[CobrastanJorji]

The folks who don't make it are an interesting group on their own. Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating. It's not like broadcasting on a ham radio or shouting into the aether or blogging on a little independent site thinking that maybe somebody might be reading it. They know that exactly zero people see it. And they do it for months and months.

There are some interesting articles out there that look at the motivations and experiences of the zero viewer streamers: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17569520/twitch-streamers...

There are also some websites that send you to streams that nobody is watching: https://nobody.live

Anyway, not really your point, but a fascinating group of people to think about.

[KronisLV]

> Anyway, not really your point, but a fascinating group of people to think about.

Oh, hey, I sort of fit into this group, since I stream with a VTuber (virtual avatar) persona and play niche indie games. Sometimes a friend or two drops by and we chat, other times someone new drops by and says hi, but there are also those times where I spend an hour or two playing a game alone and talking into the void, expressing my thoughts, maybe getting a clip with something notable in the process to link to friends later, or maybe upload the full video somewhere later.

I'd say it's not that dissimilar from working on my own personal programming projects or even some of the blog posts that I might end up writing off and deleting, since nobody is going to see the majority of those either - if they turn out good and someone does, then great, but if not then it's still a nice experience, that's also mostly free of any expectations.

As for related things, streaming lets you practice expressing your thoughts better and speak more clearly (which is especially relevant if English isn't your first language, at a point where you can use it well enough, but your pronunciation just needs more practice). It also lets you figure out how to have decent audio/video quality and create content - something that has also helped me in meetings and while working on a programming video series.

[tobr]

> Something like 95% of streamers have under five viewers, and the majority of those have exactly zero viewers. Thinking about all those thousands of people broadcasting day in and out to exactly nobody is kind of fascinating.

When you say the majority of 95% have exactly zero viewers, do you mean at a given point in time, or ever? That makes a big difference for how to think of their situation to me.

[holler]

> https://nobody.live

Something about that name is hauntingly sad.

[holler]

Just spent past 20 mins talking to a guy who seemed in great distress! Seems happier now :)

[urbanmiffs]

I didn't want to click on it. Feels so exploitative.

[jkingsman]

Yeah, I mean it's like saying watching a street performer is exploitative, I think -- people are streaming because they want to be seen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[nightfly]

Seems more helpful then exploitative

[prox]

I like to go in categories I like (a game or passtime like music) and randomly dish out subs with few viewers -if I like it of course-

It’s a great way to support and meet people.

[cableshaft]

I'm kind of one of those people (I took a long break, but want to start doing it a bit more again soonish).

I do it in part just because I'm playing the games anyway and have the equipment, might as well stream it. If no one watches, oh well, no big deal, I'm still playing the games I was going to play with that time anyway.

And secondly, I am wanting to start doing some coding in public more. It's fairly stressful having to articulate what you're doing while you're doing it (tried it a couple times), and it sort of feels like I'm in a whiteboard interview at times, but I think it's good practice to become more comfortable doing it, and articulating what I'm doing as well as getting feedback from others could help me become a better coder.

Also the game I'm working on in my spare time (a sequel to my old Proximity strategy board game that was popular once upon a time as a Flash game and on Xbox 360) will eventually have support for a Twitch audience to play along via the chat, so I'll need to stream in order to test the game properly anyway, and hopefully by the time I get to that point I'll have at least a small handful of people who will be on there and can playtest it with me.

Also part of the reason I took a break is it turns out using an ultra-wide monitor isn't ideal for streaming (aspect ratio is off). I love my monitor but when I go into games I have to mess with borders and things can get cut off without adjustment, etc. I did get a Cam-Link recently though and got streaming from my Switch to work (and presumably my PS4), and it let's me stream 1080p without stressing my computer (no worry of dropped frames) and also letting me use my monitor still for Twitch chat, so that'll probably be easier to manage.

I've got some time off starting next week so I'm hoping to start getting into the habit of it again. If anyone's curious, I have the same account name on Twitch as on here, although I'm debating changing it to something that can be a bit more ubiquitous online, and haven't decided what yet.

[fbdab103]

Probably not all that different from musicians/artists/writers/bloggers who never attain any audience. However, the immediacy of the feedback would be soul crushing.

Truly interesting.

[Balgair]

Mostly true for most academic papers as well. Not just the humanities, but the sciences too. Since you can track how many people actually clicked on the download button for a paper, you can get a sense of how many people actually read it.

Only one of my few papers has ever been downloaded by someone not on the author's list (we can compare with each other). Granted, that one's been downloaded a lot. But still, most of that hard work and going back and forth with editors is for naught.

[quickthrower2]

Your blog post today may be read tomorrow.

[cableshaft]

Twitch streams can be sent or uploaded to Youtube so they can be viewed later.

Of course the couple that I bothered to do that with also have basically no views as well :)

[cultofmetatron]

The difference is creating music, art, writing has its own intrinsic reward. I have a ton of photos on my instagram and barely any followers for the amount I put in. If I was just doing it for the likes, i would have given up on it a long time ago.

[ehnto]

The stats are a bit skewed I think, because you have to have an account on twitch to participate as a consumer on twitch, so all those 0 view streamers are very possibly people who are actually consumers and had no intention of streaming themselves.

[hhmc]

No, people who don’t stream aren’t counted in the above statistic (which is trivial to spot check)

[emodendroket]

Another possibility is just using it to capture your own play, for instance if you want to review matches later to try and analyze flaws in your game.

[ilyt]

That's massive stretch. Why would anyone do that? Twitch player isn't that great if you want to seek around the video

[johannes1234321]

It works easily and keeping hours and hours of video locally still requires quite some storage space

[majewsky]

My OBS recordings (of mostly game footage) come out to between 1 and 1.5 GiB/hour for 1080p resolution. Given that simple external HDDs start at about 20€ for 500 GiB, that comes out to 6 cents of storage per hour recorded. Your power bill for the gaming PC is going to be higher than that in some places.

[emodendroket]

OK, so we’ve established that it is possible to do it another way if you want. But why get an external hard drive if you’re happy with Twitch VODs?

[johlits]

One use case is speedrunning. If you don't have space on your PC and want to record your runs.

[emodendroket]

I myself have used it for this purpose so I don’t think it’s a massive stretch.

[PurpleRamen]

There are 150+ million accounts on twitch, but only 10+ million people who streamed in the last months, and around 5 millions who seem to stream regular. Doesn't make the impression of being skewed by people who did not aim to stream. Sure, some might hit the button by accident. But more likely, it's just people who have a different aim than making viewers.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you're making the mistake that the point of a Twitch account is to stream. Accounts are useful for viewers with no intent to ever stream as well

[dubeye]

Doesn't seem too different to most musicians having zero audience outside friends.