Requiescant in pace
It can be quite galling to learn just how fragile most of what we have in the world truly is. Like a delicate ice sculpture, ostensibly steadfast and immaculate, balanced on a graceful pin-prick, all but one errant shove away from shattering into a thousand tiny shards. Such is everything we own, in one way or another, but it certainly is a much warmer and comforting frame of mind to believe in one's own security and the illusion that is 'permanence'. Of course it never hurts to be aware of one's own mortality, it can be a humbling and straitening practise, reminding you never to become too complacent and never to trip into a trap of your own hubris. Because make no mistake, fooling yourself into believing you're invincible is a one-way-trip to falling right into your own hubristic web, tumbling over your manicured world and irreparably destroying all you've built for yourself and those about. Such are responsibilities of a world built around delicacy, for they tend to be... delicate.
All of which is a flowery way of me saying that the blame for the sudden and total collapse of the 'Artesian Builds' PC building company lies solely at the feet of the man who built it, and his actions have soundly ruined what might be safely characterised as 'the perfect gig'. Theirs was a business model built around the creation and shipping of high model gaming PCs for big price points, and as any company with that uber specific audience in mind would strive for, they made the wise decision to target Twitch Streamers for their marketing push. It was a sound strategy, and it worked out well for that initial shot of notoriety. Partner with a Twitch Streamer in order to pimp out your gross gamer-themed energy drink and you might snag a few customers from that viewer base if you're lucky and the moon's are shining bright on you, but send a Streamer a custom built PC and those vectors between the target audience and the marketing audience will clash into beautiful profits. What better advertising could you possibly hope for than literally having a regular and arrested audience enjoying content that is being powered with your product? Demonstration and gratitude, wrapped up in a neat package.
Artesian managed to hit a stride faster than their competition by partnering with just about anybody on the platform with a pulse, which snagged them clients everywhere from small Streamers to huge Streamer networks like OTK. They team bolstered and swelled in kind to the influx of business until they were managing a small army of around 50 employees, probably just enough to keep up with the busy work of building and shipping PCs, managing the now-garishly big marketing effort, and ignoring their smaller creators. Yeah, Artesian sort of developed something of a reputation for allowing anyone to join the club, so to speak, but not really treating all of them equally. Big Streamers could expect regular contact, free gifts and that attention which influencers crave so desperately, whilst smaller Streamers earnt the right to advertise for them. And that's about it. There were a few tiny promises of kick-back profits that would correspond to the number of referral clickthrough's that resulted in purchases, but such deals are typically writhe with so many caveats and meticulously crafted clauses that they're hardly the brilliant deal they're always pitched as.
But how could it be that Artesian lost their interest in supporting the smaller creators? I mean, they seemed to be so homely and approachable what with their regular PC building live streams, more recently coupled with giveaway events for expensive hardware: what about any of that hints at a callous company? Well as it would turn out, it was through these very livestreams that we'd eventually get a spotlight presentation of exactly the sort of mindset that Artesian, or perhaps just their CEO, fostered behind the marketing faces. Which is another example, as though we need one, why your CEO should never be hanging around the front door of your company, speaking with the public and dragging the name of everyone behind them everytime they make a blunder. It really is irresponsible on everyone's part. And if he must make the appearance, for the love of god don't let the idiot wear his Starlord cosplay. Please.
In a livestreamed giveaway this CEO, now widely known as 'Discount Starlord', or as I like to call him 'Crapp Pratt', aired to the world exactly what kind of person he is, the standards his company operate under, and why most people really probably don't want to be associated with him or his team. The magic moment came when one small Streamer who was picked from a random onscreen raffle, won themselves an expensive PC giveaway. What should have been a moment of celebration took a wholly uncomfortable and weird turn when Crapp immediately launched into investigating their analytics live on stream to find all the ways that this small creator wasn't worthy of the giveaway prize they'd just won according to watch-time, click-through rates and the general size of their audience. Just to be clear, none of these specifications were announced before the giveaway, they were conjured on the spot. And if you think that Crapp here was tactful about the surprise rejection... he wasn't. Transcribing his words doesn't do a lick of justice for demonstration how he justified his actions, and even if I did regularly embed videos I wouldn't want his smarmy mug on my blog for a thousands miles. All I can say is that in England we have a word for people like him who speak in the way that he does, and it's starts with C.
This was a man who had offered out his hand to feed scraps to the community only to shut it when he didn't like the look of those who took up the offer. One creator was too small, another didn't have a click through in their fourth months of partnering, neither asked to be mocked and insulted on a Live Stream by the presumably well-off CEO of a multimillion dollar company. And as you can imagine, that did not go down well with the community. The Twitch community, moreso than most other content creator groups, tends to be very protective of their own and tuned into pretty much every potentially-viral word that is mentioned on or about their platform. So when word starts going around that Artesian Builds screws over smaller creators, does so in a callous and sing-song voice, and has a CEO with a face so punchable I can only assume he has to leave the house with a full face-mask for fear of coming home with a face like a walnut, those who are partnered are going to start rethinking their relationship.
Artesian sparked a wave of backlash, their CEO dragged himself in front of a camera to squeeze an apology out of his fisted glove and agree, under perceivable duress, that giveaways should be available to all creators, big or small. But as some might say, it would seem that Artesian's Doomsday clock hit midnight. They lost their partnerships, big and small, as everyone fled the apparently soulless company, (including OTK) competitors swooped in to snatch up the bereaved and score a quick swig of good publicity and, almost by clockwork, some shady tax filing dealings by Artesian were dragged into the light and the company had an even bigger enemy on the horizon. On the heels of a single livestream, they had lost their reputation, the lionshare of their biggest Twitch Partners, their lucrative sponsorships with Intel (Intel pulled out so quickly you'd have thought they were there watching the livestream themselves) and ended up under investigation by the Franchise Tax Board. Lock up your CEOs, everybody; they're a menace to society!
In the wake of this, rather understandably, Artesian Builds ceased production. That's probably mostly due to the last issue, pissing off the tax man is a pretty quick way to get your business licence revoked, but the immediate dissolution of their entire target market means that even if they manage to scrape their way out of this through that employee buy-out they're considering, there's no business waiting for Artesian on the otherside. In the space of a single week the world moved on and fifty people lost their jobs, all because of the machination of one crappy Starlord cosplayer who happened to be a CEO. And just like that, the ice sculpture slipped and a perfect iron grip on the streamer customer base shattered into a million irrecoverable pieces in the blink of an eye. Life is fragile everybody, always respect that.
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