The current state of Twitch

Ive seen 2, max.

If this is your current state of twitch, its because you keep clicking on boobi. Quit clicking on boobi if you dont want to be seeing boobi.

- I stream on Twitch. I see mostly video games. So I dunno? There are always randoms. But very rarely do I see the bikini stuff.
This might be a repost of an older meme when it was stíl true
- Older meme? Twitch rolled back their barely nude positive rule by, like, the next day.
Just not true. I don’t have a twitch account and visited to see what it’s all about and it’s all over. Even if you peek inside the just chatting category it’s a huge majority of the top content
Of anything, what you state is the result of content filtering for yourself and not for everyone at large.
I'd like to think that, but I just went to twitch to see what was up and i've got one "18+ 🥵🥵" in my recommends despite the only things i've really watched on twitch being like 24 hours of marvel snap to collect rewards in that game (i left it in a tab running in the background because why the fuck would i watch other people play something I can just play? but i wanted the in game rewards), some classic TNA (which despite the name is just wrestling) and the first iteration of watch forever (the ai generated Seinfeld).
So they're definitely advertising it outside people explicitly looking for it.
That said i have no problem with it, if this is how people are making their bag in our capitalist hellscape, get that bag...
- Ive gone actively searching for it and cannot find more than 2 at any given moment besides that one dude with the naruto pfp who is just autoplaying youtube twerk videos.
  And one of them who frequently does the topless cutoff videos has already needed to up the ante by having 4 girls on screen at once.
  Its not that big of a deal. There really isnt much to advertise. And its clearly not doing that well as a strategy to get viewers.
Yeah, OP has "why do these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?" energy.

I'll never understand how Twitch became as big as a thing as it is.

"So you're telling me that instead of watching a fifteen minutes of nicely edited video of content I can watch for hours of a greasy man in a tank top play a game for four hours and get fifteen minutes of good content in the time span? "(Literally) "Take my money!"

A stream is a very different format for content, but that doesn't necessarily make it worse - only different.
As streams are live, anything could happen, so there's the possibility for unexpected excitement and being a part of that as it happens
Live chat can make a stream feel social and connected with other viewers
Streams give you the ability to speak to the streamer and change the outcome of the stream
I think that the way people consume content has also changed. A lot of people watch streams "in the background" just as noise while they do other things, not in a way where they are giving the stream their 100% focus in the way you would with a short and well-edited video.
- Stream chat is something I never understood... it scrolls way too fast.
- This is 100% me, I just commented elsewhere a similar thing, for me I love that the streams tend to be long. I like having things playing for long periods at a time so having to stop and find a new video every 10 minutes is maddening especially if I'm at work and it's more like background noise about a topic/game I enjoy.
15 minutes of good content in several hours? You might not be watching the best streams ngl.
From my view, I enjoy watching Twitch for two main reasons:
For the same reason I like watching live sports rather than a 15 minute cut of highlights - the feeling of experiencing events in real time, the payoff of seeing a big play unfold after all the anticipation leading up to it, watching strategies and counter-strategies unfold in real time, that kind of stuff.
For the same reason I like watching video essays, stand-up comedy, interview shows, podcasts, or other media where one particular person is the focus - that person is entertaining to me. They have a personality I vibe with, they're funny, they have an interesting perspective, etc.
To a lesser extent, it's also nice background noise. I can throw a stream on at the beginning of my workday and not have to fiddle with it until I'm done with work, because it's a constant, reliable source of background noise.
As a genXer I don't get it either. The model at the moment referenced here makes much more sense to me at least. Not understanding twitch is a real marker of shifts in generational mindsets. I think I understand tech, but I wouldnt invest in tech sectors as I clearly don't have the instinct for it anymore.
- If my kids were unmonitored, they'd probably watch game streamers all day, every day.
  I rationalize it like watching sports, but I don't really understand that either.
What makes sense is two things:
You can ask questions about the game and get a direct answer, often including someone showing you exactly the thing in the game you asked about.
Some streams are genuinely entertaining, such as GTA RP streams. These people mostly aren't slobbering fat guys (though some are) but are actually working and acting the entire time.
Watching someone play video games is straight up younger sibling energy. I don't get it at all, but I was the older brother.
Seems like a lot of them aren't greasy men in tank tops.
Smaller streams make more sense to me. It's like a virtual social setting, an old school chatroom, but with a focus of attention, and a guy kind of structuring the whole thing, and a guy who can be engaged with. Occasionally, the streamer can be cool, most of the time they're kind of a goblin, though, so the good streams are few and far between.
Larger streams don't make much sense unless you kind of view them as being like, the same appeal as talk radio, or something, because the chat scrolls way too fast and most of it is emotes, so most messages will never get read, and never have anything good to say in the first place. There's not much of an advantage for any of it to be live content, it just sort of is a relic of the format. Sometimes you get higher production stuff, most of the time it's just some bald asshole ranting about the prices of things in costco and doing other bad stand up bits.
Edit: Also a big appeal is how brainrotted people are. The focus (I'm generalizing now across all internet platforms) is less on some specific information, and is more on "personality" and appeals like that, because that's the most sustainable way to pump out a metric ton of content at all times, and algorithms tend to reward when you pump out a ton of content. And so you get a lot of parasocial relationships and non-content, and viewers, frankly, just watch whatever's in front of them. There's not a lot of control these platforms, increasingly, give you over what you're watching anyways, and people aren't going to keep pulling that skinner's box lever unless they get a hit at some point. Most of the content ends up being dogshit, so you get a kind of selection for people who enjoy dogshit, and a lack of other options, so people just acclimate to their lack of alternative and become kind of complacent in their environment.
For twitch more specifically, you also basically just get shit that's meant to only reward people's dopamine centers, when they get their message read by the streamer, and then they keep pulling the lever on the slot machine over and over multiple times per stream. Either that, right, or you're getting a lot of people who just don't have many social relationships, and just want to feel like they're part of a larger organization, or being, even if it's totally mindless and meaningless. People who want to "turn off" and just kind of mindlessly be part of the flow of the chat, or what have you. That last part is the brainrot, basically.
A buddy from college is a somewhat famous twitch streamer. I remember seeing him a few years after college and asking what he was up to, and couldn't believe he was making any money just streaming himself playing League. My brain couldn't comprehend who would want to watch that. That was like 10 years ago, and dude is still doing it, and hasn't worked a real job in a decade. I'm low key jealous AF.
- I had an application from someone who had his previous 3 years of work history as "Twitch streamer". He didn't even put his twitch name on there so we could look him up. That one went in the bin.
But if you give the greasy man $50 he will say your name!!!!
Right? The 15 minutes of watching someone else play would even be a challenge for me if I'm actually trying to pay attention. That is the kind of content I barely can do as background noise.
For me it's that twitch is a lot more personal, at least it used to be.
I met some of my best friends hanging out in smaller streams. That was 8 years ago. We still hang out daily in discord or on twitch when one of them streams.
Never understood concert goers.
So you're telling me that instead of listening to 4 minutes of edited music you can watch an old fart on stage for four hours?
(Not even a twitch head by the way)
I much prefer to watch gameplay on twitch. It’s a much more natural way of consuming content vs the super energetic, loud, pushy YouTube videos.
Edited game content provides very little entertainment value to me, while I mostly have streams turned on as background noise and check in occasionally to see what happens.
I mainly watch speedruns and esports live because if you're watching a video you already know if a runner has PBed or which team won (in the case if esports)

Never seen these cam girls everyone complains about on my twitch feed. I don’t seek that stuff out though either. You can also filter out content in settings, but I’ve never had to. This “problem” seems like a non issue.

If you click "I want to watch mature content" on any profanity stream such as Soda or Summit your feed magically starts filling up with titty streamers.
The notion that you need to seek them out first is false.
- Didn’t even know that existed. Guess I’d have to seek it out, or get into discussion on lemmy. Is see profanity on chat. I’ve never seen these girls.

They should change the name to Twatch.

I'll see myself out.

Buy my girlfriend a pregnancy test while I'm out...

I don't get some of these comments. You can want to avoid random nudity without bring a prude or jealous.

I'd argue that a LOT of people are not interested in seeing 99.9% of the population naked, and there should be nothing wrong with that. I don't care what they look like. Sometimes people just don't want to look at rectums.

The mindset of "you have to be happy about unexpectedly seeing a stranger naked or you're a prude" also doesn't sit right with me.

I would have just stopped using twitch, personally.

It's the internet post-2014. If you have simply never heard of someone's particular flavour of BDSM kink before, they take it like you're attacking them.
Maybe growing up in a warm, costal area makes it more common, but young women just wear similar outfits to most feminine streamers where I'm from. They usually aren't making a statement about it, it's just hot outside and they don't mind showing off. It's normal.
Some streamers do embody the meme. Some focus cameras on their ass. However, feminine streamers aren't the majority, and most of them aren't even that sexual. On a whole, men have more viewers, with almost every top streamer being male.
Part of why the discourse around sexual streamers seems so prudish is that they don't dominate on twitch. There are a few popular ones, but women don't even dominate the site; there's just more of them than in the past. Most feminine streamers aren't sexual. People see what they want to see.
The only male streamer ever suspended for showing his bare chest was crossdresser. Masculinity is normalized, so femininity is othered.
- Don't get me wrong, I'm not about telling other people how to dress or what to wear. Not at all.
  To be honest with you, I don't really go on twitch. When I made my comment, I had some of my earlier experiences with lemmy on my mind. I just turned off nsfw in my app settings though.
  My main reasoning was so that certain things didn't show up when I was showing something else to family, or if a coworker saw my phone over my shoulder. There are some jobs where you really don't want your boss to see certain things, but most other forms of slacking off are ok.
  For me, it wasn't even about anyone's chest. It was not wanting furry porn haha. They really should have thought about this before instating it.
  Now people will be upset regardless of what they do.
- dude, i'm just saying that there other places for noon-gaming stuff and those people are invading a site that was born for videogames. but then, i'm not using twitch for quite a while now since the homepage was taken over by IRL streams. I just opened twitch.tv (not logged in) a minute ago and in the homepage there's a dude sleeping (with the name of the stream "i'm only sleeping" wtf??), one deejay, someone cooking and a saxophonist...
  that's 4 streams out of 8 in the homepage that have nothing to do with gaming.

You know how people watch videos of master carpenters or cobblers or whatever the fuck do their jobs expertly? This is like that but with videogames instead of building shit.
Alternatively, you know how people watch dumbasses with endearing personalities do whatever the fuck? This is like that. Exactly like that.
- People watch carpenters so they can get ideas on how to make useful things. Games are meant to be fun, not constructive. So, I still don't get it.
  It does seem like you're second point is more valid This is just reality TV. I've never understood that, either, though.
Personally, I enjoy watching people who are better than me play a game. One of my favorites is Insym, dude is just incredible at figuring out the mechanics behind gameplay and screwing around with the game engine. It's really interesting to watch him figure stuff out and test his theories in real time.
On the opposite end of the scale it can also be hilarious to watch someone like Jerma walk around talking about food while ignoring the most obvious things in the game. It's like a mobile ad that makes you want to play the game just to do it right.
There's plenty of trash content on twitch but there are definitely creators that make watching them play a lot more about their personality than the game itself.
I sometimes watch it for games that I think I can learn/improve by watching. Like chess.
me too. honestly I don't even watch video walk throughs it's too uncomfortable
For me it's nice to have someone playing the same game as I am while I'm playing, the streams are usually long so I don't need to worry about stopping to find something new to put on and I learn stuff about the game I might have missed or just never knew. I live alone so, depending on the streamer, the conversation is also nice to have around.
I can't say I'm one of those that only watches a stream though, I need to be doing something other than just watching lol
I can't do it, either. The only way it's tolerable is if I'm sitting next to them and can occasionally grab the controller (husband and I get through 1 player games this way, currently playing The Sinking City)

If you want video game streams then look for video games. I looked up the starcraft 2 section and there's not a single thirst trap streamer, same with the video games that I play.

People are always getting pissed off that their favorite thing no longer exists. It's still there, dummy! You just think it doesn't because complaining is more popular than talking about the things that people like.

inb4 "it's just a meme, it can't mean anything"

there are a few in very popular yet casual categories like Overwatch, but yes you have to go into hot tubs to see them and spend time in those streams to get recommended them
- Who? I'm looking at the Overwatch 2 directory right now and can't find a single one. Like half of them listed don't even have face cams on, judging by a quick scan of the thumbnails.

Didn't Twitch take back a lot of what they said?

I mean yes, but this is still the Just Chatting section
Yes but the just chatting section as been this for years regardless of what we last unenforced rules twitch makes

ootl is twitch expanding into the amateur porn market orrrrrr

For years, Twitch's "Just Chatting" section has basically been podcasts, Reaction content where streamers play a youtube and go take a shit, and (generally female presenting) streamers in various states of undress. You may have heard of "the hot tub meta" which involved putting on a skimpy bikini.
This has resulted in some pretty awkward front pages where it can look like you are looking out the window in a beach town or left a PG-13 movie on. Because, you know, bikinis.
This came to a head semi-recently when "the topless meta" became a thing where (generally) female (presenting) streamers would put on a tube top, position the camera like they are doing a face stream in the early 2010s, and make people think they are actually topless. So obviously a bunch of the most generic white guys with man buns on the planet (and Kai "Trick guests and other streamers into being raped by my violent rapist buddy" Cenat) lost their shit and competed to go viral with their Reaction content to putting something tamer than what TBS shows on daytime television when they play Austin Powers on the screen.
So Twitch/Amazon actually made a good decision for the first time in years by allowing artistic nudity and sexualized content so long as streamers checked a box that would add content warnings and take them off the front page. Which led to a race to promote OF/Fansly content by the streamers interested in that and to show how sexualized content is destroying the white man by the usual suspects. And Twitch, rather than try to moderate this, rolled it back.
Because, as OP demonstrates, there is this completely asinine "theory" that bikini streamers are ruining and taking over twitch. And, while I am not a fan and wish we had the content warning policy, they really aren't. The top 100 streamers by almost any metric are almost universally dudes (many in tanktops because they hit the gym and male nipples aren't scary) with the few female streamers being people like Pokimane or QTCinderella who actively do not do this kind of content.
But just look at people like andrew tate and like half of kick. There is a lot of money in pushing incel content and hate.
- Exactly. Charalanahzard did a video on this a few days ago I thought was really good.
  Essentially what you said: it's not really an issue. It only seems like one because there's a demographic that's intensely jealous and controlling.
- I agree that 95% of the reason is just men being uncomfortable with women having success in "their" space when it involves their sexuality, but I can also sympathize with being unable to find a mid-sized chill stream to watch because so many of them are half-nude ASMR streams or body painting. It's like how YouTube has so much trashy corporate garbage protmoted in its algorithm, it's just exhausting to wade through sometimes.
  The way incentives are currently set up on both sites just happen to prioritize those types of content though, so it's pointless to get mad at the creators as if they're doing something wrong. Twitch is still a step above YouTube in this aspect as well, since at least you can't AI generate trash content that gets uploaded 100+ times daily on a livestream. You're at least getting real people.
- You know I'm partial to the explanation that none of the viewers who watch this kind of shit would really want to watch anything else anyways, because they're just here for the softcore porn market, so it's not really hurting anyone. Or, if they would watch anything else, they clearly have their priorities, and it's not the problem of the softcore streamer to stop streaming so kai cenat can have 0.5% higher viewership since theoretically they're "stealing the views with their feminine wiles". On the other hand, I do think a lot of people (mostly kids) tend to eat whatever you put in front of them, and it's not as though tastes can't change over time, with exposure, rather than something or other being necessarily higher value to the viewer. The only people who could probably attempt to know the truth, if they wanted, would be twitch themselves, because they have access to that collection of statistics, of what viewers are getting converted over to what streams. It's not so clear as to be just a zero sum game, but it's also not not a zero sum game, is basically what I'm saying.
  FWIW though I don't really care about softcore on twitch because ALL of twitch is softcore. All of it. Most of the people who complain about this shit are just idiots sitting around doing react content or gaming and doing really dumb stand up, and all the viewers are parasocial andys. The only good twitch streams I've seen are a guy getting tortured in a closet and a dude doing amateur cooking for random people he meets outside, and then a very small handful of people livestreaming technical subjects and doing live tutorials because that's easier and provides more feedback than videos, even if it's not scalable. And the sumo guy, that guy's sick.
They recently made a post saying sexual dancing would be allowed on the platform but then changed their minds after being roasted for it.

And it didn't last a day.

Well, on Twitch and YouTube and Reddit, I'm settled.

On Twitch, I never visit front-page. I follow the channels I follow.

On YouTube, I watch the subscribed channels (and recommend videos. If good, I follow).

Reddit, I don't visit All or Popular. I have the subreddits I wanna follow.

On Lemmy, it's so new that I haven't found all the places, so I go to All on Local and see what's up - like I do now.

Yeah, I do a similar thing with youtube and reddit. I am interested in communities of humans I like curating content and conversations. I am less interested in a robot doing so, even if it wasn’t a crap advertisement and engagement robot.
I am interested in the humans and I find it infuriating how often these websites try to shove what the robots want me to engage with down my throat while hiding access to the humans/communities I am interested in so I always have to click through to see it.
- Yeah for that reason I just have my YouTube subscription download and go to my plex server so I don't have to deal with ads or algorithms and we have a discord channel where we share interesting videos so I find a lot of my content that way. For reddit I just stopped going there after the exodus except when doing searches and I can't find what I'm looking for I'll add reddit to the search query to see the comments and hope there's an answer there

Why do people watch this shit on Twitch when there are sites where you can watch live porn?

As a father who is a linux wizard and knows every single ip our BABIES go to
why are you using a VPN son 😢?????
In some countries, porn is banned so they watch this.

The prude subcurrent on Lemmy is apparently massive. You honestly are being hardly inconvenienced by boob streams and yet it deserves and inordinate amount of complaining. On a real impact basis, you are far more impacted by video games you aren't interested in than boob streamers.

Not interested is very different from disinterested or disgusted.
This single image really rustled your jimmies huh?
- You don't post when your jimmies are rustled?

There's still tons of video game streamers. In fact, even if 10k titty streamers join the site, that doesn't push even a single video game streamer out.

There's a market for both things, and neither thing is eating the audience of the other.

This is all just stupid neo-puritanical pearl clutching.

A woman showing her tits on twitch isn't going to hurt you, or anyone else.

You know, I don't get offended or anything. But it's impossible to mute / block streamers, and there are some particularly annoying offenders which I just don't want to see when I open twitch. Just give me the option to filter that out and I won't complain again.
- Every single time I go to watch a clip theres a ton of random partially naked people in the useless recomended section under the clip. I wish I could turn that off
- A filter is an entirely reasonable request
- This reminds me of when I used TOR to check my Facebook account after so many years. It was constantly throwing random almost-explicit-but-definitely NSFW pages at me.
  "Where did these come from? Did I accidentally subscribe at some point? Oh they all say "suggested for you."
  Can you turn off "suggested for you"? Lol no. That's how they force ads on you.
  My findings concluded as expected: All the people I knew in highschool are living their dream lives somehow, my grandma's still into weird rightoid conspiracies, and FB is a dogpoo platform I don't understand how anybody still uses lol.
- There's a block functionality that any user can use and iirc if you block a streamer they will be filtered out from your recommends/etc
  Helps to clean things up if you wanna hide the usuals you aren't a fan of
- Only a corporation would be so completely uninterested in the experience of users that they wouldn’t have a way to mute or block channels. Honestly they should be ashamed they don’t have that feature, how long has twitch been around?

This makes me feel disappointed. I still remember when I discovered twitch years ago an thought "a whole site for livestreams of people playing videogames? That is so cool!". Nothing lasts forever I guess ...

Without intentional effort to prevent it, every platform eventually becomes some level of this.
Youtube: remember when they had to scrap "reply" videos because they were all borderline NSFW spam?
Onlyfans: was originally intended to be a platform for fans of fashion, idols, etc. I guess they just embraced it since then.
Tumblr: banned NSFW content because they thought they were becoming a porn site and didn't want to moderate that.
Reddit: Segregated it and relies on community moderation, because otherwise it's like half of the front page.
Twitter: it's still all over, under most popular posts. I don't know if they moderate it out or not.
- So is social media becoming porn just like entropy or something
- Reddit: intentionally curating the internet's biggest high school to onlyfans content pipeline.
  FTFY. I am genuinely shocked they haven't been called out for this yet.
- Pornification, the Carcinisation of social media ...
Its not even changed, bud, ops tripping
The fuck is this comment? Twitch is still 90%+ video games.

I've personally been blamed for the fact that lascivious female streaming material shows up on my feed despite the facts that I'm not sexually interested in females and the fact that I've never even seen a Twitch.

Thirst trap .

Yeah, they should rebrand as ’Simp Central’

"Simp Central, eh?"
- Simptral.

destroyed

Wait, did twitch become something that interests me when I wasn’t looking?

I don't see a problem?

It's been a long time since I've actually watched Twitch and I actually thought it was a really cool idea to start with. Back then I got pulled in from following competitive StarCraft. By the time I got there SC2 was on the decline but LoL was taking off. I liked watching the big LoL competitions but spent most my time watching competitive StarCraft II. Shout out to Incontrol, RIP, his casts got me into it and if there was still quality content I could see myself following again.

Eventually though you would just start following the trending streams. After every big release there would be new streamers popping off and it was fun to watch. Slowly the bots got more and more obnoxious and you realized the trending shit was bought and paid for. Then, a site where LoL streams was the central draw, camgirls started showing up. They created the IRL channel and influencers took control.

In a world where competitive gaming was taken seriously by the viewers and game studios fully supported the competive community twitch might have turned out different. For now, I think about how to get that OG twitch feeling back.

SC2 was what first brought me in too! I had never cared about esports or watching streams prior to that. Incontrol, Day9, Husky, and all the competitive stuff.

Just a reminder that Twitch only shows you lots of booby streams if that's what you've been clicking on. Much like Tik Tok and Instagram.

Nope, it also recommends streams based on what other people watch from the channels you're following, it's not only based on your viewing data. Other aggregates like generally what's popular might get thrown into the mix as well.
To test this create a fresh account, follow Asmongold & let his streams run for a while, after some time the recommendations are going to be full of booby streams.
It's kind of a running joke at this point that if you watch him you're going to get booby stream recommendations because his viewers are degens.
- That's why! Once in a while I watch one of his streams for a bit when he's playing something new. Every single time I watch, I come back a day or two later and I have booby streamers in my suggestions. I'm not even remotely interested bc gay. I always have to remove the suggestion but it's a losing battle. They come back. You'd think twitch would actually cater to only what you want to see.
- You will get occasional recommendations but they won't fill your home page as many complain. You can. Also click the dots and tell them you're not interested in a recommendation and then you get less of them.
Or if you sort by view count instead of recommended
I haven't used twitch for years, and have only used it for esports streams back when I did use it. I've never watched a booby stream.
I just reinstalled the app, logged in for the first time in years, and my top recommended stream is called "2 GIRLS 1 SHOWER JUMPING JACKS" and has a topless girl in the shower painting white boxes on her arm. The game category is listed as "art".
But I like boobies
I haven't used twitch for years, and have only used it for esports streams back when I did use it. I've never watched a booby stream.
I just reinstalled the app, logged in for the first time in years, and my top recommended stream is called "2 GIRLS 1 SHOWER" and has a topless girl with a white bar over her boobs. The game category is listed as "art".