This is my journey on Facebook Gaming, where I was one of the top Facebook Gaming partners. I was making more than $10,000 a month. I was getting paid to play with some of the best Warzone players in the world, and my page was just going nuts. I went from being early into Facebook marketing and teaching Facebook Gaming, to quitting gaming multiple times, and then I came back in 2020, got to be one of the very top Facebook Gaming partners in 2021, and then I got demonetized in 2022 after I changed my race.
While I was 100 percent serious about it, all the naysayers and critics, all the people who'd been building up jealousy against me, all came out and attacked so ferociously that the things they made up became more important than me telling the truth of changing my race, which is fully supported by law. It resulted, ironically, in me getting discriminated against for the color of my skin. I'll tell you the whole journey of it right here.
Why I deleted my Facebook page in protest
Some of us think, the way my friend Supo Man put it on Twitch, that 2021 with me on Facebook Gaming looked pretty euphoric sometimes. But inside, for me, it was really stressful a lot of the time. I deleted my Facebook page in protest, because I was so disgusted with Facebook's obvious duplicity, not respecting the law, and not asking me anything at all. When I changed my race, they literally just removed me as a partner, demonetized me, and celebrated it. They never even asked me any questions or any clarification, which, considering I had a manager who was supposed to be there for stuff like that, was pretty disappointing. At the same time, it was not surprising.
I'm very proud that I did it, because I helped millions of people see through the matrix of fake identity separation. So I have no regret. The only regret I have is that I didn't tell anybody about it beforehand, because I knew everybody would try to talk me out of it. I knew if I told everyone, they'd say I shouldn't do that, that the topic was too sensitive, and I thought I'd lose my courage to go forward and do what I thought was exciting, was right, and was useful for humanity. However, if I get any great ideas like that again, I would check with everybody I care about first in the future.
The height of popularity didn't feel like enough
At the height of my popularity on Facebook, I was playing these retro games and getting huge payouts. I did an entire presentation showing people exactly how I was growing, including the minutes people were watching. I had video after video just go viral on retro games and on Call of Duty Warzone. It was everything I had dreamed of, but ironically, it was not satisfying. I very often thought it wasn't enough, and I was stuck in this competitive mindset. I kept looking at Stone Mountain, the top Facebook Gaming partner, and thinking, I want to get above him. I want more followers than him, more viewers than him, and more than everybody else too. It was consistently frustrating.
While to many people this would look like a dream come true — making huge money and having huge popularity playing video games — it felt bad to me. A lot of the time it was stressful. A lot of days I showed up thinking, I hate playing video games for a job. If I didn't play either a retro game, or Warzone, or some popular algorithm hitter, and instead just played a game I wanted to play like Rise of Nations or Returnal, the algorithm would dump all over me, and my videos wouldn't even go out to the people who were paying to support me. There were hundreds of people at one point paying to support me, and when I played games that weren't algorithm friendly, the people paying to support me wouldn't even see it or get a notification.
Don't judge somebody else's outsides against your insides
This is why, if you take anything out of this, don't judge somebody else's outsides against your insides. While I was showing all of this off and explaining exactly how I was doing it, I was really annoyed, and it felt like not enough very consistently. There were days where it was euphoric, where it was awesome, and I loved it, but there were a lot of days where I thought, man, there must be something better to do than this.
After I was demonetized, I remember thinking, great, now I can do something else. I had gotten so tunnel-visioned, because Facebook Gaming was paying so much money and there were so many people watching. There were lots of days I didn't want to play Call of Duty Warzone, but I just showed up and played, because I wanted my paycheck and I wanted the attention. Then I'd get done and feel disgusted with myself.
Some of the days were absolutely awesome. There was a stream where I won five Warzone solo games in a single session. The stream I changed my race on, I won a Warzone solo game right in the middle of this huge controversy. Going viral while I was live, I dropped a win right in the middle of that, and that felt really good.
Facebook was a nasty, toxic platform to stream on
Even before I changed my race, there were so many people who were always being nasty on my Facebook streams. They hated my Warzone playstyle. They said I wasn't really sober, that I was on drugs, that I had kids in the basement — every nasty thing you can imagine, before I ever changed my race. Facebook was such a nasty, toxic platform to stream on. While it did do good, it consistently put people into my live streams through organic traffic. I didn't have to use any paid ads. That organic reach is pretty incredible.
It was a dream come true to play NBA Jam with my shirt off, or GoldenEye, and get hundreds of thousands of views. Almost a million minutes viewed — tens of thousands of hours of people watching me play video games. It was a dream come true in a lot of ways, but most days it was stressful. It felt like I could never do enough, like I never had enough time, because I was also a stay-at-home dad. My wife got a job in 2022, and it definitely lines up that as soon as my wife started a full-time job, I changed my race within three weeks. On some level, I felt like I was trapped in Facebook Gaming.
Now I'm really glad, because they ended up closing Facebook Gaming down completely. I'm glad I was able to exit and have time to set myself up on YouTube, and I'm grateful YouTube fully supported me in changing my race — they never took any of my videos down. Twitch took my channel down initially, but only for two weeks, and then they actually put it back up and apologized after Black celebrities and creators came out supporting me. They said, we're sorry, we took your channel down in error. I've had a lot of things banned and taken down, and very rarely do they ever say they were wrong and apologize for doing it.
What I'd do differently: funnel everyone to Twitch
If I had to do Facebook Gaming again, I would consistently funnel people to Twitch the entire time. One of the best things I did was funnel people over to Twitch, and there were so many people on Facebook Gaming who wouldn't come over. It's crazy — it's like they cared more about the platform they were on than me as a creator. Some of these were people literally paying on Facebook to support me who would not come over and watch on another platform. That was so annoying. (I went deeper on that whole break in why I walked away from Twitch after nine years.)
Some of what I'm most proud of now are the great conversations we had on those streams, which I'm now uploading on my YouTube channels and on my X page. One live stream was awesome, but right before it, I was so frustrated with Facebook Gaming, and it all felt like not enough, that I did a really toxic live stream where I just went off on everybody in the whole gaming system.
What Warzone did to my mindset
Playing Warzone all the time put my mind in this competitive, dominate-others mindset. Even though it was fun sometimes, a lot of the time it was just pure stress and competition. It made it harder to be a good husband, harder to cooperate with my wife instead of competing and trying to dominate her, harder to avoid trying to control my children. There's definitely a way to play video games and have fun, but if you're spending 20 or 30 hours a week in a first-person shooter, it definitely has an effect on the way you see the rest of reality.
There were some amazing times though. One NBA Jam stream had 107 live viewers, and it was amazing. But here's one thing Facebook Gaming tricked me with: a view on Facebook would often be only a few seconds of somebody watching. The average live viewer on that stream only watched 17 seconds, whereas on Twitch the average live viewer watches anywhere from 5 to 20-plus minutes. Having one viewer on Twitch is worth ten or twenty of those Facebook "seconds." I got tricked into thinking my Facebook was doing so much better, because the algorithm would push out my videos after I went live. While that was great for discovery, it set me up to feel like a slave to Facebook Gaming, where I had to just play what the algorithm wanted.
The partner terms and conditions I regret signing
There were also some really disgusting terms and conditions you had to agree to if you wanted to be a partner. The challenge is, when you've set up this fantasy that you want to be a Facebook partner, you see these terms and conditions and a non-disclosure agreement — which I would never sign again. They gave me an absolutely repulsive, shocking list of things I was not allowed to talk about in exchange for being a partner. At that point I realized every other partner had their mouth taped shut too.
Think about it: this was 2021. There were some really hot issues in 2021, and we were not allowed to talk about any of them. You couldn't even say positive things that would make people hesitate. It was absolutely disgusting, and I regret that I signed it. I was so desperate, and I had my heart set on being a partner. I thought about not signing it, but what I ended up doing was just flaunting it. By the time I changed my race, I was flaunting almost all the partner terms and conditions. I was daring them — go ahead and demonetize me. I was going to get demonetized on one thing or another, because it was so addictive. With all the views, attention, and money I was getting, the addictive part of my personality couldn't stop obsessing about maximizing my views and my money on Facebook Gaming.
Getting demonetized set me free
As soon as I got demonetized, it was painful the first couple of days. But after that, I thought, awesome — now I can do something else with my life. Now I've set my life up so that I can truly create without boundaries. I can make music on Twitch. I do crypto videos. I play games on Twitch.
And yet I still struggle, because after all that time I grinded out Warzone, the crazy idea still comes back that being a professional gamer is the best thing I could do with my life. But then I remember: yes, there were absolutely times where it was awesome, where I was as high as you could get sober, and it was so much fun. But there were also times where I'd show up to play Warzone and think, I freaking hate this. I hate people watching me get my butt kicked at Warzone. I hate all the trolls who sit there and say nasty things and snipe at me from behind their phones. I hated all the other streamers for having bigger followings than me. I was annoyed with all the little streamers who were there just clout-chasing — they didn't really care about my stream, they were just dropping stars to get me to give them a shout-out and more followers.
Some community members became one of the biggest liabilities — people who throw out a hundred-dollar tip and then expect me to watch their crappy stream all the time. You have a worthless live stream, you cheat at the game and you're still not even good at it, and you expect me to watch your stream, and then you're all upset because I didn't spend two hours watching after you tipped a hundred dollars. There was no agreement that you give me a tip and I'll watch your stream. It got to be nasty, and it got to be really gross seeing the inside of this.
The friend who wouldn't sacrifice himself on stream
I had a friend I paid to play GoldenEye with me, and the stream ripped and went viral, because my personality plus his personality was a great combination. I'd hired him as a one-on-one coach. We worked together and did drum circles, men's circles, ice baths, yoga, and ecstatic dances. I miss him. He played the one GoldenEye stream with me, but he got burnt out doing the gaming streams pretty quickly. That GoldenEye stream made $3,000 for me in ad revenue — I made $3,000 in an hour and a half playing GoldenEye, because Facebook ripped it all over the algorithm and people watched for an average of about 35 seconds.
He quit coming to play with me because it wasn't fun for him. He was more tuned into his inner guidance. He'd say, this isn't fun, I'm not enjoying this, I'm not going to do it. Even though he had hardly any money — I gave him $500 — he was living in his head and really needed money, but he was not willing to show up and sacrifice himself on stream. He got his butt kicked playing with me usually, and it was so not fun for him that he started ignoring my requests. I'd say, hey, come play GoldenEye, man, I'll give you $200. And he'd literally just ignore it. Looking back, he could see that this was a toxic, life-force-draining activity, and he wasn't willing to trade that for money. He wasn't willing to look stupid on stream for money.
I was willing to look stupid for money — until I wasn't
But I was. I was willing to look stupid on stream for money. I was willing to look insane on stream for money. I was willing to get called every name you can imagine — just give me some money, and you can call me anything. Facebook Gaming, in some ways, was really awesome, and there was euphoria, but there was also so much insanity. Today I look at it as a gift — a gift that, at the time, felt like the worst I'd ever felt as a creator. Getting demonetized off Facebook Gaming was even worse than getting banned from Udemy.
On Udemy, I was running my mouth and telling everything Udemy was doing wrong, criticizing their every move because they were screwing up a lot — like taking my reviews off. I'm not going to shut my mouth for money. I know now that I'm not willing to just be a good boy and collect my paychecks. I'm not willing to censor myself and act a certain way to get money. For a lot of my Facebook Gaming time, that's exactly what I was doing. I'd play whatever game you wanted, just give me money.
I blew up because I was having fun
I'm most proud of the retro games. I originally blew up on Facebook Gaming because I was having fun, and ironically, that's what stands out. Most of the big partners, most of the big streamers on Facebook Gaming, were not having fun. I'm sad to say that by the time I changed my race, that's where I'd gotten to — it wasn't fun anymore. You watch them and they're not having fun either; they're just sitting there grinding for a paycheck.
The reason I really blew up was that when I first started playing Warzone solos, my streams ripped because I was actually enjoying myself and having a blast. I'm also an experienced content creator who has done thousands of hours of live streaming since 2013. I've been on every platform, so I'm practiced and I'm gifted at it. I figured out how to technically work things — you do 80 live streams, test all these games, share a story, and learn how to rip the algorithm. My streams went off again when I started playing retro games like GoldenEye and Family Guy. I went nuts playing all these different games because I was having fun. But by the time I changed my race, there was almost no fun left, and it felt like a prison cell by the time I was done there. (This is the same thing I keep running into on YouTube too — I wrote about why being a big YouTuber is not as fun as it looks.)
Changing my race freed me from the prison cell
Ironically, even though I hated it at the time, changing my race released me from both the mental prison cell of race that I'd been in since I was a kid, and the prison cell of Facebook Gaming. I had identified a certain way because my skin looks this way, even though legally race is a self-defined characteristic that doesn't matter for almost any regular interaction outside of certain circumstances in court.
I want you to remember this, and I'm going to make sure to remember it too: when you're looking at somebody else's outsides, understand what might be underneath. A lot of people looked at me on Facebook Gaming with envy and jealousy. When the tide turned and a bunch of people started hating on me, some of the same people who'd been clout-chasing — throwing stars up, sharing my stream, acting like they loved me — came out with all their jealous, nasty attacks. They were just playing that competition game too.
The people who were there to catch me
The people I'm most proud of are the ones who were there to help catch me — people like Supo Man, Jose, and Lisa, who watched through that entire period and kept showing up. Supo Man said, okay, now that you're not doing Facebook Gaming, you should get into crypto again, we'd really appreciate you back. That kind of loyalty is exactly the energy I try to keep close now in the Jerry Banfield Family.
Now I have a better setup than I've ever had before. I film a couple of crypto videos every day, which takes an hour or so of my time, and that's a full-time paycheck. I can do it in a way that's honest, without lying, cheating, and stealing from people the way most are doing in crypto, and it actually helps people. Then I'm free to play games with no pressure. What I have today is a better setup than I ever had on Facebook Gaming, even though I do miss the Facebook Gaming days sometimes. I did some really amazing streams.
The 18-plus comedy streams
I did some 18-plus comedy streams, and those were wild. I made some jokes that were incredible. I didn't get demonetized for some of the jokes I made, and I really went in on them. Some people said I should be demonetized for them, but really, we should be able to joke about almost anything in life. One of the indications that your health is going to fade and your life force is draining is that you're super serious all the time — that you can't have fun, can't laugh, can't joke around, can't play. So I'm proud that I got out there and made the craziest jokes I could think of, and Facebook let me keep doing it, even though people reported my page, complained, and threatened all kinds of stuff. I got out there, I had fun, and I played hundreds of different games. My live streams went off like crazy.
Leading by example: sober, happily married, and keeping it off
I dispelled a bunch of myths and told people exactly how I did what I was doing. I led by example, I had fun, and I carried a lot of positive messages too. There are millions of people who saw that I was sober. I personally took one guy locally to his first AA meeting after he found me on Facebook Gaming, and a lot of other people told me they went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, or got sober, based on me leading by example.
One of the most common criticisms, when I'm out there with my shirt off, screaming, cussing, and acting crazy, is, "you aren't sober, you can't be like that if you're sober." Wrong. I can be like anything when I'm sober. So I'm proud I carried the message to tens of millions of impressions — that I'm sober, that I lost weight and kept it off, that I'm happily married. I inspired a lot of people while I was on Facebook Gaming, at a time when things were really dark. That was my original intention for being there, and in what some called the woke euphoria of changing my race, I tried to take it to the next level. It turns out I'm better off doing that on Twitch and on YouTube.
Outstanding support as a partner, bot support after
I finally realized this a year after I was demonetized. I was supposed to only be demonetized for six months. Actually, I got re-monetized after a month, celebrated, and told everybody about it — and then somebody manually went in and gave me an additional demonetization without any ongoing violation. I was supposed to be re-monetized and have the violations go away, but then I got an unoriginality-of-content flag for uploading one of my own videos as a clip, and nobody would ever help me with it. All I could ever get was bot support.
As a Facebook partner, I got outstanding support. If I had a problem, somebody would go in and fix it immediately. My page once got flagged for unoriginality of content — a very common problem when streaming — and they fixed it within 24 hours; someone went in and handled it. When I was not a partner, nothing I could do for a year would get that taken off. Other people had very similar struggles. Until I went through my own demonetization, I lacked compassion. After it, I gained a much greater understanding and compassion for other people, realizing how blatantly unfair Facebook was unless you were a partner — unless you were one of the elite with a little badge next to your name. Everyone else got treated pretty poorly.
Why I deleted a page with millions of followers
That's why, in 2023, I deleted my Facebook page, even though it still had millions of followers. If I did a live stream, there'd be hundreds of concurrent viewers right away; if I fired up a Warzone stream, hundreds of concurrent viewers immediately. I deleted the whole page because it had become like an addiction — I couldn't use it without continuing to think about it. I did additional experiments and increased my reach to crazy levels, posting 24 text posts a day and going off in the algorithm again without even streaming. It was quite an adventure, and I'm grateful for it. And I'm grateful I'm not on there anymore.
I joined Facebook in 2005. I deleted my page, which had millions of followers I'd built up since 2013 or so, and I deleted my entire personal account as well. Despite these huge stats — back when we had no strikes and violations — it all ended up meaning nothing. It became more of a liability than an asset. So I also deleted Instagram and TikTok when I deleted Facebook, because I want room to focus on things that are healthy. If you're willing to just get sucked dry as a creator and drained, and let Facebook sit there and take it all from you, then you deserve that.
I'm sad that so many people started playing and watching Warzone because I played it. I was reaching people like Josie, who became one of the main watchers on Facebook and had never played Warzone before she found my live stream. She started playing because she watched me and others play. Now I use YouTube, which gives me a fair share, and I use Twitch. Both these platforms have treated me very fairly over the last couple of years, giving me a fair share of the earnings with equanimity. I had 4,000 videos on YouTube and only one of them ever got a community guidelines violation, and I did go pretty hard directly against the terms on that one. On Twitch, they once ended my page when I accidentally went to a website one of my viewers suggested — I didn't mean for that to happen, and that was only three days. I also spend time on OpenChat and Tagger now, fully on-chain platforms where you can have real ownership by holding the token; Tagger is where I post pictures and make stuff, and OpenChat is like a fully on-chain Discord or Telegram. Because I deleted Facebook and got out of that wormhole, now I'm free. If you want to see where all of those creator-career lessons go next, I keep them going in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
No regrets, one learning opportunity
So I wouldn't take back anything I did on Facebook Gaming. I remember one of the partners I'd worked my way up to — someone who almost never let anybody play with him in Warzone, but eventually let me on his stream. He was pretty upset that I changed my race, and he asked, do you have any regrets? I said no, no regrets. I have one learning opportunity for next time: before I make any major changes, I will talk with everybody else first.
If I were to go back, I would talk to my wife and everybody else beforehand. I would actually reach out to Facebook Gaming in advance instead of surprising them, and say, hey, I'm planning on changing my race — do you have any tips to make this go smoothly? If I'd done that, they might not have demonetized me. If I'd talked to them in private first, they would have been prepared and probably given me a few tips: don't mention this, make sure you say that. They probably would have taken care of me if I'd mentioned it to them first. So from now on, any great ideas I get, I'll make sure to run them by somebody else first, even if it means I might not do it, or I might put it off. I learned these lessons on Facebook Gaming, and I taught everybody this stuff along the way.
If the gaming side of this is what pulls you in, you can watch more of my game streams and gaming videos in my Games playlist — and if you've ever felt that same grind, you might relate to why the hardest thing in gaming is starting a new game. This was quite an adventure I had on Facebook Gaming. It was awesome, and it was hard. There was a lot of learning, and I'm glad I'm not on there anymore. I hope you enjoyed this chapter of my autobiography.