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Old farts of Hexbear, is there something about younger people that you don't get? [no punching down!]
(hexbear.net)
OK this is my list. But first, I need to say that this isn't a condemnation of those into such thing. They just don't vibe with me.
- Cannot get into ASMR. I've tried. Often its women 20 years younger than me, rubbing their fingernails on hairbrushes. The intentional sounds they make with their lips and fingers are things that would make me want to change seats on a bus.
- Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I'm just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I'm single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.
- My students' taste in anime. I try to be all cool and show off my cool taste in anime, maybe drop a Azumanga Daioh clip. It's all ancient history for 17 year olds.
- Photo and videos done in portrait mode. I guess I don't watch videos on the go. See #2
Things that the kids these days do better:
- Usually better opinions on current events than people my age
- I wish that cosplay existed when I was a teen. The default when I was younger was drugs.
If anyone insults the kids, I will visit you at your home and do an 
obsession with streamers. I literally cannot wrap my head around the appeal of watching another person that isn't an actual friend play a videogame.
Community
Almost always there is a chat feature, and many successful streamers interact with that community live. For an old-folks reference, it's not very different from MTV's Total Request Live where part of the appeal was interacting with the hosts.
YES I ALWAYS EXPLAIN THIS PART WHEN TALKING TO BOOMERS ABOUT IT.
Like imagine you could be in a chat room cheering for the Eagles playing football with everybody else who was watching the game? That would be fun as hell and the trash talk/ insight is enjoyable
I lol in a good way reading this
parasocial relationships
I think it's really a reflection of the social conditions of our generation. Gen X chuds are a certain brand of paranoid and self absorbed, and generally made bad parents. Many western parents stopped letting their children participate in things outside the house because they were terrified their kid would get kidnapped. So instead, kids made friends with random people on the internet. So watching a stranger play Pokemon really doesn't feel like much of a stretch for me.
The way kids have been semi-systematically confined to their homes makes me simmeringly furious.
Yup, my gen x dad wouldn't even let me take a walk on our street just to get some exercise and fresh air, because he thought I would be kidnapped and SA'd. Kidnapping has never even happened in our town before.
Meanwhile, teachers, cops, and even the fire chief were caught messing with minors or having CSAM on their computer. But I was "safe" at school! And "safe" at home with my abusive step mother. Gen x chud dads are really something else.
It's so fucked. Back in my day when I was 7 they'd kick us out of the house with a juice box, a bike, and instructions not to come back until lunch or dinner. And that's literal! We had bears and moose and god knows what in the neighborhood and it was just like "Go outside and have fun" for hours every day during the summer and the weekends. When I was in highschool we'd stay out all night fucking around, wandering through neighborhoods, hanging out at Denny's, or driving to some of the trails and scenic overlooks outside town. That it's gotten so bad, and so restrictive, in a few decades of 24/7 news panicmongering is so frustrating. It shouldn't be like this!
Basically my youth. The only dangerous thing I ever encountered was the fucking swarms of mosquitos and the neighbor kids playing pranks on me like trying to convince me a nugget of moose shit was a cookie.
It tasted like wood.
: p I never got got with moose poop, but there was definitely some intra-tweenage warfare going on.
lol back in the day I nearly burned down the "woods" behind our house fucking with mosquito coils. I hate mosquitos with the fury of ten thousand haters. The only good thing about them is growing up in AK, I can laugh at folks in the lower 48 any time they say "The mosquitos are real bad out here!"
to be fair I was like 3 or 4 when I got got by the neighbor kids.
I've also accidentally almost burnt down or blown up the woods in a few neighborhoods because either unsupervised camping and making campfires, got out hands on fireworks, got our hands on gunpowder, got our hands on gasoline, got our hands on butane, etc.
Now that I think about it I'm surprised none of us actually got seriously injured with all the dumb shit kids do.
It really shouldn't be like this and I think it did permanent damage to me, I'm like a skittish indoor cat now. Been trying to enjoy the outside more but I don't think I'll ever be at that level. My parents made me so anxious and nervous with their paranoia and worries.
I’d do that to my kids, but I’m more worried about heat exhaustion.
Fair, especially if they're younger. Are they old enough to recognize the symptoms? headache, shaky hands, feeling weak? If you fit them out with water bottles and snacks and they stay in the shade they should be able to hold out for a while. Especially if you send them out early in the morning and in the evening, and have them come back home for siesta during the hot part of the day.
Damn, though, you are right. I'd never even considered that rising heat would be a hazard just for kids playing outside. Shit's dark. : *(
No, 6 and 3 lol. I let them play in the backyard once and they were flushed after 15-20 mins of play.
It’s bleak
It is fun to see a person you find interesting do a thing you like. Usually they are pretty good impov type comedians. Plus TV has always been way worse on average.
Streamers are to Gen Z what sports teams were to boomers.
Just watching somebody you don’t know play a game and cheering for them because you happen to like them
That's still different though. Like I get why people watch live streams of pro gamers competing, that's the exact same as pro sports.
But watching somebody who isn't good at the game or even funny/interesting for hours? That shit will always be alien to me. I watch pro sports and sometimes pro games like Counter Strike, but I don't watch somebody who's shit at football fumble the ball for 4 hours straight
There's always a few people watching regional league soccer here so I imagine that's sort of the same except you don't have to drive 30km into a backwater to watch a 2hour game on a sunday
Except not everybody watches only professional sports, and not everybody who watches sports does so for the love of seeing the sport played at a high level.
That’s why I compared it to sports teams, which people watch for the individuals, narratives, amongst other things
I think we're kinda in agreement. Like E sports has all the same individuals, narratives, back stories, underdogs and all that fun stuff. I 100% get it. And I get watching certain streamers (not even game streamers necessarily) that are funny or charming or entertaining or informative.
But watching a charismatic black hole of a human fuck up at a game for hours or browse memes on teddit is something I can't understand.
Oh yeah some streamers definitely do not appeal to everybody, but in the same sense neither do all teams, players, sports, or genres
I watch streams of games to see if they're any good before i pirate them
Funny enough there's a few mid-tier streamers that I can watch. But their content is all edited decently, they cut out the bullshit opinions and bad jokes, and they're pretty self-deprecating. It really helps to turn my brain off to just watch someone play a game I like and comment through it. If I couldn't sleep, this would be my brain-off content. I'm thinking of Francis John or Call Me Kevin. I feel bad, but I've never contributed to anyone's Patreon.
I don't watch streamers personally but I can see the appeal of having some background noise
Remember celebrity culture back in the 90s and 00s? Figure it's the same thing, mixed with the appeal of Mr. Roosevelt's fireside chats.
I also like watching some of the S-tier streamers in games I play. Like watching very high level players in Naraka is incredible because they're playing an entirely different game from the bush leagues where I hang out.
Imagine the millennial obsession of Bradgelina. Or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman or Justin Timberlake. Or with hot tub streamers, imagine having a crush on your older sister’s female friends and trying to impress them. Or millennials who saw Evangelion and were like “omg so me” instead of having parents.
Imagine Wombo Combo or Leroy Jenkins but instead of millennials screaming and hollering together, it’s zoomers.
If you can understand these things, you can wrap your head around streamers.
The average streamer is straight up doodoo IMO, but some rare ones are good entertainers or speakers. I got into one for a while like 7 years ago that played mostly older games, but not all retro, and played a super wide variety (many of them entertainingly bad tbh), usually not for hours at a time unless the challenge was specifically to beat the game, and made like a game show out of selecting which one he would play, or what romhack, or whatever, and usually had other friends on to keep the banter up, play against him, whatever. And hilarious intermission gags.
After that fairly short phase though I really started to get into twitch after starting to become radicalized and watched some varying levels of left wing political streamers, like half of them trans, mostly for entertainment, and one for background noise during work. Most of them turned out to not have the best takes tbh, and I got sick of all but one by mid-pandemic and stopped. I'd say only one has really gotten at all parasocial feeling and that makes me a little uncomfortable tbh so I try to be mindful of it.
I also sometimes watch hasan clips but I straight up do not have time to watch his full streams ever lol, and its mostly him yelling at chatters for saying something reactionary I feel like so the edited clips are better and I can skip around if he gets stunlocked
Plus his chat are massive libs
Streamers are only useful as background noise for me. Whenever I try and just watch one, even smaller ones, I inevitably get annoyed - they have some personal quirk that bothers me, enforce the rules too little or too much, or when politics comes up, it's usually either milquetoast lib stuff said sanctimoniously or people who are kinda left-leaning but their closeness to meaningfully good opinions is itself annoying as I want to push them on but I cannot because that would be creating a parasocial relationship. I prefer to just move on and remove them from algorithmic recommendations.
Having any kind of "allegiance" to a streamer or really any content (bleurgh) creator just seems unwise to me, no matter how amazing they are and correct they are on issues. Because the drama will come for them, and then instead of discussing real-world issues, you've delving into reddit threads about he-said she-saids to determine if they're Still A Good Person or not.
It feels like the modern incarnation of celebrity culture but for people who say they don't care about celebrities. "Oh no, I don't give a shit about what's going on with Taylor Swift or Megan Markle, caring about random people like that is kinda weird. HOLY SHIT have you seen the newest video by Blungle292? The video game challenge he just did is so INSANE and DIFFICULT." And explicitly political streamers? Good god, I don't even go near them, they're inevitably uninteresting and annoying.
I will add one caveat to this actually but he doesn't stream games and its not really a parasocial relationship because he is a Lakota elder in Chunka Luta Network. https://www.twitch.tv/lostsioux
Definitely check out this one because he is funny as fuck and has a lot of wisdom to share.
I used to think the same way. Until I meet Jerma.
Still, I watch his old streams only. Not fan of watching anything live.
Also, he has some bangers I like to rewatch before falling asleep.
This is true. Jerma is very funny. I love rewatching his clips.