Jay G.

I was a regular of JTV. When that ended a lot of people went to VaughnLive. It seemed legit enough, I think the owner Mark coded a bot for JTV so I thought it was a legitimate website.

From the start it was a lot of good casters. It was a genuine community. The admins seemed to cut the drama when it went too far. It was a lot of familiar faces and politics wasn't a big part of it.

A lot of people on this website seemed to abuse alcohol on cam. Over time this seemed to be a large portion of the live streams. This seemed strange because the site also had a strict no weed policy. Casters would gets bans or warnings for smoking weed while the next channel you'd be watching a drunk person roll around in their own pee on a kitchen floor and several channels with people passing out.

Mark Vaughn the the site owner hired his mom to co-run or some sort of position within the site. I'm sure she had an official title but it was never obvious what her role was. Instead of the regular hands off approach this lady became heavily obsessed and personally involved with the drama going on in streams and chats and from what I can tell, real people's lives. As Mark and his mom became more and more intertwined with people, more and more of the community splintered.

I miss the good days of this site. It was a good place because of the people.

People who teach economics courses should put VaughnLive in case studies as what you should not do when running a streaming service. Instead of focusing on community and user experience, the site administrator used the website as his personal Friendship Maker, and then invited his mother who would jump on people's streams starting arguments with seemingly random people in the chat, completely hijacking the streamer. Vaughn and his mom would constantly linger around the top channels. Not much transpired without them either taking credit or making it worse.

There was a very healthy Vaper community on VaughnLive. Mark Vaughn drove every single one of them away. Every one! From a page of channels to not a single person. I tried to get the story on this but there was no one to ask. The answers I did get boiled down to "Mark Vaughn". I do not vape but I'd often stop in because they were super friendly and there was no drama. So that was doomed to fail I suppose, in retrospect.

2016 happened and then the politics started. Probably when the people started leaving the most. Mark Vaughn is a conservative, which of itself is not an issue. Many conservatives run very successful businesses. Often by focusing on the business. Not so with Mark Vaughn. The owner of VaughnLive would belittle his customers for their political beliefs. He allows a lot of hatred and so the site attracts a lot of loose cannons and people out of touch with reality. These people aren't going to pay his bills, but that's his business model.

Now when I visit I see he's basically begging for money on his website. The site is buggy and slow. Once the stream gets started it's not bad but often the ads would freeze the page and require a lot of refreshing.

VaughnLive attracted a lot of good people. Vaughn thought it was his great website that was attracting people when the truth is he got a lot of overspill from the JTV closing. His job was to retain and grow the numbers. He did the opposite.

I have no idea what the business model of this website is supposed to be.

Before posting this I had a look at the positive reviewers. Apparently they think these bad reviews are a Liberal conspiracy? Well the website is there and you're free to click it.