>Streamers like Tyler form the backbone of tech giants’ “creator economy,” Maybe this is pessimism, but calling streamers "creators" feels like a perverse label.
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Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
291–300 of 320 posts
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#292Imo we should be lauding this brand new sector and the folks that made it in it. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok literally created a new kind of millionaire. Are we just upset we're also not uber rich for playing video games all day? It's the same with crypto, OnlyFans, and so on. It was the same in '99 with the dot coms. Merely from an economic standpoint, it's interesting to see who these new industries are displacing (since…
Your comment doesn't reflect how this thread ended up developing—quite the opposite, in fact.
It's important not to overgeneralize from a few datapoints that one dislikes - this routinely leads people to false conclusions:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
You may have gotten bitten by a variant of the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) in which initial comments are shallow dismissals and then more substantive comments appear over time. The initial comments don't characterize the community. They just appear first because they're reflexive reactions (the fastest kind of reaction to have) and they're shallow (the fastest kind of comment to write).
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, I don't understand this. I admittedly don't watch much streaming. But every streamer I've ever seen interacts constantly with their audience. And the ones I interviewed are intensely conscious of their audience and the need to make them feel special. The actors I knew mainly focused on craft and collaboration with teams. If they dealt with the audience at all, it was in very controlled bursts in the minutes af…
Sitting at a computer interacting with a non-red HAL9000 and IRC is not the same as interacting with directors, producers, other actors.. people There are more people in acting than the audience POV: you're a streamer interacting with the audience https://cdn.imgy.org/j6km.jpg (chat unrelated, I just picked the one in my follows that would fill the screen quickest) idk it just doesn't feel social to me at all, never…
Sorry, I'm not getting it. Are you a successful streamer and are offering your own experience as evidence? Or are you a non-streamer just giving your general take?
You make my point with that screenshot. The chat isn't unrelated. The chat is primary. The streamers I talked to and the streaming I've watched is a performance for an audience. It's way more interactive than most live theater, even the stuff with audience participation. And it's leaps and bounds more socially demanding than film work.
As an example, watch this video from a streamer with 120k followers on Twitch:
https://twitter.com/negaoryx/status/1354147400160403457
While playing the game she is deeply involved a conversation with the people watching. As streamers explained it to me, that's key to the economics of being a successful streamer, in that significant audience segments are buying a feeling of being in the in-group, and that feeling has to be supported with actual interaction with the streamer.
I agree that's not the same thing as being on the same stage with people. But it's still very social. Similarly, remote work is still social. I've never met any of my colleagues, for example, but they're still people to me.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#294This reads as very biased and judgmental. It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle and career choice. It honestly makes me wonder if the author is jealous of the subject. It seems like the piece is really reaching to make Tyler's life appear as irresponsible as possible. Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their lives…
> It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle and career choice. Interesting. I did not read it like that at all. Do you have an example quotation of what makes you think that? The impression I got is both Tyler and Micayla are well aware of how negatively streaming affects their lives. They both explicitly said they don't want to be doing…
I also didn't get the impression at all that they're kids; quite the opposite. They have golden handcuffs, just like a lot of people in tech. The difference seems to be (and this is what I felt the article conveyed, at least to me) the grueling effect of having your life and brain on display around the clock.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#295Streaming aside, tyler1 has an almost inhuman dedication and focus when it comes to League of Legends. On Hacker News it's common to hear that programmers can't work (on classic programming tasks) for more than ~4 hours a day. I also feel exhausted after working for ~4 hours and have always wondered if this was some sort of mental trap I'd fallen into or a genuine limit. Games like League of Legends require complete…
Do you really imply that playing the same game over and over again (with some variables but still) is the same as solving programming problems? The game is literally designed to hook you in and make you play one more and one more. You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win. Don't get me wrong, the guy has a lot of dedication for sure. But playing League all day is really not like coding all day, I don'…
Playing a high level game of Starcraft or Dota is more exhausting to me then programming. With programming I have to think of some designs, spend some times with the tooling, setting things up, to all the busy work surrounding the core problem and so on. Sure there are moments when you really have to think very hard about what you do as well, but its not constant.
I can take easy breaks. Run some tests and so on.
When playing a game you have to be totally focused for longer periods and not just focus but also execute and handle the concept of being activity opposed. Its like if you were programming and the compiler was activity being evil.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew G to PG-13 rated camgirls that were making six figures back in 1997 to 2000. They eventually got disrupted by the adult industry providing more explicit content for much less money upfront. OnlyFans seems to have reinvented this model at scale, but what's the average margin for an OnlyFans provider? $180/month. https://influencermarketinghub.com/glossary/onlyfans/
I’m familiar with two women doing financial domination stuff. One of them is fully PG-13. It’s interesting there are still certain niches where you don’t have to go past R rates stuff and can bring in mid 5 figures or higher.
The sad part is that's only bringing in mid-5 figures which makes me think that findom is an efficient market and I await the Harvard Business Review case study of it with baited breath.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#297This article is fascinating for the effects it has on readers. We likely all understand that one of the toxic forces in our culture today is the compulsive need to turn every story and news article into a clear moral narrative with a pure protagonist and a villainous antagonist. Reality isn't like that at all, and when journalists force reality into that framework, it distorts our perception of the world in unhealthy…
Agreed. I'm kinda shook at a lot of the comments here, IMO missing the point (or lack of point) of the article. It's a slice of life view into a poignantly tragic story of a kid "lucking" into a terrible pair of golden handcuffs - a view into the apex of parasocial relationships. Someone who so clearly lacks any semblance of a social life, in the same hand creating a social environment for thousands of people - chief…
Sure his life seems like a nightmare, but to be honest, wouldn't it have been even worse without the streaming. Then he'd probably still be playing computer games all the time, still living in squalor, but he'd be broke. Now he's at least able to save up a lot of money.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#298This reads as very biased and judgmental. It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle and career choice. It honestly makes me wonder if the author is jealous of the subject. It seems like the piece is really reaching to make Tyler's life appear as irresponsible as possible. Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their lives…
> Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their lives at 26 I mean take a look at the movie artist, musician field and see how many people there have problems running their live. Having the skills to run your live, is a separate skill set. And the more stress and irregularities you job entails the harder it is. Hence why e.g. successful actors often have people helping them managing their lives. > but i…
"life"
one doesn't live a live, they live a life.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Making money is fine as long as it is done in a moral and ethical way. Women showing their bodies on twitch and others so guys can drool over them? No thanks.
What's unethical about that? I don't participate in either side of the market, so maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like a pretty clear service-for-money deal, with consenting adults on all sides and transparent revenue models.
It spreads immorality and deviancy.
Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
#300This reads as very biased and judgmental. It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle and career choice. It honestly makes me wonder if the author is jealous of the subject. It seems like the piece is really reaching to make Tyler's life appear as irresponsible as possible. Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their lives…
What makes you think it's judgmental? If they had instead wrote the article about a drug dealer making $500k a year, explaining the downsides of that line of work, would you also think the journalist was just jealous? The point of the article is that this seems like a lifestyle destined to cause issues later in life.
> issues later in life
Not all "issues" are equal; a job that requires regularly committing felonies has much more severe potential "issues later in life" than working a few too many hours a week.