Distorted facts pushed by the "obvious" - My part in Laterious

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Everything was made to seem a lot bigger than it was,
Everyone was made to believe in what it seemed like, not what it actually was,
& Here is my story on it.

My relation with the organization was shaky, to begin with. Saw the owner gifting large amounts of subs in the Twitch chat & Their team(at the time) was in a boot camp. As I previously had played with the players and was looking for a new job, I shot my shot in discord dm’s as a social media manager and agreed to work for the organization.

Upon arrival at the boot camp, I quickly realized that this organization had “NOTHING” except apparent money to burn… since they were at a boot camp and I couldn’t find anyone who had their money missing, yet.

So I Saw an opportunity to build something from the ground up, something that people would look up to and be “inspired”. But this takes time, a lot of time, it isn’t to be done in a month or two, or even three. It takes an unknown amount of time of relentless persistence.

The time I was made to believe, we had.

Based on:
“I’ve got connections to sponsor X, Z, N & E, we just need to gain some reach”

So, we amassed upwards of 700k reach with a ~70% German audience. Started rooting a great community, and assembled a large line-up of some of the coolest people in DACH Valorant content creation, both streamers and social media managers.
& to top it off, Vetrezz formed a VCL team, that would have been among the best ones in DACH.

So the time came, we had to monetize our reach… but the previously mentioned connections turned out to be just info@ e-mails.

At this point, which was 2 weeks ago. I could have dismantled the org by asking around a lot more than I did. But here is where I made a mistake.

I should have seen through the bullshit, realized it was a dead end, and tried to salvage what was there at that point but,
As I was informed that the signed contracts will be paid out in the end,

Or as per my best memory:
“Everything will be paid out in the end, don’t worry”.
In the context of asking for my money after the first month.

So, not having any incentive to doubt the credibility and authenticity of this statement because of my own ignorance partly, and as all the designers I worked with had been paid, well on time, I decided to trust this and continue to move forward to give it my best attempt.

And in retrospect, I could have pried through these “seemingly” good connections & incredibly shallow plan & prevented this from happening in the first place.

But so could ANYONE else, especially those who talk on Twitter. Why didn’t you ask me, or any of the content creators, or managers, ahead of time? I never received a Message “Hey, I have a concern regarding the stability of Laterious, can you please hop on a call for a minute?”

By no means, I am not criticizing anyone. I could have done better, and taken more accountability, pried through with questions as the events were unraveling, yet I continued to have faith that it will work out & push it even more as I agreed to continue to work for free after the first month.

& Moving on, to prevent similar shortcomings, we can only do our best to work together, and help each other out when we see the obvious details, as to when someone at the direct source of it, doesn’t.

Together we can make esports better, for everyone.

Take care of your health, eat well & don’t forget to do something other than gaming once in a while, too!

This closes a chapter of my life.
& Here is My last message to everyone within e-sports & gaming:
Pinned video on @laterious_gg

Note: I am the only person remaining in control of the social media accounts & was the creative lead for the brand that was created.

If anyone reading this needs any help, or perhaps just another viewpoint. My dm’s are always open.

I am a creative problem solver & am always open to exploring any opportunities, so if you wish to contact me to kick off something meaningful or see how I could improve an ongoing project, please reach out to me, not bound to e-sports.

TL;DR

An Incredibly stupid plan made to seem realistic based on heavily bent truth promised to be backed by finances to fail-safe the people involved turned out to be a fraud and encouraged by my skills & naivety to the absurdity.

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