HotWheelsVroom

Hello. I am a former Spectrum Internet / Spectrum Cable customer as we ditched Spectrum last year and switched to Fastwyre Fiber. So far, I have been loving Fastwyre, they have been a joy to work with. A breath of fresh air. But, before that, we were, sadly, a Spectrum customer. And my experience with Spectrum was nothing short of awful. I at some points had constant breakdowns due to Spectrum’s horrible and downright dogwater internet service. They were always a pain to deal with and was always the most frustrating ISP we have ever dealt with. They really were a nightmare to deal with on certain days. They seriously pissed me off. I wanna explain every reason I hate Spectrum with all of my heart, and list some redeeming qualities as well.

As a Charter Communications customer for over 10 years (including Spectrum years), we expected to be treated fairly and had decent if not good speeds. Nope! As soon as they completed the merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House, it all went to crap. Speeds of our router slowed down gradually over time with no signs of ever stopping. At some point, we were getting less than a quarter of their actual speeds. It was the absolute worst during the pandemic when everyone was needing access to COVID-19 information like info as well as locations to where they could take their vaccines. It slowed down 10x as much. We switched to them when they were still a separate company known as Charter Communications, and for a bit, they were actually fairly decent. Now, I'll admit, it wasn't the greatest internet in the world, but it was at least digestible and we could do stuff like browsing the internet without a hitch. But then, we started to hear about mergers taking place. They started with Bright House, which was a smaller ISP company. There was nothing up about that merger, so we thought nothing of it. We still got relatively the same speeds we were getting before with no problems or issues. So, that merger was basically a nothing burger to us. It was the merger with Time Warner Cable that was when things started to go south. First up, the name change to Spectrum. What kind of name is that? Second off, speeds were hit. Our internet got slower pretty much soon after the merger with TWC took place. And lastly, the monthly bill for our internet skyrocketed and went up significantly. What happened? And it was the worst during the pandemic. It went down, like 10+ times a day. It was a nightmare.

So, here's the thing about our connection. Our connection was always usually unbearably slow. I swear, it sometimes felt like we were still on dial-up internet with America Online at some points. The internet would always be slower than the speeds we were promised by Spectrum on their website. You see, we had the usual, standard 200mpbs package for around $80 a month when we were with Spectrum. However, we got barely even a quarter of that. The speed was always usually somewhere around maybe 30 - 40 megabits per second according to the Speedtest website, and it literally made doing even the basic of things on the internet nigh on impossible. The internet would consistently cut out multiple times throughout the day, sometimes for extended periods of time, and would always be happening in the middle of the day. We either would get disconnected from our internet 5 - 6 times every day, or our internet would be slow to the point it is practically unusable. Even fidgeting with Airplane Mode on my computer did nothing if I was experiencing connection issues. It honestly felt as slow as a sloth sometimes. And this really made basic things like gaming and streaming impossible. One time, I was trying to watch a Twitch stream on my laptop at the time that since got scrapped. Oh my god, the buffering was atrocious. The stream kept buffering every few minutes or so and it literally made the entire stream unwatchable. It actually, honestly, pissed me off and it made me just leave the stream entirely. I wish I was able to just cancel Spectrum right then and there. That day will never be forgotten in my eyes. Spectrum was just yanking our chains at this point, treating us like complete arse. That day seriously made my blood boil because all I wanted to do is relax and watch a Twitch stream. Absolutely atrocious behavior from Spectrum. I was merely trying to relax and watch a stream, and I couldn't even do that because of the constant amounts of buffering. The throttling was absurd and ridiculous to the point the stream was just unwatchable and I had to leave because of the constant issues. No, I didn't leave the stream because I was bored or something like that, I left because of the fact that Spectrum couldn't maintain a stable connection while I was trying to watch a Twitch stream. That day still left a bad taste in my mouth, because I was watching a streamer that I actually enjoyed watching and loved. It was annoying to have to deal with constant and absurd amounts of buffering because Spectrum didn't know how to keep my connection and speed higher than practically the speeds of dial-up internet.

In fact, I couldn’t even simply browse the internet on certain days without Spectrum deliberately freezing or straight up throttling my traffic. Websites would load like a snail, and sometimes would refuse to load at all. Sometimes, it got so slow that I couldn’t access about 99% of websites without being shown the infamous Chrome dinosaur. The fact that I kept seeing that dinosaur on my screen so constantly just proves how inconsistent and unstable their internet is. The internet, at a point, literally got so slow that it didn’t even exceed a single megabyte in speeds. Yep, you heard me. Less than a megabyte both down and up at one point (it hit 0.16 mbps down and 0.02 mpbs up). It is the all-time record for slow Spectrum speeds for me personally. I truly couldn’t enjoy my time on the internet with Spectrum due to their inconsistent and crappy speeds. It would get so bad to the point where I would have to use my mobile hotspot pretty much 100% of the time. I shouldn't have had to use my mobile hotspot practically the entire time to have the goddamn ability to simply browse the freaking web. It is so unbelievably dumb and stupid.

In fact, sometimes I was hit offline while I was playing games. Constantly. In the middle of online games. I was in the middle of online play and usually would get thrown off and be disconnected from the instance or the game lobby. This meant that I was unable to play with my friends and unable to play online until Spectrum would get their crap together. And if it was a game that had a cooldown/ban system in place, that meant that if I got knocked off of my internet, I was the one who would receive the punishment, not Spectrum, who was the actual perpetrator, since they were the ones messing with my connection. There was one particular instance regarding this that I will never, ever forget about. There is this one online sports game called 3on3 Freeestyle. It is a 3 vs 3 online basketball game where two teams of 3 players would try and score points by passing the ball to their teammates and trying to land the ball in the hoop. You got points every time you would score. I used to like this game a lot, but the grindy mechanics, ignorant and sometimes braindead teammates, and this particular instance that made me truly despise the game. You see, one of the days I was playing this game, I was in the middle of multiple sessions and was disconnected every single time. And do you know what happens if you are disconnected for whatever reason? The whole match is forfeited. The match is determined a 'no contest' if a player leaves or is disconnected. And this happened every time I was disconnected because of Spectrum's bad internet service. It got so bad that players started to report me for intentionally disconnecting from the game, and as such, I later got hit with a 24-hour ban from the game. Yep, you heard me right. A full day ban because of internet issues. I was so pissed off about this and I even complained about this to JoyCity's support email, and they said that they were aware of the ban restricting me from playing the game and basically told me to make sure my internet was working properly. Yeah, "get better internet", as if it was even possible in the first place. I have never forgotten about that day and I will especially never forgive Spectrum for getting me falsely temp banned from a game that I was enjoying. I no longer like this game; in fact, I hate it, which is in fact mostly due to the game's core design, not this Spectrum incident. But, it's still notable regardless.

And oh boy, their Customer Service to us in particular was incredibly unhelpful and quite frankly assholes at times. All we were doing was just explain that our speeds were constantly going down the crapper and all the time the only response that we got was to restart the router/modem and try again. Sometimes, the reps were just assholes and hung up on us. Your customer is trying to get help, and you just hang up the phone on them purely out of spite? Shame on you! Imagine if I was working for an ISP and I just hung the phone up on you without even helping you! You’d be rightfully pissed off! Well, don’t do that crap to us! Well, once they did finally get technicians out there, they only made things worse. First one installed a new router that made our internet go out twice as frequently within the first 5 minutes of it being installed, and the other one changed everything on the box outside of our house, and still made it worse. How do you send two tech guys out and have them manage to make our internet worse? But, he most notable part is that they were just usually outright unhelpful. Every single time we called their Customer Support we only got more questions and got basically nowhere closer to a solution. We always got the same cookie-cutter response every time we called, which is 'put a pin in the back of the router, and restart it'. I've heard this line so many times that I probably can recite it word for word now. We have even told them that we have tried this multiple times and that it didn't work out for us. They would then just tell us the same thing again and expect a different result. Isn't that the definition of insanity? Trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result? I'm not 40 years old and I have stated that this solution did not work 99% of the time. It would usually take so much pestering and complaining to get them to finally get technicians out to take a look at it, and they usually didn't really do anything to fix our connection, or would somehow make it even worse than it already was.

In fact, there was one time that our internet was out for a whole 3 hours with no word or ETA from Spectrum. It just went down and we did not get a single word or message from them. Everything went down, the phone, the internet, and the cable. We could not access anything, we could not make calls, we could not go online, and we couldn’t even watch TV. Every bit of our Spectrum service was down. We just had to sit there and wait for the braindead employees to get it working again. It would have been nice if we were given a word on if there was an outage or if there was scheduled maintenance for our area. Nope! We couldn’t even call them to find out what was going on. We just had to sit there for 3 hours waiting for our service to be restored. It took over 3 hours for them to fix our service, the longest outage we have ever faced. And I know others might not be so lucky. Some of you have outages going on for more than a day. A week. Possibly even a month. Some of you may be really unlucky with a year-long outage, but I don’t know. Probably not. A week outage, though? More likely, in my opinion. But, the thing is, extended outages are in fact documented.

And despite all of that, Spectrum’s prices were always outrageously expensive. At one point, the subscription we had to Spectrum Cable literally caused our price to go over $300 on the day our payment was due. Literally. We had to pay that much, and that was the time when we still had the cable portion of our service before we cut cord due to it making our bill insanely expensive. And even when we got rid of Spectrum Cable, our bill for the internet and phone combined still exceeded over $100 per month. We were still expected to pay this much for internet that never worked. And it was like this every month. In fact, it continued to rise every month that we continued to be on Spectrum. We barely had enough left by the end of it. Thanks to my autism check, it was just always barely enough to pay for most of the things we have in our house, like internet and water. So, thankfully, my check managed to keep us from going homeless due to Spectrum’s insane prices for poor service. If it weren’t for that check keeping us afloat, we’d have been on the streets by now, so I am thankful that check kept us from being evicted. Despite all of our complaints with Spectrum's service, we were still having to pay over $200 a month for their services. And that was when we had cable. Even though we had numerous complaints with their services, we were still expected to pay premium for the services we were being offered. That is straight up theft! Why would you expect us to continue paying for a service that we did not even get? If our internet went down, we had to suck it up and pay for it, regardless of how our bad our service was. They did not care. And guess what? We had to completely cut off our Spectrum Cable subscription due to this. It was the main reason our Spectrum service was so damn expensive in the first place. Taking that off took a massive weight off of our shoulders. But, it was still stupidly expensive despite us cutting the cord on our cable subscription. Over $100 a month alone just for the internet and phone. It was absolutely ridiculous.

And speaking of Spectrum Cable, there was barely anything good on our subscription. Every time, there was always good channels getting replaced with channels we have never heard of. I was extremely upset when the good retro channel INSP was replaced with GRIT. INSP was a TV channel where we would watch a lot of classic shows that my uncle who passed away a while back grew up with. He was furious when GRIT replaced INSP, and I can’t blame him. GRIT was just a TV channel with nothing but random Western shows that we truly didn’t even care about. Spectrum replaced a channel we loved with a channel we couldn’t care less about. Thank God that they never touched MeTV while we were still on cable, or there would’ve been a riot. So, for explanation, INSP was a channel that was bundled with our cable package that included a lot of shows my uncle grew up with, such as the likes of The Rifleman, Highway to Heaven, and Little House on the Prairie. It was a channel my uncle tuned into frequently. One day, though, the channel number that INSP was on was replaced with a channel known as GRIT TV. The channel was purely a channel that was full of random Western shows, and it completely replaced INSP on our cable package. It wasn't moved to another channel, it was full on-replaced with a filler channel full of shows we didn't even really care about. And my uncle was angry. He was so mad that a random filler channel replaced a channel he loved. The channel MeTV, another channel he tuned into frequently, was thankfully, never touched.

Also, Spectrum had two contract disputes. One with Viacom (now known as simply Paramount Global), and one with Tribune Broadcasting. The Viacom one was set to bring all Nick channels offline, and thankfully, that never happened. But, the Tribune one happened, and it took our local news channel owned by Fox offline. So, now, there was no way for us to get weather on TV, and it pissed off Chiefs fans who were looking forward to seeing them in the Playoffs (this happened in 2019). The Viacom one was from 2017 (roughly) and was set to bring all Viacom related channels offline. So that meant all of the Nick channels like Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and TeenNick were gonna go dark unless Spectrum and Viacom reached an agreement to keep the channels online. I got super upset about that and I made an angry video about it while the dispute was ongoing. Thankfully, they both reached a long-term agreement to keep all of the channels running before the blackout date, which was unbelievably good news. However, I cannot say the same for the dispute with Tribune. So, Tribune Broadcasting is the broadcaster that owns our local FOX channel, FOX 4. This is the channel where we usually got our news updates from when we still had our cable subscription. Unfortunately, the contract was set to expire soon and both Spectrum and Tribune got into a dispute over the agreement, just like with Viacom previously. We thought that everything was gonna go swell, but no, not at all. The blackout date came, and our local news channel went dark. This made us so mad, but not for the reason you might think, which is related to the Chiefs. No, it was actually because we were now technically no longer gonna get our news updated until the blackout was to be resolved. This meant no news unless we went online for the news. So, now, we had no way to stay up-to-date on what was happening in our local area. But, the thing is, the people it really upset were, actually, the Chiefs fans. The Playoffs were set to happen a little while later, and the blackout basically eliminated the chances for the Chiefs fans to see them in the Playoffs that year, in 2019. So, NFL fans were left high and dry in our local area. It took a while for them to actually reach a long-term agreement to restore programming, too. So, we at least got our local new channel back in the end, which is good, since we got our news station back and we were able to keep up-to-date with our local news again.

And oh man, when we had cable, the commercial breaks were awful. Let me sum it up for you. Spectrum ad. Spectrum ad. Medicare ad. Medicare ad. Spectrum ad. Medicare ad. All day, non-stop. I truly was getting fed up with all of the Spectrum ads and Medicare ads! For one, we already have Spectrum, why are you showing us ads for a product we already have, and, quite frankly, don’t like? And two, why are you showing us these stupid Medicare commercials 24/7? Oh my God, the ones starring Joe Namath and Jimmie Walker were the most rampant when we had cable. I hated that Joe Namath went from being a former NFL quarterback to a person lying about Medicare benefits, and I hate Jimmie Walker’s stupid voice. Him saying “It’s FREE!” in that stupid high pitch drove me to madness. The commercial breaks were truly the worst. The Kay Jeweller's ad with that stupid “You Are The Reason” song made me wish I was deaf on numerous occasions. Spectrum’s ad breaks on cable were abysmal and I am so glad we cut the cord on them so we didn’t have to listen to any more of Spectrum’s stupid showboating, the cringe ads, or the blatant and downright scam ads.

And also, speaking of their commercials, I hate them with a burning passion. Spectrum ads are the pure equivalent of cringe and blatant dishonesty. I had to listen to them lying during commercial breaks practically every single day. It was absolute, pure torture. I hate those commercials because of the fact they are nothing but just showboating about how good their services are, like "We provide fast speeds at a reasonable price" and stuff like that. It was basically them just telling people that they are an amazing and reliable internet service provider and that they have some of the best cable packages on the market. I hated the fact that they played their own commercials alone, and it was even worse having to hear it over and over again, especially considering the fact we were already on Spectrum to begin with. These ads are just nothing but blatant lies and deception used to trick potential customers into buying their service. In fact, I am not surprised a cable ISP provider is lying to people who are looking for a new internet provider, since they've lied to us constantly before. But hearing their ads play every commercial break was exhausting and annoying, considering we already had them and hated them as it already is. The ads are deceptive marketing that is nothing but lying to potential customers and I hate those ads so much. The ones I hated the absolute most are primarily the Spectrum Business commercials. These particular ones were overplayed to death on our cable package. These ads are the worst offenders when it comes to these Spectrum commercials, as not only do they lie to customers, but they also lie to people who are looking to start a business. The one that was overplayed the most was the Spectrum Business ad where Spectrum called rival ISP companies and made them give their opinions and thoughts on Spectrum, which were always positive. This is the Spectrum ad that made me internally furious every single time it played during an ad break, and that was mainly because of the premise of calling rival internet providers to give out their thoughts on Spectrum. I am pretty sure that the ISP companies in this particular ad were either bribed by executives and the Spectrum corporate ladder or forced to say positive things about Spectrum. Either way, their ads were straight-up garbage and I hated listening to them every time they aired. I think their commercials are in fact robotically awful, and we had to listen to this crap every commercial break. It was simply torture hearing them showboat about their service when we know for a fact that they were lying because of all of the complaints we have had to make against them over the years. I was so tired of it. The commercials just drove me up the wall.

And let's not forget, Spectrum has three different cable packages that are basically separate tiers. The three tiers in question are Silver, Gold, and TV Select. All of them are garbage cable plans outright. Do you wanna know what our cable package was full of? Nothing but filler channels galore apart from a handful of channels that we actually did watch and care for. There was, like, a never-ending sea of other channels that were just filler channels that were probably only used to jack up the price of the subscription packages in question. There was barely anything good on our cable package, and the only way we could get more channels was to go to channel 2495 to upgrade our package. And again, all of these packages are garbage cable plans. No channels that you actually wanna watch, but a hundred dozen channels that you don't care about or don't watch like WGN, which I know for a fact very few people watched despite maybe a small minority of Spectrum Cable customers. There was, like, literally endless amount of channels on our cable package that we literally didn't even care about or didn't really watch regardless. And this contributed to the extremely and absurdly high price for our subscription bill. Why are you making us pay for channels that we don't even watch or care about? It makes zero sense for us to be paying for channels that none of us tune into. I know for a fact no one in my household watched WGN, yet we were still expected to pay premium for a channel that we didn't even view. Every package on Spectrum was like this when we were a customer, and in fact, it probably still is like this even to this very day. Why? Money, of course! But hey, you still get like thousands of channels to watch, huh? Yeah, right. Thousands of filler ones, that is. Most of them probably not even good.

The only good thing I can say about Spectrum's cable package was that they had an actually good original show. There was one particular show that was part of their Spectrum Originals lineup that I actually watched through to the very end and ended up actually enjoying. This show in question is called "Curfew". This is a British dystopian drama show that is essentially Death Race meets The Purge. This show is about a deadly race that happens only during the curfew hours one day a year (hence the show name Curfew) that was a race to determine who would be able to leave Great Britain. The Great Britain in question is one riddled with a nasty, deadly infection that was resulted from a man-made virus, and as such, Britain implemented a curfew that happens every 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. under the guise it would be to protect the civilians from the virus and the mooks. This essentially turned Great Britain into a totalitarian state, and a handful of people sick and tired of the curfew enter themselves into a deadly, illegal 1,000 kilometer street race from London to Scotland to win their freedom and escape the regime and the virus. The contenders would use souped-up, modified cars that resemble some of the cars from the Mad Max films in terms of style and design, and the winner of the race would win the ultimate prize, which is moving to a sanctuary island, a rumored 'safe haven' and safe space for whoever was lucky enough to win it. This show was originally broadcasted on Sky One in the United Kingdom before being added to the Spectrum Originals lineup here in the United States. And for some reason, I actually enjoyed this. I watched it through to the end, which is something I don't usually do with TV shows. It might have a mixed reputation, but I actually liked the show's concept, even if it was just a mash up of The Fast and the Furious, Death Race, and The Purge. Honestly was surprising I was even able to watch the series to the end given Spectrum's shoddy service and bad internet. Usually I would never be able to do that with them.

And oh man, don’t even get me started on that “Directory Assistance” nonsense. It was this stupid phone number that we used frequently if we needed to find a business. Whenever we called, their automated bot responds and asks for the name of a city and/or business. Every single time, the bot either gave us the wrong business or said the name of cities or businesses incorrectly. Their stupid bot made me wanna pull my hair out on numerous occasions. It always took so long before the bot gave up and connected us to an operator who actually would usually send us to the correct place. Sometimes, they also gave incorrect businesses or were complete assholes who just hung the phone up on us, but that was rare, the operators were usually really nice even though we could barely hear a word that they were saying. And every time we were in fact hung up on or given an incorrect business through an operator, we’d have to go through the stupid bot again, and every time we had to, it only made me wanna pull out my hair even more. We had to go through this stupid bot 3 times at one point before an operator gave us the correct business. That day was especially a nightmare. And besides, we already have Google. Why would you go through this crap when a far better tool already exists? It really makes no sense. Google is far more reliable than Directory Assistance, and it is much easier to access the things you need, when you need them.

And lastly, for a while, we were stuck with Spectrum whether we liked it or not. For quite some time, we were stuck under a stupid monopoly that essentially made them the only ISP that was available in our rural area, and they for sure took advantage of that. Before Spectrum, we actually had a few ISP providers available to us; in fact, we used to be subscribed to D-Link, which I honestly think was turbo shit (don't wanna get into the shit we had to deal with on D-Link). And before we went to Charter Communications, we were on Virgin, which was pretty bad, and then we went to DirecTV and then DISH Network. And then, Charter came into the picture and was honestly a breath of fresh air for us, since we needed reliable broadband internet. And then, well, everything that could go wrong with Spectrum did go wrong, and it went to crap. And because of the monopoly, we were stuck with them. You see, when a ISP controls an entirety of a town or city, it's called a monopoly, and Spectrum had it in our are for a while. Because of that, we actually considered moving on numerous occasions to places that offered Google Fiber, but we couldn't due to certain reasons I don't wanna discuss. We could not switch providers because of the fact Spectrum was in control of our area. It was either Spectrum or no internet at all, and unfortunately for us, we needed internet, so we had to suck it up and deal with it. And I hated it. In these cities or towns, if Spectrum has a monopoly in that said city or town, then that means they are the only option available to that particular city or town, and everyone who lives inside of it is forced to go with Spectrum whether they like it or not. And because of them being the only option available, they are also listed as the only ISP in that city or town that is not ridiculously overpriced, and they take advantage of that as well. They will do whatever they please and no matter how much the people in that city or town complain, whoop, holler, and shout, Spectrum will not have any sort of action taken against them as they are the only option available in that particular city or town, and the people are either forced to go with it, or move out of the city. And it should be illegal for any ISP to have a monopoly in any sense of the word, regardless of how big or small they are.

Alas, the good news is that I am no longer a Spectrum customer. Finally, in 2024, Fastwyre Broadband began offering their fiber-optic services in the very tiny, small town we reside in. My father had a few chats with one of the people working for Fastwyre, and they seemed to be very promising and were looking to be a breath of fresh air. They were offering speeds Spectrum could never provide, and they also stated the pricing, which was so much more cheap and affordable compared to Spectrum. And so, we decided to go through with Fastwyre, expecting it to be too good to be true, and we finally got a installation date of May 1st, 2024. And when the day finally came, we got our new router supplied by the company, and we disconnected our Spectrum router and internet service before being able to finally cancel our Spectrum subscription and service.

And let me tell you, switching was the best decision we have ever made. Our internet has always been constantly and consistently up, even during the worst of weather. Our speeds have been nothing short of incredible as well. We always get a staggering 800mpbs down and 700mbps up every single day, and whenever there is a service outage, it usually happens late at night when we are all in bed, and it always takes them less than 5 - 10 minutes to restore our internet. I have never, ever had a single complaint towards or about Fastwyre, and the best part is that we got our first month of service with them completely on the house and didn't have to start paying until next month (June 2024). And guess what? The cost of our service has never went up in price as far as I am aware of and has mostly stayed at the price when our service was first installed. I think we are still paying just $59.99 a month (roughly $60/month) compared to Spectrum prices. And, so far, I have never had to contact Customer Support in any way, shape, or form. It's so reliable and consistent, no matter the season or time of day, which makes calling them just seem completely pointless, in a very good way, of course. We've had our Fastwyre Fiber service for only a year and roughly 7 months, and it has stayed the same. To say that I love Fastwyre would be an understatement. They are the dream ISP I wish we could've had years ago, and they are 100,000,000 times better than Spectrum. I love them and I cannot recommend them enough. And the funny part is that over the past year we've had Fastwyre installed, Spectrum's been constantly sending us junk mail in a desperate attempt to get us back by offering us price cuts and discounts for being a long-time customer. Haha. Classic. How do you think that is gonna work on us?

Also, a little extra funny story: My dad said that the guy that installed our fiber-optic Fastwyre service was, funnily enough, a former Spectrum customer himself. My dad told me that he had Spectrum for quite a while and absolutely despised and hated them with a burning passion like we all did, and when he was finally able to switch ISP provides, presumably to the one he's working for now, Fastwyre, he called up Spectrum to cancel his service as he found new internet service. Well, they did finally listen to the man and cancel his service, and before he hung up the phone, he gave Spectrum a very kind and friendly "f off", then hung up. What an absolute mad lad. I love that dude for that.

In short: Spectrum is an awful ISP and cable provider, and if you can switch to a better ISP, definitely do so.

You people outright need to stop making BS excuses entirely to blame us for our financial woes and especially give us useless advice that doesn't help us. You're making a fool out of yourself.

"You made bad decisions!" - Well, I'm so freaking sorry the only jobs I can apply for are garbage jobs in retail work or jobs at fast food establishments like McDonald's and Wendy's. I can't find anything better because every decent paying job that will actually help me rejects my application or just refuses to respond to it. Sometimes, even the fast food jobs reject my applications and I literally am unable to work at all. How is job hunting and getting applications rejected 50 goddamn times over or only being able to work at jobs that pay the least is a 'bad decision'? That is absolutely ignorant.

"Just work harder!" - You can be working your goddamn ass off at a full-time job for 40 plus hours a week and still barely get anything back, if anything at all. I could be working 3 part-times at once and still not have enough money to pay for my egregious rent. What do you mean 'work harder'? I'm already working as hard as I can and am still unable to keep up with the prices to afford basic essentials. Working any more jobs at once is just asking for me to 100% overexert myself for barely anything back.

"Stop being poor, then!" - Oh, wow. Great advice, thank you tons! That's what I am TRYING to do. But in the here and now, being poor is more likely for low-income people than being financially stable. I'm sorry that I can't work in the first place due to having disabilities. I'm literally 23 years old, still living with my parents who are also going through the same shit as me, and can't even afford my own place to live. Thank you for the utterly useless advice. How I'd love to stop living in poverty, but I literally am unable to make any money for myself and I don't even have a credit card. Trying to get out of this is what I WANT to do, but can't. This advice is not only unhelpful but also incredibly rude and condescending. You're making it out like it's so easy to get out of poverty. Newsflash, buddy - it's not. You are seriously arrogant if you say this. In fact, telling someone that they need to 'stop being poor' is like telling a homeless person to buy a house. How they'd love to do that, but they're literally HOMELESS!

"Join the military!"- And come out with lifelong trauma and basically have my soul and spirit broken? Nah, hell no, dude. I'm not putting myself through this, especially when I am on the spectrum and have ADHD and probably PTSD as well. I've already seen and heard horror stories in war and I wouldn't be able to deal with the stress and the anxiety that comes from fighting in the armed forces. No way in hell are you convincing me to join the Army. I have already played Spec Ops: The Line and I've seen the real horrors of war firsthand. I came out of that game absolutely traumatized. There's one scene in the game where you have to bomb a refugee camp to the ground with phosphorus bombs. That image of the burnt carcass of a mother holding onto her child has been seered into my brain forever. No way in hell I will ever be joining the military when I've already seen the true pain war inflicts on soldiers, so I wouldn't be able to handle it in a physical setting. I'd end up having a COMPLETE breakdown.

"Get a job!" - I literally can't. I have already been deemed 'unworkable' by a doctor due to my disabilities. How is it possible for me to get a job when I have already been told I can't work? By a doctor, no less? In fact, on top of that, I would probably not last a day or two in a workplace environment and would probably lose my job and get fired almost immediately because I would be so damn stressed out. How would I even be able to find work in the first place? My disabilities make it impossible for me to work in the first place. You probably wouldn't last a day in my shoes with the disadvantages I have. You would be completely lost. The only way I am even able to make a little extra money for my family is some program I luckily got approved for that gives us a LITTLE bit of extra money for work my dad does around the house. It has taken a big weight off of my shoulders.

"Go to college!" - How is being able to get a degree by going to college possible when I have no money to go to college in the first place? I don't have, like, thousands upon thousands of dollars to hopefully go to college and get a degree. Besides, colleges have the ability to reject applications if they deem that you aren't worthy enough to enroll as a student. And also, these things aren't cheap, they are ridiculously expensive to afford, especially for the far more prestigious colleges like Stanford and Harvard. I was barely able to graduate high school due to bad teachers, leadership, and management during my Junior and Senior years. I do not want to go through that kind of experience again, and I don't even have money to do this in the first place. And the fact you HAVE to have a degree to be able to apply for certain jobs is utterly ridiculous bullshit. It's like they just make it so much harder for people in poverty by shutting them out of job opportunities for not having a stupid-ass college degree. Going to college is not possible for me and it would probably suck. I'd rather go to a trade school than go to a college or a university.

"Stop living in America!" - Are you actually stupid or something? We can barely keep up with the rent. How would we even be able to leave the country and go to another country like Canada? You have to pay for a ton of expensive things like a house to live in, a hotel to stay in for a few days, a flight to even get to the country in the first place, and you also have to have a ton of shots, visas, and passports to even get the damn approval to leave the country. We can't even move to another city at the moment, let alone state! Moving to another country entirely is flat-out impossible. We can't afford to travel and we're stuck in this dumpy ass apartment that we've lived in for over a decade where the rent is surprisingly low. Trying to save up to be able to move to another goddamn STATE is already hard enough as it is with our situation, and I have never been able to go on a proper vacation. Moving countries is only possible if you already have the funds to. And we don't. We're still struggling to afford rent for our apartment, for Christ's sake!

"Unworkable is not a disease!" - I'm sorry, do you even have a brain? Being unworkable literally kills your chances of even being able to work, especially when a goddamn doctor has told you so. If a doctor tells you that you can't work, it's because you have a disability that makes you unable to work. This is absolutely one of the STUPIDEST arguments I have ever seen. I cannot believe there's people that think like this and think it is still possible for people deemed unable to work to be able to do so. Guess what? I have already been told I can't work due to my disabilities. End of story. My chances of going to a workplace or any job for that kind of matter have just been thrown out the window. I'm sorry that you can't accept that. It's like you're in some way telling me my disabilities are fake. They're not. I have ADHD and probably also have PTSD, which are real disabilities that can affect someone negatively in a workplace. Having these disabilities is not as easy as you all think it is, there are real disadvantages, and a major one is not being able to get a job. Even if I did go to work at a job, I wouldn't last a week without probably having a nervous breakdown. This program I had to apply for and got approved for is LITERALLY the only thing I could do to help out and support both me and my family.

"Stop being lazy!" - You are definitely an absolute DUMBASS if you think I am being lazy. I am trying to do everything I can to support my family and it apparently isn't good enough for you guys. Getting approved for this program has taken a massive weight off my shoulders and it feels relieving to be able to get just a tiny bit of extra money to help us out. That's not even the only thing I did. The other thing that I did was share my dad's GoFundMe campaign to help him out with car repairs that need to get done - a full repair of everything estimating to over a thousand dollars and shared it all over social media. Barely anyone even donated to the cause; we only have made $173 so far, less than 25% of the $1,000 we need for all of the repairs in total. Oh, and I also tried to apply for YouTube monetization multiple times. Every time, I got my application rejected for 'reused content' when blatant content farms that are already Partnered are full of blatantly reused content in the first place. I could've been making my dad money for making videos. But YouTube said 'no'. I've sent in three Partner applications already and ALL of them have been rejected for the same goddamn reason. It's stupid. I'm not being lazy, I'm actually trying to help us get out of this situation and barely anything I've tried so far has worked except for the program I got approved for. Were you hit on the head as a child or something? Besides, there are literally people working multiple side hustles at once on top of their part-times to keep up with their rent, are THEY being lazy as well?

"You're a choosing beggar!" - No, I'm not, I'm wanting actual support and assistance and you are instead laughing at me for being stuck in a shitty financial situation, along with the rest of my family. Telling me that I am a 'choosing beggar' for getting sick and tired of being made fun of for being stuck in poverty? That is SO disgusting and is wrong on SO many levels. All I want is for my family and I to not have to pick between paying the rent and going out for groceries next week so we don't starve our goddamn selves to death. I'm trying to be realistic here and have realistic goals. I try things, but it's never enough and there are still a ton of things keeping us down. I am not asking for much here; like, I am not begging for my dad to buy me a goddamn game on Steam. I am literally just wanting to get out of this mess and for us to FINALLY end up being financially secure so we actually ARE able to buy stuff for ourselves for once rather than focus on our goddamn needs pretty much all of the time. That is NOT being a 'choosing beggar', that is being 'a person who just wants to relax and not have a million goddamn things to worry about all the time'. If you think like this, you need to go fuck yourself with a cactus. Not wanting to deal with constant struggles is me being a 'choosing beggar'? You are delusional, AND insufferable.

You people just find any excuse to blame us for being poor. It's pathetic.

What was your favorite moment when you knew something that other people didn't and you basically called it right from the get-go before it was revealed or happened?

I'll start.

So, during DanTDM's first tour back in 2016, he would later announce that he was working on a secret project that would be revealed later on, in the coming months. It was revealed that it was something relating to the tour that he was doing at the time, the first one with Evil Dan. He showcased a few behind the scenes clips of this project on his MoreTDM channel, and it looked like he was gonna be doing some kind of video or something, because they were recording him 'interacting' with Trayaurus, which was actually just a person doing an impression of him that they would later replace with Trayaurus himself in the actual project, whatever it was. I apparently just had a revelation that day when he showcased the BTS content on his vlogging channel, so I, randomly one day, in the best but arguably still awful DanTDM impression I could muster, said: "Hey guys, Dan here! And today, I am here to announce that I have created a YouTube Red show!". Yes, I legit said 'YouTube Red show', in my best DanTDM impression I could possibly do. I thought nothing of it, since it was an impossibly stupid prediction that felt too good to be true, and there were, like, a hundred other things that this project could've possibly been. But, I settled on it and just said he was working on a 'YouTube Red show", doing an impression of Dan as if he was making an official announcement he was working on a show for the service. For those who are unaware, YouTube Red was the original name for the Premium service, and it used to have original programming funded and paid for by YouTube itself; shows like Scare PewDiePie and Paradise Calls are just two of the many examples of various Red shows. Keep in mind, I made this prediction, and impression, in December 2016, when he posted his latest vlog at the time, which would also be his last, since he has abandoned the MoreTDM channel since that last vlog, and it has been unused for almost 9 years now. Fast forward to March 30th, 2017, 3 months later. He posts a new video to his main DanTDM channel, and guess what it is? He officially announces that he is releasing "DanTDM Creates a Big Scene"... a YouTube Red Original. Yep, he was, in fact, working on a YouTube Red show the entire time and I just so happened to accurately predict this without even knowing that it was an original show for YouTube Red or what it was even for in the first place. I still don't know how I was able to predict this so accurately and correctly, but I apparently called it.