- *Before I begin I think Twitch is an almost unsuable website. The amount of ads is utterly bonkers. Even with things like uBlock Origin it's just still plastered with advertisements * *
I love watching E-Sports on Twitch. Seeing the highest level turbo-nerds duke it out in games is a lot of fun and helps me understand better ways to play certain games. However there is another side of Twitch I fundamentally don't understand. I suppose I don't understand the whole "para-social" dynamic in general but it seems even further obfuscated on Twitch. I'm not even talking about the biggest streamers either. I have watched some people with 13 viewers play and the dialogue between chat and the player seems stunted and inhuman. It's all very odd to me.
I'm not trying to make a generational critique at all; however it really seems like Twitch is really bad the social component of gaming/online culture. The site itself seems bad for both creators and viewers alike. I know YouTube has it's many problems but it at least it seems design to facilitate some communication and community building. Twitch just seems like website "Brought to you by BRAND-X , NEEDLESS AMAZON SERVICE, and PRODUCT_THAT_HAS_NOTHING_TO_DO_WITH_GAMING".
I don't really see the appeal of Twitch outside of the very narrow display of "high-level" gaming. Could someone explain how it's created such an important digital space in the current walled gardens of the net?
each twitch stream is its own community. The ones I watch are all pretty healthy.
https://www.twitch.tv/bloodberrytart
https://www.twitch.tv/livagar
are the ones i watch the most as of late.
It feels like the community of a old-net chatroom though, it seems so very fleeting by design.
Saving chat logs helps with that, I go back and search through them with some frequency (using Chatty for chat. Chatterino is more popular, though). For example, when one chatter in a random stream was dunking on Hasan, I searched the username in my chat logs and it was a user Hasan had banned a few months prior.
I only find it enjoyable if I watch VODs
It’s also best if the streamer mostly ignores donations. Some streams are unwatchable because it’s just some saying thank you every 15 seconds.
I have watched some people with 13 viewers play and the dialogue between chat and the player seems stunted and inhuman.
Small channels tend to be one of:
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Just a person who plays a normal amount of video games and enjoys streaming it for whatever reason. They're often normal, friendly people, and their streams can be fun. They rarely stream more than once a week.
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Speedrunners who just want their attempts documented for the leaderboards. They might not even have a mic.
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Someone who wants to be a big streamer, and is putting in the work. In this case means streaming on a fixed schedule for several hours a day, saying hi to everyone who comes in, asking how their day is, and constantly trying to be entertaining. I'm impressed by their work ethic, but also deeply unnerved by these people. They stream 10+ hours a week.
The normal ones stream at most a couple hours a week, and the speedrunners have two or fewer viewers, so if you pick a random stream with a dozen viewers, it's always that third guy.
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You're looking at two extremes - dinky little streamers and humongous ones. Good, mid-sized streamers (like 100-250 viewers) are the ones where you can have a conversation with the streamer and they're interesting enough to warrant it. Of course that depends on the size of the audience - for games like Civ 6 that are more dedicated fanbases you're really looking at anyone who hits like 50 viewers regularly.
Twitch adblocker extension and midsize variety streamers like jerma, moonmoon, criken and team vinesauce. 90% of everything is shit and the rest of life is just combing through it for peanuts. Same as anything else
Same here. The SFV bouts are lot more enjoy on YouTube and it's exactly the same content.
Is the culture surrounding streaming on Twitch fundamentally different than with streaming on Youtube?
I think on twitch it is way more common and more acceptable for streamers to replace words with emotes IRL.
I have been saying lol and lmao verbally for half my life so I can't really get too mad
Sure, but back in the day I think it was like a handful of those maybe, these days you could build a whole dictionary out of twitch emotes, and the worst thing about it is I've come to hate some streamers because I can't get past the constant emote talk.
I specifically hate the ones replacing everything with -ge like sadge, madge etc... Shit is incredibly annoying and cringe.
I specifically hate the ones replacing everything with -ge like sadge, madge etc… Shit is incredibly annoying and cringe
:very-intelligent:
I really only watch Hasan and a few other lefty streamers sometimes. I hate the overall twitch culture.
I like twitch and Im not a young one anymore. As with any website you need to sift through some trash to find some gold.
I'm old and I still say it's very off-putting. I wholeheartedly agree with you even if I personally can't stand the aggressive :heated-gamer-moment: hostility or toxicity of esports to begin with.
I'm currently using this to block ads and the purple screen on twitch, in combination with ublock origin
https://github.com/younesaassila/ttv-lol-prothere are other scripts to block twitch ads here
https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutionsAlternatively, you can just watch the vod to not see the live ads.
Twitch is very popular here. It's basically TV for a lot of kids because our own TV shows are hot garbage.
