What is the distinction? TYM represents the NRS community just like Event Hubs and SRK represent the Capcom communities and Tekken Zaibatsu represents the Tekken community.
Have you ever played World of Warcraft?
NRS Community = The Horde
TYM = Orgrimmar
Everyone from the community has the option to join Orgrimmar and socialize in front of its gates. Trade, duel others, watch others duel each other, go inside the city and visit the auction house.
Or do none of that and just que up for battlegrounds, arenas and raids, which take place outside Orgrimmar anyway.
My point is, that the NRS community consists out of people, who are interested in NRS products. They buy the games. They watch guides on Youtube. They watch reaction videos. They watch tournaments. They follow people on Twitter. They don't have to join TYM to be a part of the NRS community. They already are. I was too for the longest time. I know who you are from your Freddy Krueger gameplay and from your Deathstroke Low Gunshots monologues. I know who PerfectLegend is and I know who REO is. But to know all that I didn't have to be a TYM member and I also never really had to follow PL or REO. I just know it, because I'm part of the community and I notice it.
I've pointed out what makes a good influencer. REO is an awesome guy, but he is not a TOP influencer. The majority of the community isn't interested in him. I'll expand on that in a second.
I am well-aware that Discord, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter have impacted these websites by creating smaller communities.
They're not small communities. Maximilian had up to 20K or more viewers, when he was streaming MKX on a regular basis. He got me to check out MK9 in the first place, since before I was only watching his MVC3 content. Super makes mostly NRS gameplay videos and he has +550K subscribers. UnCAGEdgamez records himself reacting to MK videos and also playing MK every now and then and he has +350K subscribers.
REO has slightly above 20K or something. After being active forever. So he is clearly doing something wrong. And I've actually already told you what. Rather pass that over to him than defending him, since that's not going to help him.
And REO could very well need that help. He is visibly trying to profit from his participation in the NRS community. He has a Youtube channel, sells merchandise and he has a Patreon account. It's just that the way he handles things... he has 2 Patreons, where HoneyBee, who started much later has that times 60 or something (so 120 Patreons and counting). I've already said what HoneyBee is doing right. He is influencing faaar more people with his opinions and what-not.
Look at Tom Brady. Dude has been around forever. And I love me some Tom Brady, but he too has a tiny Youtube account and can only get a fraction of the financial backing he is hoping for. The majority of the community doesn't know him and they don't care about him.
The NRS community does most certainly not consist of casual gamers such as GameFAQs users, who play every NRS fighting game for a month at most and then proceed to move on to the next most popular game.
Well, that's where you're wrong, M2Dave.
MK has always had pretty damn decent viewership numbers during tournaments. Even when they were only a small side tournament. That speaks volumes for the interest the franchise creates and the backing the game gets. There are individual people out there, who have more MK related items in their kollection than you, REO, Tom Brady and the rest of your crew combined. Are you going to tell me that they're casuals members of the NRS community, while you aren't? They clearly love MK more than you do. But they don't have to be registered here to be part of the community.
Again, the NRS community is gigantic. What you probably have in mind is the FGC tournament part of the NRS community. If you would have asked about that my list would have looked much different and it would have featured much different reasoning / arguing. But that's not what you wanted to know.