I've just started hanging around Twitch and there is one (good looking, gotta admit) gal there who entertains by dancing to some console dance game and/or doing cosplay ASMR (which is something I've never heard of before but have found it's a whole sub-culture). It's not my thing, to be honest, and I'm not knocking it, but she has over 500K followers and is probably making (by my estimate) over $150K per MONTH doing what she does, and she works 12 hours a day doing it. I'm both baffled by what the internet will sponsor and impressed that every-day people are inventing news ways to make a living doing what they love to do.

There are a bazillion gamers on Twitch, of course, and many make far more than the dancing gal.

There are Musicians and DJs, and Artists, and Table-Top Gamers, etc. who have invested money in to their own personal TV studios, with lighting, effects, multiple camera views...what ever they can think of. One chap puts on concerts each night, and for his genre he's damn good.

Once you get over the absurdity of it all, you might come to appreciate, as I finally have, how cool this really is.

So the point of this topic is really to open up a discussion about the power of Social Media and how it has changed the world, for better or for worse.

Talk about what amazes/baffles/inspires/sickens you about Social Media.

So the YouTubers that are making money off their game videos are making more additional money while on Twitch.

It's madness I say.

Here is an article on the impact of living your life completely online, performing for 12 hours a day 7 days a week. When they take a vacation, their income can drop instantly for each day they are off.  Unlike other professions they are completely at the whim of their audiences as they are audience paid, and if the platforms they are on capriciously change their terms of service constantly without consultation. It sounds like it is ridiculously easy, and I understand why kids want to enter this and become a personality but I can't imagine a more stressful way to make money, because it can literally disappear overnight.

Comparing Doctors to streamers is a false equivalency of stunning proportion.

RT

Comparing Doctors to streamers is a false equivalency of stunning proportion.

•••

Just saying.

I don't make the same amount of money as Jeff Bezos, which what you are comparing here. The average successful youtuber makes less than $80k a year. Pewdiepie (I hate this guy) and others like scumbag Logan Paul are not the norm, they are the exception.

Imagine living your life 12 hours a day performing for an audience that if you deny them their desires for an instant, can destroy your income. It's a nightmare.

RT