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Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

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Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#261

Post by anoncoward111 »

tathougies wrote: post #230
anoncoward111 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really regrettable that humans have this incredibly illogical, subconscious algorithm for making otherwise logical decisions. Most of the money and capital in this world are held by the older generations rather than the younger generations. The younger generations have to then spend their time "pitching" the older generations on ideas that, in a vacuum, are logical but not evident to the older generations. As a…

As a person of color, the last time I checked, there are also old people of color. It's not like we just sprung up fully formed 10 years ago or something, okay?

There's no need to accuse me (an ally) of allegedly forgeting your existence when I was merely trying to give an example of someone who is statistically extremely underprivileged.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#262

Post by ryanwaggoner »

falcolas wrote: post #145
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live like a king on $72,000 a year in the midwest, and the bonus is that the northern part gets so cold in the winter that there's not much else to do but work and stream!

Don't forget to pay your taxes (about double what you would pay as a regular employee; your employer pays a portion of that behind the scenes) out of that, plus any health insurance you want to pick up. That $72,000 yearly will vanish pretty quickly.

This isn’t true at all. The only extra tax you pay as a contractor is the other 7.65% of the FICA, or $5500 here. You also get a bunch of new deductions you can take, including that $5500 itself.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#263

Post by danielhlockard »

com2kid wrote: post #148
busterarm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours. And that those streamers have to stream 6-7 days a week to maintain their audience. Not worth it, honestly.

> You also have to consider that the average length of a "day" for a popular Twitch streamer is 10-12 hours. carlsagan42 streams once a week for ~4 hours, and pulls in a couple thousand viewers at min, at 6pm on a Saturday. His secret? He is super entertaining, hands down one of the funniest people and most entertaining people to watch on twitch. His YT videos of his streams then get a few hundred thousand more views…

Carl is so good. I made the overlay for a charity stream last year. The mario maker guys are a good bunch.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#264

Post by y2bd »

KirinDave wrote: post #232

Having spent literally hundreds of hours producing video game content for youtube and twitch, I can say this: It's an incredibly sad, discouraging experience even if you get traction (and I got some traction). It's also utterly hollow: your entire existence is as a wrapper around the content folks actually want to see. The most successful streamers develop their own brand, but these people are the 0.5%, the Felixs an…

Similar boat of making Minecraft videos in the past (2011-2014). It was mostly just my friend and I playing through various Minecraft adventure/puzzle maps. We got a couple dozen to a hundred followers through luck/timing (playing new maps that later become popular) but didn't get too far.

Then one day my friend on a whim did a skit that ended up doing very well (it got featured on wired.com and even posted on HN [1]). We got a lot of attention from this skit (and one or two others), but this really wasn't content we wanted to dedicate ourselves towards.

It was extremely disheartening seeing the wide disparity between videos we wanted to make and videos that got views--we loved to think that people enjoyed watch us, but it was really clear that most people just wanted to see more of those two/three videos.

I don't think I regret the time spent though. Doing LPs definitely strengthened my ability to explain what I'm doing as I'm doing it, a skill I use all the time as a software dev (and one I definitely see others lacking). It also gave me a ton of experience with video editing, which while not as useful professionally is a lot of fun and I think a useful skill to have in your pocket.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3543039

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#265

Post by [deleted] »

thejake0 wrote: post #162
degenerate wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White noise is better than nothing, but my brain won't stop generating content (thoughts) with white noise. When the TV is generating the content, my brain focuses on that, and it's mindless enough to fall asleep to. I think it has something to do with being a mentally active person forced into a passive role, like shifting the brain into low gear.

Check out the Sleep With Me Podcast[1]. Same concept: Dull, meandering talking to lull you to sleep. [1] https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

[deleted]

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#266

Post by rezashirazian »

keithnz wrote: post #252
rezashirazian wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality is poor. It's mostly gamer streamers trying out something different. They're usually going through a udacity course or hacking a crud web application. There is lot of blindly looking at the screen, reading tutorials or getting frustrated with compilation errors. They do not like to be helped.

I think this is an unfair characterization, there are some REALLY good programmers, some new programmers, and people at all stages of their programming journey. A lot are doing game programming, I'm less interested in this, but some are very interesting. For instance... https://www.twitch.tv/jessicamak Really interesting what she does, and an insane attention to detail. A HNer I watch when he codes... he does an inte…

My comment was based on random visits to /programming and checking out what people were doing.

I didn't know of the streamers you mentioned, but I'd be sure to check them out.

Looking forward to being wrong on this.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#267

Post by munchbunny »

metalliqaz wrote: post #14

What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content. When it comes to sitting on your butt and watching something, the traditional TV show is moving to an on-demand model. Twitch is a step in the other direction, where if you faithfully consume content from any Twitch channel, you have to sit down and watch for hours every night when the streamer is online. Who does that? I imagine it'…

I watched a lot of Twitch while I was playing video games myself. The slower paced games (Cities Skylines, Factorio, Minecraft, Civ 5, etc.) have occasionally monotonous periods where having something in the background is nice filler.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#268

Post by 0xffff2 »

mkirklions wrote: post #139
com2kid wrote: post #28

I am a regular of a low viewer count stream, choaslegionkaeru, who is pretty good and talkative. He rarely gets past 10 streamers, and his style isn't for everyone and I don't think he'll ever be a massive success, but I enjoy watching and interacting with him. I've tuned into other low viewer streams, and a lot of them are just bad. The gameplay is bad, and the streamer isn't entertaining. A successful streamer need…

This sounds like the twitter Financial Independence blogging community. People with 0 new advice, rehashing the same old credit card rewards and budgeting advice. Its so terrible that there are people claiming 'frugal ways to eat' and claim 50$/week per person for food is frugal. A single google search would tell you that under 30$/week is a good goal. This drives me crazy because we are eating for 20$/week and actua…

This is tangential, but what's a good starting point for "frugal ways to eat"? I'm not even remotely interested in getting down to $30/week, but my current budget is "not to exceed" $30/day, and I probably average around $20/day, and I generally cook at least one meal per day at home.

Even in a week where I only at food cooked at home I can't imagine getting under $70/week. I'm curious what I would have to give up to get to $50, much less $30.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#269

Post by NathanCH »

rezashirazian wrote: post #218
prefferot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this made me curious. I'll probably check out the programming category tonight if I have time. How is the quality of those programming streams? What goes on in them? Do the streamers answer questions about techniques, etc? Is it just shoptalk/circlejerking? I'm usually a self-starter on learning things, but I can lose interest quickly if I don't get some sort of feedback or have someone to ask questions. MOOC…

The quality is poor. It's mostly gamer streamers trying out something different. They're usually going through a udacity course or hacking a crud web application. There is lot of blindly looking at the screen, reading tutorials or getting frustrated with compilation errors. They do not like to be helped.

Who likes being helped when nobody asked?

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#270

Post by widgitybear »

socrates1998 wrote: post #25

Most people are not interesting enough to watch play a video game. Which means, most people should NOT be doing this. Or at least doing it with the expectation that people will watch them. You have to be something that sets you apart. Super good, super funny, or entertaining. Just playing a game and making dick jokes isn't interesting or funny.

I think you're underestimating the power of good dick... jokes.
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