Let's get those Twitch Pennies rollin' in!

It's no secret that we use the funds raised through Patreon (and Twitch, etc) to reinvest in our stream and make it better, funnier, more engaging, unique, you name it. One of the first things we used Patreon money on was the ill-fated Loot Cam 2000 -- which we still have -- but we encountered some technical problems as well as struggling to find a way to properly incorporate it into the show.

Not everything is a winner like our Prize-O-Matic, a mechanical random number generator. The Prize-O-Matic was also built using Patreon money and it serves the important purpose of choosing a random number between 1 and 24 by way of spinning an arrow around a roulette wheel. Sure, we could've used a digital solution for picking a random number, but what's the fun in that? The Prize-O-Matic is a practical prop. It's fun, it's entertaining, and no one else on Twitch has one. Only we do... because we built it ourselves.

I don't know how it happened, but "turning digital things that other streamers use into physical props" became a gimmick associated with Gatorbox. We actively resist -- and mock -- the "professional" streamer industry. Whether it's by claiming to be sponsored by a non-existent brandless drink or spinning a physical wheel instead of a digital one it seems that everything we do on our show laughs in the face of practicality and industry standards. And it just sorta happened, we didn't plan or intend for things to pan out like this. But we're not complaining.

As you can see in the photo above, we're ready to keep that train rolling. Now, I know that we use proper pop-up alerts when viewers contribute Bits, follow, host/raid, buy a shirt, etc. But we still decided to build yet another practical prop that mocks streaming culture. It's a light-up marquee emblazoned with one Bit ($0.01) that can be manually illuminated by pressing the button attached to the wire coming out of the back of the sign. Bits, which we've nicknamed "Twitch Pennies", are sort of a meme currency within Gatorbox. They add up, but for the most part what happens is you guys watch a few ads and then proceed to metaphorically flick nickels, dimes, and the occasional quarter at us.

Lots of streamers have crazy and obnoxious pop-ups that cover their entire screens and can be triggered with as little as one bit. We don't do that, not because we don't want your support but rather we run a live show and if there was a notification every time there was a 1 Bit donation that would get tiring real fast. Also really, y'all expect us to stop the show and thank someone for sticking a whole penny up our asses? Haha.

The "Bit Sign" (working name?) is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to all the streamers out there who clutch onto the pipedream that they can be a successful streamer while broadcasting subpar Fortnite gameplay to an audience of 3 people. We're not laughing at those people specifically -- we were there once ourselves after all (minus the Fortnite) -- but instead the Bit Sign more or less takes the piss out of the struggle itself. The mindset that "everyone is special" or "everyone is talented" and that if you just try enough then god damn it you can be an Internet superstar. And you'll get there one Bit at a time, right?

Originally we were intending to make the Bit Sign automatic and literally flash on its own once for every Bit that was received. This was a novel idea because most of the Bits we receive show up in groups of either 10, 11, or 13. We get a ton of those and 10 blinks on the sign at 2 blinks per second means that there'd be five seconds of blinking. But then our thoughts wandered to what would happen when someone drops 1,000 Bits in chat, which happens occasionally. At 2 blinks per second 1,000 Bits turns into 500 seconds, or just over 8 minutes. Of non-stop blinking. Yeah, that would get really annoying and distracting. Even if we dialed up the speed to 4 or 5 blinks per second that would still translate to approximately 4 minutes of blinking which is still not ideal.

We racked our brains over this trying to think of a programmatic solution. We considered adjusting the rate of blinks relative to the total amount of Bits given, but quickly nixed the idea for the reasons mentioned in the above paragraph. We then thought about incorporating different color LEDs into the display to match the various tiers of Bits and then gradually blink them out in that manner (for example: 1,234 Bits would blink blue once [1 x 1,000], purple twice [2 x 100], and white 34 times [34 x 1]). But that was ruled way too difficult. Possible, but not very practical. Not for what's meant to be a dumb joke.

Then the solution came to us. Just make it manual and whenever someone drops some Bits in the stream one of us can just click the button a bunch of times and say something snarky.

Simple. Easy.

And that's how the Bit Sign became the latest addition to the Gatorbox set.