If you’ve noticed that streamers on Twitch, YouTube, and other popular platforms are getting weird, you’re not the only one. It’s getting harder and harder out there to capture people’s attention, leading many to take part in some extremely bizarre stunts just to get the viewership they once thrived upon.
One streamer even turned herself into a Pokemon Diglet yesterday.
We’re serious, watch below.
One viral post has a theory.
“Viewership across the board on twitch is plummeting and people are getting desperate. top streamers that would hit 75k+ consistently are now averaging slightly above 10k, you’re seeing less and less successful vtuber debuts,” says Twitter user @autixcx. “Society is healing.”
The poster seemed to have an anti-stream bias, of course.
“i fully believe that streamer/vtuber/edrama popularity and numbers are a healthy metric for where society is at. send it to zero,” they continued.
Many are in agreement. The post, which has 7.4 million views since being posted early this morning, along with 3,000 retweets and 67 thousand likes as of publication.
People think streaming is on its way out
Many are in agreement with the post.
“People are realizing that it’s boring and weird to watch someone for seven hours straight,” said user @pooeater38.
“We need to kill of streaming as a career. choice for the sake of society as a whole,” said user @sillylilbuddy.
“I never understood why anyone would want to sit and watch somebody play video games on the internet. Ultimate boredom,” said user @texas1LE.
Some have blamed the platforms themselves.
“Twitch squandered their viewer base fair and square,” added user @TheDanPeters.
Not all people agree that it’s the thing itself that’s boring, of course.
“I disagree with “watching people play videos games is boring.” There is a social element of chatting and making bonds with the streamer and other viewers that develops over time, and often people are also active on the discord servers of streamers they enjoy,” said Twitter user @jarofjuice.
“Another point is that not everyone can afford buying the latest games all the time, so watching streams allows many people to experience games that they would otherwise miss out on or probably can’t afford,” he continued.
Are Twitch streaming numbers actually down?
Others, however, have questioned whether this is actually true.
“Do you have any data/articles on this trending decline on twitch viewership? Wondering if it’s a platform issue or maybe the livestream market is just cooling,” asked Sishaar Rao @sishaar.
The evidence from @autixcx is based on his own experiences using the platform.
“My eyes looking at numbers over the course of the last few years and using the platform,” they added.
“That’s obviously anecdotal. The numbers are pretty much the same they were pre covid in 2019. I feel like this is happening in every industry you don’t get the same numbers as you did in quarantine and all of sudden everything’s dying orrrr it’s just back to normal,” responded user @igotyabitfh.
“Anecdotal doesn’t mean incorrect,” the original poster responded.
Popular streamer Asmongold weighs in
Extremely prolific content creator and streamer Asmongold aka ZackRawrr, who boasts 2.71 million combined subscribers and nearly 2 billion views, disagreed with the point, calling it completely false.
“Factually untrue statement btw. Viewership has grown tremendously since covid and retained relatively well since people have returned to work/school,” said Asmongold, adding statistics from twitchtracker.com to dispute the point.
So, who’s correct?
While he’s correct that streaming numbers are up overall, it’s possible that both parties are right.
If you look closely at the numbers, it’s clear that the number of channels has grown far more than the viewership, which means that while more people are using the site, they’re divided by more channels, meaning that while people are using the platform overall, individual streamers are having a hard time keeping the viewership they once did.
What that means is that actually maintaining an audience, and making a career out of streaming, is actually getting harder, because the competition for eyeballs is ever increasing.
So ultimately, let’s answer the question posed by the headline: Is streaming dying? No, streaming is bigger than ever. But this may be the death knell of the streaming career and streaming celebrity, as true ascendency may be a flash in the pan for many, with attention nearly impossible to maintain.
Anyways, stream stuff here.