[HN Gopher] Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
___________________________________________________________________
Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
Author : breckenedge
Score : 235 points
Date : 2021-12-10 19:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| Permit wrote:
| Streaming aside, tyler1 has an almost inhuman dedication and
| focus when it comes to League of Legends. On Hacker News it's
| common to hear that programmers can't work (on classic
| programming tasks) for more than ~4 hours a day. I also feel
| exhausted after working for ~4 hours and have always wondered if
| this was some sort of mental trap I'd fallen into or a genuine
| limit.
|
| Games like League of Legends require complete focus and attention
| yet he somehow manages to regularly stream for 10 hours and
| sometimes reaches peaks of over 30 hours(!!!)[1]. Can you imagine
| solving leetcode problems (even easy ones) for 30 hours?
|
| In 2020 he paused streaming so he could focus solely on going
| from Diamond (mid-to-high tier) to Challenger (highest tier). If
| I recall correctly, he said he would sleep on the couch by his
| computer, wake up, play and go back to sleep on the couch after
| ~17 hours.
|
| I don't follow League of Legends (I prefer Dota) but tyler1 has
| always stood out to me as a person with an incomparable focus and
| dedication. I haven't seen anything similar in the Dota community
| and the only programmers that jump to mind would be geohotz or
| maybe Nick Winter[2].
|
| [1] https://dotesports.com/news/tyler1-marathon-stream-top-
| lane-...
|
| [2] https://blog.nickwinter.net/posts/the-120-hour-workweek-
| epic...
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| Some heroin users are also incredibly dedicated to finding
| their next score. They show intense focus when it comes to
| seeking out their next hit.
|
| Why do you think demonstrating focus on an addictive video game
| is the same as solving open-ended computer science problems?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There's huge amounts of space between "open-ended computer
| science problems" (your words) and "classic programming
| tasks" (gp's words)
| Permit wrote:
| > Why do you think demonstrating focus on an addictive video
| game is the same as solving open-ended computer science
| problems?
|
| Firstly, I probably wouldn't classify the work most of us do
| as "solving open-ended computer science problems" so I'm not
| trying to make a comparison to that work.
|
| Secondly, I guess it stands out to me because I watch other
| people play the same addictive game and are unable to play at
| a high level for the same lengths of time. If it were just an
| addictive property of the game, we should expect to see
| thousands of tyler1's as we see thousands of heroin addicts.
| Since we do not, it makes me think that there's something
| special with him.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Tyler is just "high level" heroin addict so to say. There
| are indeed thousands of heroin addicts, just look at online
| of Dota 2.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My dad worked for startups on-and-off and he definitely was
| productive for a lot more than 8 hours per day. He does agree
| that for truly novel work there's a limit, but for every novel
| problem to solve, there's dozens[1] of reported bugs to
| investigate, so there's plenty of work to fit between work on
| new things.
|
| 1: That number seems small today, but I got the sense that bug-
| discovery by customers at least was limited by the low number
| of customers that a b2b startup had in the 80s.
| megablast wrote:
| You are talking for your dad?? What??
| aidenn0 wrote:
| He has far more experience working 60+ hour weeks then I
| do, so I defer to his wisdom in this case.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You're comparing apples to oranges.
|
| I could also play MMORPGs and Dota 2 for 10 hours straight
| without any break, I can barely sit one hour solving
| LC/learning something. And before you account this to age, even
| now I could spend whole day playing some addictive game like a
| robot.
| _prototype_ wrote:
| He takes Adderall my dude. I'm a developer and I use absolutely
| no cognitive enhancers. If I took Adderall I would be able to
| code for 20 hours straight. I took a small dose back in college
| and that stuff is insanely good for long hours at anything.
|
| Also, I'm speculating here, but I think he is on Testosterone
| Replacement Therapy, which also has insane energy, mood and
| cognitive enhancements.
|
| Lastly he takes a ton of stimulants.
|
| I don't for a moment think he's working purely off "natural"
| energy.
| handrous wrote:
| I think the impressive thing is doing it day after day. I can
| do _lots_ of things, including programming, for 12+ hours. The
| trouble is, after a day or two of that, I _desperately_ don 't
| want to do whatever-it-is for several days or weeks. I want to
| go do other stuff.
|
| It's the doing it day after day on a regular schedule that
| makes me feel like I never really recover from programming, and
| just want to zone out and stare at the wall until bed time,
| having very little energy left for anything either fun or
| productive, after 4-5 hours, most days.
|
| I'll even do that with video games. Get the family out of the
| house and give me a weekend, I'll play vidja games for like 16
| hours. Then wake up the second day and not want to touch a game
| for at least a week, and instead start doing home improvement
| projects or whatever. Or sit outside and read a book all day.
| Not because I feel like I should, but because it's the thing I
| most want to be doing, and I have zero desire to look at a
| screen for a good long while.
|
| The regularity of work is what makes it so damn draining, for
| me. I'm sure it'd ruin gaming for me in short order, too,
| though I'd have fared a lot better at it back when I was in my
| teens or early 20s than I would now, for sure. I _can 't_ do 30
| waking hours of _anything_ now. 24 just about ruins me. I could
| get to about 36-38 before hitting a wall and passing out for
| like 12 hours, back then. 30 wasn 't that big a deal, and I hit
| that mark pretty often (usually, yeah, playing video games for
| a good chunk of it).
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| It's worth noting that tyler1 is a hugely toxic individual and
| is one of the most visible "role models" for massively toxic
| and aggressive behavior.
|
| "Focus" aside, his overall contribution to the sport is tainted
| with his abhorrent behavior.
| dathinab wrote:
| I don't think leetcode problems are a good example.
|
| But I have worked (programmed) two 9h days without sleeping in-
| between before and it worked somehow well???
|
| Through normally I often have problems working 8h a day without
| taking a fairly long lunch brake.
|
| But then sometimes I just went 10h with close to no brakes
| (some ad-hock food) without even realizing it.
|
| It's still puzzles me what makes the difference.
| kubb wrote:
| Do you really imply that playing the same game over and over
| again (with some variables but still) is the same as solving
| programming problems?
|
| The game is literally designed to hook you in and make you play
| one more and one more. You absolutely can autopilot through a
| game and still win.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the guy has a lot of dedication for sure.
| But playing League all day is really not like coding all day, I
| don't want anyone to get that impression.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| There's a world of difference between playing league casually
| and competitively. No one at his level of play can autopilot
| through a game and still win.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| That's not true. The skill disparity between the very top
| players (100-500), and the rest of the players in the top
| league is usually very large.
| 1_player wrote:
| The point of match-making is playing with people your
| same level. It doesn't matter what level tyler1 is, he'll
| be playing against people that will challenge and give
| him a hard time.
|
| You're not matched against people less skilled than you
| where you can just "relax" and walk it in. When you reach
| your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain
| there.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work
| hard just to remain there_
|
| Top players hit the ceiling of the MMR system before they
| hit their skill ceiling.
|
| When you get to the very top of a ladder, matchmaking
| stops working correctly. Partly because the top few
| players are insanely good compared to everyone else and
| partly because there are literally not enough people
| online at any one time for an equal match to be made.
| seabird wrote:
| He IS a very top player (solo Challenger, top 200 in 4/5
| roles in the game). There's not a chance in hell he's
| able to go on autopilot at that point, even in slightly
| lower rank games during his grinds where he has to try
| and win losing games with a team that's not good enough
| to help him do it. The only reason he's not playing as a
| salaried professional is that he's in a bad region to do
| so and makes more being a personality.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| That is my point. You don't think he could autopilot and
| still win majority of his games while climbing from
| Diamond to Challenger?
|
| > _where he has to try and win losing games with a team
| that 's not good enough to help him do it_
|
| This doesn't mean he can't autopilot. Attempting to solo
| carry a team of 5 is difficult even if you're completely
| dialed in.
| tester756 wrote:
| I have 5?k hours in LoL around high plat / in previous season
| low diamond and I'd say that LoL while being different from
| competitive programming
|
| is still exhausting if you want to play it with full focus
| for a few hours.
|
| Of course there's difference between playing ARAMs for fun
| and tryharding on "relatively competent" ELO where you try to
| do not commit mistakes as hard as you can and games are not
| "fiestas" (lack of strategy, just fighting)
|
| >You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win.
|
| Significant part of day2day programming can be pretty
| brainless/trivial too - yet another gluing json over http.
| Don't get me wrong, there are insanely exhausting projects
| too.
|
| During programming you can take break whenever you want, go
| to kitchen, watch memes, hn, read news, blabla, meanwhile
| when you're in game, then you can't*.
| evandwight wrote:
| How often do you engage your slow brain (from thinking fast
| and slow)?
|
| I feel like it's like speed chess and not normal chess. You
| have no time to think till after the game, you just have to
| do and trust your gut.
|
| The slow brain is what exhausts you.
| tester756 wrote:
| There are slower and faster moments.
|
| e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like
| 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want
| to do / achieve and how to do that
|
| It depends on the stage of the game, but generally when
| enemies are around, then you may don't have time to
| think.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like
| 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want
| to do / achieve and how to do that
|
| 30 seconds is infinite in games like that.
| evandwight wrote:
| That's been my experience too. I never felt exhausted
| playing. Thinking about what to do better between games
| was more draining.
|
| I've never played competitively, though I did get to
| about top 3000 in North America. Thanks for sharing!
| tester756 wrote:
| I mean I'm not saying that I do not feel exhausted after
| playing
|
| Matches where e.g we lose early game and have to come
| back somehow by avoiding commiting mistakes hard and
| somehow catching off somebody from enemy team could be
| exhausting cuz you're basically balacing on the edge for
| 30min :P
| panick21_ wrote:
| Playing a high level game of Starcraft or Dota is more
| exhausting to me then programming. With programming I have to
| think of some designs, spend some times with the tooling,
| setting things up, to all the busy work surrounding the core
| problem and so on. Sure there are moments when you really
| have to think very hard about what you do as well, but its
| not constant.
|
| I can take easy breaks. Run some tests and so on.
|
| When playing a game you have to be totally focused for longer
| periods and not just focus but also execute and handle the
| concept of being activity opposed. Its like if you were
| programming and the compiler was activity being evil.
| Permit wrote:
| Have you played League of Legends or Dota 2 before? It will
| be hard to convey the mental/emotional exhaustion that most
| people feel from playing MOBAs at even a semi-competitive
| level. In my experience it's a lot different than playing FPS
| or other games.
|
| I have a distinct memory of finishing a game of Dota 2 and
| realizing that it felt as though I'd just finished a 3 hour
| exam. I didn't feel happy that we'd won, just relieved. I
| don't think this will convince you, but perhaps consider
| being open to the possibility that it genuinely is as
| difficult as solving most programming problems that we face
| in our day-to-day work. In my mind, it's at least as
| difficult as "easy" leetcode problems.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I would argue that is more due to stress than focus. Top
| players usually don't take laddering seriously (I.e. not
| stressed).
|
| Also, if you're playing for that long you end up making _a
| lot_ of mistakes even if you 're a top player. I don't
| think it's comparable to programming.
| _prototype_ wrote:
| League is extremely fun and addicting. Its a huge dopamine
| kick. When I play, I stay hooked for hours on end and have
| to stop myself.
|
| When I code, I'm mostly just thinking hard and not very
| happy. The best part is the "aha" moment, and the huge
| dopamine kick of solving the programming/debugging problem.
| It is also NOT addicting.
|
| These are two completely different things. I'm not sure why
| you're so determined to compare the two. They are insanely
| different.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I've played League of Legends for nearly 10 years.
|
| Not to take anything away from Tyler1, because he really
| goes above and beyond, but it really doesn't take much
| mental focus or anything really to play it. Programming? It
| takes focus, you really have to think sometimes. But
| League? When I'm tired the game plays itself. It just feels
| like muscle memory.
|
| It might take a bit more effort to play at a consistently
| high level. But I'm pretty sure it's mostly muscle memory
| for him too. There's very little actual thinking other than
| the big picture of what objectives to take and I'm sure
| when he's playing for 20+ hours he's just on autopilot for
| the majority of the time.
|
| To put it into comparison with how little mental power it
| personally takes me, I like to watch a lot of Anime, that's
| Japanese animation with English subtitles. I can't watch
| Anime if I'm tired because keeping track of subtitles and
| what's on screen actually takes a substantial amount of
| mental power. But I can bash out 5 games of LoL back to
| back when I'm equally as tired.
| MacroChip wrote:
| There's a difference between "playing the game" and
| playing the game. I can sit at a chess board and move
| pieces around and say that chess takes no focus because I
| chose not to focus
| lostmsu wrote:
| Is there thought? How do you know his skills are not due
| to a few hours (tens of hours, hundreds of hours) of
| intense training of a few basic rules, and the rest is
| just freeroaming like it is for every other player?
| arcsonnet wrote:
| Because there are other players on the other side of the
| game. They will be at comparable levels of "intense
| training of a few basic rules" (due to ELO based
| matchmaking) and they will be trying as hard as they can
| to beat him.
| lostmsu wrote:
| You can't assume high-level players are trying as hard as
| they can in a proof that high level players are trying as
| hard as they can.
|
| Your argument doesn't make any sense in the scenario I
| described.
| [deleted]
| moosebear847 wrote:
| Playing a game like LoL is like being in a battle or war.
|
| Would you watch anime and shoot your gun with 'muscle
| memory' while fighting 5 ruthless, intelligent opponents?
|
| A fight requires constant reevaluation of the situation
| and planning to win the game. If you play by "muscle
| memory" and win, you are playing against weak unthinking
| opponents or getting carried by your team.
|
| If you played against good players, trust me you won't
| win thinking about anime and chilling. And it's very
| stressful because you're constantly on guard.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Would you watch anime and shoot your gun with 'muscle
| memory' while fighting 5 ruthless, intelligent opponents?
|
| Easy. At some point some actions are so engraved that you
| respond without even thinking. Example: blinking out on a
| slight enemy sight.
|
| > A fight requires constant reevaluation of the situation
| and planning to win the game. If you play by "muscle
| memory" and win, you are playing against weak unthinking
| opponents or getting carried by your team.
|
| > If you played against good players, trust me you won't
| win thinking about anime and chilling. And it's very
| stressful because you're constantly on guard.
|
| You can use all those big words, but reality is
| completely different. I've watched amateur/pro Dota 2
| since it's inception in 2011 and some pro Dota 1 before
| that. It is a team game, it is more about team
| cooperation and heroes you pick. Sure small things can
| overturn the game, but most of the time it is about
| bigger game than small actions.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode
| problems.
|
| I have 3k hours in Dota 2. I know exactly what it is and
| how it works. It's really not. Not even close.
| kubb wrote:
| Yeah I've played League for a bit. It really does get
| easier the more you play.
|
| By the way, I've just read in the article that Tyler's been
| on Adderall since first grade, I guess that will help him
| stay focused.
| abledon wrote:
| wow, that explains so much, he usually plays it offlike
| its only the pre-workout bloodrush hes drinking
| solidasparagus wrote:
| Playing MOBAs all day is much easier than programming all
| day. It has bigger lows like exhausting 100 minute techie
| games or getting tilted by teammates, but it's still
| somehow easier. I think it's because you get a fresh start
| every game and a good game is refreshing in a way that
| finishing a problem isn't.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Sometimes grandmaster but frequently diamond player here
| that also built my own company where I frequently coded
| 12+ hours a day. I disagree with you completely. I was
| also significantly more exhausted from a long session of
| league then I was from a long session of developing one
| of my sites. You are always on for 30 minutes straight
| and near the end it's almost non stop team fighting and
| positioning with micro decisions being made every few
| seconds versus coding where my mind will wander until I
| snap it back to focus.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You're an outlier, there's a reason why anybody can play
| games designed to hook at many people as possible and not
| everybody can program.
| arcsonnet wrote:
| This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of
| skill required to compete at the highest level.
|
| You don't encounter a lot of autopiloting at the highest
| level of competition. The people you compete against are
| trying as hard as they possibly can to beat you, and it takes
| a tremendous amount of focus and ingenuity to outplay them
| and win. You gloss over the details of that monumental task
| with reductive phrasing - but I think you're overlooking a
| lot.
|
| I was at a party once, talking to a stranger about why I
| loved programming so much. They said: "Yeah, but at the end
| of the day, it's _just_ programming, right?". That's how this
| comment reads to me - "At the end of the day, it's just
| playing a game, right?"
|
| There's a reason that some people compete at the highest
| level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.
| kubb wrote:
| Your response is really not adequate to what I wrote above,
| you seem to be projecting some past experiences that you
| had with people not giving you credit on me and it feels
| like a very unfortunate and provocative stance.
|
| If I wanted to respond in the same tone, I could say: "The
| guy is not a pro player, he doesn't compete at the highest
| level, he just grinds solo queue for 10 hours per day on
| Adderall. He got this way because he had a mixture of
| talent and addiction susceptibility. He got addicted to the
| dopamine hits that the free to play game was meticulously
| designed to deliver in a pattern that makes the player
| unable to stop even if he hates it and feels miserable."
|
| But I will say this: I think you're misinterpreting my
| comment as scorn when in reality it's my perspective based
| on my experiences with coding and playing this game. I know
| both, so I believe that my opinion is valuable and I
| decided to share it.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > There's a reason that some people compete at the highest
| level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.
|
| It's the same as with any activity.
|
| Time * dedication * (1 + natural talent)
|
| > This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level
| of skill required to compete at the highest level.
|
| I've done both, I'm not disregarding amount of skill and
| dedication it takes. But it is completely different from
| programming.
|
| Competetive gaming is akin to real sports, more about
| situation, luck and reaction rather than natural wits. All
| games are following patterns which you can learn just by
| spending time in game which adheres to limited set of rules
| defined by game logic.
| 1_player wrote:
| At gunpoint, I'd rather code 12 hours a day than play LoL or
| CS:GO 12 hours a day. Because programming is less exhausting
| and my code doesn't insult my mother on VOIP. And I say that
| as a gamer and esports enthusiast.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I used to play League...then I found out everyone who
| played that game had slept with my mother.
| shanehoban wrote:
| Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less
| draining.
| kubb wrote:
| Except when you're drained you won't have the creativity to
| solve another programming task. But you will be able to
| queue up again. It also gets easier the more you play,
| because you're relying on the same skills that you build up
| with every match.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I haven't ever played a MOBA, but fixing bugs (which
| takes up a significant amount of developer time), seems
| to be about as rote as playing an RTS (which I have
| played, albeit almost 20 years ago).
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| You skipped over the year and a half when he was banned from
| LoL for being such a raging asshole.
| https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/10/14179366/league-of-legends...
| vertak wrote:
| I find it hard to sympathize for the poor plight of the
| $200,000/month healthcare-less twitch streamer working 2 more
| hours a day than the average person. Was this article written
| entirely to provoke outrage or is there some oppression I'm
| missing?
| habosa wrote:
| I'm happy that he's making money, especially since it sounds like
| he didn't have it easy as a kid.
|
| However it's a bit sad to me that this is the successful end
| state of the streamer economy. His job is uniquely voluntary. He
| plays what he wants to play. People tune in and pay him if they
| want to. And somehow the result is that if he wants to stay at
| the top of this world he's trapped in that chair for unreasonable
| spans while people drop by to either praise or abuse him.
|
| If this is the natural evolution of celebrity-fan relationships I
| think it reflects way worse on the fans than the celebrity. This
| is what we demand for the sake of our entertainment.
| kingcharles wrote:
| https://archive.md/Dpr7S
| mrtksn wrote:
| 3 to 8 hours long streams seems to be the norm on Twitch. What
| kind of lifestyle there's that allows the consumption of full day
| long content?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| When I was in college I had about 10 hours of free time a day.
| elaus wrote:
| I think for most streams there's no real need to watch them
| from start til end. You can just tune in and out at will
| without missing much. For many it probably just runs in the
| background while they do other things, like some people do with
| soap operas on TV.
| Operyl wrote:
| It's good background noise for me, albeit I watch relaxing
| background content here, things like Pokemon or Animal
| Crossing.
| anthonycr wrote:
| Personally, as a programmer I usually have a Twitch stream
| (often Tyler1's) running on a second monitor as background
| noise if I'm not listening to music. However, the most active
| chatters are mainly college students in my experience.
| cardosof wrote:
| The streamer is 8 hours in, not the audience. Also, if you
| think how much free time children, teenagers and NEET adults
| have, yeah, 5+h per day watching games is completely doable
| during a pandemic.
| handrous wrote:
| > What kind of lifestyle there's that allows the consumption of
| full day long content?
|
| Kids.
|
| Adults without kids.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Adults without kids.
|
| What an ignorant thing to say. Apparently having no
| kids==nothing to do except for consume full day long content.
| abledon wrote:
| do 4 hours of work, remain 'online' at job watching twitch
| for rest of 4 hours
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Or just keep it on in a background tab with headphones on?
| I've always got some kind of podcast running or twitch if I'm
| not doing deep work (I do frontend, so I'll listen to stuff
| when writing boilerplate vs problem solving).
| hogFeast wrote:
| You have it on in the background. Some streams have a very
| engaged community, everyone is there flooding the chat all the
| time. But in most streams the viewers aren't engaging, they
| have it on the background, it is on their second monitor while
| they play games or work or whatever. Viewership went way up
| during the pandemic too.
|
| I don't think it is for everyone but I prefer it to
| TV/Netflix/whatever. I didn't even play games when I started
| watching (I do now, but only once or twice a week). Some people
| prefer amateur porn to Brazzers.
| jrockway wrote:
| What's the career progression for streamers and eSports players,
| anyway? I feel like everyone that does this now is going to be
| tired of it in 5 years, and then they're just 30 and without a
| college degree or job experience.
| jedberg wrote:
| The same career path as a professional athlete. Some go into
| commentating, some go into sports management, and most retire
| broke and have to pick up a whole new career in their late
| 20s/early 30s.
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| Bingo -- they struggle through their 20s until they realize
| they need to pick a practical career in their early 30s.
| munk-a wrote:
| Twitch streaming can be extremely practical if you're being
| sustainable about it. Assuming you're actually watching
| your income and expenses and being smart about when to hire
| on additional help you can make a pretty darn successful
| career. I'd point to T90[1] as an example of someone that
| isn't near the top 1% but has built an extremely
| sustainable business including paid moderators and content
| editors (for sending clips to YouTube).
|
| 1.
| https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/T90Official/Broadcasts
| solidasparagus wrote:
| T90 was number 211 in the leaks. That is the top 0.003%
| of streamers.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Most people who have a twitch account are 'streamers'.
|
| I occasionally stream my desktop to show friends
| something - doesn't mean you should count me for that
| same list.
| solidasparagus wrote:
| Go ahead and exclude 99% of the 9.2 million monthly
| active streamers - T90 is STILL in the top 1% of that
| group.
| mbesto wrote:
| That's a helluva wide brush you just stroked there. Not
| everyone follows this path, but it's certainly pervasive in
| sports & entertainment.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| The skills and experience they've picked up directly
| translates to a number of "practical" careers: affiliate
| marketing, social media marketing, PR, community building,
| video and audio editing, etc. not to mention game-related
| careers in eSports, game development, etc.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Same thing everyone does when they can no longer work in their
| current career space (or no longer want to): They do something
| else.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Same thing people in sports do:
|
| - Continue
|
| - Retire
|
| - Start coaching
|
| - Start casting
|
| - Management (Organizing/growing content creators/groups)
|
| - Switch careers entirely
|
| Any of the giants should hopefully have been saving there money
| and have quite a bunch tucked away. Any of the smaller ones
| should have been doing something on the side, or at least have
| a plan B ready.
|
| Also, not sure why we're assuming no college degree here.
| munk-a wrote:
| Or that running a successful business for a decade doesn't
| count as experience that most businesses would be happy to
| hire on. Being a successful twitch streamer involves
| extremely good time management and a lot of hands on
| advertising. They've got a lot more proof of successful
| marketing than most PR folks you might look at hiring.
| somerando7 wrote:
| If you're one of the top streamers, with decent financial
| literacy, you will easily make enough to retire by 30 if you
| started streaming at say 20.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| Nowadays there are financial planners focusing on content
| creators/streaming talent who will know the specifics of tax
| structures and advantages, etc. as well.
| jrockway wrote:
| But what if you're not one of the top streamers, and you just
| get 250 viewers a few times a week? I watch a lot of people
| like that. It seems to pay for room and board, but I worry
| about their future.
| vkou wrote:
| > But what if you're not one of the top streamers, and you
| just get 250 viewers a few times a week?
|
| If you have 250 viewers a few times a week, you're not
| quitting your day job for it. If you are, you should
| probably reconsider.
| che_shirecat wrote:
| What's the alternative? Alot of these people are great
| entertainers and terrible <anything else>. If they weren't
| streaming they'd be working shifts at McDonalds. If
| anything they're doing the most advantageous thing they
| could be doing.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Why is that a problem? Nobody cares for the millions of
| people that try to be professional athletes, musicians,
| artists or dancers that are barely making ends meet and
| ultimately move on to something else.
|
| This is just like any other endeavor. Many try, most fail,
| some succeed wildly. We don't need to feel bad for the
| people that try and fail. That is part of life and
| progressing as a person.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| For some people it's a career. For people with ~250 viewers
| a few times a week...they probably need another job.
| Aunche wrote:
| That works for the millionaire streamers, but I'm sure a lot
| of them make modest incomes as well.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I know a few ex-YouTubers, and they're all doing just fine.
| Working in PR, marketing, agents for other creators, etc. Sure,
| they don't all have a degree... but they have a ton of
| connections and relevant experience.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Will Frampton (aka QuickyBaby) who streams mostly World of
| Tanks has a PhD and is 33.
| bluedino wrote:
| Hopefully they invest their money and don't blow it on Ferraris
| and avocado toast.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Their money goes into GME and crypto
| floren wrote:
| Jeez, at least avocados are tasty...
| authed wrote:
| better investment then a Ferrari
| bbreier wrote:
| depends on the Ferrari tbh
| munk-a wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but cars are the
| definition of an absolutely terrible investment - they
| might beat out randomly hoping you'll land big on
| r/wallstreetbets but both are extremely poor investment
| decisions.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Ordinary cars are a strongly depreciating asset. However,
| above a certain level this stops being true. I had the
| fortune to buy, use and subsequently sell a number of
| higher end cars (Ferrari, Lamborghini) and I made little
| to no loss on any of them. In fact, the Ferrari 458,
| which to this day I consider the best supercar to drive,
| appreciated during the year or so I had it.
| munk-a wrote:
| It sounds like the cars might have slightly more than
| broken even on cost for you which sounds like a terrible
| investment option when you've got everything from real
| estate to mutual funds that will generally outperform
| cars - and, much like stock picking, most of the models
| you purchased didn't significantly appreciate - just one
| ended up gaining in value.
|
| I suppose I was misinformed in that I thought that cars
| of all value ranges were pretty disastrous assets to hold
| - but it sounds like holding on to them for value
| appreciation still isn't a particularly good tactic.
| jakear wrote:
| When you have enough cash on hand to buy one, chances are
| you already have investments in money-returning assets,
| and you're diversifying into entertainment-returning
| ones. No point making a bunch of money just to spend it
| all on making more money. If you can tie up a bundle of
| cash for a year, get a bunch of entertainment out of it,
| then liquidate for approximately the same amount, who is
| to complain?
| [deleted]
| verve_rat wrote:
| I'm assuming they were making a comment about the value
| of classic cars. Some of them could absolutely be a good
| investment, if, (big, giant, planet sized) if you know
| what you are doing.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| ask your colleagues :)
|
| i was pleasantly surprised one day to find I was working side-
| by-side with someone who was once a minor music celebrity
|
| they had pivoted in their 20-somethings after a decent payout,
| used it to finance their education, and are now just 'one of
| us' haha
| dnissley wrote:
| Reminds me of Travis Morrison, lead singer of the indie band
| The Dismemberment Plan who were popular in the 90s/early
| 2000s. After his retirement from music he became a web
| developer who at one point worked for the washington post and
| huffington post.
|
| His girlfriend (now wife) describes the experience of being
| with someone who was once somewhat famous in this article [0]
| -- _There were moments of extreme cognitive dissonance when I
| saw him up there. He's a wild and expert showman on stage. As
| I'd watch him do things like play the keyboard by smashing it
| with his forehead, spit water all over the audience or writhe
| convulsively on the ground, I would think, "I can't believe
| this is the same man who likes to go to bed at 10 o'clock and
| sweetly brings me coffee in bed every morning."_
|
| [0] - https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/07/travis-
| morrison-and...
| alistairSH wrote:
| He's on pace to earn more then $3 million before he turns 30.
| He doesn't much of a plan to live reasonably for many years.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| He said in this article he's already earned $5 million.
| alistairSH wrote:
| 2.5 for Twitch so far was listed earlier in the articles.
| Either way, my point stands, he can retire if wants.
| matwood wrote:
| I know an ex-WoW professional player. He didn't make a ton of
| money. After it was over he went back to school, and is now a
| very talented software engineer.
|
| Doing anything at a high level tends to cultivate skills that
| translate to other areas. General skills like focus and
| discipline come to mind.
| golemiprague wrote:
| What's the big deal starting at age 30? you still got another
| 30 years to work at least, if not more. You just study some
| profession and start working in the field.
| criddell wrote:
| Do you have the same questions for professional athletes in
| traditional sports?
| [deleted]
| valleyer wrote:
| We have decades of examples of how this works out for pro
| athletes. The answer is that there's a range of outcomes:
| some have to find new careers after their playing days are
| over; others find ancillary work (coaching, scouting) in the
| sports industry; the very best make enough money that they
| don't need to work anymore. In many cases, the athletes have
| a college degree of at least some value.
|
| Professional video game streaming is relatively new. It's a
| valid question.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's a valid question, but the answer is simple: nearly the
| same thing that sports players do when they stop being the
| player. They either coach, manage, promote their brand, or
| switch careers.
| xwdv wrote:
| Yes. A lot of professional athletes don't really make much
| money. They get normal salaries and play for non major league
| teams or federations of some sort.
|
| Eventually though they will have to quit their sport due to
| wear and tear and no longer being at a peak level. And most
| will probably never really progress to a level where they can
| make some quick millions from a contract and then retire
| early.
|
| So what then?
| microtherion wrote:
| One concern I could see in e-sports vs traditional (and I
| don't follow e-sports closely, so maybe I'm wrong) is that
| the games being played change regularly. Do the skills of a
| top player of one generation of games tend to translate well
| to coaching top players for the next generation of games, or
| would any such coach look more like Ted Lasso?
| bsder wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I'm a proponent of the idea that your athletic scholarship at
| a Division I-A school should be for "sports degree" and that
| it should entitle you to _come back prepaid_ for an
| "academic" 4 year degree when that track runs out.
|
| That would stop a lot of the idiocy we see around "student
| athletes".
| microtherion wrote:
| I'm sure professional athletes in non-traditional physical
| sports have had to face the same questions -- e.g. Tony Hawk.
| And in reality a lot of people put in professional levels of
| effort into traditional sports without reaping the kind of
| career-defining rewards one would associate with
| "professional athletes".
| analogdreams wrote:
| from the article it doesn't sound like this guy needs/wants a
| lot. what he needs is a financial advisor to properly look
| after that money and he should be set should he just walk away
| in a few years.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Some of them make enough money to retire if streaming doesn't
| work out long-term.
| siruncledrew wrote:
| If someone is an esports player, it would be hard to stay a
| professional (in most action games at least) at age 30 simply
| due to natural wear on your hands and reaction times getting
| slower.
| Drew_ wrote:
| I haven't seen any evidence to suggest 30 years is a number
| of much importance for this. Most Esports scenes also aren't
| old enough to have older players as well.
|
| The only ones that I know of are Quake and Street Fighter. In
| Quake currently only 1 or 2 of the best mechanically gifted
| players in the world are under 30. In Street Fighter, there's
| a wide range of ages including younger players as well as
| players as old as 40+. The "god of execution" Sakonoko is 42
| years old and is still winning major tournaments every once
| in a while.
|
| In Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton is likely on his way to yet
| another world championship at 36, edging it out over his 10
| years younger contender.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This doesn't really make sense. Athletes in many sports are
| playing way past their 'prime' these days and they are
| wearing out much more than just their hands. Consistently
| good reaction times are a result of consistent training.
| Plenty of older baseball/tennis players have superhuman
| reaction times. I would see mental fatigue and boredom as
| being the major hurdle to playing esports on a professional
| level at an older age. No matter how fun it started as, 10+
| years of looking at the same thing over and over has got to
| be soul sucking.
| blahblah123456 wrote:
| It's counterintuitive, but if you look at eSports players,
| the prime years are much lower (both the start and the
| end). You do see 16 year olds at the top but you never see
| 30 year olds. It feels like the prime is really 16-25.
| Reaction times in traditional sports are not as important,
| and hands are one of the worst things to wear out. More
| parts != more wear out. There's a reason why there are
| (general) physical therapists and physical therapists who
| specialize in hands. Hands are incredibly complex and soft
| tissue injuries heal very poorly due to lack of blood
| supply.
|
| I doubt the boredom thing is that different for sports vs
| eSports. At least with eSports the game is changing due to
| patches. With sports, the game itself hardly changes.
|
| For citation: see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article
| ?id=10.1371/journal... you can see reaction time starts to
| drop off rapidly starting at age 25
| mym1990 wrote:
| Its not really counterintuitive, the prime years are
| lower because true physical development in physical
| sports starts at a later age, everything up to that point
| is related to building a physical foundation for
| movement, building an interest in the sport, and laying
| groundwork for proper mechanics.
|
| There is also societal stigma from playing video games
| seriously past early 20s(well atleast 5-10+ years ago,
| but with Twitch and things it is now way more
| accceptable).
|
| "Reaction times in traditional sports are not as
| important" is laughable.
| jackothy wrote:
| Re: Boredom
|
| eSports players spend a lot more time playing than normal
| athletes. You can only be physically active for a few
| hours per day. eSports players can do a lot more, like
| tyler1 who consistently streams for 10+ hours 5 days a
| week.
|
| Normal athletes arguably also get more variation.
| Football players don't play back to back football matches
| all day every day, they practice and improve in a lot of
| other ways. They also get more variation due to traveling
| around to play away games.
| tester756 wrote:
| > You do see 16 year olds at the top but you never see 30
| year olds.
|
| In CS:GO there were players around their 30s and were
| successful
|
| https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Virtus.pro
|
| e.g
|
| >2016-07-30 1st S-Tier Offline ELEAGUE ELEAGUE Season 1 2
| : 0 Fnatic $400,000
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| In physical sports the barrier to entry is very high. Even
| if you have good reaction time, high strength, etc. you
| will still need 1000s of hours of practice from a very
| young age to excel.
|
| In e-sports there's millions of people practicing every day
| and the built in ranking system can filter that down to the
| current top 0.1%. At this point branching out into actual
| competitions is not nearly as difficult as getting noticed
| by a NBA, NFL, etc. recruiter.
|
| It does depend on the Game. CSGO players play a very
| limited number of maps so pure reaction time and hand-eye
| coordination is often the deciding factor. Strategy games
| like LoL and softer FPS games like Fortnite are less
| dependent on physical talent.
| mym1990 wrote:
| The ranking system in physical and mental sports is
| essentially the same, it comes down to: 'can you beat or
| compete with X person consistently', and just for
| context...there were over a million high school football
| players participating in 2019, and this is mostly in
| organized play. If I want to get noticed in League, I
| have to grind a queue for ungodly amount of hours to get
| to a respectable ranking and then solicit myself to teams
| for proper team based competition...good luck with all
| that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 1. Most professional athletes have very short careers.
|
| 2. The athletes who do play "past their prime" are usually
| making up for reduced physical acuity with other skills
| (e.g. you don't see very many baseball players hit triples
| after 30).
|
| 3. Players with long careers invest a huge amount of time
| in conditioning, and to a hard-to-measure degree, PEDs.
|
| 4. I don't really follow eSports; If someone played
| Starcraft competitively 20 years ago, are they still
| playing SC, or do they switch to something else like LoL?
| What's the typical competitive "lifetime" of a game? If you
| picked up game-specific skills, it might be harder to apply
| #2 when the game du-jour changes.
|
| 5. As a slight nitpick to the whole conversation, my
| understanding is that "reaction time" is perhaps a
| misnomer; the drop in reaction time with age for performing
| a simple activity appears to be relatively minor, but more
| complex activities (including habitual ones like driving),
| which suggests that the performance decline is in selecting
| and/or executing the proper response to a stimuli rather
| than what we think of as pure "reaction time"
| tester756 wrote:
| In CS:GO there were players around their 30s and were
| successful
|
| https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Virtus.pro
|
| e.g
|
| >2016-07-30 1st S-Tier Offline ELEAGUE ELEAGUE Season 1 2 : 0
| Fnatic $400,000
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| There are quite a few streamers who have been doing it for more
| than a decade at this point with no sign of slowing down.
|
| On the other hand, there are plenty of ways to sell the skill
| of building a large following to employers, and plenty of
| companies looking for people who are experts in social
| media/streaming platforms.
| RobRivera wrote:
| why does every endeavor require career progression? its
| [Current Year] can't people just enjoy something, take the
| money and invest it, then go to college, start a business, make
| a RE empire?
|
| Ask a few military vets, many legitimately just start at the
| bottom at the totem some place novel into their mid 30s.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Right? Can't you just enjoy being in a good place and stay
| there?
|
| Maybe I'm jaundiced because I just had to fill out my annual
| review self-assessment and skipped the "5-year plan" because
| I simply couldn't be bothered to lie about it.
| dejke wrote:
| I think a decent few of them find positions in related fields
| like talent management or esports. They do probably develop
| pretty decent relationships in those industries.
| sneak wrote:
| You could ask the same of any developer in their 30s or 40s,
| most of whom earn less per year than the subject of TFA, and
| who similarly will have trouble finding work in their field in
| 10-20 years (if the ageism doesn't go away).
| o10449366 wrote:
| The comments section is truly depraved.
| alistairSH wrote:
| $2.5 million earned at 26 years old. Tiny little violin playing
| for him. So what if he hates it and stops, he's already earned
| more in a few years than most people do in a lifetime.
|
| Not much different than most pop stars or pro athletes.
| daenz wrote:
| >Streamers like Tyler form the backbone of tech giants' "creator
| economy,"
|
| Maybe this is pessimism, but calling streamers "creators" feels
| like a perverse label.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Why?
| daenz wrote:
| Because they entertain, making them primarily entertainers.
| We should reserve labels like "creators" for people who are
| actually building things, not streaming their lives on camera
| for an audience.
| wiseowise wrote:
| They're creating content though.
| [deleted]
| daenz wrote:
| Semantics. If your bar for calling someone a "creator" is
| that low, then nearly everyone is a creator in what they
| do. But we have different classifications because
| applying one label to most of the population is not very
| useful.
| [deleted]
| gizmodo59 wrote:
| " But as a gig worker for a media empire, even a successful
| streamer like Tyler has a livelihood that's inherently unstable
| -- without insurance, unions, sick days, retirement funds or hope
| for a sustainable career."
|
| That's funny. He has earned more in a year than many in a decade.
| Million a year and it's unstable. What makes you think the job of
| a software engineer is stable! He is skilled in entertainment. He
| will find a way.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| His outgoings must be pretty modest if he spends most of his
| waking life streaming.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| And why does he need a union when he works for himself?
|
| And what do they mean he doesn't have a retirement fund? He has
| plenty of income to invest in a retirement fund.
| npinsker wrote:
| This reads as very biased and judgmental. It treats streamers as
| kids who can't take care of themselves and don't understand the
| long-term impact of their lifestyle and career choice. It
| honestly makes me wonder if the author is jealous of the subject.
| It seems like the piece is really reaching to make Tyler's life
| appear as irresponsible as possible.
|
| Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their lives
| at 26, and plenty decide to completely change their lives at ages
| far older than that. Tyler seems like an admirable rags-to-riches
| success story -- he didn't get his foot in the door by being in
| the right location or knowing the right people, just hard work
| and a ton of talent. The company that runs the game he plays
| banned him for life, and he persevered anyway. In many ways, his
| success is more rare and more difficult than starting a startup.
| I'm not saying the lifestyle is necessarily worth celebrating,
| but it's deserving of a lot more respect than it gets here.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves
| and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle
| and career choice.
|
| This is more or less what many streamers are saying about it
| too. And most streamers are eager to get out of this self-
| destructive lifestyle with age. Streaming is a though gamble,
| and most are losing it. Educating about the harsh price of this
| is good and necessary, and the article is pretty fair there
| IMHO.
| obstacle1 wrote:
| > It treats streamers as kids who can't take care of themselves
| and don't understand the long-term impact of their lifestyle
| and career choice.
|
| Interesting. I did not read it like that at all. Do you have an
| example quotation of what makes you think that?
|
| The impression I got is both Tyler and Micayla are well aware
| of how negatively streaming affects their lives. They both
| explicitly said they don't want to be doing this forever and
| want to retire, didn't they?
| asdf_snar wrote:
| I also didn't get the impression at all that they're kids;
| quite the opposite. They have golden handcuffs, just like a
| lot of people in tech. The difference seems to be (and this
| is what I felt the article conveyed, at least to me) the
| grueling effect of having your life and brain on display
| around the clock.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Plenty of people in all careers don't know how to run their
| lives at 26
|
| I mean take a look at the movie artist, musician field and see
| how many people there have problems running their live.
|
| Having the skills to run your live, is a separate skill set.
| And the more stress and irregularities you job entails the
| harder it is. Hence why e.g. successful actors often have
| people helping them managing their lives.
|
| > but it's deserving of a lot more respect than it gets here.
|
| yes, it's a hard job. For each successful case there are
| thousands which fail.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| What makes you think it's judgmental?
|
| If they had instead wrote the article about a drug dealer
| making $500k a year, explaining the downsides of that line of
| work, would you also think the journalist was just jealous?
|
| The point of the article is that this seems like a lifestyle
| destined to cause issues later in life.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I don't think this article is that biased. This kind of
| lifestyle is pretty common for top streamers, and I'd argue
| it's about far more than just not knowing how to run their
| lives.
| kevinwang wrote:
| Agree, I thought the way the article was written made me
| really sympathetic to Tyler. Plus, while the article does
| talk about streamers in general, I really read it much more
| as a story about this specific streamer, not about streamers
| in general.
| dathinab wrote:
| It's actually a lifestyle common for many self employed
| people, not just streamers.
|
| But also e.g. startup entrepreneurs.
|
| Or people with a small one-person shop.
|
| or even the movie industry, everyone from the industry I have
| spoken with agreed on the lifestyle many involved peoples is
| so bad that many end up needing drugs to goo on sooner or
| later.
|
| But I tend to linger on twitch and there are many streamers
| which might just earn comparable to a slightly better
| employee job, but which have a much more healthy life style.
| Like streaming with a (somewhat) stable schedule, <=5 days a
| week. Taking holidays and not streaming too long. Through
| platforms like Twitch, YouTube and especially TickTock make
| taking holidays REALLY hard. And it's really not easy to get
| right.
| Drew_ wrote:
| People like to be bitter about others finding success in spaces
| they don't they don't like or don't take very seriously.
| jeffchien wrote:
| I think it's possible to both respect how they got there and
| their agency, but also feel some mixed feelings about their
| lifestyles. Especially if you see tyler1 and xqc do 8+/10+ hour
| streams every day respectively, while taking 1-2 vacations per
| year.
|
| "Pity" might be too judgemental, but I personally don't envy
| that lifestyle. It's just like respecting boxers' and NFL
| players' success, while not wanting to be in their shoes and
| risk getting killed in the ring or CTE.
| dathinab wrote:
| > 8+/10+ hour streams every day respectively, while taking
| 1-2 vacations per year.
|
| Sounds like the live of very many self-employed people.
|
| Like even if you just have a small shop going with 10h a day
| 6 days a week _without_ vacation for many years isn 't that
| rare of a story to hear.
| chii wrote:
| but the success of a small shop owner doesn't have the same
| scale as the e-celebrities, despite similar time
| commitments.
| dathinab wrote:
| I'm not sure why you started that sentence with a but.
|
| Through most people who are earning money through twitch
| and similar don't earn that much either.
| azirbel wrote:
| What I found most interesting:
|
| > His latest Twitch deal includes a performance quota; he streams
| 200 hours a month.
|
| 50 hours a week of on-stream time! And any other
| business/branding/merchandizing must happen on top of those 50
| hours where he already has to be 100% on. It does sound
| exhausting.
| dathinab wrote:
| I think it's totally ridiculous that some are treating this at
| "not a real job".
|
| It just shows that many people do not understand what is going
| one at all.
|
| Sure it's a form of "entertainer" job, but actress, synchron
| speaker or comedian are also real jobs.
|
| And no one would go and say "oh say just need to say some lines
| on stage so it's not a real job". It's not at all as simple as
| "just playing games in front of camera".
|
| Sure some people do just that as a hobby, but then people also
| program as a hobby and programming is still a real job.
|
| And sure many just barely make enough to cover living expanses,
| but that's true for many jobs which still are "real jobs".
|
| No idea why people feel to denounce people which act as
| entertainers while also often managing a merch job and a
| community as "not having a real job"? Is it be of envy that some
| people have and at their job and where able to turn their hobby
| into a job?
|
| Either-way it's not just a real job it's like many jobs from the
| entertainment business not an easy job to get successful with,
| without a "clear" path to success, requiring often both hard
| work, talent and luck and with often not-so rosy long term
| aspects and just a few managing to get rich or wealthy, while
| many other are sooner or later forced to change their job. You
| know like in many other jobs in the entertainment industries,
| e.g. musician/singer.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| A real job is one where a boss can arbitrarily fire you so that
| you learn to respect your elders and anybody who doesn't have a
| real job is bypassing the critical societal conditioning step
| and should be shamed.
|
| -some old fucks. probably
| dathinab wrote:
| Welcome to YouTube, which might arbitrarily cut your salery
| because others said so.
| noselfpromote wrote:
| Streamer here. It makes me sad to see that kind of numbers. There
| is plenty of interesting and attaching personnalities but the
| crowd focus on top tier streamers. I not complain for me, I'm in
| the top tier of my niche but I see many people with unit viewers
| while being positive for other people. That's why I
| systematically send my viewers to smaller streamer when I stop
| the live.
|
| If some of you wonder why viewers give us money, from my
| experience, the stream is a comfortable place for them. But how a
| 26k people chat could be comfortable? You instantly loose the
| special link with the streamer by being flooded into the chat. On
| the streamer side, I can't imagine loosing the special link I
| have with the community. With 240 messages per minute, it's
| impossible to meet anyone. I'm lucky to have made friendships and
| even working relationship through the stream.
|
| For anyone curious about how twitch and HN can meet, go to the
| Twitch "software and development" category.
| mjfl wrote:
| youtubers / streamers keep making the mistake of thinking
| reporters are there friend and letting them observe their lives.
| jthornquest wrote:
| Good work, capitalism. /s
| Kiro wrote:
| Yes, I honestly believe the donation model (which is the big
| share of their revenue) shows a glimmer of hope in capitalism.
| I wish for a future where it's norm not only for streamers but
| also companies to have the majority of their revenue come from
| donations.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think, for the majority of streamers, the way to set
| expenses is by looking at long term subscribers rather than
| day-to-day donations - those donos can fund fun things but
| you're going to want to try and keep your life expenses
| carried by the regular subscription income. A lot of the
| people who have gotten successful doing this have endured
| extremely lean times when they were trying to break into a
| decent sized audience - every streamer I've ever heard talk
| about the financial side of things plans things extremely
| conservatively.
| Kiro wrote:
| Aren't subscriptions basically just a monthly donation?
| What do I get for subscribing apart from the icon in front
| of my name in chat and possibly a shoutout?
| munk-a wrote:
| Absolutely nothing! But subscribers tend to be more
| reliable about re-subscribing.
|
| When it comes to twitch you're never really buying
| anything concrete with your cash. You're mostly buying
| attention or a reply - sometimes you'll buy game effects
| or challenges, but usually you're just abstractly
| throwing money at them to keep the content coming.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Yep, what an atrocious system where you can earn millions of
| dollars by being entertaining and playing games.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to
| HN. We ban that sort of account because we're trying for a
| different quality of discussion here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Fortunately your previous comment was excellent--please
| contribute more of that rather than more of this!
| skerit wrote:
| There are plenty of streamers that make enough money without
| having a crazy schedule.
| munificent wrote:
| This article is fascinating for the effects it has on readers.
|
| We likely all understand that one of the toxic forces in our
| culture today is the compulsive need to turn every story and news
| article into a clear moral narrative with a pure protagonist and
| a villainous antagonist. Reality isn't like that at all, and when
| journalists force reality into that framework, it distorts our
| perception of the world in unhealthy ways.
|
| But when an article comes out that _doesn 't_ do that, that just
| says "here are some people and what their experience is like", it
| seems many of us are unprepared to handle it. In the comments
| here, I see this rorschach-like phenomenon where each reader
| _imagines_ a morality play, superimposes it on the article, and
| then gets surprised when others saw something different.
|
| This isn't an acticle about good guys and bad guys, winning and
| losing, the good or evil of capitalism. It's just a window into
| one person's life. It's a _useful_ article because this is a kind
| of person whose life affects many of us--a lot of people here
| watch popular streamers--but where we have little insight into
| the whole picture of how that impacts their life.
|
| We should relish journalism like this. There is no need to jump
| to any moral conclusion. Just witness and understand a bit more
| about the variety of lives people live today.
| LordEthano wrote:
| Agreed. I'm kinda shook at a lot of the comments here, IMO
| missing the point (or lack of point) of the article. It's a
| slice of life view into a poignantly tragic story of a kid
| "lucking" into a terrible pair of golden handcuffs - a view
| into the apex of parasocial relationships. Someone who so
| clearly lacks any semblance of a social life, in the same hand
| creating a social environment for thousands of people - chiefly
| centered around making fun of him. There's no moral "good" or
| "bad" here.
|
| As readers we can draw our own conclusions here, but to call
| the author biased into making the life/platform/phenomenon of
| twitch streamers bad? That's just a really narrow view of a
| fairly compelling article.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Sure his life seems like a nightmare, but to be honest,
| wouldn't it have been even worse without the streaming. Then
| he'd probably still be playing computer games all the time,
| still living in squalor, but he'd be broke. Now he's at least
| able to save up a lot of money.
| black_13 wrote:
| Jesus what would our grandparents think.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This sounds like a bad way to live, and I'm sure it is. But, I
| wonder if a similarly anxious narrative could be written about
| the average PM at a startup, or Amazon delivery person, or Uber
| driver, or really anyone with a demanding job that consumes as
| much of your time as it can. It seems like being swatted and
| harassed online are the more unique perils of being a content
| creator, but the 10-hour stressful days are not, and many people
| would probably trade their 10-hour stressful days at $40k-$160k a
| year for 10-hour stressful days at $2 million a year if they
| could.
| fizx wrote:
| It's probably more stressful having a camera on you for with
| thousands of fans offering critical feedback every second.
|
| Maybe something like an engineering management role where all
| you do is share performance reviews?
| hogFeast wrote:
| T1 is a very extreme example. He seems to have no life, he
| plays the same game for 10-12 hours/day, he is pretty toxic, he
| seems to have few other interests and no social life...that is
| fine, he is an astute businessman but most other streamers
| aren't doing this. They play variety, they do IRL, they have
| social lives, they take breaks. Even xQc, another streamer who
| is notorious for 20+ hour streams every week, plays variety and
| goes outside...sometimes (he recently did an IRL stream at
| Universal).
|
| So I think it is like a lot of entertainment: the job can be
| intense, there is often little separation between personal and
| private but the pay is generally pretty good. Even on Twitch
| which really struggles with promoting smaller streamers, there
| are people far down the chain earning $50k/year with relatively
| small communities. Is that better than a startup? No. But not
| everyone can move to SF or go to college either.
|
| I don't think being swatted or harassed is that common either.
| If you are a big streamer and you leak where you live, then
| maybe...but it doesn't happen as much as it used to (xQc got
| swatted repeatedly this year, and someone broke into his
| house...it does still happen).
|
| Also, Twitch chat is toxic but most of the negative comments
| are not serious. I understand why normies wouldn't understand
| that but part of the fun for (some) streamers is battling with
| chat. It isn't a very serious place.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I keep reading these expose's about how difficult and damaging
| some career is. I rock climb and everyone is obsessed with
| shining light on eating disorders and how thin athletes need to
| be. No one is writing about plumbers having bad backs and
| knees, or construction workers having lung problems. It's just
| oh "Kim Kardashian is stressed because people say mean things
| on Instagram."
|
| It's dumb, yes life is hard and will grind you down. If your
| lucky you make enough money to step away while your still
| healthy and relatively young.
| jetsetgo wrote:
| Most Twitch Just Chatting streamers just react and steal content.
| Unbelievable how YouTube can just let their entire content
| leeched off.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Still sounds like a good deal despite the difficulties and toll
| dvt wrote:
| Imo we should be lauding this brand new sector and the folks that
| made it in it. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok literally created a new kind
| of millionaire. Are we just upset we're also not uber rich for
| playing video games all day? It's the same with crypto, OnlyFans,
| and so on. It was the same in '99 with the dot coms.
|
| Merely from an economic standpoint, it's interesting to see who
| these new industries are displacing (since this is a zero sum
| game). I'm sure having zillions of dollars doesn't make you
| happy, but there's so much unwarranted hate here on HN for new
| ventures and disruptive industries, it's kind of odd. It feels HN
| has become way more corporatist in the past few years -- everyone
| wants to work for FAANG, no one wants to do their own thing. "If
| it's popular, it must be bad" is a pretty myopic view.
| dang wrote:
| Your comment doesn't reflect how this thread ended up
| developing--quite the opposite, in fact.
|
| It's important not to overgeneralize from a few datapoints that
| one dislikes - this routinely leads people to false
| conclusions:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| You may have gotten bitten by a variant of the contrarian
| dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tr
| ue&sor...) in which initial comments are shallow dismissals and
| then more substantive comments appear over time. The initial
| comments don't characterize the community. They just appear
| first because they're reflexive reactions (the fastest kind of
| reaction to have) and they're shallow (the fastest kind of
| comment to write).
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The economy is not a zero sum game.
| unbanned wrote:
| Elaborate
| moolcool wrote:
| > It feels HN has become way more corporatist in the past few
| years
|
| It's a bit disheartening. It makes me wonder how the HN of
| today would react to someone like Aaron Swartz.
| paulpauper wrote:
| What hate is there? the majority of comments are supportive.
| belval wrote:
| The article mentions that Tyler makes $300k per year in
| merchandise alone (so excluding any actual sponsored content).
| Frankly I don't get why this can't be seen as a legitimate very
| successful business. Where is the line? Is entertainment only
| valid on TV? YouTube?
|
| Some commenters here even said that it's all good now but that
| it won't work in his thirties or something as if there aren't a
| ton of jobs out there that feed on young blood that won't be
| able to keep up later in life.
|
| I completely agree with you, this kind of "this is not a real
| job" attitude really comes off as people upset that they can't
| be millionaires at their job.
|
| EDIT: A lot of the comments point out that most people on
| Twitch/YouTube/OnlyFans don't make money and would be better
| off getting a "real job". I am not trying to argue against that
| or say that Twitch is a good job prospect. My point is that if
| they do succeed in that niche, trying to segment money-making
| endeavour between "real jobs" and "just a kid playing video
| games" seems very vain to me. Tyler is making millions
| providing entertainment, to me that is very much a real job.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| I see no difference in this kind of job as an NFL or any
| other sports player. Sure they might not be able to keep
| doing this into their 40s but who cares have to strike while
| the iron is hot.
|
| If they grow out or decide streaming video games or whatever
| isnt for them, thats no different than a baseball player
| retiring.
|
| Maybe they move into the front office and advise other up and
| coming streamers and entertainers what they can do. Who knows
| what the market will look like for this kind of entertainment
| in the future.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Once you have a few millions secured, it is hard to blow it
| if you invest and save prudently. It's not like when he turns
| 30 he will be back to poverty. There is too much negativity
| and doom and gloom. These gamers, e-celebs are making a lot
| of money and will not be destitute when their star fades.
| Today's internet celebs are much better at saving and
| investing their money compared to celebs of decades ago, who
| blew their money on extravagant expenses and saved nothing.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Actually it's very easy to blow some millions.
| Sportspeople, lotto-winners and such are doing it all the
| time. Handling money wisely is a skill you need to learn
| and master.
|
| That guy is in esports, so he is generally very risk-
| friendly, so chances are high that he is also investing and
| wasting his money on risky investments and potentially
| losing it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Handling money wisely is a skill you need to learn and
| master.
|
| At that scale of wealth you don't just have to not handle
| money wisely, you have to be downright foolish to make it
| all disappear.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think these twitter gamers and celebs are smarter than
| mainstream athletes lotto winners in terms of higher IQ ,
| and thus are better at personal finance and budgeting
| wpietri wrote:
| I'd be very interested for your evidence there. Both that
| streamers are higher IQ, and that high IQ means more
| responsible financial behaviors for people in power-law
| industries like this.
|
| I've known plenty of smart people who were terrible with
| money, and plenty of average people who were very good at
| managing it. There's a huge gap between intellectual
| understanding and practical skill. And I've known some
| brilliant people whose brilliance made them confident the
| money would keep coming or that the usual dynamics didn't
| apply to them. Note, for example, that intelligent people
| are more likely to become addicts:
| https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/intelligent-people-drugs/
| syntheweave wrote:
| Competitive gamers - or at least the kind that get big
| Twitch viewership - aren't too far removed from athletes.
| They're used to the game giving reliable feedback and to
| getting as many tries as they need to perfect their
| skills, even if there are moments of high pressure to
| test them. They're rewarded by chasing a big audience and
| hustling to put up equally big and obvious leaderboard
| scores. Gamers have "tight grips" on their domain and
| optimize themselves heavily towards crushing the game.
| It's not just an IQ thing, but a personality type.
|
| Finance tends to be the opposite - limited information,
| long time horizons, optimal risk/rewards by going into
| poorly understood niches, and permanent failure making
| loose attachment and adaptability preferable to
| optimizing. While you can make the competitive gaming
| mindset work, it's an "attack dog" way of running your
| life.
|
| And you can see a contrast between session based online
| gaming - which is what gets most of the Twitch viewers as
| alluded earlier - and MMOs, in the types of playstyle
| that "make it" competitively. While MMOs often reward
| persistent grinds, they can also reward creative ways of
| redefining the game's goals and mechanics to develop the
| game in a pro-social direction. You want to be in an MMO
| with other people who know how to make the game lively,
| not 1000 angry sweatlords chasing after the same
| leaderboard stat. So there are typically more ways to
| measure oneself, and more opportunities to do things like
| item trading arbitrage, which is directly financial in
| nature.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Why would this group of people have higher IQs than
| mainstream athletes? Why would higher IQ lead to better
| personal finance and budgeting?
|
| I'd think you childhood/background and your current
| environment would be the biggest factors.
|
| Some mainstream athletes may feel the need to flex. So
| they may spend extra money. There's also generally
| certain rituals or going with the crowd that means
| spending more money.
|
| It feels elitist to call these gamers and celebs both
| smarter than mainstream athletes and label the latter as
| lotto winners. Unless you were talking about lotto
| winners as a separate group. Though that too appears
| problematic as you're more closely associating them with
| mainstream athletes in a negative sense.
|
| Lotto winners also have societal, environmental, and
| cultural issues many other wealthy people like streamers
| don't. No one thinks the lotto winner deserves their
| money. People have far easier time coming out of the
| woodwork and hassling lotto winners. Asking for money and
| more.
| strken wrote:
| All highly paid celebrities without managers, including
| many streamers, are effectively running marketing and PR
| campaigns for million-dollar brands. It's quite
| believable to me that the job would select for higher
| intelligence, or at least better cash flow management,
| than being an athlete who plays a team sport.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Why would this group of people have higher IQs than
| mainstream athletes?
|
| Though I disagree with the posters theory that twitch
| gamers are less susceptible to blowing their fortune than
| athletes, the fact that their job doesn't come with a
| high risk of head trauma is a reason they may be smarter.
| varelse wrote:
| I knew G to PG-13 rated camgirls that were making six figures
| back in 1997 to 2000. They eventually got disrupted by the
| adult industry providing more explicit content for much less
| money upfront. OnlyFans seems to have reinvented this model
| at scale, but what's the average margin for an OnlyFans
| provider? $180/month.
|
| https://influencermarketinghub.com/glossary/onlyfans/
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I'm familiar with two women doing financial domination
| stuff. One of them is fully PG-13. It's interesting there
| are still certain niches where you don't have to go past R
| rates stuff and can bring in mid 5 figures or higher.
| varelse wrote:
| The sad part is that's only bringing in mid-5 figures
| which makes me think that findom is an efficient market
| and I await the Harvard Business Review case study of it
| with baited breath.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Not a real job is a quite good stance to take. Because there
| is an absurd power law at play here, the absolute top make a
| lot of money. In a "real job" you are paid a living wage, on
| twitch you are paid scraps if you don't make it to the top.
| vkou wrote:
| Twitch does follow a power law, but from the leaks, I was
| surprised as to how many people are making high-five
| figures/year from it.
|
| But no, it's not a 'career' I'd recommend to anyone. The
| net expected value of becoming a local theatre actor is
| significantly better than Twitch...
| belval wrote:
| I am not saying this is a real job prospect. If a kid told
| me he wanted to be a Twitch streamer I'd say he can't be
| one, same as professional singer or musician in general.
|
| What I am saying that what Tyler has very much is a real
| job and successful business. You wouldn't say Taylor Swift
| is jobless because very few people make it in the pop music
| world.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| If my kid told me they wanted to be a twitch streamer I
| would advise them against investing a significant amount
| of time and effort building a business with a single
| gatekeeper.
|
| If they wanted to be a famous personality, I would insist
| they start building a profile on every platform.
| Karunamon wrote:
| This isn't well known, but to monetize on Twitch (i.e. be
| able to receive subscriptions and bits), you have to sign
| an affiliate agreement[1], which includes a clause
| prohibiting you from multi-streaming, or putting your
| VODs up anywhere else for a full day after their
| conclusion. This severely limits your ability to cross
| platforms.
|
| [1]: https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/legal/affiliate-
| agreement/
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Which kind of demonstrates exactly my point. I would
| never build a business that needs somebodies permission
| to exist.
| vasco wrote:
| Every single business needs permission to exist, not only
| because you need approval from the government to open
| one.
| gassiss wrote:
| You can't be comparing Twitch to the government. Those
| are not even remotely the same thing
| mejutoco wrote:
| One is taken for granted, but I think it is a valid
| point. I share your opinion (bad to depend on platforms),
| but that never might have triggered the comment.
|
| For some people never means usually not, and for some
| never means never :)
| DarylZero wrote:
| The USA built a system of "checks and balances" so that
| there would not be a "single gatekeeper" to government
| permissions.
| prawn wrote:
| I'd advise them to dominate a new platform as an early
| adopter and then spread out from there. Or put out
| content very consistently on 2-3 platforms. But even
| spreading yourself between two accounts let alone
| multiple platforms is time consuming.
| zem wrote:
| excel girl[1] did that right. i have a tremendous amount
| of admiration for her.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/22807858/tiktok-influencer-
| microsof...
| obstacle1 wrote:
| >If a kid told me he wanted to be a Twitch streamer I'd
| say he can't be one
|
| You'd be lying though, and your kid would probably grow
| up to resent it. There are ways to educate kids about the
| relative risks of careers in good faith.
| danny_codes wrote:
| I believe OP was being hyperbolic.
| belval wrote:
| It was a volunteer oversimplification to explain my
| reasoning, not parenting advice.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| I think making it to top on Twitch/TikTok/SocialMedia is
| hard, just like it is hard to be a famous Hollywood star.
| But there are a lot of minor social media celebrities that
| make a middle class income or they do it as their second
| job but no one talks about them just like how no one talks
| about minor actors.
|
| I know this because recently I ran into a few Instagram
| influencers with a low 6-figure followers, who get paid
| $1000+ per ad post. The ones I know have day jobs,
| Instagram is mostly extra income for them. I also know a
| blogger who is doing it fulltime and making upper middle
| class income from it.
|
| The point is power law seems absurd because it is easy to
| start these things but very few people actually treat it
| like a job or a business. To me it seems those who treat it
| like a business have pretty high chance of making, at
| least, living wages from it.
| api wrote:
| Hasn't it always been this way in music, art, writing, and
| media? Making a living doing any kind of art or media has
| always been brutal. How many rock bands made a decent
| living, let alone serious money?
| notJim wrote:
| What definition of "real job" are you using? By that
| definition, any kind of performer (music, sports, etc) is
| not a "real job". Hell, starting most businesses including
| startups would not be a "real job," since most fail. I
| guess you can definite it this way if you want, but I'm not
| sure what you're trying to communicate.
| slightwinder wrote:
| To give some numbers: There are more than 10 millions
| Streamers on Twitch, of which 5 millions are streaming
| regularly. The top 10_000 of them earns barely minimum wage
| or more. The Top 1000-5000 is earning some decent money on
| middle-class-level and the millionairs-club is around Top
| 100. And these numbers are globally, meaning all streamers
| from all countries.
|
| So we are still talking about an absurd low number of
| people.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| A service that makes 100 users a millionaire is a low
| number? And by the way, there is no way to know how much
| people are really making because they not only get money
| through Twitch but also through tip systems, merchandise,
| promotion, sponsors and other revenue generating
| activities.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Yes, but the twitch-numbers reflect a streamers potential
| for earning money through merchandise, promotion,
| sponsors and other revenue generating activities. There
| usually is a direct enough link between them. Tipping is
| a bit more special, but it's quite unlikely that a small
| 20 viewer-streamer will get a million-dollar-tip
| regularly. So you can make an educated guess of the
| general income, at least regarding someone's success as a
| streamer.
|
| Of course it's always possible that someone is far more
| successful outside of twitch. Like an established celeb
| who streams without monetization. But I don't think it
| makes sense to discuss those special cases here.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Yes, the viewer numbers are the direct link. But viewer
| numbers are not Twitch revenue. Subscriber are Twitch
| revenue. And it is not at all impossible to have a lot of
| viewers and not a lot of subscribers.
|
| How are you going to know what the stream is earning the
| musician keeping contact with his fan base?
| mbesto wrote:
| Now do this for football players.
|
| Over the age of 6: 5.16 million
|
| High school: 1 million
|
| College: 70k
|
| Pro: 1,700
|
| Also a power law distribution.
| ng12 wrote:
| Same for musicians, artists, actors. It's really not
| abnormal.
| [deleted]
| j7ake wrote:
| Now do the numbers with startups. I thought the
| hackernews community embraces taking risk and doing your
| own thing. I am surprised to see the conservatism here.
| mathteddybear wrote:
| There was a leak of Twitch data recently, so we know that top
| twitch-ers earn megabucks. The real business is, of course,
| Twitch itself.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| I don't think we needed a leak to learn that top Twitch
| earners make millions per year...
| notreallyserio wrote:
| IIRC you had to crack the top 2000 to hit $50k in a year,
| although I don't think the data showed streaming hours per
| year so it's hard to know how many earned something close
| to a living wage.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Should be noted the leak only contained money earned
| directly through twitch. But most income from bigger
| streamers is coming by other means and external services.
| Though, there is some correlation, so the twitch-only
| numbers can be still be used to make an educated guess.
| After all, if you are not making significant money via
| twitch, it also means your community is usually too small
| to bring you money through placements or other money
| flows.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _Frankly I don 't get why this can't be seen as a
| legitimate very successful business._
|
| This is going to sound glib, but I honestly think it's
| because Pinterest hasn't been able to create a comparable (or
| even marginally similar) business model for its users to
| capitalize on. Seriously, why isn't Pinterest a big shopping
| destination? The answer to that will tell us a lot about
| attitudes toward influencers and e-stars.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Because to do that it'd become YouTube?
|
| No one cares about a shopping list of pictures, people want
| engagement with a Real Human(tm) if they're going to spend
| their cash on a recommendation
|
| So Pinterest would have to pivot to a niche video site,
| which is not exactly an easy thing to sustain
| esyir wrote:
| >A lot of the comments point out that most people on
| Twitch/YouTube/OnlyFans don't make money and would be better
| off getting a "real job".
|
| To support your point, acting, singing and writing are in a
| similar state, as are most media works. Creative media seems
| in particular its the area where the gulf between the
| successful and the well, not, is massive.
| snek_case wrote:
| It's very competitive and tends to follow the Pareto
| principle, i.e. 10% of the people making 90% of the money.
| Some of it is luck and timing, some of it is hard work.
| Some of it probably comes down to your taste being more
| aligned with a broader audience.
| wpietri wrote:
| This is true, but I have to wonder whether those things are
| as grueling as streaming is.
|
| I did some user interviews with streamers for a project.
| None were this successful; the people talked to ranged from
| making a decent living to having a day job and then doing
| streaming as a full-time second job.
|
| Even the ones like Tyler were feeling the same strain he
| is. But the ones who seemed worst off were the ones who
| were putting in the same level of effort but making peanuts
| or were net negative on a cash basis. I remember one guy I
| talked to who said that he never talked to his old friends;
| everybody he spent time with now was a streamer because he
| didn't have time for anything else.
|
| In contrast the actors I used to know seemed to have a much
| healthier relationship to their art. They were working hard
| and trying to make it, but I don't recall the same sense of
| ruthless grind I got from the streamers. Ditto the writers
| I know these days.
| corobo wrote:
| I don't think it's a case of gruelling, it's more that
| streaming is the social outcast version of acting. You
| have to interact with people to act else it doesn't work.
| Streaming can be entirely solo, even at the top end
|
| Nobody is forcing you to be live 12 hours a day. Most of
| the super effort no reward streamers would benefit by
| cutting the live hours and working more on marketing
| anyway. Twitch in particular is terrible for organic
| growth
|
| Not to imply any negativity in this comment if it reads
| that way, just shite at words. I've dabbled in streaming
| and realised I need to build up the audience first
| otherwise it's a massive timesink
| snek_case wrote:
| > Twitch in particular is terrible for organic growth
|
| Might be in part because the search function is so bad. I
| tried to use twitch to discover DJ slash electronic music
| streams, and had a really hard time finding what I
| wanted, though I could sometimes find them using other
| keywords.
| corobo wrote:
| They're doing better with tags and recommended streams
| now but yeah I think it's a combination of bad search and
| kingmaker directories
|
| If you're big, you get bigger. If you're small, you'll
| never (rarely) be seen by someone browsing
|
| They'll sprinkle some AI on it eventually
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand this. I admittedly don't watch
| much streaming. But every streamer I've ever seen
| interacts constantly with their audience. And the ones I
| interviewed are intensely conscious of their audience and
| the need to make them feel special.
|
| The actors I knew mainly focused on craft and
| collaboration with teams. If they dealt with the audience
| at all, it was in very controlled bursts in the minutes
| after a performance. So it seems to me that streaming is
| much more socially demanding.
| corobo wrote:
| Sitting at a computer interacting with a non-red HAL9000
| and IRC is not the same as interacting with directors,
| producers, other actors.. people
|
| There are more people in acting than the audience
|
| POV: you're a streamer interacting with the audience
| https://cdn.imgy.org/j6km.jpg (chat unrelated, I just
| picked the one in my follows that would fill the screen
| quickest)
|
| idk it just doesn't feel social to me at all, never mind
| socially demanding
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not getting it. Are you a successful streamer
| and are offering your own experience as evidence? Or are
| you a non-streamer just giving your general take?
|
| You make my point with that screenshot. The chat isn't
| unrelated. The chat is primary. The streamers I talked to
| and the streaming I've watched is a performance for an
| audience. It's way more interactive than most live
| theater, even the stuff with audience participation. And
| it's leaps and bounds more socially demanding than film
| work.
|
| As an example, watch this video from a streamer with 120k
| followers on Twitch:
|
| https://twitter.com/negaoryx/status/1354147400160403457
|
| While playing the game she is _deeply_ involved a
| conversation with the people watching. As streamers
| explained it to me, that 's _key_ to the economics of
| being a successful streamer, in that significant audience
| segments are buying a feeling of being in the in-group,
| and that feeling has to be supported with actual
| interaction with the streamer.
|
| I agree that's not the same thing as being on the same
| stage with people. But it's still very social. Similarly,
| remote work is still social. I've never met any of my
| colleagues, for example, but they're still people to me.
| [deleted]
| solidblu wrote:
| I agree with everything you said except FAANG. To keep with the
| corporatist shill culture it is now technically MANGA instead
| of FAANG with Facebook's rebranding to Meta.
| dave_sullivan wrote:
| > Are we just upset we're also not uber rich for playing video
| games all day? It's the same with crypto, OnlyFans, and so on.
| It was the same in '99 with the dot coms
|
| Yes, that's literally it. This is the proper use of the term
| hater.
|
| > It feels HN has become way more corporatist in the past few
| years -- everyone wants to work for FAANG, no one wants to do
| their own thing
|
| Also agree. I liked HN better years ago. When I was younger.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| It is not zero sum. People only switch to these new sources of
| entertainment because they get more value from it
| unbanned wrote:
| What do you mean it's not zero sum
| slothtrop wrote:
| The word "switch" kind of implies that it is zero sum;
| they're either watching one thing, or another. Entertainers
| and companies compete to monopolize attention.
| serverholic wrote:
| Society is finding ways to value a wider range of talents.
| Different people are good at different things and,
| unfortunately, only a subset of those things are valued in the
| economy.
|
| These technologies are allowing people to display their talents
| and allowing them to make money off of them. Back in the day
| being good at video games was a fun thing to do when you had
| free time. Now there is a small chance you can make a living
| off it.
|
| I can't remember the quote but Warren Buffett once said that
| the only reason he is a billionaire is that he was born at the
| right time, with the right gender (back when women weren't
| allowed to do much), and with the right talents.
|
| Valuing a wider range of talents allows more people to
| participate in the economy. Crypto for example allows
| developers to inject little bits of economy into apps. Perhaps
| in the future someone can make a living creating really good
| cat memes instead of a deadend job that is basically useless
| anyways.
|
| If that last sentence offended you I'd suggest you checkout the
| book "Bullshit Jobs".
| paulpauper wrote:
| >These technologies are allowing people to display their
| talents and allowing them to make money off of them. Back in
| the day being good at video games was a fun thing to do when
| you had free time. Now there is a small chance you can make a
| living off it.
|
| People have been making money from e-sports for a long time,
| at least two decades. it's not a new thing. The new platforms
| however allow gamers to reach large audiences without having
| to join a major gaming league.
| 1290cc wrote:
| Youtube/Social Media has removed the filters and gatekeeping
| that happened in the legacy media. Of course there is a lot of
| noise. But what are the odds of a young MKBHD, DrDisrespect,
| Linus, etc, etc getting their own show in legacy media? Zero to
| none because we would've never heard about them.
|
| Its glorious to see people who are truly brilliant at what they
| do getting a shot at the audience and owning everything they
| do. Its not just Twitch Streamers and 20 something influencers.
| There is a deep world of niche experts opening up all sorts of
| interesting topics to everyone and the best get to stand front
| and center.
|
| My recent fav is Benn Jordan who breaks down a lot of the
| challenges of being an independent musician in a world of
| streaming. He recently did an incredible piece on how a NY
| Times reporter used his credentials to scam hundreds of
| musicians.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk872ERRVxA
| dathinab wrote:
| If you mean Linus from LTT, then wasn't he involved with some
| tech show which was "more legacy media-ish"?
|
| But either-way, it's not really that legacy media has a lot
| of gatekeepers which are a mixture of "stuck in the past",
| "focused on questionable qualifications" and/or "not-
| impartial/corrupt".
|
| I guess it's not surprising that such which benefit from
| being (with modern tech) unnecessary middle man and/or
| benefit from corruption are not happy about losing power and
| potentially becoming obsolete.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| Linus got his start doing product review videos for NCIX
| which was an online computer hardware shop up here in
| Canada. He had a fairly severe disagreement about the
| future of the company (his idea was to compete against
| amazon with kiosk-style brick and mortar with minimal
| inventory) so he went independent with his videos. It
| wasn't really a traditional media thing. NCIX died a couple
| years ago.
| darcys22 wrote:
| Yeah i agree, twitch and youtube are producing a new type of
| celebrity where the content can be created by anyone. Its build
| your own content, create your own community and do it all
| yourself. This is disrupting the old entertainment industry
| where you needed many well connected people to connect you to
| the audience, and your content was reviewed heavily by
| 'experts' before production.
|
| The content is easier to produce due to technology, and this is
| personal opinion but its way better than what was made by
| television studios etc.
| tw04 wrote:
| > It's the same with crypto, OnlyFans, and so on. It was the
| same in '99 with the dot coms.
|
| Please don't lump content creators in with crypto and dot
| bombs. The folks creating content on streaming platforms are
| providing entertainment and putting in real time doing a job.
| Equating them to what were/are more or less Ponzi schemes isn't
| fair to them at all.
| coolso wrote:
| > Are we just upset we're also not uber rich for playing video
| games all day?
|
| There's envy involved but I do think a large contributing
| factor is also the fact that what streamers and influencers and
| the like do, and what their "influencees" do, tends to very
| much lean towards being very mindless. It's like celebrity
| worship, except there's this "they're just like you and me!"
| aspect to it that feels incredibly disingenuous.
|
| Instead of going out and doing things, you have people sitting
| on their butts watching someone else sit on their butts and do
| that stuff. Instead of people bettering themselves and going
| out and getting a girlfriend, you have people paying to pretend
| those lewd photos of some random girl who mentioned your
| username on a stream once because you tipped her which means
| she totally knows you exist and is basically your girlfriend,
| were taken just for you.
|
| On top of that one of the main goals for these people is to get
| you to buy products from their sponsors. They're like the used
| car salesmen who try to buddy up to you and flatter you so
| you'll buy one of their cars. Except people know used car
| salesmen are bullshitting them. And people know celebrities
| aren't like you and me. People connect to streamers and
| influencers and spend more time worshiping them on a different
| level that feels unhealthy.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I do think they provide some benefits to
| society. You can say that these sort of people help others feel
| like part of a family or whatever, and helps those who have a
| hard time getting a girlfriend feel better. On the other hand,
| you could also just point to, for example, the suicide rates
| which have been trending upward pretty steadily, especially
| starting with the prevalence of smartphones and such. Or the
| fact that antidepressant usage has essentially doubled in the
| past two decades.
|
| Overall, to me, it all just feels like a trend in the wrong
| direction.
| [deleted]
| huetius wrote:
| I'm sure there are plenty of incoherent criticisms and not a
| small amount of envy at play, but there are more serious
| traditions of thought that are negative towards "culture
| industry," writ large.
| Mc91 wrote:
| > It feels HN has become way more corporatist in the past few
| years -- everyone wants to work for FAANG, no one wants to do
| their own thing.
|
| You didn't have a situation like FAANG and its cohorts in the
| past, paying what they do and hiring like they do, in as
| attainable of a way.
|
| Banking $270k comp. as an L4 for a few years would allow me to
| "do my own thing" more than anything.
|
| If you mean people like Gates, Zuckerberg etc., they had giant
| safety nets to fall back on.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Big corporations are paying more than ever, in addition to
| surging stock prices for even the biggest of companies, so
| working at a trillion dollar company is more lucrative than
| most startups. It did not always used to be that way.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And given the scale factors involved it is still cheap,
| even at that level.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Imo we should be lauding this brand new sector
|
| I disagree. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok didn't create a new kind of
| millionaire. They're simply celebrities. The only thing that
| arguably changed is that content production is so cheap and
| saturated now that consumers get a lot more choice in terms of
| who they want to watch, without being constrained by TV
| schedules and other distribution/logistics limitations.
|
| There is no "new industries", it all still falls under the
| entertainment industry umbrella, and even the monetization
| mechanisms are the same old ones (ads, sponsorships,
| merchandising). By "lauding celebrities", all we're
| accomplishing is consolidate consumer attention into fewer
| content production channels, solidifying the position of the
| platforms where these celebrities operate.
|
| Arguably the only noteworthy thing here is that technology
| changes and companies that embrace innovation will eat the
| lunches of those that fail to keep up (e.g. Blockbuster).
| "Everyone wants to work for FAANG" because a good chunk of the
| entertainment industry money is flowing there.
| notJim wrote:
| In addition to what others have said, I think the fact that
| people can make a living from very very niche content is
| novel. Arguably, it works so differently that it could be
| considered a new sector.
|
| > By "lauding celebrities", all we're accomplishing is
| consolidate consumer attention into fewer content production
| channels, solidifying the position of the platforms where
| these celebrities operate.
|
| I think you're on point about the platforms, but not about
| the channels per se. In the past, you basically got to watch
| what 60-year old guys in the executive suite thought was
| appropriate, whereas now you can watch a lot more types of
| stuff. And I think people are wising up to the power
| platforms had. I think when OnlyFans said they were banning
| porn, people quite rapidly found new platforms to move to.
| Building these platforms has also become cheaper and easier,
| especially in the last 2-5 years IMO.
| DarylZero wrote:
| >I think the fact that people can make a living from very
| very niche content is novel
|
| https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/
| lhorie wrote:
| I mean, cable was already in the niche catering business in
| the 90s. Gordon Ramsay or Jacques Cousteau or Mythbusters
| are all quite niche IMHO. I'd be willing to acknowledge
| that the existence of gaming/mukbang/etc content creators
| nowadays is merely the entertainment industry catching up
| with the fact that the world is a lot more vast (and dare I
| say mundane) than TV would have you believe.
|
| As for platform power and user choice, I think people have
| a misconception about how much "power" they have,
| considering that search results and recommendations are
| entirely at the mercy of the companies that provide them
| and they're very much aggregated by user profiles, much
| like cable had "hundreds of options" that are in actuality
| largely curated to target audiences.
|
| There are a variety of niche old videos that I can no
| longer find on youtube. The long tail does disappear for no
| rhyme or reason (actually, if you understand the logistics
| of live/cold storage and the scale at which youtube
| operates at, it totally makes sense). It certainly isn't
| like the napster days where you could in fact find that one
| ultra rare file that only one person in the world was
| seeding.
|
| As for content creator mobility, I don't consider twoset's
| presence on tiktok any more novel than hollywood getting
| into home video. Content creators and distributors
| interests' don't always align and there has never been an
| actual monopoly on distribution channels, even despite the
| existence of large media conglomerates. It's just the
| individual players that are different, IMHO.
| paulpauper wrote:
| it is different. the old celebrities were chosen by media
| execs, who wielded all the power. now the audience decides.
| dathinab wrote:
| yes, it's basically strips gate-keepers from parts of the
| entertainment industry.
|
| Through it's still the entertainment industry as in: It
| requires a mixture of skill, hard work and luck to even
| just get to the point of earning more then just your basic-
| living expanses with it.
|
| Through we also have seen such a disruption in the music
| industries where with modern music services people can
| reach some degree of success without any deals with any
| large publishers (through it's not easy).
| jackothy wrote:
| That is partially true but not entirely. Twitch still has a
| somewhat strict TOS and regularly bans streamers. The
| audience is not always allowed to watch what they want. I'm
| guessing this is because Twitch needs to be advertiser
| friendly.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > I disagree. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok didn't create a new kind
| of millionaire. They're simply celebrities.
|
| Yes and no. They are celebs, but definitely a new style of
| celebs. They are your average Joe, with barely any special
| skill. They could be your neighbor or the dude next to you in
| a supermarket, and you wouldn't know. Furthermore, they are
| millionaire working from home, growing from home, with
| average equipment and average products. This is something
| which never happened before, not at this scale.
|
| Though, to be fair, there are also some actual skilled people
| growing into this space and celebs from other areas are
| breaking in too.
|
| > There is no "new industries", it all still falls under the
| entertainment industry umbrella,
|
| Yes, obviously. But the type and quality is completely
| different to established entertainment. It started with
| people with the bare minimum of entertaining-skill who
| established this. People who wouldn't have been able to
| succeed in the classical entertainment-industry. And this
| absolutely is a change. For the industry itself, it also is a
| change, because those people are cheaper and have a different
| angle to play at. This is more on the quality-level of a
| tupperware-party that somehow went up to a global scale.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
|
| Absolutely, provably false.
|
| It takes a lot of skill to constantly produce content at
| the rate that millionaire twitch streamers do. Most of them
| own youtube channels as well, which requires additional
| time to process, edit, and mix videos, depending on what
| they're doing with it.
|
| It also takes a high level of creativity in order to come
| up with new ideas for streams, keep the audience engaged
| while playing the same game for hundreds of hours on end.
| This means doing giveaways, interacting with the audience
| without offending them, planning contests, negotiating
| advertising deals with game-makers for promo-streams, etc.
| etc.
|
| It's an incredibly demanding gig, that, at the very least,
| requires a pretty insane schedule, or being really
| passionate about the job. Most people would burn-out at
| their rate, and a lot actually do.
|
| Maybe some streamers get help in production and
| orchestrating their stream, but for most it's more than a
| full-time job commitment.
|
| Those average Joes you mentioned? They get 1-2 viewers, who
| are usually their closest friends. This the skill ceiling
| for "barely any special skill" people. If they stream a
| game that just came out, they may break 10 viewers once in
| a while. That's about it.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > It takes a lot of skill to constantly produce content
| at the rate that millionaire twitch streamers do.
|
| Well, that's disputable. Most content-sources are
| delivered externally, in form of games and stuff they can
| react too. It's not like they sit there and think up
| something fresh by themselves for 8 hours a day. Though,
| yes, they have some naturally skill in socializing which
| they hone over time. But still I would not say it goes
| beyond the skill of any other natural socializer which
| exists in any community.
|
| > Most of them own youtube channels as well, which
| requires additional time to process, edit, and mix
| videos, depending on what they're doing with it.
|
| Which is most of the time not done by them. Usually they
| pay people for this. And to be fair, Videos of streamers
| are usually not really masterpieces either. They are
| optimized versions of their streaming-content. A good
| youtube-creator has significant more skill there. They
| occasionally also create far higher quality of content
| than most streamers.
|
| > It's an incredibly demanding gig, that, at the very
| least, requires a pretty insane schedule, or being really
| passionate about the job.
|
| How many streamers do you actually know? Well scheduled
| is not really what I would call most streams I've seen.
|
| > Maybe some streamers get help in production and
| orchestrating their stream, but for most it's more than a
| full-time job commitment.
|
| If you are a fulltime-streamer, earning money, then they
| pretty much all get help to some degree.
|
| > Those average Joes you mentioned? They get 1-2 viewers,
| who are usually their closest friends.
|
| Not really. They are many dedicated hardworking people
| with similar skill-levels even on the lowest levels.
| Success in streaming depends far more on luck than skill.
| Though, luck is also a skill in some way, so hard to
| say...
|
| But the skills I was talking about are not the ones you
| are getting naturally but being alive or just doing stuff
| long enough to acquire them. Obviously if you stream long
| enough you get a bunch of skills and knowledge
| automatically, which any non-streamer is missing yet. But
| that is nothing special.
|
| Special is stuff not everyone has or can acquire on it's
| own. Like a professional who went through a long
| professional training, reaching a level of quality a
| normal selfmade-streamer never can reach. Or someone
| which a career outside of streaming. There are more and
| more people like that hitting the platforms. Many
| entertainers with decade-long careers came in the
| pandemia to twitch and youtube, searching for new
| playgrounds and displaying skills which leaves any big
| established streamer in the dust.
| wpietri wrote:
| > They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
|
| What's your evidence for this? I don't watch a ton of
| streaming, but to me it looks hard to do well. If they're
| truly average people, how do you explain the big
| differences in popularity?
| lhorie wrote:
| > They are your average Joe
|
| I think you're blurring some lines. I don't imagine Ben
| Levin (a friend of the much more famous Adam Neely) is a
| millionaire, and I certainly don't imagine either of them
| are anywhere on the same level as someone like MrBeast, who
| actually employs a crew much like a TV show might.
|
| It certainly is as easy as ever to get started, but I think
| this idea that anyone can just pick up an iphone camera and
| become a millionaire is a bit disingenuous. As the article
| alludes, it does take effort, sacrifice and probably a
| healthy dose of luck to get somewhere in the industry,
| especially with how crowded it has become.
| slightwinder wrote:
| I don't know Ben Levin, but IIRC MrBeast did started as
| the average Joe and just grew big. And yes, of course the
| lines do blur over time. If the new creators become big,
| they start stepping into the realms of professionality
| and are beginning cooperations with old industry,
| creating content for the new and old spaces. But they
| usually still have the average joe-vibes, because that's
| how people grew with them, how they see and remember
| them. But also because they continue maintaining this
| vibes, as this is their habit of working.
|
| > but I think this idea that anyone can just pick up an
| iphone camera and become a millionaire is a bit
| disingenuous.
|
| Obviously not everyone can do that, but this is how
| almost everyone from the new industry started. I would
| say, it's simply the difference in culture, between old
| industry professionals trained schools and such, and the
| self learners of the new industry. Though, old industry
| is now moving in this space too, so it will change with
| time.
| mbesto wrote:
| > They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
|
| You've clearly never been to a restaurant in LA or NY.
| These are chock full of "average Joes" working as
| bartenders and waitresses just waiting to "make it" in
| movies, tvs, commercials.
|
| Many of the top twitch streamers have legitimate "skill",
| it's just not the skill you might be referring to in
| classic entertainment. For example "360 no scope sniper
| kills" might be the equivalent of "funny one liner quips".
| watwut wrote:
| > They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
|
| This is not true. It is no more true for streaming then for
| acting, hosting tv show or entertaining in bar via magic
| tricks or playing music. The ability to produce
| entertaining streams is a separate skill. Not just in game
| skill.
|
| > This is something which never happened before, not at
| this scale.
|
| At the time when live music was a thing, there were
| definitely few thousands musicians able to live from it.
| Which is as large scale as successful streamers seem to be.
|
| > growing from home, with average equipment and average
| products
|
| Really, no more true then about musical instruments of the
| past.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
|
| Their skill is usually something like live broadcasting
| and/or interviewing depending on the streamer as well as
| brand marketing.
|
| It's essentially the further democratization of talk shows,
| right?
| slightwinder wrote:
| People are generally upset when people succeed with evil deeds.
| And those new millionaires are often walking a very fine line
| between good and evil. The amount of trash they sell and scams
| they do is insane. And even the good ones still play on
| psychological mechanism, which can be questionable.
|
| Not saying that we should despise them all by default, but one
| should be very aware of the mechanism and plays of those people
| and not blindly accept everything. It's an entertaining space,
| but also a dangerous one. And that too many young people fuel
| this industry is a problem IMHO.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > Imo we should be lauding this brand new sector and the folks
| that made it in it. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok literally created a
| new kind of millionaire.
|
| You provide no explanation as to why we should be lauding them.
| Or are you implying that because someone is a millionaire then
| we should automatically laud them? Is that what late stage
| capitalism looks like?
| chii wrote:
| one would laud them the same way HN lauds over successful
| startup founders and YC'ers. They are entrepreneurial and
| hardworking.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They're providing something of value to their audience,
| through a combination of entertainment and merch/other sales.
|
| That's why they should be lauded (IMO).
| ridaj wrote:
| The challenge is that many of them have unsustainable always-on
| relationships with their audience that seriously burn them out.
| Sure folks should be free to do what they want with their life
| but remember they're not the only ones getting the benefit,
| they're feeding a bunch of social and merchandising platforms
| that make big $ on their backs - so the question becomes, what
| responsibility does the platform have towards the health of its
| creators?
| fragmede wrote:
| Workaholics are nothing new and date back to _well_ before
| the Internet or some TV show about the phenomenon.
| ridaj wrote:
| Yes, the new thing is the emergence of mega corporations
| that profit from platforms that are essentially
| manufacturing workaholics. Freewill notwithstanding,
| exploitative incentives are a real thing...
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Do investment banks have a responsibility towards not burning
| out their employees?
| ridaj wrote:
| There's at least a potential moral responsibility (yes pls
| spare snark about banks and morals), and in some countries
| it can be a legal one, see eg emergence of the "right to
| disconnect"
| watwut wrote:
| I would say yes. But also, that who industry is toxic
| cesspool of sociopaths. Moral responsibility is not a
| factor anyone in there considers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't see it that way. HN is many different things to many
| different people. Sure, there are a large number or corporate
| workers on HN, but given the number of people employed at the
| top 5 tech companies alone that shouldn't be a surprise.
|
| But there are other substantial areas of interest and overlap:
| the creatives / makers, the one person businesses, the SMBs
| (both owner/operators and employees), the start-ups (founders,
| co-workers), the people pushing some agenda or other (those can
| be quite annoying) and finally the trolls and even some
| griefers, though the latter two groups usually find their
| accounts very short lived (with some regrettable exceptions).
|
| HN has gotten large enough that it is no longer a niche player,
| but still small enough that it hasn't reached the 'everybody's
| on it' stage.
|
| But I don't see that 'unwarranted hate for new ventures and
| disruptive industries'. What you do get is a crowd that isn't
| going to roll over right away at the first sign of a 'new
| thing'. In that sense we are probably becoming a bit jaded,
| having seen 25 years of one new thing after another.
| kubb wrote:
| Why is it laudable? Sure, we shouldn't be jealous of successful
| people, but why go to the other extreme? It surely won't help
| you have an unbiased stance on the phenomenon.
| azth wrote:
| Exactly. Making money is fine as long as it is done in a
| moral and ethical way. Women showing their bodies on twitch
| and others so guys can drool over them? No thanks.
| wpietri wrote:
| What's unethical about that? I don't participate in either
| side of the market, so maybe I'm missing something. But it
| seems like a pretty clear service-for-money deal, with
| consenting adults on all sides and transparent revenue
| models.
| selectodude wrote:
| Sounds like you're just jealous nobody wants to spend money
| to look at you :)
| azth wrote:
| Like Magnus Carlsen said, do better :)
| jcun4128 wrote:
| You do have to have something inviting to have mass appeal. It's
| interesting like the quiet mopy energy doesn't bring flocks to
| you makes sense.
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