Remember when there was a question of whether a blogger should be active in their own comment section, or hold themselves somewhat apart from the community that formed around them?
One thing I'm curious about is the dynamics that cause certain streamers to become popular in the first place. Like there are a million variety streamers trying to make it. How did Asmongold become the guy? I wonder if the insanity going viral has something to do with it.
There are a million variety streamers today, but a much smaller number who started 4+ years ago and have had the stamina to stream 6 days a week for four years straight. Stamina really explains a ton of this, imo. Top streamers are *machines*.
Yeah, I think this really explains much of it. I doubt many people sit down and watch this ass-clown stream for 7-8 hours straight, but the second screen phenomenon is a very real thing. Many people, especially teens, will have a stream running on one monitor, or their phone, or whatever, while they play games and chat with their friends, and the only thing that gives them pause is when I look at my goddamned Xfinity bill at the end of the month and threaten to castrate my 17-year-old for data overage charges.
Don't they risk losing viewers over sharing their views? I'd imagine that the median Twitch viewer is the type of person who "doesn't want things to get political". Like if you're trying to stay popular with the largest possible swath of people, it feels counter-productive to stake a position that ~45% of Americans will resent.
You might lose a weakly connected audience member, but you also might gain a highly connected audience member. For streamers the more highly engaged the audience is, the better. A very small but highly engaged audience can provide equivalent incomes to a streamer with a large but weakly engaged audience.
Thank you for the clarification! That makes perfect sense. Follow up question - would a more connected audience (in theory) be more loyal if they streamed less? Or do you think they’re more likely to just get pissed off if the streamer slows down?
This is a bit of a guess, but any random person (especially one who can provide financially valuable engagement) is unlikely to provide that engagement on any particular narrow schedule. So by streaming a lot, the streamer makes it easier for various members of their audience to engage at different times. Also, people who don't have other outlets for their views (and therefore are likely to have views that sit outside the main stream for one reason or another) are likely to be more highly engaged with a streamer who provides positive feedback.
Basically, by seeking highly motivated people with unusual views and creating continuity between their different times of engagement, the streamer acts as a way for those motivated weirdos to coordinate and pool their opinions across time in the same way that the internet generally enables them to connect and pool their views across space.
I’ll definitely echo these points. Curation + react is a combination that creates brainworms. Reactors will end up reacting to the most extreme stories, since that’s what will come up to the surface in algorithm-driven platforms. Combine this with the lack of curated, thoughtful treatments and you get a recipe for extremism.
I rarely post on substack, but each post will cite books and articles I’ve read. There’s a lot that goes into a high quality blog post on this site from many of the most popular writers. It’s not surprising the content is more thoughtful.
I wonder who the most popular live streamer with normal Democrat policy positions is.
(It might just be that there are incentives to having strange politics, and incentives to present as apolitical, but few incentives to talk about conventional politics.)
I would guess the incentives are to either present strange politics, or to present conventional politics very strangely. So you're not going to find many people saying "Joe Biden has done okay, but could be doing better", but you will probably find active disputes between people who talk about "Genocide Joe" and people who are ardent Biden stans. Basically the same sets of people you'd see on twitter, but at much greater length.
Probably Destiny. I don't watch these kinds of streamers, but I know he's a Debate Bro type that argues against the extremes. The online Left tends to hate him in the way that they hate most liberals and will frame him as being center-right, but according to his wiki page he seems like he has a lot of normal, progressive-leaning Democrat positions.
Destiny has fairly reasonable overall politics, but is also prone to have Heated Gamer Moments so he also has a long list of questionable tweets/statements.
Remember when there was a question of whether a blogger should be active in their own comment section, or hold themselves somewhat apart from the community that formed around them?
One thing I'm curious about is the dynamics that cause certain streamers to become popular in the first place. Like there are a million variety streamers trying to make it. How did Asmongold become the guy? I wonder if the insanity going viral has something to do with it.
There are a million variety streamers today, but a much smaller number who started 4+ years ago and have had the stamina to stream 6 days a week for four years straight. Stamina really explains a ton of this, imo. Top streamers are *machines*.
Machines…and also prisoners in a prison of their own making. Bananas
Do you think that most of them are starting from a place where they don't have much of a social life, or they choose to stream over the social life?
Who the hell would watch stuff like this? How bored can you possibly be?
Second screen content strikes again!
Yeah, I think this really explains much of it. I doubt many people sit down and watch this ass-clown stream for 7-8 hours straight, but the second screen phenomenon is a very real thing. Many people, especially teens, will have a stream running on one monitor, or their phone, or whatever, while they play games and chat with their friends, and the only thing that gives them pause is when I look at my goddamned Xfinity bill at the end of the month and threaten to castrate my 17-year-old for data overage charges.
Don't they risk losing viewers over sharing their views? I'd imagine that the median Twitch viewer is the type of person who "doesn't want things to get political". Like if you're trying to stay popular with the largest possible swath of people, it feels counter-productive to stake a position that ~45% of Americans will resent.
You might lose a weakly connected audience member, but you also might gain a highly connected audience member. For streamers the more highly engaged the audience is, the better. A very small but highly engaged audience can provide equivalent incomes to a streamer with a large but weakly engaged audience.
Thank you for the clarification! That makes perfect sense. Follow up question - would a more connected audience (in theory) be more loyal if they streamed less? Or do you think they’re more likely to just get pissed off if the streamer slows down?
This is a bit of a guess, but any random person (especially one who can provide financially valuable engagement) is unlikely to provide that engagement on any particular narrow schedule. So by streaming a lot, the streamer makes it easier for various members of their audience to engage at different times. Also, people who don't have other outlets for their views (and therefore are likely to have views that sit outside the main stream for one reason or another) are likely to be more highly engaged with a streamer who provides positive feedback.
Basically, by seeking highly motivated people with unusual views and creating continuity between their different times of engagement, the streamer acts as a way for those motivated weirdos to coordinate and pool their opinions across time in the same way that the internet generally enables them to connect and pool their views across space.
I’ll definitely echo these points. Curation + react is a combination that creates brainworms. Reactors will end up reacting to the most extreme stories, since that’s what will come up to the surface in algorithm-driven platforms. Combine this with the lack of curated, thoughtful treatments and you get a recipe for extremism.
I rarely post on substack, but each post will cite books and articles I’ve read. There’s a lot that goes into a high quality blog post on this site from many of the most popular writers. It’s not surprising the content is more thoughtful.
I wonder who the most popular live streamer with normal Democrat policy positions is.
(It might just be that there are incentives to having strange politics, and incentives to present as apolitical, but few incentives to talk about conventional politics.)
I would guess the incentives are to either present strange politics, or to present conventional politics very strangely. So you're not going to find many people saying "Joe Biden has done okay, but could be doing better", but you will probably find active disputes between people who talk about "Genocide Joe" and people who are ardent Biden stans. Basically the same sets of people you'd see on twitter, but at much greater length.
Probably Destiny. I don't watch these kinds of streamers, but I know he's a Debate Bro type that argues against the extremes. The online Left tends to hate him in the way that they hate most liberals and will frame him as being center-right, but according to his wiki page he seems like he has a lot of normal, progressive-leaning Democrat positions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_(streamer)
Destiny has fairly reasonable overall politics, but is also prone to have Heated Gamer Moments so he also has a long list of questionable tweets/statements.
Outrage, drama... they sell. Normality doesn't seem to be able to compete.