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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

#351

Post by danharaj »

0xffff2 wrote: post #310
Noumenon72 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most food has 200-600 calories per pound, so you need 4-6 pounds of food per day. (This lines up with Google search.) Call it 35 pounds per week. Therefore, you need to spend an average of $1.50/lb to hit $50/week. Bananas and canned tomatoes or beans are well under $1. Pasta and bread are $1. You definitely don't have to give up all TV dinners or meat, you can eat pretty normal.

That does give me some food for thought. To take an example I cook regularly, the absolute cheapest tomatoes are a bit under $1.50/lb, but San Marzano tomatoes are more like $3/lb, and worth every penny. Then, if you're making a basic pasta marinara, add garlic, thyme, oregano, maybe some pepper flakes, olive oil... No one thing is expensive, but it adds up. Then, if you really want to kick it up a notch in the cost…

You can grow basil and thyme! We have some and we live in an apartment with east-west windows and it's still plenty of herb.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#352

Post by RankingMember »

Retric wrote: post #342
michaelt wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really true? Look at The Simpsons, for example. No matter what anyone does in episode N, the world is reset at the start of episode N+1.

Not quite, Ned Flanders wife died for example.

To be fair, instances of lasting change through episodes were rare, usually necessitated by staffing/pay disputes (e.g. Maggie Roswell, who voiced Maude, leaving after wanting money for travel and not getting it, thus Maude being killed off) or death of the voice actor (e.g. Marcia Wallace, who played Edna Krabappel, among others).

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#353

Post by paidleaf »

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'…

> What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content.

Who has time to write comments on an anonymous forums? Who has time to watch TV? Listen to music? Who has time to watch a couple of men kick a ball around? People make time if it is something that interests them.

> you have to sit down and watch for hours every night

You don't have to. You could just check in for a few minutes while you are eating or programming or cleaning or anything really. Also, many streams are available for viewing "offline". You don't have to be there for the stream. You could watch it later.

> Who does that?

Tens of millions of people?

> I imagine it's mostly students and single young professionals.

Probably. It's usually the younger generation that adopts tech and then slowly the older generation follows.

Not sure why you are so shocked? What's the difference between twitch and TV or watching the world cup? At least with twitch there is interaction via chat.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#354

Post by naravara »

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'…

>What I don't understand about Twitch is how anyone has time to consume this content.

My impression is that most people are just having it on in the background while they do other stuff. If this sort of thing was around back when I was in college I can definitely imagine myself streaming something on Twitch while I studied.

The overall vibe seems to be analogous to having someone keeping you company while you work. Not that different from talk radio shows, only more interactive.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#355

Post by naravara »

xyzzyz wrote: post #239
gcburn2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, several of my co-workers are big into Overwatch so when the Overwatch League started up in January I started watching matches with them. After a few weeks of asking questions as we went, I felt like I had a pretty handle on it and could start to contribute to the discussion. You are absolutely correct though. Those first few weeks I had no idea what was happening aside from the occasional head-shot.

The popular FPS games like Overwatch, CS:GO, or Fortnite are easy to understand for someone who've never played them. Dota/LoL/Starcraft are completely different though -- you needs lots of hours of experience to even have any clue as to what's going on. Try watching it, and you'll see what I mean.

This is true of DotA and LoL, but not really Starcraft. Starcraft is fairly easy to pick up and almost all the relevant information to understand who is ahead, who is behind, and how the game is going is easily visible on the screen.

Games like DotA and LoL have too many mechanics built into them that are just debt from their origins as a Warcraft 3 mod. They're not really intuitive or sensical to the uninitiated.

Moreover, in Starcraft if lots of different things are happening at once, it's as technically challenging for the players to keep track of as it is for the viewers. With MOBAs the action is scattered across 3 to 6 areas of the map at the same time, so it's way more complicated to keep track of as a spectator.

The Blizzard MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, was kind of designed from the ground up to be a lot more watchable. They got rid of the item stuff and moved the complexity from being focused on the character builds to more strategic stuff that's visible on the map. But it doesn't seem to have taken off that much.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#356

Post by rossdavidh »

rubicon33 wrote: post #224
Retric wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect their are far more viewers than people making content. The issue is 1 or even 10 viewers is no where near enough to support a content creator.

I find it fascinating that the distribution of resources is almost always NON-LINEAR. Take capital wealth. Money. That is a heavily non-linear distribution. Twitch is no different. If you use viewers as a proxy for wealth, it's fascinating that even that proxy behaves in a non-linear way. I happen to have heard some interesting behavioral theories about why resources distribute in that manner. I'm always curious abou…

I agree that the "natural" result will always be something along the lines of a Pareto distribution. That's bad news for my libertarian instincts, because I think it means that, in the absence of any mechanism to (partially) flatten this distribution back out, we inevitably see power accumulate more and more in the hands of fewer and fewer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#357

Post by naravara »

closetohome wrote: post #213
Reedx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I'm curious about is where that comes from. Why do people like falling asleep to the TV? Why is it preferred over white noise?

If you grew up in a big family and got used to there always being voices and activity in the house, it can be kind of comforting just to have quiet, familiar voices as background noise.

I'm not on Twitch much, but "quiet" and "comforting" aren't really how I'd characterize the voices of most streamers I've been exposed to.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#358

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

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.

Made $73,500 last year as a freelance software consultant last year. Sole breadwinner in my house - my wife doesn't work.

Paid my estimated federal and state income taxes through the year, paid federal and state taxes at the end of the year, paid for a decent tier in the healthcare exchange, put away as much for retirement as was prudent, and still had more than enough money to take two months of the year off and pay for a three bedroom, two bathroom house in the suburbs (mortgage, utilities, and insurance all paid).

It's not impossible here, but it is impossible in the Bay Area.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#359

Post by degenerate »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #346
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 book, "Turning the Mind into an Ally" by Sakyong Mipham. I used the techniques in that book to silence those random, erratic thoughts. I fall asleep within a minute of hitting the pillow now.

Thanks, I will look it up.

Re: Twitch streamers who spend years broadcasting to no one

#360

Post by tathougies »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #261
tathougies wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire idea of 'allyship' is racist, tbh. There are >3 billion non-white people. The idea that you can somehow promote all their interests is ridiculous. The only way you can believe that is if you actually think we are all the same. Last time I checked, we don't all share one group mind.
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