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Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

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Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#241

Post by habosa »

I'm happy that he's making money, especially since it sounds like he didn't have it easy as a kid.

However it's a bit sad to me that this is the successful end state of the streamer economy. His job is uniquely voluntary. He plays what he wants to play. People tune in and pay him if they want to. And somehow the result is that if he wants to stay at the top of this world he's trapped in that chair for unreasonable spans while people drop by to either praise or abuse him.

If this is the natural evolution of celebrity-fan relationships I think it reflects way worse on the fans than the celebrity. This is what we demand for the sake of our entertainment.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#242

Post by tinus_hn »

slightwinder wrote: post #191
tinus_hn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A service that makes 100 users a millionaire is a low number? And by the way, there is no way to know how much people are really making because they not only get money through Twitch but also through tip systems, merchandise, promotion, sponsors and other revenue generating activities.

Yes, but the twitch-numbers reflect a streamers potential for earning money through merchandise, promotion, sponsors and other revenue generating activities. There usually is a direct enough link between them. Tipping is a bit more special, but it's quite unlikely that a small 20 viewer-streamer will get a million-dollar-tip regularly. So you can make an educated guess of the general income, at least regarding someon…

Yes, the viewer numbers are the direct link. But viewer numbers are not Twitch revenue. Subscriber are Twitch revenue. And it is not at all impossible to have a lot of viewers and not a lot of subscribers.

How are you going to know what the stream is earning the musician keeping contact with his fan base?

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#243

Post by corobo »

wpietri wrote: post #217
esyir wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A lot of the comments point out that most people on Twitch/YouTube/OnlyFans don't make money and would be better off getting a "real job". To support your point, acting, singing and writing are in a similar state, as are most media works. Creative media seems in particular its the area where the gulf between the successful and the well, not, is massive.

This is true, but I have to wonder whether those things are as grueling as streaming is. I did some user interviews with streamers for a project. None were this successful; the people talked to ranged from making a decent living to having a day job and then doing streaming as a full-time second job. Even the ones like Tyler were feeling the same strain he is. But the ones who seemed worst off were the ones who were p…

I don't think it's a case of gruelling, it's more that streaming is the social outcast version of acting. You have to interact with people to act else it doesn't work. Streaming can be entirely solo, even at the top end

Nobody is forcing you to be live 12 hours a day. Most of the super effort no reward streamers would benefit by cutting the live hours and working more on marketing anyway. Twitch in particular is terrible for organic growth

Not to imply any negativity in this comment if it reads that way, just shite at words. I've dabbled in streaming and realised I need to build up the audience first otherwise it's a massive timesink

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#244

Post by arcsonnet »

kubb wrote: post #62
Permit wrote: post #51

Streaming 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'…

This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level.

You don't encounter a lot of autopiloting at the highest level of competition. The people you compete against are trying as hard as they possibly can to beat you, and it takes a tremendous amount of focus and ingenuity to outplay them and win. You gloss over the details of that monumental task with reductive phrasing - but I think you're overlooking a lot.

I was at a party once, talking to a stranger about why I loved programming so much. They said: "Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's _just_ programming, right?". That's how this comment reads to me - "At the end of the day, it's just playing a game, right?"

There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#245

Post by jacquesm »

dvt wrote: post #46

Imo 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…

I don't see it that way. HN is many different things to many different people. Sure, there are a large number or corporate workers on HN, but given the number of people employed at the top 5 tech companies alone that shouldn't be a surprise.

But there are other substantial areas of interest and overlap: the creatives / makers, the one person businesses, the SMBs (both owner/operators and employees), the start-ups (founders, co-workers), the people pushing some agenda or other (those can be quite annoying) and finally the trolls and even some griefers, though the latter two groups usually find their accounts very short lived (with some regrettable exceptions).

HN has gotten large enough that it is no longer a niche player, but still small enough that it hasn't reached the 'everybody's on it' stage.

But I don't see that 'unwarranted hate for new ventures and disruptive industries'. What you do get is a crowd that isn't going to roll over right away at the first sign of a 'new thing'. In that sense we are probably becoming a bit jaded, having seen 25 years of one new thing after another.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#246

Post by jacquesm »

paulpauper wrote: post #137
Mc91 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels HN has become way more corporatist in the past few years -- everyone wants to work for FAANG, no one wants to do their own thing. You didn't have a situation like FAANG and its cohorts in the past, paying what they do and hiring like they do, in as attainable of a way. Banking $270k comp. as an L4 for a few years would allow me to "do my own thing" more than anything. If you mean people like Gates, Zuckerb…

Big corporations are paying more than ever, in addition to surging stock prices for even the biggest of companies, so working at a trillion dollar company is more lucrative than most startups. It did not always used to be that way.

And given the scale factors involved it is still cheap, even at that level.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#247

Post by dathinab »

chii wrote: post #197
dathinab wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8+/10+ hour streams every day respectively, while taking 1-2 vacations per year. Sounds like the live of very many self-employed people. Like even if you just have a small shop going with 10h a day 6 days a week without vacation for many years isn't that rare of a story to hear.

but the success of a small shop owner doesn't have the same scale as the e-celebrities, despite similar time commitments.

I'm not sure why you started that sentence with a but.

Through most people who are earning money through twitch and similar don't earn that much either.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#248

Post by snek_case »

corobo wrote: post #243
wpietri wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but I have to wonder whether those things are as grueling as streaming is. I did some user interviews with streamers for a project. None were this successful; the people talked to ranged from making a decent living to having a day job and then doing streaming as a full-time second job. Even the ones like Tyler were feeling the same strain he is. But the ones who seemed worst off were the ones who were p…

I don't think it's a case of gruelling, it's more that streaming is the social outcast version of acting. You have to interact with people to act else it doesn't work. Streaming can be entirely solo, even at the top end Nobody is forcing you to be live 12 hours a day. Most of the super effort no reward streamers would benefit by cutting the live hours and working more on marketing anyway. Twitch in particular is terr…

> Twitch in particular is terrible for organic growth

Might be in part because the search function is so bad. I tried to use twitch to discover DJ slash electronic music streams, and had a really hard time finding what I wanted, though I could sometimes find them using other keywords.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#249

Post by dathinab »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #179
dathinab wrote: post #139

I think it's totally ridiculous that some are treating this at "not a real job". It just shows that many people do not understand what is going one at all. Sure it's a form of "entertainer" job, but actress, synchron speaker or comedian are also real jobs. And no one would go and say "oh say just need to say some lines on stage so it's not a real job". It's not at all as simple as "just playing games in front of came…

A real job is one where a boss can arbitrarily fire you so that you learn to respect your elders and anybody who doesn't have a real job is bypassing the critical societal conditioning step and should be shamed. -some old fucks. probably

Welcome to YouTube, which might arbitrarily cut your salery because others said so.

Re: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

#250

Post by snek_case »

esyir wrote: post #214
belval wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that Tyler makes $300k per year in merchandise alone (so excluding any actual sponsored content). Frankly I don't get why this can't be seen as a legitimate very successful business. Where is the line? Is entertainment only valid on TV? YouTube? Some commenters here even said that it's all good now but that it won't work in his thirties or something as if there aren't a ton of jobs out there that…

>A lot of the comments point out that most people on Twitch/YouTube/OnlyFans don't make money and would be better off getting a "real job". To support your point, acting, singing and writing are in a similar state, as are most media works. Creative media seems in particular its the area where the gulf between the successful and the well, not, is massive.

It's very competitive and tends to follow the Pareto principle, i.e. 10% of the people making 90% of the money. Some of it is luck and timing, some of it is hard work. Some of it probably comes down to your taste being more aligned with a broader audience.
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