Greentext

Same thing with twitch or streamers in general. About a year ago I went from "What is this vtuber thingy?" to basically staying up late and watching 3 hrs of streams daily. I never actually spend any money or even made an twitch account and there were always enough other contributors so that I didn't feel bad for lurking. But It went from enjoying the entertainment to asking myself "What the fuck am I doing?". I stopped cold turkey, I occasionally watch some youtube shorts if they pop up in my feed or some highlight reels, but thats about it.

Especially the top streamers are borderline predatory. I dont what to throw every top streamer in the same bucket. But look at Emiru for example, her streams have objectively zero entertainment value and she gives me the vibe to genuenly despise 99% of her viewers. I'd like to ask somebody who enjoys her content to show me on this puppet where exactly they feel entertained. Is it the zero effort cosplays, or the sideeyed gameplay of some popular videogame. People are literally throwing money at a millionaire for nothing.
I can understand the streamers perspective, its the easiest paycheck ever earned. I just don't get the people that support them. I know it's the journey to the top that is disproportionaly hard. Building a brand and getting a steady income from streaming is next to impossible unless you fully commit, but once you earn multiple millions per year, own multiple houses, mutlille cars and can essentialy live more than comfortably off of dividents from your stocks, why not just cash out and dip instead of providing half-assed attempts at entertainment?

There are also definetly streamers who are 1 in 10.000 entertainment bombs, that push the envelope and are only held back by the limitation of their medium. Filian comes to mind. I wouldn't be surprised if she just takes out a salary from her earnings and poures the rest right back in her stream. Next to no Coomer content, just good physical comedy and engagement. She definetly gives of scatterbrain overachiever with from a well off family that has "taken several courses on community management and platform development" vibes, but doesn't heavily lean into it. And there's at least some serious talent behind that.

It's funny how on the internet the power dynamic is basically reversed. Men have to either grind for a decade or be cliniclay insane to have any chance of a career. And for women, if you're mildly attractive (physically or emotionally) you already have a solid footing.