A Brief Guide To Twitch Streams

Have you ever been to the circus, watched one of the clowns perform, and thought to yourself, “Man, I really wish I could pelt this guy with red-hot coins”? Well, have I got the thing for you.

This comic was inspired, at least partially, by my recent foray into the ‘Go Off Kings’ universe, the ‘’’’gaming’’’’’ stream co-hosted by YKS superstar Jesse Farrar and weasely unknown Stephen Heck. I was introduced to the crew after a buddy sent me a link to their admittedly ingenious “name change stream” where viewers spin a wheel are forced to change their usernames to something like DogPoopToothbrush

or MySonHurtMe, and immediately upon viewing the VOD was blasted by a schizophrenic onslaught of video pop-ups and sound alerts which rendered the actual content of the stream laughably difficult to watch. And again, to their credit, the absurdity seems to be kind of the point— I think the duo is able to the ride the line of ‘this is transparently idiotic/but we gotta play ball in order to do this for a living’ in the least shameful way physically possible. Presumably, the same can’t be said of most streamers, though I wouldn’t know, because of course I don’t watch this crap. Gaming, at this point, seems secondary to the spectacle. I guess that’s for the best, in like an ontological sort of way? For better or for worse, the medium seems to have been refined into its truer self. Neat.

Vtubers could probably afford their own category, but here’s all I have to say on the matter; something has gone wrong here. Not in like a morally prescriptive way, necessarily, but in the sense something appears to have glitched in our genetic code. It’s like that old Minecraft phenomena, where if you ventured like millions of in-game miles outside the starting spawn the game engine would start to chug and the boundaries of reality would begin to warp. 300,000 years of humanity and 4000 years of civilization has finally brought us to this, and things are going to start getting a little weird. I think back constantly to infinite jest passage about the dawn of videophone, where people felt so overwhelmed by the anxiety of showing their face during communication that they started wearing realistic rubber masks of more attractive versions of their face, before eventually just covering the camera lens with a still 2-d image of themselves that was airbrushed to the point of unrecognizability.

Briefly— let’s address the bald white elephant in the room. Northernlion is a smart guy, for sure, but I think he would be the first to admit that he only seems preternaturally so when compared to your average streamer or stream viewer. In reality, though, here is what is actually the most impressive about him; his brain and mouth seem to be able to move at exactly the same speed. I’ve never once seen the man make a flub, or skip a beat, or produce anything less than a fully coherent and eloquent response within naught-point-one second of receiving word from the peanut gallery. He’s like an inverted Trump. Irrespective of substance, he does a damn fine job of sounding smart, and lord knows I of all people place a premium on that. Here’s to you, egghead; no one could never make me hate a roguelike brother.

(“Erm, don’t you mean rogueLITE?’ You’ve lost the war. Go back to pre-Isaac 2011.)

Pu-On: The Smudge. I mean, what else can you even say about that? Masterclass in toilet humor, man, enter-the-matrix Neo flow state. I surprise even myself sometimes