three prox mines. How did he even put three prox mines there? Shit, he's waiting right there, too. My new best friend. Come on — I'm gonna fuck you right in the face, dude. Just had a hacker in the stadium hiding underneath. Nice.

Alright, this dude just got out. One shot, two shot, three shot, four shots — all I hear is gunshots. This is where the fun stops. Got your ass. Alright, there he is. Oh shit! Got him — and I got him fast, too. Alright, let's reposition and get ready to bang him again. I ain't done yet. Alright, now I'm done. I'm good now. He already got all that dude's loot out there. Let's get in my truck here. Oh, somebody's up here? Damn, he took himself out — did he kill himself with that, too? Damn, I did not need to mess with that dude. Everybody's running C4s today. Damn, good game, dude. I did not need to mess with that guy. Good job, dude.

Going Out Like Scarface

When somebody just shits on you in Warzone, be like — oh yeah, he fucked me. Good. Oh yeah, he headshotted me right in the face. Oh, come on. Come on! Good! You get to be the one who goes out like Scarface at the end — just gets shot up and falls down in the pool. Now, you don't want to do that every game. When I don't like how things are going, it should motivate change. Motivate you to play a little bit different, to try something new.

Fuck yeah, we got — oh, shit. Oh! He was laying down in a body! He was laying — was he laying down in a body? Oh, no. That was another body. Oh my god. That was sweaty. Oh, there's my gun. There he is, dude. There he is. One kill! We got one kill. Let's go, baby.

And sometimes it's not going to be an even exchange of energy exactly in the moment — even when you're, like, parenting. Fuck me, dude. Aw, GGs, dude. Good game. If you enjoyed these Warzone solo highlights, there's plenty more where that came from in my Games playlist.

Much love, and thank you all for a fantastic time. See you in the next one.

2 Warzone Solo Wins in 2 Hours Stream Highlights! The look in his eyes when we're self reviving

From my video published August 2, 2026.

I'm glad we got Rambo all set up now — Rambo's got no shirt on, just like me. Is it just me, or am I getting real good at grabbing these? Whoa, that was good. That was good skill play right there. That was real good skill play. Did you see what we did to that player? I'm opening it — screw it, I'm opening it. Bought a Specialist and stopped that dude cold — power got it done on him. We got Specialist, and we're going for the escape. Oh my god, I love getting Specialist.

We called another UAV, and then it hit me — smart, you're so smart. You are so smart, I love it. That's so dirty. That's so dirty — I've never done that before. That's what she said. That is SO dirty: you can move your UAV upstairs. That's so sick. Look at that. That's so filthy. That is so filthy. Wow, dude, that dude is sneaky. That dude is so sneaky — I didn't see anything at all. And then I just killed him with the prox mine. Let's go! Let's go — I just killed that player with the prox mine in the house. That is so dirty.

Win Number One in the Final Circle

All right, I'm hot. I'm hot right now. I'm hot. We got Specialist and we're in the final circle. Trophy system ate that rocket for breakfast — ate you for breakfast, no rocket for you, dude. All right, we see one out in the open. That's the last guy. Let's go — win, win. I believe that we will win. Perfectly played. Let's go, baby! Who wants to see me in a solo tournament?

Let's go — we needed to get up there. I thought he was right there, but that's the height jump. And then, what the hell is this in the vault? Did you not know what to do with this, dude? Yeah — Bullfrog, and then, if somebody comes in and blows the prox mine... oh, hello. Oh my gosh, dude. That's why we play like this. Did you see that? That player had almost no chance against us. And then the same thing right there — like the exact same scenario.

All right, so we got some sniper rounds over here. It is nice to be in the center, but I don't know exactly where I'd go in the center right now, because if you get in the center too early, you get shot in the back pretty easily. Oh man — he didn't hit the other prox mine. Dang it. He didn't. I thought if I just needed to wait for him to hit the other prox mine... GGs, dude. All right, no two wins in a row for us that time.

Going for the Vault Every Single Game

Yeah, while y'all are screwing each other over, I'm gonna kill whoever's left. Good beatdown. Good beatdown, dude. All right, I got the Specialist, I go for the vault — what I'm doing in solos right now, I'm going for the vault every single game. Nice, my shots all hit that time. I'm going for the vault every single game now. And that shotgun actually worked — that shotgun actually beat my LC10. That's interesting. I thought I got another AFK gulag — yes, dude, we've been slaying in the gulag today. Damn, there's another person right here too. All right, I'm gonna get that kill, I'm gonna have that one, dude. That dude hit it and quit it on the loadout. Wow. Whoa — there's somebody, there's another person over here too. That's crazy.

Here's something I got thinking about mid-game: your initial judgment — the initial appearance of somebody — it's the same functionality where you can look at me and, immediately, just based on what I'm wearing, make a negative judgment. That's the exact same functionality in the brain that's responsible for any type of discrimination in the game, and hate — letting that part of the brain guide what we're saying to people.

Oh wow, that guy's gonna report me for hacks after that. That was some good shooting right there, wasn't it? And about the trolls — I love all the trolls. They give me a good chance to teach, and I very much invite the trolls to be in my live stream, because I'm gonna use you as a teaching example. Nice, got him. That's the most important thing: you gotta live. You die, and everything else is not worth it. I got a dual PC setup, by the way — that's how this is all running.

This player sacrificed everything — they sacrificed every single thing trying to hit me with a grenade. That was just unwise, my dude.

Two Solo Wins in Less Than Two Hours

He's coming — let's make him run into the prox mine. Oh, this is gonna be fantastic. Oh, and he gave us a munitions box! He gave us a munitions box. Oh my god, what a play, my dude — he just gave us a munitions box. I can probably beat this truck with a prox mine. All right, here we go: we're gonna throw a prox mine down right there, this truck's probably gonna drive through it, we're gonna try and kill that dude's truck and stay ahead of the rotation. We gotta find this other player that's on foot, and then I can just kill him, and then I can 1v1 the truck. Oh — I just hit him on a prox! Oh, second one of the day, baby! I just killed him with a prox mine in the gas. Let's go — two wins! Yeah, two wins, baby. Two solo wins in less than two hours. Let's go!

All right, we just gotta get around the corner — got your little butt. That dude chased the hell out of me and got turned on hard. Nice, got you up the zip line, going off over here. Oh my gosh, this dude just got dumped on. If I suck, I can't imagine how bad you are. I think this dude's on top of me right now — come on down, I got some prox mines for you in here. Oh, somebody else just finished that dude for me — that dude that was waiting out there just finished him for me. Dang, he annihilated that dude. Oh, he didn't even see me. That player is definitely legit right there. And I almost — nearly killed somebody else with a prox mine too. That player is definitely legit.

If you enjoyed riding along for these two wins, there are plenty more streams and highlights like this one over on my Games playlist.

Two solo dubs, a pile of prox mine kills, a gulag slaying spree, and a vault run every single game — that's a stream I'll take any day.

$305 Co-Stream Highlights with Im2freshent

From my video published August 2, 2026.

This one opens right in the middle of the chaos: a guy popped one foot out of cover and then jumped right back down. This is why restock is so nice — you just keep throwing it. Then, oh no, he got squashed in the elevator. That's happened to me before, too. Hey, at least it left your specialist up here. Then there was a truck, and with two or three minutes left, somebody was sitting in the building right there with us, just chilling. All right, well, good game, guys.

Here's the setup for this whole session: my teammates were over in Kuwait, so we were literally playing across the world from each other in real time. We were running quads on Rebirth, and we had just picked up a specialist token the game before. I was playing with Im2freshent — Two Fresh — because I dropped the big money on this co-stream: 305 bucks. So the question at the start of the drop was simple: do we divide and conquer, or all go for the same spot?

The First Win with Two Fresh

I called out that I had eight, there was a gun over here, a gun over by me — and then somebody grabbed my specialist. "There it is. Give me that. I knew a specialist was going to jump down, bro." Then it got wild fast. What the fuck — bro, there were people everywhere. Everywhere, man. They ran one way, and one of them had specialist perks, and then there was another one. Dang it. Then the specialist died in the circle, which was painful to watch. I dropped out of the fight with full sniper ammo, wondering if guys were in the building with me. Dang — he was right on me. EGs, dude. I went down one, killed one, and then this dude got back up and I put him right back down. There was still one up, and when he dropped: "There you go. Nice. Easy work, man. Easy." They basically brought us a bunch of cash and money by pushing us like that.

Then I was over on the other side asking who was still alive, because there were bodies everywhere over there and cash sitting out in the open. Oh, Lord — I got shot in the back hard. Then he was right next to the wall right there. Oh, shit — they were coming down on all of us, and then came a genuinely beautiful sequence: look at that team play. Another one up top, and he's down too. Was that ours? Yeah, that was mine — I put it down right as I dropped in. I got him. Nice.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, somebody asked, "Did you say you want to be my boyfriend?" — which tells you exactly what the energy of this co-stream was like. There was definitely another one out there. Almost had him, then my mag was empty. Finished him? Nice, bro. And then — oh my God — I got four. Now there's another one. Woo. What? Four! Let's go. Four kills just went off in that one fight. We had enough money to rebuy a teammate if we could get over to a buy station. Then it turned into a two-on-one, then a three-on-one. He just got up — there we go. GG. One left. There it is. Yeah, let's go. There's the win. That's how we do this: an easy win on Rebirth, and we got wins on both streams that day.

Trash Talk Between Matches

Between games, the trash talk got going. Somebody insisted this is a video game and it's got nothing to do with sex, and the response was: I imagine a lot of you wouldn't be playing this game as much if you were having more sex. Nobody gets a thousand wins playing this game while having a lot of sex. Then came the question of why some people were complaining about paying for a co-stream, and the theory offered was equally blunt: they haven't had sex in a long time, and ninety percent of them can't get a woman to look at them. Meanwhile, Dirty Larry gets wins on Rebirth, so he's apparently got time to get both wins and women. That's the kind of comedy you get on these streams.

Then it was back to business: which part of Superstore do you want to go to? "I'm gonna love you. You already know. Come on. Give me that. You wanted me to do that to you." One guy was hiding — camping — and then, no, I got too thirsty. He had an M60, which explains a lot.

Back-to-Back Victory

Next fight, I broke a guy's armor and got him down, but his teammate was over there and kept wearing my health down. I got no hits with a stun, and then couldn't tell if they were running. "You're right here? I'm coming." I had no visual on them, but they were right around there. Then he came around the corner — got him — but I didn't know where the other one was. While I was cleaning up, ah! He got me, point blank by the fence. Honestly, hiding by that fence was a sneaky move of mine that just didn't pay off. But the team held it down: "There you go. Nice. You got enough to buy me, too. Nice. All right, good job."

Then a guy came in right on top of us, going back for his stuff — he dropped right where we killed him, literally returning to the scene of the crime. He was off to the right, I downed one to the right, and that was the whole team. Good job. That put us top ten, and from there: that house next to us is good. Got one. It's two-on-one, dude. We got him. Watch it — two-on-one, and I bet the other dude's right next to him. Yeah. That's that win. Let's go, baby. Last one of the stream — and there it is. Good win with Two Fresh. Good win. Oh, that's so satisfying. Let's go, baby.

Proximity Mines and the Elevator

On the next drop I called the guy in the truck — "I got the one in the truck" — and a teammate took the one right next to it. Give me that first kill. Then I had to reload on this girl — dang, girl running me out of ammo. Hold up. Thank you. Two? Yeah, let's go. Get on him. One more was over there, so I headed back up to the roof to see if I could get out. Oh, bro, that's messed up. I love getting a proximity mine kill off a building — you throw the thing down and let it work. Then somebody hit my proximity mine; they were upstairs. I killed one and then spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to find my way back downstairs so I could get the rest of them. There was a team downstairs, one was up, and then — what? — he just fell. He was able to duck into the chute and just fell down. That's interesting; I hadn't seen that before.

And that brings us back to the moment from the opening: he popped one foot out and jumped back down, which is exactly why restock is nice — you just keep throwing. Then he got loose, and then he got squashed in the elevator, which has absolutely happened to me before. At least it left his specialist token up top. I tried to stun my way up there, found him in a corner in the back — got him. Then I hit somebody else on the prox mine back there while I was plating up. Careful — they were about to push up that house because the gas was going to force them out. I was out of stuns. Damn. One went down, one was right next to me — got him. That's it. Hell yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

The ending, though, was pure pain. A guy was up on the tower and I couldn't see him, so I couldn't shoot at him. Shit — my hand slipped on the joystick. Then I could not find the buy station to save my life. Where the hell is the buy station? It was supposedly right next to me, right up here — I could see him shooting but couldn't get a shot on him, and I still couldn't work the buy station. No. They got me right there. Damn it. I died trying to get to the stupid buy station. Where the hell was it? Stay down. All right, hit it. Dang, dude. Good game. That's crazy, bro. GGs. I do like having that specialist, though — that specialist is nice. I'm going to get him next time. If you enjoyed these highlights with Im2freshent, there are plenty more sessions like this one on my Games playlist.

Thank you for hanging out for these wins with Two Fresh — back-to-back victories on Rebirth made every bit of that $305 worth it.

$310 Back to Back Dubs with Wink248 Stream Highlights

From my video published August 2, 2026.

They're the last guys right there — let's go, let's go! There you go, right under Paris. You should have them. Yeah, let's go. I did nothing and we won. Two wins! That's the energy of this whole session with Wink248, and I want to walk you through exactly how it went down.

Sticking Together and Wrecking People

The plan was simple: they have to stick together, so we can just wreck people. We hit that one, then went straight upstairs. Right over here to the stairway. Once I got up there, I waited for everybody to get up with me so we could go in and grab it together. Oh, I got a baby monitor, too — let's go. I figured the other one was either up top — yes, yep, we got one. I saw him inside. Where the hell is this dude on your AV? Oh, he's inside. He's inside. Hey, I got him. I'll get you up.

Where do you want me to park this thing? Right here — got him. Splat! Oh shit, somebody behind me. Who's ghosted? Got him. All right, somebody else was aiming at me. Oh man, those ghosts snuck up on us. Give me a damn gun — a damn shotgun, an old-school shotgun. I just beat two of them off, dude, and there was another one. Dang. Hey, they shot Wink! I went in and grabbed that one quick. Got it. Get off. I'm finishing that — finish that! The next one I got put down. Oh, he's right here, and there's another whole team over here. I dropped back in and told the squad I was going to drop some back in for us too.

Get me out of here — oh, they already opened the vault. Damn. I went up to it anyway. How much health did this guy have left? Oh, here to help. What? Oh yeah, specialist — just specialist. Nice. I got him, and I got the fast revive. He's in the door over here — damn, bro. Whoo! Annihilated them. I was out of ammo though. Damn, it's a max — it's good. There were two teams. There were two teams, damn, two teams back here. They were all over in here, all over in here. I told the squad I'd bring them all back — we just needed to live for 30 seconds and the whole team would be back.

Got him down on the left. There we go — that's one kill. All right, it's four on three, guys. We got this. On the left, got one down — you got that one dead. Finish him! Let's go, it's one on four — finish him! There are the last guys right there. Let's go, let's go! There you go. Even in the ugly game, we got the win. Let's go — got the W. Oh my god. Yep, we did it. I got it.

Back to Back Dubs

All right, I'm buying back — who wants to do something crazy in Paris? Are you done? You're not getting me out of the sky. We landed right there, and oh yeah, we were going to be able to buy everything — there were only six teams left. That's awesome. Nice, good kill. All right, it's a best four-v-four. Oh, we could see him — right here, come out. I'm going to hit one of these shots one day, too. Oh, they just rebought their teammate. We got this.

Then the airstrikes came in again — where the hell did I drop in at? Nice, you got him. Oh, here — my prox mine, it's my prox mine over here. Yeah, let's go, shoot — he's right ahead, right next to that door. Right under Paris. You should have him. Yeah, let's go! I did nothing and we won. Two wins! Let's go! Dude, hella clutch. Oh my god, I didn't hit a damn shot that game. Let's go — two piece! Hey, hold up — was that two in a row? That was back to back! Oh my god, y'all are sick, man. That's sick.

Next drop, I came down right behind Wink. He's right here — I'm going farther down. Somebody dropped right next to us, Wink, right here — I'm beating him off. Oh yeah! Give me that. I like beating guys off. I went for another kill over here — got you down. See if he's got a teammate on the train. Somebody finished my kill on that dude. He's on the train. Oh, I see — nice. Us versus solos right now. I did the math: one team's got two, another team's got two, and then there's a solo. Oh yep, he's right behind there. Damn it. Right behind — yep, top of the hill. Damn, I got insta-killed, my god. Oh, there was a team of three — I didn't do my math appropriately. I don't even know if they rebought or something, but that's the second GG. I know I reported that team — good game. All right, we got two firsts and a second.

Real Talk on Cheating, Bot Lobbies, and Reverse Boosting

Here's the thing about reporting, though: if you report someone who's not really cheating, it doesn't matter — they're not going to get banned just because a few reports came in. I've heard that a lot of streamers use VPNs, which loads bot lobbies. I imagine there are a lot of things that would shock you that streamers do to artificially inflate their gameplay. For example, if I wanted to have the very best gameplay, all I'd need to do is reverse boost — just play really bad ten, twenty, thirty games intentionally, like while I was editing a video, just have Warzone loaded and die over and over again. I'd get easier lobbies. So then when I came on stream, it would look like I'm playing in all god mode. But I don't do anything that I wouldn't want to tell everybody about.

If you enjoyed these back-to-back dubs with Wink248, there are plenty more gaming sessions like this one over on my Games playlist. Two firsts and a second in one session — I'll take that any day.

A Trampoline Vision Pulled Me Back to Warzone

Originally published June 21, 2026.

This is an excerpt from my full-life memoir, Un Fn Myself — my real story of addiction, recovery, fatherhood, and everything in between from 1984 to 2026, including the parts most people would cut out.

I kept going to AA meetings. There was a week where in-person AA meetings were illegal, and I went anyway. My thinking was simple: I might get arrested for going to a meeting, but if I don’t go, I might drink myself to death. At that time, people were relapsing everywhere. I could picture alcoholics sitting at home, isolated, drinking instead of being in meetings. The home group I was part of tried to shut things down. They told me, as secretary, that I had to lock the room. The chair and treasurer insisted. I told them, I’m showing up in person every day. I have a key to our meeting space, and you can’t stop me. They split the group. Half went to Zoom. Five or six of us kept meeting in person almost every day. I was there nearly every day, even during the period when it was illegal.

There were others who felt the same way. One of them was a pastor who actually got arrested for keeping his church open. Eventually, churches and AA meetings were allowed to stay open even while nearly everything else remained closed. I never stopped going. My ex-wife was angry about it, but she also understood why I wouldn’t budge. For me, staying sober mattered more than following rules that felt disconnected from reality. In that moment, I wasn’t trying to be rebellious for the sake of it. I was choosing what I believed would keep me alive.

Around that time, I started getting pulled into an entirely different social orbit. Through another massage therapist, I met a few people who introduced me to a wider circle over Zoom. These were very new-age, light-and-love types, and a lot of them lived together in a shared house in town. I began spending time with them in person. In May of 2020, I even paid a guy $100 an hour for life coaching. He was in his early twenties, living in a house with a bunch of other guys, and my ex-wife was furious that I would spend $100 for a single hour with him. But the experience was genuinely transformative. We ran around a park yelling, I’m free, I’m free, at the top of our lungs, and as ridiculous as that sounds, it felt liberating. It cracked something open in me. It shifted my perspective. It was worth every dollar. Looking back, it still amazes me that even at the depths of my financial collapse, I somehow still had the abundance to afford massages and life coaching.

At the same time, my ex-wife was accumulating a lot of resentment toward me. Her entire family was angry because if I had just gone along with the lockdowns, they would have been able to see her and the kids. Because I refused to comply, they refused to see us for months. My ex-wife held that against me far more than she held it against them, because she agreed with them more than she agreed with me. From her perspective, my stubbornness was the problem. From my perspective, I was watching collective insanity unfold and choosing not to participate. During the height of all of this, I was going to ecstatic dances, doing ice baths, and spending time in close quarters with all kinds of people. I was fully immersed in real, physical experiences while most of the world was locked inside scrolling their phones. I genuinely believed I was the sane one for continuing to live my life.

That contrast mattered. As everyone else retreated further into the internet, I felt more convinced than ever that I wanted my life to be in person. That realization was a huge part of why I sold off my entire studio and all my equipment. Spending time with people face-to-face was infinitely better than doing everything online. It felt alive. It felt human. So I committed to it. By June 2020, I had launched The Jerry Banfield Show as an in-person event. I found a venue, booked it, and went for it.

The first show drew about twenty people. The first mistake was the tickets. I wanted people there so badly that I gave away too many free tickets. Out of those twenty people, maybe three actually paid. The show was losing money immediately. On top of that, I had no idea how to promote locally. I tried running online ads, but they didn’t work, at least not for that first show. None of my existing followers showed up either. Many platforms were actively discouraging or suppressing promotion for in-person events during that phase of lockdowns, so inviting people to gather in real life was treated like a problem. Under those conditions, twenty people was all I could get.

Still, the show itself was genuinely good and I hosted multiple shows each week. I brought in a hypnotherapist who led a group hypnosis and past-life regression session, which was incredible. I had a massage-therapist friend lead a movement practice that was fun and energizing. A guy I had partnered with came on and told his story, including how he had once modeled for a famous magazine, and it was surprisingly motivating. I loved the variety. I loved the energy of it. It felt like something real was happening.

I had also joined Toastmasters back in 2019 to improve my public speaking, but when that moved to Zoom, I stopped participating. After nearly two decades of living my life online, the last thing I wanted was another virtual room full of faces in boxes. I was done with that world. Even though the show was losing money and clumsy in execution, it represented something I deeply wanted: a life built around real people, real conversations, and real presence. That craving for real connection is exactly what I try to give people now, so if you want the same, you can book a private call with me and we'll choose presence over screens together.

Watching everyone else retreat further into online life made me want to unplug even more. So I did. I stayed unplugged and ran the in-person show for a few months. At first, the lockdowns were the main obstacle, but masks weren’t really a thing yet. Then the mask bullshit started, and to me that was even worse than the lockdowns. Seeing people finally allowed out of their houses but forced to cover their faces felt completely insane. Around the same time, my daughter’s school shut down. We got about $1,000 back in tuition, which was something, but it only reinforced what I already knew—we should never have enrolled her there in the first place.

As time went on, people got used to staying home. Even when lockdowns eased, people still didn’t want to come out in person, and the masks became this lingering psychological barrier. Attendance at my show dropped steadily. By August 2020, it was dead. I had multiple shows where nobody showed up at all. There was one exception: a single woman came because of a Facebook ad. I met her in person, and afterward I ended up attending several yoga classes she hosted. Through that connection, I also met one of my favorite yoga instructors. So even though the show completely failed as a business—months of losses at a time when our finances were already desperate—it still ended up being fun and valuable on a personal level. It built character. It connected me with people I never would have met otherwise.

By August 2020, though, I was desperate again. I didn’t know what to do next. I tried doing live streams to promote the show. I had one guy join my partner group for $1,000 and come down to see me in person. I did live streams with him. I tried focusing on local marketing. None of it worked. Once again, I felt stuck. So I went live on Facebook and asked my followers directly what I should do. Even after everything, there was still a massive gaming audience following me. People who had been with me since 2016 had now lived through two and a half years of me not gaming. They were begging me to come back. They told me this time was different. Facebook Gaming was blowing up. They said if I came back now, it would finally work.

The next day, after that live stream, I was jumping on a little fitness trampoline in the house. And that’s when it hit me. I had this clear, vivid vision of being a professional gamer. For years, I had wanted nothing more than to make money playing video games so I wouldn’t have to do anything else. That dream was one of the reasons 2019 had beaten me up so badly. I kept thinking, I could have just gone for it. I could have just committed to gaming instead of assuming it wouldn’t work. Instead, I chased other ideas that turned out to be far worse. Jumping on that trampoline, I could suddenly see it. I could see myself making real money playing Call of Duty: Warzone. It felt obvious.

From the outside, the situation was absurd. I didn’t own a single gaming system. I had almost no money. I was drowning in minimum payments and still relying on credit to survive. My ex-wife was angry, and I was depending on her financial support. I had sold every camera, every PC, every piece of streaming gear I owned. All I had left was a shitty laptop I’d bought in 2015 that couldn’t even live stream properly. No consoles. No setup. No plan. Nothing. And yet, bouncing on that trampoline, I could see it clearly. With everyone online, watching live streams nonstop, Warzone felt like the moment I’d been waiting for all along. This was it. This was the opportunity I’d been circling for years without fully committing. And this time, instead of doubting it, instead of overthinking it, I decided to act. From that moment on, I started executing.

My ex-wife was pissed immediately. She didn’t want me going back to video games, resented the idea, and made it clear she hated it. In her mind, I needed to get a real job or make real money online, not screw around playing games again. At the same time, she took on this resigned, resentful posture of, you’re going to do whatever you’re going to do anyway, which I fucking hated. No—I wasn’t just doing whatever I wanted. If that were true, I wouldn’t have asked her opinion at all. I wouldn’t have cared how she felt. The fact that I was asking meant I did care, even if we couldn’t agree.

Despite all of that, I went back to gaming. I put it out publicly that I wanted to return, and I was honest about where I was—I didn’t even have the money to buy the equipment. I asked for help. One friend, who I’d mailed a microphone to back in 2015 so we could collaborate on video courses, mailed me that same Blue Yeti USB microphone back. Another friend, who I’d given my Xbox One Day One Edition to years earlier—the one I bought in 2013—sent it back to me as well. Within a week, I had an Xbox again. It was barely good enough to run the game, but it worked. I had a low-end mic, but the audio was solid. All I still needed was a computer and a camera.

I went on Facebook Marketplace and found a guy in Tampa who had slapped together a PC from old parts. For $600, he sold me a machine that was just barely good enough to live stream. Then I found another guy selling a camera he had used to film funerals. Apparently, he was done filming funerals. I bought it from him for $200, picked up a capture card, and put everything together. Within a couple of weeks of that vision I had on the trampoline, I had a complete setup again—and I’d spent less than $1,000 total.

I hated the setup. Six months earlier, I’d had a $10,000–$20,000 professional live streaming studio, one of the nicest setups you could possibly have. Now I had this janky, thrown-together system that barely worked. The Xbox was so slow it could hardly run Call of Duty: Warzone. The PC was so weak I could only stream to one platform at a time, and even then it crashed sometimes. The camera was ghetto—blurry, pixelated half the time. Everything about it was inferior. And yet, it worked.

If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Games playlist.

Streaming to Blow Up on Facebook Gaming

Originally published June 21, 2026.

More importantly, I was back to gaming. And this time, the viewers showed up immediately. With most of the world locked down and online, my viewership picked up right where it had left off a year earlier. On Facebook, I instantly had hundreds of concurrent viewers. It felt like the universe was conspiring to give me exactly what I wanted. Views poured in. One of the top zombie streamers on YouTube raided me on one of my first streams back, dumping his audience into my channel while I was playing zombies. I was having a blast almost immediately. I had missed gaming so much, and my followers were thrilled I was back. New followers kept rolling in.

I spent a few days warming up on zombies, then jumped into Call of Duty: Warzone. At first, I got absolutely shit on. Warzone solos are brutal—150-person free-for-all battle royale—and it took me eighty-two games to get my first win. I finished second multiple times. Third several times. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth—over and over. I was in the top ten probably twenty or thirty times in those first eighty-two games. Then it finally happened.

The final circle pulled perfectly in my direction. I was set up behind cover. The other guy got unlucky and had to sprint straight toward me. I jumped out to the left side of the cover and sprayed him. He returned fire. I jumped to the right, aimed, and killed him. The moment I won that first Warzone game, I hit peak euphoria. It was electric. It was confirmation. Right then, I knew. Shit. If I can do this—just wait. I thought, Wait until you see what I can do if I keep going.

What people really connected with on my live streams was how much fun I was having. Back in 2018 and 2019, when I streamed, I was the guy who had already made all this money. I wore suits and costumes, talked about business, tried to sell courses, and played this larger-than-life role. People watched, but they didn’t really vibe with me. When I came back to gaming in 2020, I was the opposite of that guy. I was barely scraping by, chasing a dream, streaming on a ghetto setup that I’d pieced together for under $1,000. I talked openly about how broke I was, how messed up my finances were, and people related to that immediately. One of my first live streams in the gaming program pulled in over $700 in donations. People were getting stimulus checks, sitting at home drunk or high, lonely, desperate for connection, and they were throwing real money at my stream because it felt alive.

They loved the rawness. They loved the honesty. That same energy I’d felt when I calmed the screaming homeless guy—that grounded, present, loving intensity—I poured straight into my live streams, and people felt it. The time off gaming and working on myself had paid off big. The channel started growing fast. As I got better at Call of Duty: Warzone, the growth accelerated. I started winning more games, and instead of just flexing wins, I taught people exactly how I was doing it. What made my stream different was that I wasn’t relying on cracked reaction times or hyper-aggressive Twitch-style gameplay. I showed people how to win with strategy. I taught people how to be a little camping bitch—sit in a corner, hold position, wait for the elevator door to open, and spray someone when the moment was right. It was patient. It was sneaky. And it worked.

That approach attracted a very specific crowd. People who felt like they didn’t belong in the hyper-competitive gaming world. People who felt too slow, too awkward, too shitty to even enjoy watching other streamers. They’d come into my stream and think, This guy gets me. At the same time, I was talking about sobriety, health, inspiration, and ripping into all the bullshit happening in the world. It wasn’t just a gaming stream. It felt like a hangout with someone real. That feeling of finally belonging somewhere is what I try to give people now, so if you’ve never quite fit the hyper-competitive mold either, you can set up a call with me whenever you want that same grounded, real conversation.

From a marketing standpoint, I knew exactly what was happening. Facebook was pushing live streams hard in the algorithm, and I knew how to take advantage of that. While most gamers had zero understanding of digital marketing, I had a decade of experience. Most streamers would title their streams with dumb shit like, Call of Duty Warzone Solos | 5KD | Pro Player, or whatever sweaty nonsense they copied from bigger channels. The big streamers did it, the small ones copied it, and they all blended together.

I did the opposite. I wrote full paragraphs in my descriptions about my life. I talked about being sober for six years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mentioned being inspired by Wayne Dyer. I talked about yoga, meditation, and personal growth. Facebook had all this user data, and with live streams boosted in the algorithm, it started showing my streams to people who had never watched gaming content in their lives. People would show up in the chat saying they didn’t even play video games and had no idea how they ended up there. For many of them, I was the first person they ever watched play a video game on Facebook—and I definitely wasn’t the last. That was the magic of it. I wasn’t just another gamer. I was a human being playing games, fully myself, and Facebook’s algorithm amplified that in a way I hadn’t seen before.

As my viewership kept climbing, I started asking myself how I could push it to the next level. I noticed that a lot of hot women were streaming, and it was obvious why people stopped scrolling. There was one streamer in particular I remember watching and thinking that the camera was doing a lot of the work. On screen, all you saw was a blonde woman in a tank top, and that alone was enough to make people pause. What struck me was how boring the stream itself was. No personality. Not especially good at the game. Just hacking around, barely engaging. In my head, I was judging hard—dismissing her as someone throwing on a sports bra and letting horny dudes pile into the chat. And yet, it worked.

That made me think: How do I trigger that same scroll-stopping effect? What could I do that would make people pause the way those streams did? The answer I came up with was simple and extreme. I started streaming naked. Completely naked. My camera only framed me from the shoulders up, so nothing explicit was visible, but yeah—below the frame, I was naked. I told myself it made me more vulnerable, more raw, more real, and maybe that was true. For a couple of weeks, I streamed like that, and my viewership went insane.

At the time, I don’t remember seeing any other guys streaming shirtless, let alone naked off-camera. Maybe some were, but I hadn’t seen it. What I do know is that my shirtless streams stopped people dead in their scroll. People would wander into the chat asking, Where’s your shirt? Are you on drugs? It was instant engagement, and Facebook loved that. One person would comment, then their friends would jump in, and suddenly the chat would explode. Before I took my shirt off, my audience was mostly people who already liked me, plus some new viewers. After I started streaming shirtless, the numbers skyrocketed. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, sometimes five hundred concurrent viewers. Followers poured in. Donations increased. The growth was unreal.

The downside was that the chat became absolutely toxic. The comments were brutal. People attacked my gameplay, my family, and me personally, and told me to disappear in the ugliest terms imaginable. Anything you can imagine, people said it. A lot of them got blocked by Facebook for it. Ironically, many of the people who genuinely loved me ended up getting their own accounts suspended or blocked from commenting because they were fighting back in the chat. I’d get private messages saying, Man, I can’t comment on your stream for a week because I went after some guy who was talking shit. It was chaotic, ugly, and incredibly toxic. And Facebook absolutely loved it. The platform pushed my stream everywhere. The controversy, the arguments, the nonstop engagement—it was exactly what the algorithm wanted, and it amplified me relentlessly.

One thing after another kept happening in a way that felt almost perfectly, divinely aligned. There was this moment when a new Easter egg dropped in Warzone—the Juggernaut Easter egg. You could get this insane suit that gave you something like twenty times the normal health and a minigun with infinite ammo. I was absolutely wrecking people with it. I was just blasting lobbies, taking on three or four people at once sometimes, feeling unstoppable. Then this one guy rolled up while I was in the Juggernaut suit and ran me over with a car, which somehow took out about two-thirds of my health. After that, he sprayed me so hard that he finished me off completely. Most people would have lost their shit in that moment. I didn’t. I started praising him like he was a god. I was saying things like, Holy shit, that’s the best Call of Duty gameplay I’ve ever seen. You’re unbelievable. I can’t believe you just did that.

What I didn’t know at the time was that this guy was one of the top professional players in Mexico—possibly the top Call of Duty streamer in the country on Facebook. He had thousands of people watching him live, something like three or four thousand viewers, and all of them were hearing me hype him up instead of rage. He sent his entire audience over to my stream. Suddenly, I had this massive influx of new viewers and followers, and then those people started sharing me out even further. It snowballed fast.

As 2021 approached, I started becoming one of the recognizable names on Facebook for Call of Duty: Warzone. There were maybe ten top Warzone streamers on the platform, and I was consistently in that group. I was showing up in other people’s live streams, donating to them, interacting, building real relationships. At the same time, the money finally started coming in. I was making thousands of dollars a month just from Facebook streaming. On top of that, I was posting videos on YouTube and experimenting with live streams on Twitch. For the first time in a long time, it felt like something was actually working.

There was still one thing that pissed me off, though. I hadn’t been accepted into the Facebook Gaming partner program yet. I was pulling more views than a lot of people who already had partner status, but I still didn’t have the invite. I kept checking my dashboard, waiting for it to show up, and nothing happened. Eventually, multiple followers told me I needed to contact Facebook support directly. I resisted for a while, but finally I did it. I sent a message basically saying, What the fuck? I clearly meet the requirements. I should have the partner invite, and it’s not there.

Facebook support replied and told me they couldn’t help me. That was it. Then, within twenty-four hours of that response, the option to apply for partner suddenly appeared on my page. Someone had clearly gone in manually and fixed something. My page was old. I’d been part of Facebook’s gaming ecosystem early on, and something about it wasn’t triggering correctly anymore. Whatever it was, it got corrected, and I finally received the partner invite I had been chasing since 2018. It was wild to think about. The thing I had wanted so desperately years earlier—back when everything was falling apart—finally showed up after I had stripped everything down, rebuilt from nothing, and committed fully to what I actually loved doing. If you’re rebuilding something from nothing yourself and want a clear-eyed second opinion on your own path, you can book a one-on-one call with me and we’ll map it out together on our call.

I finally got the partner invite. Then I read the terms. They came with a non-disclosure agreement, which immediately set off alarm bells for me. Any time someone hands you an NDA, something fucked up is happening, because they’re asking you not to talk about it. I’m not going to spell out exactly what it said, because this book is public, but the terms were disgusting. Reading them made something click in a way that honestly nauseated me. I realized that this must be how the entire internet actually works. All the biggest voices, all the people with the most reach—most of them must have signed agreements like this. Maybe not every single one, but enough that it shapes the narrative. Agreements where you’re not allowed to speak honestly about certain things, where you’re nudged—sometimes explicitly—into saying things a particular way.

Looking at those terms, I remember thinking, Oh… this is how it’s being done. This is how people are being steered. This is how public perception gets molded. Some of the clauses were so bad that if the average person saw them, they’d want to throw up. It hit me that the top voices online weren’t necessarily lying because they wanted to—they were being boxed in. Silenced selectively. Directed. And that realization made me sick. I signed it anyway.

I wanted it too badly to walk away at that point. I told myself I’d just try to be a good boy. That alone should tell you how fucked the situation was, because I can’t be tamed. I figured I’d do my best not to violate the terms and stay just inside the lines. I also realized that the public didn’t know about the agreement, so they couldn’t report me for violating it. Only other Facebook partners and Facebook itself knew what was off-limits. As long as I stayed discreet, I’d be fine. That was the logic. It killed me, though, because I’m an extremely direct person. After signing that NDA, I stopped openly talking about some of the things I’d been running my mouth about and started being much more indirect—at least for a while.

If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Games playlist.

Top of Facebook Gaming, but Warzone Became My Drug

Originally published June 21, 2026.

Right before I got the partner agreement, my performance in Call of Duty: Warzone went to another level. I started having live streams where I’d win four or five games in a single session. I got really good. Remember when it took me eighty-two games to get my first win? I decided to see just how far I could take it, and the answer was very far. That’s also when I started noticing something uncomfortable. A lot of the top Facebook streamers appeared to be cheating. Not all of them, but most of them. They’d get called out live. Clips would surface where their cheats slipped on stream. They were usually very good at hiding it, but sometimes it showed. There was one guy in particular who was blatantly cheating. Everyone knew it. His cheats would occasionally glitch on stream, and he’d immediately delete the VOD. People would repost clips, and Facebook wouldn’t do a thing about it.

That started to piss me off more and more, especially because I was building a massive following without cheating. There were stretches where I was the top Facebook Gaming streamer on the entire platform. I remember Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2020 vividly—I was number one both days. My streams pulled hundreds of thousands of views. I had two thousand, three thousand concurrent viewers regularly. I felt like a god. This was exactly what I had wanted for years.

The money was pouring in. Fifty dollars here. One hundred there. Ten, twenty, thirty-five, nonstop. New followers flooding in. New likes. New donations. New supporters. The club growing every week. Everything exploding at once. I remember how incredible it felt to be crushing it on Facebook Gaming instead of being with my family. I remember thinking the other streamers were idiots for choosing family time over these easy views. Christmas and Christmas Eve were absolute gold, and I was cleaning up while everyone else logged off. At the time, that felt amazing.

When I was starting out again back in August 2020, those first several months on Warzone blew up because I was genuinely having fun. I loved playing the game, and that joy was obvious. But eventually, something shifted. Once I got to the point where I could win three, four, sometimes five games in a single live stream, the excitement started to drain out of it. My streams would run anywhere from one to three hours on the short end and six or seven hours on the long end, and a single win could take around thirty minutes. On a stream where I won five games, that meant two and a half hours of straight winning. I was winning almost as often as I was losing, and even in the games I didn’t win, I was finishing in the top ten most of the time. I had gotten insanely good at the game.

At the same time, I was getting increasingly pissed off about hackers. At least half the games I lost felt like they ended because I ran into someone cheating. I’d get wiped by a hacker, over and over, and when I looked at the people above me in the rankings—the ones who were bigger streamers than I was—I became convinced that a lot of them were cheating too. That anger built up fast. I kept thinking, This is rigged. I remember having the thought that if I really wanted to get to the next level, I’d have to start hacking myself. With the strategies I was already using, if I’d added wall hacks or a bit of aim assist, I probably could have won eighty percent of my games instead of ten or twenty. And even a ten-to-twenty percent win rate in a 150-person free-for-all battle royale is insane. I was objectively very good. But despite that, I was bored.

I blew up on Warzone because people were shocked to see someone having that much fun. I was like a kid again, genuinely enjoying video games. But after several months and hundreds of wins, the fun turned into something else. There were streams where I wouldn’t win a single game, where I’d place second, fifth, third, tenth, fiftieth, second again, and I’d end the stream feeling like absolute shit. I’d shut it off hating myself, feeling like I hadn’t properly gotten high that day. That’s when it hit me that Warzone had become a drug. I was using it to get high, chasing that rush. When I got a win, I’d scream with joy but when I didn’t get that fix, I felt awful. I’d even had a policy early on that I wouldn’t swear or go crazy on stream, but I watched a few other streamers blowing up by swearing nonstop and acting unhinged, so I started doing it too. Recognizing when something fun has quietly turned into a way to get high is exactly the kind of honesty I hold myself to now, so if you want that accountability you can schedule a private call with me and we'll build healthier habits together.

Right before I got the partner agreement, I also started experimenting with other games. I tried playing Rise of Nations, a game I loved from years earlier. That game carried a very specific memory for me. Back in college, when I was in the police academy, my girlfriend at the time came over one night clearly wanting my attention. I was drinking and playing Rise of Nations, and I told her, Hold on, I just need to finish this game. It was a four-on-four match, and my team needed me. That wasn’t a five-minute delay either—it took another thirty minutes to finish. She was furious. I chose the game over her, and not long after that, I lost her.

So there I was years later, thinking it would be fun to play it again, to reconnect with that part of myself. I went live playing Rise of Nations, and my stream absolutely tanked. I’d have three, four, maybe five viewers. I was livid. If I took my shirt off and played Warzone, I could pull tens of thousands of viewers per stream, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views total. But the moment I tried to play a game I actually wanted to play, I was down to a couple hundred views at best and single-digit live viewers. It felt like a trap. I realized I was roped into playing Warzone exclusively if I wanted success, attention, and money. And I hated that feeling.

All of a sudden, I was making thousands of dollars a month from people paying to play Warzone with me, on top of thousands more coming in from subscriptions, donations, and general support. People got insanely toxic about the fact that I charged for it openly. I didn’t hide it. It was right there on jerrybanfield.com. Click a button that said play Warzone with me, pick a day and a time, and that was it. I eventually raised the price to $300 for a three-hour live stream, and people kept buying it. I sold so many of them. There were stretches where five or six days a week, someone had paid $300 to play Warzone with me live.

Sometimes people split the cost. I allowed up to three people to play with me at once, so a group of three would each pay $100, and the four of us would stream together. For a lot of them, it worked beautifully. They picked up a ton of new followers, got donations, and made their money back almost immediately. Other times, it was a complete disaster. If the audience didn’t like the person, the stream was miserable, and I hated every second of playing with someone I didn’t even enjoy being around. It became clear very quickly that this wasn’t just about gaming anymore; it was about managing energy, personalities, and expectations nonstop.

I also partnered and played with other top Facebook gamers, including the same girl I’d judged earlier. I did a live stream with her, and one of my viewers wandered over to her stream and dropped $200 on her instead of me. I remember thinking, Really? Fuck you, bro. None of the people coming over from her stream gave me big donations, but one of my guys dumped money on her immediately. She actually lived nearby, and technically we could have met up, but I had zero interest in that scene. Hard pass.

By the summer of 2021, from the outside, I was absolutely crushing it. Inside, I was miserable. I hated that the only thing that worked was Call of Duty: Warzone. I burned out fast. After weeks where more days than not involved someone paying $300 to play with me, I felt exhausted and trapped. The worst part was that when I wasn’t playing with other people, all I wanted to do was play Warzone solos. Solos were my game. I hated four-player Warzone. I was bad at it. The strategy was completely different, and I couldn’t stand the revive mechanics. Solos were pure. One life. One mistake and you’re done. That was where my skill actually showed, and being forced into squad play for money made me resent the whole thing. If you feel trapped by something that’s supposed to be a win in your own life, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we’ll talk through what a healthier next move looks like.

By June, I snapped and posted one of the most toxic live streams I’d ever done. I ripped the entire Facebook Gaming ecosystem apart. I talked shit about everybody. Even some of the most respected top streamers caught strays. I said they sucked, that they were useless, and that people were pathetic for crediting streamers with getting them through hard times. I remember saying something like, How bad is your life if you’re thanking some guy playing video games online for being there for you? Get a real life. I went all the way off. Ironically, some of my closest followers later told me that was their favorite stream I ever did. Out of everything, that was the one that hit hardest for them.

What makes it even funnier is that I wasn’t even playing Warzone during that rant. I was playing some old SimCity game—SimCity 2000 or something ancient like that—just zoning out and unloading everything I’d been holding in. Looking back, it’s wild. Within a year of that vision I had bouncing on a trampoline, I had gotten everything I thought I wanted. If you’d told me a year earlier that I’d be making $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a month just by showing up and playing Call of Duty: Warzone for three hours a day, I would have thought that sounded incredible.

Then I actually got it, and I was often unhappy. I was stressed consistently. The game felt like a drug. It got me high, jittery, shaky. I’d forget to eat. I learned pretty quickly that I didn’t even want to go on stream after eating, because food would bring me down and make me feel depressed. I needed to be slightly hungry, amped, wired—basically cracked out. I was completely sober, but the game itself was producing the same effect. Warzone was getting me high, and the more I depended on it, the more trapped I felt by something that had started as pure joy.

We had some genuinely great times on the stream. There were a lot of laughs, a lot of shit-talking, and moments where everything just clicked. I did these stand-up-comedy-style streams where I’d go completely off the rails, saying the wildest things, riffing nonstop, and people loved it. Those were fun. But by June 2021, I was burned out. Even with the income, the followers, the reach—everything I’d been chasing—I felt exhausted and restless. I was obsessed with becoming the top Facebook gamer, constantly looking upward, constantly measuring myself against whoever was ahead of me, and getting pissed that my growth wasn’t accelerating fast enough. I had everything I said I wanted, and it still wasn’t enough.

That summer, I went on a two-week road trip with my family, and somewhere in the middle of it I had an insight: what I really wanted to do was play retro games. Earlier that year, I’d actually experimented with that. I’d gone to a local game store, bought a Nintendo 64 and GoldenEye, and streamed it along with a couple of other retro games. I’d ended up returning the console because the live viewership was way lower than Warzone, so I wrote it off at the time. But something stuck with me. When I looked at the analytics later, I noticed that the GoldenEye livestream behaved differently. Unlike Warzone streams—which would spike while live and then die almost immediately—the GoldenEye stream kept getting views after I went offline. That was unusual. That’s when a light bulb went off. I remember thinking, I think I just found something special.

When I got back from the road trip in July 2021, I leaned into it and started playing retro games seriously. Almost immediately, things went nuts. I streamed Duke Nukem, which I was ridiculously excited about. I played NBA Jam, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and other old classics, and within the first two or three weeks some of those streams exploded. I went back to GoldenEye and even brought over the same guy I’d paid $100 an hour for life coaching earlier. We streamed GoldenEye together, and while the live viewership was nothing special, the replay absolutely detonated in the algorithm. Around the same time, a new Space Jam movie came out, and I streamed NBA Jam, intentionally using keywords to tie into the movie. That stream went crazy too, pulling in close to a million views. The followers poured in.

Because I was a partner by then, my streams earned ad revenue after they went live, which non-partners didn’t get. That GoldenEye stream I did with my friend ran for a couple of hours and ended up making $3,000 in ad revenue. I made three grand streaming GoldenEye for a few hours. I felt like an absolute god. It was finally clear: this was my thing. I’d cracked another code.

If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Games playlist.