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On Twitch, you can never log off

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Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#191

Post by MomoXenosaga »

warent wrote: post #187
SilverBirch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what you are describing is how you use Twitch as a person who Twitch makes no money from. That's fine! I'm not saying that every Twitch user is this one type of person. You're the type of customer who will take an uber to the airport once every 6 months, that's not problematic, but it's not something uber can build a business on top of. In the same way, you're not engaging with Twitch in a way that Twitch actual…

it seems many people read way too far into this with a distorted "back in my day!" mentality. I watch twitch nearly every day and subscribe to (pay) a couple of streamers. You know what I don't watch? TV. Cable, satellite, or otherwise. This is simply modern entertainment. Streamers are professional entertainers. As for the people who seem to have a parasocial relationship--none of this is new. In my childhood I had…

Lots of people had toxic relationships with pop stars. Just look how Kurt Cobain ended up.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#192

Post by KronisLV »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #78
vimwizard wrote: post #53

I think a more interesting story would be about the people that grind for years and years and never make it. You're left without a useful skill and no money, and probably a deficit on your mental health because you didn't go out and talk to people in real life for years. I think its not at all worth getting into as a career because making it big is like starting out as an actor, you have to know people. If you hit it…

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that may…

> Anyway, not really your point, but a fascinating group of people to think about.

Oh, hey, I sort of fit into this group, since I stream with a VTuber (virtual avatar) persona and play niche indie games. Sometimes a friend or two drops by and we chat, other times someone new drops by and says hi, but there are also those times where I spend an hour or two playing a game alone and talking into the void, expressing my thoughts, maybe getting a clip with something notable in the process to link to friends later, or maybe upload the full video somewhere later.

I'd say it's not that dissimilar from working on my own personal programming projects or even some of the blog posts that I might end up writing off and deleting, since nobody is going to see the majority of those either - if they turn out good and someone does, then great, but if not then it's still a nice experience, that's also mostly free of any expectations.

As for related things, streaming lets you practice expressing your thoughts better and speak more clearly (which is especially relevant if English isn't your first language, at a point where you can use it well enough, but your pronunciation just needs more practice). It also lets you figure out how to have decent audio/video quality and create content - something that has also helped me in meetings and while working on a programming video series.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#194

Post by RGamma »

dncornholio wrote: post #136

People realize they are wasting their time by watching people that are wasting their time right? right??

Most activity on MSM could be summarized this way but its usual patronage may be too far gone to notice.

And too far gone feel the days I thought the internet would elevate most people's minds, but commerce is commerce and consoomers are consoomers and somehow this all feels so inevitable it's best to shut it out.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#195

Post by MomoXenosaga »

solarmist wrote: post #2

Isn’t this the next level of burnout that YouTube creators have been complaining about and feeling for years? And before that movie stars.

I remember in the 80s and 90s lots of people wanted to become stand up comedians. It's harder than it looks (in fact your job is making it look easy).

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#196

Post by Nursie »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #182
Nursie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parasocial nature of it is a bit concerning and (to me) deeply weird. I went to a presentation by a couple of streamers at an event a few months ago, aimed at people wanting to learn a little more about it or get into it themselves. They referred to the people in the chat as 'chat' but warned never to use that word in the stream, instead have a cute name for it. One always called them her "besties" which helps gi…

> They referred to the people in the chat as 'chat' but warned never to use that word in the stream, instead have a cute name for it. Strange advice. Pretty much all Streamers I know, call their viewers chat. How big on twitch were those people speaking there? What kind of content did they made? Calling viewers by a cute name makes the impression of being more on the abusive side of community-interaction, or having a…

I got the impression they were plugged into whole communities of streamers for whom this is entirely normal.

I have no idea how big they are, I don’t think they were aiming particularly young, one was regularly streaming horror games.

To me the whole thing is weird in many other ways (why watch other people game?! I could be gaming!) but twitch seems set up for this sort of stuff and it feels pretty unhealthy.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#197

Post by emodendroket »

ilyt wrote: post #134
emodendroket wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility is just using it to capture your own play, for instance if you want to review matches later to try and analyze flaws in your game.

That's massive stretch. Why would anyone do that? Twitch player isn't that great if you want to seek around the video

I myself have used it for this purpose so I don’t think it’s a massive stretch.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#198

Post by emodendroket »

majewsky wrote: post #167
johannes1234321 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works easily and keeping hours and hours of video locally still requires quite some storage space

My OBS recordings (of mostly game footage) come out to between 1 and 1.5 GiB/hour for 1080p resolution. Given that simple external HDDs start at about 20€ for 500 GiB, that comes out to 6 cents of storage per hour recorded. Your power bill for the gaming PC is going to be higher than that in some places.

OK, so we’ve established that it is possible to do it another way if you want. But why get an external hard drive if you’re happy with Twitch VODs?

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#199

Post by emodendroket »

knaik94 wrote: post #147
emodendroket wrote: post #7

It seems like operating a channel shared between a few people might alleviate some of these concerns.

There is an example of a shared channel, BotezLive is a channel where Alexandra Botez Woman FIDE Master and Andrea Botez, sisters, make chess content. They are usually making content together though.

Yeah, I think this would work better if they usually work as a group but sometimes someone takes a break.

Re: On Twitch, you can never log off

#200

Post by Retric »

langsoul-com wrote: post #101
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fame is often fleeting which pushes people to try and save for a rainy day even if they are pulling in 6 figures. Adam Ragusea a quite successful YouTuber mentioned being quite burned out because he was doing almost everything for his videos, but said he’s also got 1 million in savings from a job that could go away at any time. For a 40 year old with a family that means a lot if things fall apart. At the other end Ha…

Hacksmith isn't the best counter example. Because he accidentally built himself a business and team that can fully operate without him. And he, the business owner, would still earn revenue.

The owner only gets to step aside if the company is profitable which hasn’t happened yet. It might end up as a profitable company, but right now things are quite risky.
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