Doris and I were just talking over coffee while I was streaming about what we were talking about. She’s steaming her artsy outfit for the day. We started talking about the creativity of just putting together an outfit for the day. That led to a conversation about people-watching and gallery shows and all sorts of streamable stuff. I mentioned watching DJSlave1 the other night for like three hours just people watching with a bunch of great music. (Goths love being watched.) It was captivating just watching the people.
All that got me to thinking, what if I did one or two actual ASMR coworking/music streams per week that are located in places that are really great for public people watching? I do wish there were a way to stream to YouTube without the music while still streaming the music to Twitch. Isolating VOD track 2 in OBS is a Twitch-only thing. Hummmm, what if I just turned on record as well and recorded it in 4k. Then I would a long-running ASMR YouTube video that could be uploaded with whatever copyright free music I could find.
This is really just about getting me out of the apartment during the work week. I have no reason to leave otherwise. I have been doing bike streams, and I do love those, but I also like the idea of dressing up “for work” and then getting to someplace interesting and just sharing that with my community.
People have complained about my “lazy” livestreams of just fishies and music and community chat. They don’t get that it is to enable the IRC/chat community to have a place to hangout during the day. They just think I’m leaving it on all day so make money, which is stupid because the average viewers is never over 70 for such things and I actually lose money by doing that. But the destination ASMR coworking/music stuff would definitely shut critics up because they would have something to look at and it would be obvious to the biggest moron what I’m doing. Plus I can take the 4k video and upload that to YouTube and perhaps grow our community of workers who just want someplace classy to hang out together. That’s all I really want, at the end of the day.
Doing this also means I do not have to show my screen during my work day. And if I have live music instead of recording people’s voices (which is probably the safest legally) then I can get actual work done instead of just doing things that can be streamed, like right now writing this.
The logistics of these types of streams leans on stuff from IRL POV bike streaming but with several significant differences:
I can always turn on Starlink Roam Unlimited (167/month) if this is something people like. That would enable driving the Subaru Outback to any destination and just pointing the camera at the beautiful scenery. I have a feeling that will eventually be a thing. I have all the power demands covered for that with all the solar I have.
This is gonna take some time to get setup and to build a regular community of people who actually care about this kind of stuff. On the one side, it appeals to a far greater audience, on the other, the regulars used to bike streams and tech content will be like WTF. Got a comment recently saying my “high point” was when I was doing Go and Linux streams. But I was also severely obese, the worst health of my entire life, and locked into a room. I will never go back to that life. I don’t care how amazing my tech content was, it was literally killing me. Besides, I don’t want to encourage people to watch me for six straight hours, I want to motivate them to work on their own stuff, to learn, to grow, to produce. People who watch some of the big tech streamers are just chasing a dopamine high feeling like they are being productive and successful just by watching someone be productive and successful. Pushing the ASMR coworking stuff will hopefully give people something to do and force them to ask “what am I going to work on here with Rob in this coffee shop?” It’s the same for POV adventure cycling. People say all the time, “you have motivated me to go outside and ride my own bike” and that is what I want. Twitch is a place to escape life, for sure, but why not help motivate people to live better lives instead. I personally enjoy occasionally watching someone play Overwatch, or a pirated film in Russian to learn the language better, or an absolutely adorable, incredibly stylish French girl (nyny) so I can practice understanding French, or people watch with DJs live, or just enjoy really great music with other DJs. Twitch offers a lot, but one thing I’ve never really done is find good ASMR content that I can actually put on while doing other things. The coworking streams are supremely boring and even annoying. I do not want to hear another person’s keyboard for six hours. And even the most watchable person becomes incredibly boring to stare out, even on a secondary monitor, compared to pointing a camera at actual people walking by on the street or beach or other event. Hell, I could even setup at a skate park some days.