I hate the injection of personality into technological instances or common hiccups in modern Internet culture. My heart monitor watch shows me a smiley face while booting up, Github buttons spam "Buy me a coffee!", Reddit says shit like, "Don't panic" when a webpage doesn't load. Shut the fuck up and leave me alone. I am so tired of being surrounded by these pale imitations of reality, like I need to be pacified with pseudo-emotions or meme culture every step of my day.

  • BOK6669 [none/use name]
    1·
    4 years ago

    Why would you ever give money to play video games though? People used to do it for free and fun.

    Why does Streamer X play video games when hypothetical me works at Walmart? Why would I use that money for Streamer X? I think the parasocial relationships encourages people to do that.

    Who cares if you own your labor when your labor is exploitative?

    • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I find the whole parasocial tactic to be distasteful at best. It's not very healthy consumption to encourage and as a result some people get waaaay too invested in it.

      In practice though, I don't see it being much different than paying to watch a movie or a show that you enjoy. Still shitty capitalist shit, of course.

      • BOK6669 [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        In practice, you can watch it for free. Why would you give people money unless you felt some sort of relationship with them?

        I think the middle ground is to constantly inform your viewers about parasocial relationships and that Twitch is predatory, but then you're shooting yourself in the foot if you are the streamer.

        • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I see it more as a tip. Do I have to have a personal relationship with my server at a restaurant before I tip them? I know that's not a perfect 1-to-1 comparison, but waiters and streamers are both workers being exploited to some degree.

          Twitch as a company is absolutely predatory, I can't argue with that.

          • BOK6669 [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            You could have a personal relationship with your server though, and it does happen right? Tipping is dumb anyway now that I think about it.

            • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Tipping is good practice in hellworld, what's bad is that tipping is necessary for service workers to survive. Obviously in our ideal world it wouldn't even be a concept anyone would have to grapple with.