This morning I’m all fired up. Being old does a lot of things to a person. One of them is realizing all the ways people have fucked you over your entire life. In fact, there is actually a class-action lawsuit against the Mormons by thousands of people trying to get their 10% tithing back for being defrauded out of it (which I love).
Rather than be a prick like Mark Andressen, who I remember when he put up a simple HTML web page in 94 with just a bunch of links on it and called is Yahoo, before he paywalled it, I took another route because from the time I encountered Linux I was all about fucking “free software.” Here’s the thing. I was DEAD WRONG!
The entire free software movement is absolutely full of shit and has seriously hurt a lot of people in the world. Do you see Doctors being asked how they use their free time to “give back” to their communities during job interviews? Nope. The “open” part of “open source” was good to get bigger companies to invest in things without losing their investment, so that was good. But the “free” part of free software has always been absolute shit. Turns out the saying, “There is nothing in this world that comes for free,” is actually true.
Let’s see how long this topic lasts before it shows up in another YouTuber/Twitch streamer’s live streams without any acknowledgement, again. I am so fucking tired of YouTubers directly ripping my topics for their own huge audiences and not even changing a lot of the talking points.
Perhaps the biggest decision yet to be made is should I live stream the creation of the premium content that is behind the paywall. There are lots of considerations here:
Does livestreaming content creation compromise the content by giving it away?
I don’t think so because that’s the same idea behind the YouTube short. The topic is open season and will likely promote the discussion of that same topic by others in the content creation community, but this is how the community works. Knowing what the topic is and talking about it from an original perspective is one thing, copying all the conclusions and talking points from the content itself is another.
What about VODs?
While another content creator could watch a three hour video of me creating a few YouTube shorts and a single related article for the web, that’s a lot of work. But if I make the VOD available someone intent on summarizing and stealing my content could just fast-forward or put the VOD through some sort of speech-to-text filter. (Believe me, it’s been done, people have even asked to do it and then republish the VODs on their own YouTube channels without even thinking about why that is a just a shitty thing to ask.)
Another thing about VODs, they usually have copyrighted music in them and eventually will get dinged by someone, somehow. If I had no other reason to disable VODs that would be it. This also allows me to stream content IRL from the bike while playing music. So what if it blocks clips. I can just mark the stream and go back and create really good clips on my own terms later. That also keeps me from having to control what clips get made. Often I don’t agree with a clip or three copies of the clip get created and I’m a demon for deleting someone’s “hard work” to create the redundant copy. Better I just control all of that.
Disabling VODSs also encourages more people to be present for each stream meaning I might actually finally reach more than 70 simultaneous viewers in order to qualify for partner (although that has never really been a big goal). Besides, I would rather people watch and promote the saved videos on YouTube much more than Twitch VODs.
Going to create a lurker report
For my own sanity, I’m going to create a cronjob that regularly downloads and populates a list of everyone who has been watching my stream and associate it with the stream. Then I’ll have a nice pretty way to see everyone who is my actual demographic. Hell, I might even publish that code for free so other streamers can hone in on people stealing their content and ideas.
Being able to see a report of how much each person in my stream spends watching it also has the direct value of allowing me to truly identify my biggest community members, not from some stupid streamlabs bot. Then I’ll simply know if and when I find another streamer spending a large amount of time watching my live streams when they suddenly seem to start talking about exactly the same things, even using my own quotes without acknowledging that I said them (like a late night host ripping another’s monologue act, I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it twice now).
In fact, I could even publish the total amount of time people are spending in my stream by VOD with a “biggest fans” page that can be drilled down by day. This is not doxing anything that isn’t already public information. If people want anonymity they can create a second Twitch account. Hell, I could (but won’t) even associate the total number of bits and subs and donations from those people. At a minimum I will show whether they are subbed or not. Some of the highest volume watchers don’t even fucking sub to show support and get pissy when I give them shit about it. No more. Some even make jokes about the thousands of dollars I have invested in getting the IRL streaming stuff completely polished and figured out just so they don’t have to pay anything and then complain because I haven’t “documented” it all for their free-loading ass who can’t even afford a subscription. Meanwhile, absolutely shitty “courses” in IRL streaming on Udemy continue to make money even though they are horribly and absolutely wrong.
At least coding the Lurker report generator in Go and React on Twitch will get some more “Software and Game Development” content (how I fucking hate that category name).
Yes.
I think the answer is just yes. With the lurker report in place I’ll be able to see when people are abusing me and call them out on it (if I feel like it).
How do I stay focused?
The biggest problem with creating content live is the amount of distraction that happens while I’m doing it. I can generally create the same content in about one half the time just by not streaming while I’m creating that content. When I actually stream the creation of that content I have to basically turn off chat entirely while I’m doing it to stay focused, which I already usually need to do anyway. More than one video has been ruined by an idiot saying something that gets burned into the video. I hate this dilemma because having the sense of being in the live stream is nice to have on the video itself. People have chuckled having forgotten that the YouTube video wasn’t live and that level of immersion is really good for a YouTube video, imho.
Perhaps the solution is the same as before. Just don’t look at chat at all until the breaks. And here’s a thought, you don’t even need to take a break to talk to anyone. This goes against everything in me because I love my community and want to engage with them on a personal level instead of seeing them as a mass of spectators. But the fact is, I can keep that for the IRL bike streams and move toward the spectator idea when writing or coding or whatever. It’s a problem that I would have to have faced eventually anyway as I grew to the point where the constant stream of messages was so high there was no way to ever even look at it. I watch other streamers struggle with this all the time and chuckle a bit, some are downright angry with the frustrating comments they read while trying to code interesting but difficult things. A lot of tech streamers have given it up entirely because of it. Yes, I could name six right now (but won’t).
Rather than have subscriber-only streams I think at some point I will figure out a way to only see the messages from the subscribers, perhaps I could even work that into the lurker/viewer report. This way I can create my own community member value assignments and filter out their chat into something I can see on my own console someplace. Ooo, I love that idea. I especially like it because I control it. The base value of any viewer could be established by how much they participate, how frequently they join, and how much money (bits, sub, donations, github) they give. But I can still add my own adjustments if they are a particularly annoying person with stuff I would rather not read if it meant not reading what others have to say. I would literally have a top 10 community members list and be sure to always here from them. That’s something I could even publish as a software suite. If I do it right, perhaps it would get bought by Streamlabs (like cloudbot) or something. Most of the main stuff I do won’t be free anymore (he said writing into a publicly available zettelkasten).
Not keeping VODs around really makes the decision to just ignore the chat while doing things even easier since I don’t have to live in fear of not addressing something that a mod missed while the live stream was actually happening and being roasted for it after the fact. I don’t need to have FOMO for not reading all the chat. People can tune in if they want, or don’t want, while I am doing boring things like writing all this. Then interacting with chat will be the exception to the rule and I can burn that into my brain. The IRL interaction stuff can remain while I’m doing the regular bike stream (when I actually need a distraction from the pain sometimes).
What about the content creator communities on Twitch?
By creating tech content and IRL content and the random 80s dance stream I no longer fit into any content creator community. This has created more drama that I care to admit. One asshole even attacked me and my people for suggesting I should be included in the hacking list saying nothing I ever do qualifies (while including people with much less Linux command-line and coding content).
I know the answer here already. Just don’t give a shit. You cannot categorize me. I’ve tried to put myself into a box here or there and then create different accounts for it and different social media personas. It never works. Then, when I see others doing it I cannot help but wonder how much work that takes. Perhaps if this is all I did every day (he wrote as he looked at his watch and realized he’s late for the real job right now).
Fuck the joiners.