4 ms·

it seems many people read way too far into this with a distorted "back in my day!" mentality. I watch twitch nearly every day and subscribe to (pay) a couple

by warent 4y ago

it seems many people read way too far into this with a distorted "back in my day!" mentality. I watch twitch nearly every day and subscribe to (pay) a couple of streamers. You know what I don't watch? TV. Cable, satellite, or otherwise. This is simply modern entertainment. Streamers are professional entertainers. As for the people who seem to have a parasocial relationship--none of this is new. In my childhood I had a parasocial relationship with MacGyver and He-Man. Some grown men of questionable stability had it with Brittany Spears or whatever. The only new thing is the platform. Everything else is just humans being humans as always.

SilverBirch 4y ago
The amount of MacGuyver content you got over the original 7 year run is about the same amount of content that a popular Twitch Streamer will put out in about 7 weeks. And MacGyver won't read your comment in chat and respond to you. It's a vastly different situation. Not least because in 1985 when the original Macguyver came out the entire television viewing population of the US were watching a handful of networks. Now the economics mean that there are 100,000x as many content creators to support, creating content at 52x the previous rate. So are we expecting revenue per viewer to be 5,200,000x times higher? Because that's the ratio of the content being produced.
- deleted 4y ago
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- warent 4y ago
  There seem two be two different things here. 1. "100,000x as many content creators to support" Hollywood has always been flooded with countless failed would-be actors / entertainers. Just because you can't see them like you can in Twitch, because they couldn't publish stuff in the 1980s, it doesn't mean they didn't exist. This is an old problem. 2. "The amount of MacGuyver content you got over the original 7 year run is about the same amount of content that a popular Twitch Streamer will put out in about 7 weeks." We're not talking about the actor, by himself, winging it and producing an episode on the fly. With Twitch, that is typically the case. On Twitch, content being produced is of lower effort and higher volume. It's a huge difference but the math balances out. As an aside, "fan mail" did exist back then too. Viewers would write in to a P.O. Box and if they were lucky their letters were read on air.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Lots of people had toxic relationships with pop stars. Just look how Kurt Cobain ended up.

by warent 4y ago

SilverBirch 4y ago

The amount of MacGuyver content you got over the original 7 year run is about the same amount of content that a popular Twitch Streamer will put out in about 7 weeks. And MacGyver won't read your comment in chat and respond to you. It's a vastly different situation. Not least because in 1985 when the original Macguyver came out the entire television viewing population of the US were watching a handful of networks. Now the economics mean that there are 100,000x as many content creators to support, creating content at 52x the previous rate. So are we expecting revenue per viewer to be 5,200,000x times higher? Because that's the ratio of the content being produced.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
warent 4y ago
There seem two be two different things here. 1. "100,000x as many content creators to support" Hollywood has always been flooded with countless failed would-be actors / entertainers. Just because you can't see them like you can in Twitch, because they couldn't publish stuff in the 1980s, it doesn't mean they didn't exist. This is an old problem. 2. "The amount of MacGuyver content you got over the original 7 year run is about the same amount of content that a popular Twitch Streamer will put out in about 7 weeks." We're not talking about the actor, by himself, winging it and producing an episode on the fly. With Twitch, that is typically the case. On Twitch, content being produced is of lower effort and higher volume. It's a huge difference but the math balances out. As an aside, "fan mail" did exist back then too. Viewers would write in to a P.O. Box and if they were lucky their letters were read on air.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Lots of people had toxic relationships with pop stars. Just look how Kurt Cobain ended up.