Episode 45: Geek Interviews: Mental Health and Real Life Rep Grinding with Thyst

Running two successful Blizzard positive podcasts, building a super supportive community, and working in gaming, all while dealing with anxiety and depression can definitely be hard! But our guest today, the incredible Thyst of Lagging Balls, makes it all look easy and completely natural.

Thyst says that the best thing about everything she’s doing is the community her and Laggin Balls co-host, Thorn, have built. They have an extremely active Discord channel where members of their community can share everything from memes and nudes to Blizzard game chatter to asking for help and support. It was really important to Thyst to have the kind of community that builds each other up.

Thyst shares why she started podcasting and how she’s built it from the ground up while dealing with some mental health issues and depression. In fact, World of Warcraft and podcasting is what helped bring her out of her depression — who says gaming is bad for you!

You can say that Thyst has definitely found her spark, which is a GOOD THING because holy crap this woman is BUSY! She recounts a “day in the life” with a typical Tuesday, where she’s out of her house for 12 hours a day talking about video games before coming home, shovelling food into her face, and recording Convert to Raid.

Thyst gives some extremely valuable advice to content creators for getting industry jobs. If you’ve been wanting to take the leap from content creator to professional, you should definitely check this episode out! Super, super useful!

Did you know that Thyst has started working for Blizzard? All her hard work and real life rep grinding has paid off: she was chosen to sideline report at the Mythic Dungeon International in Australia. A literally dream come true!

Thyst talks about her experience as a female Warcraft podcaster, which for the most part has been pretty damn positive! Though she does get the occasional hateful comment or trolling, her community is so full of positive faces, both male and female, that she doesn’t let them get her down.

Her final thoughts? Find your passion, make it work, and get paid doing it!

Quotes

“I always wait for life to happen to me, and then in the last couple years, something lit a fire under my ass cuz I’ve just been grinding and hustling and doing everything I could.”

“Women in eSports are coming, just give it 5-10 years. It’ll start evening itself out.”

Find Thyst Online

Fine Thyst on Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Discord

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please check out some of our others!

• Geek Characters: Glorious Ladies of Warcraft
• Geek Herring & Chill: Upcoming Excitement, Host Updates, & Mental Health
• Geek Girl Community: Support, Sisterhood, and Friendship

Love Geek Herring, please hop over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!

Join us on Discord!

Geek out with Geek Herring Online / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Patreon!

Geekily yours,
Amanda & Monika