For the uninitiated, Twitch is a hotbed of potential misconceptions. Conversely, if you’re deep in it, Twitch is exceedingly fertile soil for different misconceptions. There’s a lot to misconcept, is what I’m saying, whether we’re talking regular people who think streamers are all millionaires with the world’s cushiest job or megafans who harbor the parasocial delusion that they know their favorite streamer better than anybody else on Earth. This sounds like a job for You Are Error, Aftermath’s podcast about gaming’s greatest misconceptions.
Just a heads up that this episode is a little different. As those of you who follow me probably know – because I will not shut up about it – I wrote a book! It’s called Stream Big: The Triumphs And Turmoils Of Twitch And The Stars Behind The Screen, and it’s out now! You can find it online and wherever books are sold.
Each chapter is about a different streamer as a lens through which to view Twitch and the way platforms shape people and vice versa. Some of the featured creators, like Amouranth, Dream, and Hasan Piker, are big – household names in certain corners of the internet. Others are smaller and more susceptible to stumbling as the ground beneath them shifts, often as a result of platforms’ money-hungry whims. There are rises and falls, stories of unlikely success as well as uglier topics like abuse, harassment, grooming, stalking, and swatting. It’s a lot, but I’m very proud of how it turned out.
Stream Big was partially born of a desire to clear up misconceptions surrounding Twitch, livestreaming, and content creators, so a discussion of the book seemed like a natural fit for this show. Then I realized it was also a golden opportunity for one of my favorite things, inter-Aftermath brand synergy, which prompted a eureka moment: I could bring on other members of the staff to ask me questions about a subject I’ve spent the past more-than-half-a-decade investigating.
I decided on Riley and Luke, neither of whom consider themselves all that well-versed in Twitch or the world of content creation, because I figured they’d be best-equipped to present their own misconceptions in an honest and curious way. Also, Luke is a self-proclaimed Twitch hater, and haters always ask the best questions.
So if you’ve always wondered what the deal is with Twitch and the creators on it – why and how they’ve managed to amass so much influence within the world of video games, especially as the more traditional press fades into an, at best, secondary role – this is the episode for you. Also, fair warning, this conversation’s a little less structured than usual, but hopefully you’ll still enjoy it. I know I did.
You can listen to the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please consider leaving a review so that thousands of people can form a parasocial relationship with You Are Error, and I can tell all of them to cut it out.
Here are excerpts from our conversation, deftly edited to make a coherent point much more quickly than we did during the actual conversation:
Nathan: A thing that I was very intentional about with this book was doing all of the main interviews in person. Generally, I sought to conduct them in that person’s home, to actually go behind the scenes of their lives. Because a thing about Twitch that I think a lot of people believe – and hey, we’re back to misconceptions, the topic of this show – is that as a result of watching somebody on camera for eight or even just a few hours per day, they feel like they know everything about that person and, as an extension of that, everything about their career. What could they possibly be missing?
I wanted to reveal all of the other stuff that goes into somebody being a professional Twitch streamer, making enough money to have a family and a house and all of that stuff. And so I was like “It’s gotta be in person. I’ve gotta see this world with my own two eyes to be able to reveal the things that are actually happening here that don’t make it onto the broadcast.” Because if I was only talking to streamers on the phone, why not just write some articles? If I was gonna make a book out of this, it needed to go an extra step.
And it was really useful. For example, the chapter I wrote about Cohh Carnage is very much centered on his home. His ambition is to keep streaming for his whole life – for this to always be his job. And so he bought a house that has an elevator in it, specifically because he’s like “Yeah, when I’m 75, and I need to get downstairs, I can’t take the stairs. So I’ll take this elevator and show up like I do every day.” He was showing me all these parts of his house, too. He has a generator so that if the power goes out while he’s streaming, he won’t miss a beat. He and his family are in kind of an isolated area, so he had all these things installed to make sure his internet is of the highest possible quality. He’s all in on streaming, which makes sense; he’s been doing this for more than a decade already.
Riley: That dovetails into a misconception I had because I’m old: I think I still think about it as like “You’re gonna be a Twitch streamer, and you’re gonna make millions of dollars, and that’s your job.” But I think your book points out that everybody doesn’t become a millionaire, and that’s not the end for a lot of people. What is “You can make millions playing video games” for 2025?
Nathan: First off, there is this conception for a lot of people that Twitch streamers hit it big and get rich, when the reality is that well under one percent of streamers on Twitch even make minimum wage from streaming. Under 0.1% [as of 2021]. If you look at the top 10,000 streamers in terms of the money they’re making, you drop out of minimum wage before you hit the end of the list. So those are the people making a proper living on Twitch. That’s not many people out of the millions who stream.
Nathan: One of the main things that I wanted to express in this book and clear up as a misconception is that streaming is work. It is absolutely work. It is absolutely skilled labor. To maintain an audience – especially a big audience – just by being present and being yourself and talking for many hours per day, often with only chat to play off of, most people can’t do that. 99.9 percent of people can’t do that.
Even sometimes when we’re doing the Aftermath Hours stream, I’ll wonder how successful streamers keep their chats moving consistently on a daily basis. Because ours will just stop, and that’ll be it. When a chat loses momentum, it’s just kinda over. The fact that there are people who can, through sheer magnetism and ability to understand how this organism works, command that, it’s crazy to me. And it takes a lot of energy. There’s a reason why it’s the main thing these people do. They stream all day, manage their business by night, and they don’t have tremendously active lives outside of that.
There’s been this ongoing debate about whether or not streaming is a real job. Any time a streamer brings up this notion that they’re working, people are like “Yeah, but you’re not working in the service industry. You’re not doing construction. So you have no right to complain, and actually you should shut up forever.”
And it’s like, yeah, streaming is more enjoyable in some ways, but work is work no matter what the job is that you’re doing. And something I wanted the book to convey is that this is how capitalism is structured and how it seeks to divide us. We’re all in thrall to some larger force, and there are a lot of times where no matter what we’re doing, even if it seems appealing from the outside looking in, we’re not having a great time. We’re being pressured into overworking or burning out. And if we don’t, the whole thing falls apart.
