twitch.tv/ |
Oh look, it’s been five months since my last update... Sorry folks, the semester has been insane and I spent every day of my mid-sem break catching up with studies and assignments. Fun. And sorry again cause I’m just rambling in this one. To be fair, all of my posts have been my incoherent thoughts but this one more than the others, I guess. (There’s gonna be a lot of names but you don’t need to know any of them)
As you could probably tell from the title
of this post or if you’ve seen any of my tweets for the past few months you’d
know I’ve been watching a lot of livestreams on Twitch. I blame Wilbur Soot for
everything. It started with his collab with James Marriott, then his videos, then
his Among Us videos, then Corpse Husband playing Among Us, and then I went full
circle to watching Dream SMP. All in all, it took about 9 months for me to get
here. But we can go back even further to 2011 when it all went downhill for me
since I got unlimited access to the internet.
Long story short, 2011 - 13/14, I spent a
lot of time talking to random strangers on the internet (for the love of God,
please monitor what your children are doing on their phone); 2013/14 – present,
I watch a lot of YouTube, gone through multiple phases, watched a decent
number of creators over the years but I feel like I’ve slowed down a bit lately.
Only because I started really watching livestreams. It started with just
Corpse, which was sustainable cause he doesn’t stream as much. But then I
started getting into the Dream SMP. I’ve heard about them since like June last
year but I only started watching their content late December or early January. If
you don’t know Dream SMP is a Minecraft server with about 30 different
creators/streamers that became popular when they started doing roleplay in the
server… But we’re not diving into that now. There’s too much lore.
Anyway out of those 30 something creators,
I mainly watch 7 of them. And the one I’m watching the most right now is
Ranboo, who streams every. single. day. And if I’m being honest, that’s when I
hit rock bottom. Jokes aside, he’s awesome.
Now, the reason why I told you about my
brief history on the internet is because I kind of realized why things
progressed the way it did – I just want someone to talk to me. Well, maybe that’s
not entirely accurate. I guess I simply enjoy listening to people talk. Also, YouTube
videos and livestreams hit different because they address you as an audience,
unlike TV shows and movies. I can still binge those by the way but it takes so
much mental energy for me to start watching a new series (even though I’ve been
thinking about it for so long). But with YouTube or Twitch, whoever I’m currently
watching is usually introduced by whoever I was already watching previously. Like
the James Marriott – Wilbur Soot – Corpse Husband – Dream SMP chain I told you
about.
And my goodness, I thought my attention span
is already decent cause I can binge YouTube videos or a series (whenever I get
into it) with little to no problem. Even then, I didn’t know I can sit through
hours upon hours watching livestreams. I thought it would be a lot more tiring
than it is. Once, I watched maybe 4 or 5 livestreams back-to-back for about 12
hours. The longest single stream I ever watched was Ranboo’s UK subathon which
was about 15 hours long and I only slept for 3 hours in the middle of it.
My sleep schedule is absolutely bonkers as
you can probably tell. For the past two weeks, I go to bed at around 3 a.m.,
get about 2-3 hours of decent sleep before I proceed to be in and out of sleep
until at least 10 a.m. with a livestream (usually Ranboo’s) playing on my phone.
Yeah, it’s really bad. I promise I’ll sort myself out soon. I just have
to get used to watching VODs (basically replays). For some reason, watching a 3-hour
VOD takes a lot more energy than a 5-hour livestream.
You can probably guess what my attention is
like in class… Well, the lack thereof. I’ve been in so many classes where I also
had a livestream playing in the background. Heck, I’ve taken a couple of tests
while watching a livestream. I’m sorry, online classes are just unbearable
lately.
Back to my actual point, I like
livestreams cause I like listening to people talk. My favourite kind of streams
is chill ones where from time to time a friend would hop on the call and they
just talk about whatever they want while chat is just “third-wheeling”. One
that I cherish a lot is Quackity’s stream where he started with talking to
chat, then BadBoyHalo joined, and then Wilbur and we ended up watching plane
videos and Wilbur talked about his favourite planes. At one point he apologized
for rambling but Quackity said, “I don’t mind it at all, I’m enjoying this.” (That
meant a lot to me as someone who has a tendency to ramble but is always
insecure about it. Case in point, this post). Just now, Bad was streaming and
Wilbur, Quackity and George were on the call and at one point, Quackity and Wilbur
talked about music and how Lovejoy (a band Wilbur is in, they make banger
music) produce their songs while Bad and George were memeing around on the Minecraft
server. Another thing that stands out in my memory is whenever Ranboo would
stream with sleep-deprived Tubbo on the call, and Tubbo would say some of the most
out-of-pocket things and you can see Ranboo’s reaction from his Minecraft
character alone (Ranboo is a faceless streamer so he doesn’t usually have his
facecam on).
I don’t care much about video games and it
still baffles me how I end up being neck-deep into watching gamers but really the
entertainment value isn’t in the game they play. It’s in their personality, the
safe space they created for the audience, and the friendships that we get to witness.
A lot of the streamers that I watch became friends during quarantine, and I actually
got to see some people’s first interactions with each other. And now they’re
best friends, your honour. That feels really really nice to watch while
being stuck at home, unable to see my friends.
Now you might ask, why can’t I be in
a long call with my friends every other day? Well first off, there’s only a
couple friends who I can talk to on the phone for a few hours. But even then,
we don’t get to do it often because time is a bitch and even worse than that, I’m
not good at phone conversations. Or conversations in general actually. I don’t know
if it’s my introversion or whatever, but I get tired very easily from phone
calls so it’s not even a weekly thing. That being said though, I appreciate the
ones that I get to have every once in a while.
This one is a bit more specific but I also
like hearing background noises especially with streamers who don’t use facecam.
Dream usually plays with a fidget spinner, Corpse with his butterfly knife,
them and Ranboo sometimes slam their desks, the sound of keyboard when they’re
typing – I like them a lot. It reminds me that that’s a person behind the other
screen. It makes them feel real so it makes me feel real and human in
that very moment. It’s also such an interesting thing when I pick up on the
subtle quirks in the way they speak. This is about the only time I enjoy having
learnt phonetics. I know this won’t make sense to anyone else but me cause I don’t
think you watch these streamers but I like how Dream says “talk”, how Ranboo
says “beginning”, and how Phil says “book”. Humans and languages are amazing.
Suddenly, majoring in English doesn’t feel like a waste.
TL;DR I like watching livestreams because I
enjoy their friendships and it reminds me of my friends who I really really
miss being around. Maybe I’ll see them on graduation day if we’re lucky :’)