A good week ago, on a whim, I asked Twitch Partner Help whether I could rename to \u00abStrike\u00bb. I wasn’t even serious about it; I knew, that the account was taken, but had been inactive for long, and being used to the harsh Twitter rules for getting better handles of old inactive accounts, I expected the answer to be \u00abnah, fam\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And initially, it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To comprehend the process better, I asked the rep (@Limealicious<\/a>, btw. She’s a wonderfully sweet individual, her Twitter is full of cute ferret pictures, and she has the perfect voice for voice acting. Seriously. Watch her stream<\/a>.) how it was determined whether a Partner can get a sought-after name or not. The answer was: \u00abI can’t tell you that, but upon review, \u2039Strike\u203a is free after all!\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lying on my sunbed at a really nice beach in Forte dei Marmi, Tuscany, Italy, my jaw dropped down and hit my 50SPF-suncream-covered chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could be \u00abStrike\u00bb on Twitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why could I though? The account of \u00abstrike\u00bb has already been an active account. Yet it had showed to be inactive for a prolonged period: No activity, no profile picture, no graphics, no followed accounts, like four follows (all by other people who had a \u00abstrike\u00bb in their name; I’ll assume they wanted to see when they could get the name. Technically it’s a stolen name, but the long inactivity shows it wasn’t really being used.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, you might think \u00abSo what? It’s just a name, two characters shorter, it’s no biggie\u00bb and I’d understand why you think that. Still, you’d be questioning your General, which means you’d get the dirt road and at least 50 push ups. Anyway, the point is that simple, quick names have a few advantages in terms of marketing, some of which are specific to my situation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, for a channel that is so heavily branded and focuses on cohesive over-the-top brand communication and structure, there are a few disadvantages, some of which were brought forth by brave Strike Force soldiers when we discussed it during a mission this week:<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I thought about it a lot. I had two sleepless nights over it. Limealicious told me that Twitch can’t reserve a username so I could switch in, say, a month, and have enough time to rebrand in the background. If another partner were to come up and want \u00abStrike\u00bb, they’d get it and I’d lose a huge chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked my Command Staff who mostly stood against the change. I spoke to befriended streamers with more reach than me, those who have rebranded or changed names before, for their insight (they all instantly went \u00abdo it or regret it later\u00bb). The topic commanded my thoughts for a good while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I remembered something I swore to myself when I had hours and hours of chill time at the beach to rethink my content:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00abThe last year, all of my stream decisions were fundamentally based on the question:\u00a0\u2039Will this be popular? Will this get me views?\u203a And then when they views didn’t grow, I got frustrated, angry, jealous. I’m done with that. It makes streaming not fun for me anymore. From now on, I’m gonna go with my gut feeling, do what feels right, trust myself more, make this my bitch instead of the other way around.\u00bb<\/p>General Strike, at the fucking beach, yo And so, on Tuesday, I decided to do it. I sent an e-mail to Lime, asking her to change it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I've sent the mail. After hovering over "Send" for like ten minutes.Sliding out of the DM: Like, why?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Decision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I've got a lot of adjustments to do now.
Wow.<\/p>— \u2b50General Strike \ud83d\udd1c Gamescom18 (@StrikeForceGen) August 14, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote>