Gaming is not just a leisure activity now; for some people, it has become a reliable source of income. One gamer from Houston, Texas, used his earnings from gaming to extend a wholesome gesture towards his mother by paying off her student loan with the money. When he surprised her with the amazing news during a live stream, she couldn't control her emotions and broke down in happy tears. Aydan Condrad, a 24-year-old pro Fortnite player, is one of the most popular Twitch Fortnite streamers with over 3 million followers.
Image Source: 11-year-old Ansel, the photographer’s son, plays Fortnite. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. Most Fortnite pro players make money from tournaments, as well as with their YouTube and Twitch channels. They even earn from the merchandise they sell through these channels.
Image Source: Aydan "Aydan" Conrad speaks to the media during previews ahead of the 2019 Fortnite World Cup on July 25, 2019, in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images)
Aydan, who plays Fortnite as his profession, gave a call to his mother, livestreaming it for the audience. Aydan’s mother takes college courses. He said he wanted to give her a “late Christmas present.” “I don’t need anything, Aydan, you’ve done enough for me,” she said, bringing a smile to Aydan's face. “Well, it’s too late, Mom,” he replied. “All your school loans are already paid for.” There was a pause after which, his mom responded with an overwhelming sentiment, “No, they’re not. You can’t… you can’t… It’s not a federal loan,” she said. “I don’t think you can touch that.”
“I already talked to Lina, it’s already done,” Aydan replied. His mom took another pause and then asked in a shocked voice, “What?” Tears rolled down his mom’s eyes as she realized he was saying it for real. On the other side, Aydan was also crying happy tears. “It’s not me, it’s all the people that are watching my stream right now, they made it possible,” he said. “Awww, I love them,” his mom exclaimed. PCGamesN noted that till 2020, Aydan had earned more than $160,000 in prizes throughout his career as a Fortnite player before he presented this heartwarming moment on his Twitch livestream.
While many a player would want to use their earnings to build a lavish lifestyle, it is truly a wholesome gesture seeing how Aydan put his earnings to a thoughtful cause. He is currently a content creator for New York Subliners, an American professional Call of Duty League (CDL) esports team based in New York City.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.