Guest posting on Random Tidbits of Thought is a great way to get your thoughts, passions, and ideas out to the wider RTT community. In the past, folks have posted about their startups, fundraised for volunteer trips, shared comics, or sang songs. The possibilities are limitless. If you’re interested, guest post on Random Tidbits of Thought today!
My good friend Ki returns with his fifth guest post on my blog, a follow-up on his experiences watching and livestreaming DJ sets on Twitch during the COVID-19 quarantine.
In the Beginning, An Afterparty
You may or may not recall my previous guest post on this blog in which I briefly mentioned streaming my DJ sets on Twitch for the first time. Fast forward to three months out, and a lot has happened since then.
For context, let’s rewind. Back in April, I was watching a Club Quarantine session hosted by Dave Dresden on Twitch. As he was wrapping up his set, I had the crazy idea to play an “afterparty” and meekly announced my intentions in the chat. To my surprise, seven or so viewers showed up. Despite my obvious shortcomings in streaming equipment and décor, they stuck around and seemed to enjoy what I was playing out.
In the following weeks, word slowly began to spread of the CQ afterparty sessions, and when Dave got wind of this, he decided to raid my channel on a particular night. For those not in the know, raiding is a Twitch function that essentially sends all current viewers to a channel of the streamer’s choosing, as he or she is finishing up. Needless to say, I was incredulous when this happened, as I noticed there were suddenly close to 1,000 viewers in my channel. It is safe to say the rest is history.
When I awoke the next day, I assumed life would be back to normal, and I was glad to have had my fifteen minutes of fame. Instead, I woke up to $150 in PayPal donations and the socials blowing up. I am a bit reticent about admitting to this publicly, but I suddenly burst out in tears as I remembered that, just a few hours prior, I was playing songs like “Orbital – Halcyon On & On” in front of hundreds of viewers.
After that, I started spending a lot more time on Twitch, and not just with tending to my own channel. As a close-knit community began to form, we started “stream hopping” DJ channels on Twitch that needed extra viewers or support and scouting some of the more talented DJs as potential raid targets. I noticed that the more noteworthy channels possessed a uniqueness factor, whether the streamer realized it or not. One streamer’s channel was emceed by his daughter, another streamer’s channel featured insane green screen visuals, and a few showcased breathtaking skyline views from their upscale apartments.
This begged the question – what was my x-factor? People have relayed to me that they liked seeing the emotions I apparently pour out while I play, whether through smiling or “singing” into the camera. I suppose this might be why people returned to my channel despite my 4:3 camera ratio from the laptop webcam. Up until recently, I did not even own a (stereo) audio interface, which meant people showed up even as I was streaming mono audio.
What started out as playing afterparties every now and then turned into a full-blown operation, evolving into 24 hours of continuous raids overseen by designated moderators. I eventually found myself attending Zoom calls frequently with some of the more close-knit members of streamers and moderators. This improved my life in two ways – I was still able to be social in a post-quarantine world, and I finally had something to look forward to other than catching up on my TV shows. In theory, this should have been the end of this post – a happily-ever-after for a formerly unknown DJ, his Twitch life jumpstarted by fortuitous happenstance – but there is more than meets the eye, as with so many things in life.
The Sweat, Tears…and Drama
What the viewers see, the smiling into the camera and whatnot, is a fraction of what actually goes into streaming. The other 80% is troubleshooting sound problems and stream glitches, setting up donation portals and emotes, filling out Twitch paperwork and waiting for a response that never comes, along with a plethora of other elements that have nothing to do with playing music. It is especially tougher for me, as I consider myself “electronically challenged.” If a third party were to record my initial attempts at things like setting up the stream, and later on the sound card, it would have been a comedy stream in itself. Despite all this, the reason why we stream is because the other 20% still makes up for everything we go through.
There is also inherent drama that comes with being part of a community. I believe that the 24 hour raid operation grew too big and too quickly. Naturally, I only saw the positive aspects of this community at the start. When I began to observe the moderators of the so-called raid train letting their egos get to their heads a bit, I brushed it off as an inevitable consequence of a rapidly growing operation. Eventually there was serious infighting among the “conductors,” which began affecting the streamers negatively as well. I found this behavior to be unacceptable and unprofessional, and it would be an understatement to say that I was upset the positive vibes so many of us streamers worked hard to cultivate had devolved into a typical corporate boardroom tainted by management ego.
This made me realize something important. If the conductors were willing to get at each other’s throats like that, there was no reason to believe some of them wouldn’t come after the individual streamers as well. I witnessed firsthand one of the conductors being banned from the Discord group and subsequently relieved of his duties. This made me paranoid and led me to take precautions I would have never considered before. For example, I opened up social media accounts under my artist name in fear that some internet troll might abscond with it in the future. Prior to this, the only social account I owned was Facebook.
I began to despise the train management even more as I realized how jaded they had rendered me. Even today, I think about how much more professionally this drama could have been handled. For example, the aforementioned Zoom group (including the former conductor) invited the other conductors on multiple occasions to try and work things out in a diplomatic manner, and yet the latter group refused. It was as if they actually viewed us as laborers, and that negotiating with us was beneath them in some way.
Looking Into The Mirror: Lessons Learned
The previous section was a discussion on what other people needed to work on, but there always comes time for a “man in the mirror” moment. This new streaming lifestyle made me realize flaws of my own, as well as some important lessons learned.
- Can’t be liked by everyone – I know I am not the only person with the inherent desire to be liked by everyone. I now realize that this is just not possible, especially as a public figure on the internet. There will always be people who have problems with you, whether it is your fault or not.
- Perfectionism is not ideal – Given my personality, I wanted every stream to be perfect, devoid of mixing errors and other blemishes. This is not necessarily the correct mindset. Every stream cannot be the best stream, and I have to accept that some sessions are just not going to go well. In fact, this personality flaw elicited itself on the day of writing this. I actually stopped my stream short after making a minor mixing error, as I knew I would not be able to mentally recover from it. That being said, however, I do pride myself on trying to put on the best show I possibly can whenever I get behind the camera.
- Prima donna? – I find myself focusing too much on the numbers now. If current viewership is less than average, I wonder if I am doing something wrong, or why there aren’t as many viewers today. It also turns out I may have been slightly delusional. I assumed the time it took from, say zero to a thousand followers, would be the same amount of time roughly speaking, to get from a thousand to ten thousand followers. That was wrong, and I actually have yet to reach 2,000. It also turned out that May was the peak viewership of Twitch Music and has been leveling off since then. I conversed with Dave the other day, and he predicted that viewers would pick streaming back up given how the US is handling the coronavirus situation. We will see.
Closing Thoughts
When I first started streaming, it was an escape from the quotidian work and school lifestyle. Now, with all the drama at play, it is starting to feel more and more like a workplace. From the Zoom calls, I have heard of countless experiences of streamers who quit after being burnt out. I am exerting so much effort to not become one of them.
I will try not to lose sight of why I began doing this in the first place, although it is rather unfortunate that the conductors failed in this endeavor. I will try my best to keep grounded as I balance work, school, and streaming. And, if you’ll indulge me, I hope to see you (virtually) in my living room, enjoying some of the tunes I’m spinning, sometime soon.
