A player of WoW Classic showed his cluttered apartment on Twitch with the phrase: “That’s what rank 14 and depression do to you.” The clip went viral, and people marveled at the chaos with horror. The young man is now cleaning his apartment: There’s quite a bit to do, pizza boxes are piled high, and a mountain of cola bottles needs to be removed.
This is the clip: The streamer says: “That’s what rank 14 and depression do to you” and lets the camera sweep across his kitchen:
- You can see dozens of empty pizza boxes, all apparently from the same delivery service nearby
- The kitchen area is cluttered with opened jars of peanut butter and other spreads – the streamer laughs and says he constantly spills coffee
The clip has now over 150,000 views, while the streamer usually only has around 20 viewers.
I’m cleaning up – just not this year
In further clips, the streamer shows a mountain of cola bottles, more towers of empty pizza boxes and comments:
I have lived here for six or seven years. I have cleaned up. Just this year I decided not to.
Rukk1
Then he receives a valuable tip from a Twitch viewer to crush the cola bottles so that more fit into the waste container.
“Rank 14” in WoW is considered a soul-sucking grind
What’s up with rank 14? In the MMORPG WoW, there was a dreaded grind in the early days that only the toughest players took on. It was necessary to reach rank 14 in PvP. That was a PvP rank in WoW: the High Warlord or Grand Marshal.
The problem was that the rank required you to actually play PvP for 16 hours a day. Because if you took breaks, you would fall behind.
Rank 14 was a brutal grind that only a few managed to achieve and which became a myth over the years about how incredibly hard and addictive WoW was back then: It was a feat that one could really only achieve if they gave up all other aspects of their life, was the general opinion.
The reactions to the clip and the fact that he is now starting to clean his apartment have impressed him. He never anticipated this:
This whole attention is pretty crazy. I actually thought I was only streaming for the usual people who hang around with me. When it took off, it was a surprise, but the overwhelmingly positive reactions were truly overwhelming.
A lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time reached out and said I was doing well. New people encouraged me. They said I inspire them to get their lives together. People sent me messages: Hey, I don’t know you, but I know how you feel, and I’m here if you want to talk.
Rukk1
“I would have never done this alone”
We then asked, admittedly somewhat suggestively, whether it was the case that he had shown his dirty apartment to make his problems public and compel himself to tackle them, if it was “self-therapy through Twitch.”
He said: He knows he would have never done it alone. He told himself he would do it, but it didn’t happen.
Then it reached the point where he said to himself: “Okay, I have no more ideas. Twitch makes me feel mentally well. I’ll stream it and see what happens.”
Showing the dirty room on Twitch and starting to clean up then became an occasion for him to really tackle it. Streaming gave him a new push.
Update 8.10 13:00 Uhr: The story took another interesting turn. Perhaps the clip has had some positive effects. We have again dealt with Rukk1 at MeinMMO:
Twitch streamer plays way too much WoW, clutters apartment – Now being celebrated
WoW established the genre “MMORPG” as a mass phenomenon over 15 years ago in the West. Since then, the image of an MMORPG player who is so addicted to a game that he neglects all other aspects of his life and only lives for the game has been circulating.
We discussed this with an expert on MeinMMO:
Why are MMORPGs addictive? We asked a psychologist.
If you feel uncomfortable and have developed behavioral patterns that you consider negative, you can and should reach out to regional crisis hotlines.
The telephone counseling service can be reached at:
Tel.: 0800 / 11 10 111
Tel.: 0800 / 11 10 222
Available 24/7
www.telefonseelsorge.de
Update: We updated the article on 6.10. at 15:50 with information from an interview we had with the streamer.
In general, WoW was considered an addictive game in the mid-2000s that could destroy lives.
Blizzard later revised the entire PvP system. But with WoW Classic, the grind system returned in its original form in 2019.
Again, it was a brutal grind. The first to reach it did so in February 2020 – many other players broke under the grind. The Twitch streamer Sodapoppin gave up: He is simply too old for it now.
WoW sessions up to 16 hours on Twitch
Statistics say that streamer Rukk1 has streamed more than 10 hours per day in the last 90 days. In August and September, he had many marathon streams in WoW that lasted up to 16 hours (via sullygnome).
Rukk1 likely took on this grind with his hunter “RukknRoll” while apparently neglecting other aspects of his life.
Apparently, he has been subsisting solely on pizza for several months but couldn’t bring himself to dispose of the boxes in any form.
This continues: It’s a strange process happening live.
The streamer Rukk1 seems to fully embrace and flirt with his role as a “depressed nerd.” In Twitch clips, he says: “Showering is for normies.”
He emphasizes his depression.
After the clip went viral, he says in his Discord: “If you’re famous for the wrong reasons, you’re still famous, right?”
One good thing seems to have come from this: Currently, Rukk1 is no longer streaming WoW, but is engaging in “Just Chatting”. He is cleaning his apartment and directly getting tips from the chat on which cleaners to use.
The situation got out of control, but now he’s tackling it
This is what the streamer says: We at MeinMMO could ask Rukk1 some questions after his recent stream where he was cleaning his apartment. When asked about his age, he said he is in his mid-30s.
We then asked him how he was doing. It almost seemed that he was making fun of his depression.
Rukk1 said: He indeed takes his depression lightly, but it’s no joke for him. He has neglected his mental health. The situation got out of control. Now he wants to tackle that.
But he also tries to see the humorous side of his situation – it doesn’t help to just brood over it.
The reactions to the clip and the fact that he is now starting to clean his apartment have impressed him. He never anticipated this:
This whole attention is pretty crazy. I actually thought I was only streaming for the usual people who hang around with me. When it took off, it was a surprise, but the overwhelmingly positive reactions were truly overwhelming.
A lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time reached out and said I was doing well. New people encouraged me. They said I inspire them to get their lives together. People sent me messages: Hey, I don’t know you, but I know how you feel, and I’m here if you want to talk.
Rukk1
“I would have never done this alone”
We then asked, admittedly somewhat suggestively, whether it was the case that he had shown his dirty apartment to make his problems public and compel himself to tackle them, if it was “self-therapy through Twitch.”
He said: He knows he would have never done it alone. He told himself he would do it, but it didn’t happen.
Then it reached the point where he said to himself: “Okay, I have no more ideas. Twitch makes me feel mentally well. I’ll stream it and see what happens.”
Showing the dirty room on Twitch and starting to clean up then became an occasion for him to really tackle it. Streaming gave him a new push.
Update 8.10 13:00 Uhr: The story took another interesting turn. Perhaps the clip has had some positive effects. We have again dealt with Rukk1 at MeinMMO:
Twitch streamer plays way too much WoW, clutters apartment – Now being celebrated
WoW established the genre “MMORPG” as a mass phenomenon over 15 years ago in the West. Since then, the image of an MMORPG player who is so addicted to a game that he neglects all other aspects of his life and only lives for the game has been circulating.
We discussed this with an expert on MeinMMO:
Why are MMORPGs addictive? We asked a psychologist.
If you feel uncomfortable and have developed behavioral patterns that you consider negative, you can and should reach out to regional crisis hotlines.
The telephone counseling service can be reached at:
Tel.: 0800 / 11 10 111
Tel.: 0800 / 11 10 222
Available 24/7
www.telefonseelsorge.de
Update: We updated the article on 6.10. at 15:50 with information from an interview we had with the streamer.
