20 ms·

Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

248 points by breckenedge 5y ago

mrtksn 5y ago
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?
- elaus 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  It’s good background noise for me, albeit I watch relaxing background content here, things like Pokémon or Animal Crossing.
- anthonycr 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  > What kind of lifestyle there’s that allows the consumption of full day long content? Kids. Adults without kids.
  - MarcelOlsz 5y ago
    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).
  - abledon 5y ago
    do 4 hours of work, remain 'online' at job watching twitch for rest of 4 hours
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    > Adults without kids. What an ignorant thing to say. Apparently having no kids==nothing to do except for consume full day long content.
    - handrous 5y ago
      > allows
- hogFeast 5y ago
  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.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  When I was in college I had about 10 hours of free time a day.
jrockway 5y ago
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.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  Same thing everyone does when they can no longer work in their current career space (or no longer want to): They do something else.
- bluedino 5y ago
  Hopefully they invest their money and don't blow it on Ferraris and avocado toast.
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    Their money goes into GME and crypto
    - floren 5y ago
      Jeez, at least avocados are tasty...
    - authed 5y ago
      better investment then a Ferrari
      - bbreier 5y ago
        depends on the Ferrari tbh
        munk-a 5y ago
        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.
o10449366 5y ago
The comments section is truly depraved.
jthornquest 5y ago
[flagged]
- Kiro 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
  Yep, what an atrocious system where you can earn millions of dollars by being entertaining and playing games.
karaterobot 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
vertak 5y ago
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?
npinsker 5y ago
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.
- obstacle1 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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.
- butwhywhyoh 5y ago
  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.
dvt 5y ago
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.
- tw04 5y ago
  > 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.
- belval 5y ago
  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.
Permit 5y ago
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-challenger-before-end-of-season-10 https://dotesports.com/news/tyler1-marathon-stream-top-lane-... [2] https://blog.nickwinter.net/posts/the-120-hour-workweek-epic-coding-time-lapse https://blog.nickwinter.net/posts/the-120-hour-workweek-epic...
- kubb 5y ago
  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.
  - shanehoban 5y ago
    Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less draining.
    - kubb 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
https://archive.md/Dpr7S https://archive.md/Dpr7S
mjfl 5y ago
youtubers / streamers keep making the mistake of thinking reporters are there friend and letting them observe their lives.
alistairSH 5y ago
$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 5y ago
>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 5y ago
  Why?
  - daenz 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      They're creating content though.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - daenz 5y ago
        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 5y ago
  [deleted]
gizmodo59 5y ago
“ 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 5y ago
  His outgoings must be pretty modest if he spends most of his waking life streaming.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  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.
munificent 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
paulpauper 5y ago
Still sounds like a good deal despite the difficulties and toll
dathinab 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Welcome to YouTube, which might arbitrarily cut your salery because others said so.
- melonbar 5y ago
  Ya and it’s amazing that people think it can be easily replicated. To get to that level you must be the one percent of the one percent of gamers typically. Most coders can be “professional” with a boot camp these days.
azirbel 5y ago
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.
jcun4128 5y ago
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.
noselfpromote 5y ago
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.
jetsetgo 5y ago
Most Twitch Just Chatting streamers just react and steal content. Unbelievable how YouTube can just let their entire content leeched off.
habosa 5y ago
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.
skerit 5y ago
There are plenty of streamers that make enough money without having a crazy schedule.
black_13 5y ago
Jesus what would our grandparents think.
Datsundere 5y ago
Riot has been taking Tyler1 seriously and even had him voice over for their preseason announcements. He's been collaborating with Riot a lot so not just a puny streamer.

248 points by breckenedge 5y ago

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?

elaus 5y ago
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 5y ago
It’s good background noise for me, albeit I watch relaxing background content here, things like Pokémon or Animal Crossing.
anthonycr 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
> What kind of lifestyle there’s that allows the consumption of full day long content? Kids. Adults without kids.
- MarcelOlsz 5y ago
  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).
- abledon 5y ago
  do 4 hours of work, remain 'online' at job watching twitch for rest of 4 hours
- wiseowise 5y ago
  > Adults without kids. What an ignorant thing to say. Apparently having no kids==nothing to do except for consume full day long content.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > allows
hogFeast 5y ago
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.
colinmhayes 5y ago
When I was in college I had about 10 hours of free time a day.

jrockway 5y ago

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.

thesuitonym 5y ago
Same thing everyone does when they can no longer work in their current career space (or no longer want to): They do something else.
bluedino 5y ago
Hopefully they invest their money and don't blow it on Ferraris and avocado toast.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  Their money goes into GME and crypto
  - floren 5y ago
    Jeez, at least avocados are tasty...
  - authed 5y ago
    better investment then a Ferrari
    - bbreier 5y ago
      depends on the Ferrari tbh
      - munk-a 5y ago
        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.

o10449366 5y ago

The comments section is truly depraved.

jthornquest 5y ago

[flagged]

Kiro 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
Yep, what an atrocious system where you can earn millions of dollars by being entertaining and playing games.

karaterobot 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago

vertak 5y ago

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?

npinsker 5y ago

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.

obstacle1 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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.
butwhywhyoh 5y ago
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.

dvt 5y ago

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.

tw04 5y ago
> 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.
belval 5y ago
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.

Permit 5y ago

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-challenger-before-end-of-season-10 https://dotesports.com/news/tyler1-marathon-stream-top-lane-... [2] https://blog.nickwinter.net/posts/the-120-hour-workweek-epic-coding-time-lapse https://blog.nickwinter.net/posts/the-120-hour-workweek-epic...

kubb 5y ago
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.
- shanehoban 5y ago
  Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less draining.
  - kubb 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

https://archive.md/Dpr7S https://archive.md/Dpr7S

mjfl 5y ago

youtubers / streamers keep making the mistake of thinking reporters are there friend and letting them observe their lives.

alistairSH 5y ago

$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 5y ago

>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 5y ago
Why?
- daenz 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    They're creating content though.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - daenz 5y ago
      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 5y ago
[deleted]

gizmodo59 5y ago

“ 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 5y ago
His outgoings must be pretty modest if he spends most of his waking life streaming.
chrisseaton 5y ago
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.

munificent 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

paulpauper 5y ago

Still sounds like a good deal despite the difficulties and toll

dathinab 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Welcome to YouTube, which might arbitrarily cut your salery because others said so.
melonbar 5y ago
Ya and it’s amazing that people think it can be easily replicated. To get to that level you must be the one percent of the one percent of gamers typically. Most coders can be “professional” with a boot camp these days.

azirbel 5y ago

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.

jcun4128 5y ago

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.

noselfpromote 5y ago

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.

jetsetgo 5y ago

Most Twitch Just Chatting streamers just react and steal content. Unbelievable how YouTube can just let their entire content leeched off.

habosa 5y ago

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.

skerit 5y ago

There are plenty of streamers that make enough money without having a crazy schedule.

black_13 5y ago

Jesus what would our grandparents think.

Datsundere 5y ago

Riot has been taking Tyler1 seriously and even had him voice over for their preseason announcements. He's been collaborating with Riot a lot so not just a puny streamer.