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Broadcasters tendency to view comments in a negative light

itmeJP General
#1

Heya guys :slight_smile:

This topic might be something you dont want on here if so go ahead and remove it.

This topic is a reaction to my experiences after commenting on topics in chat during live broadcasts on several different streams. It has happened to me personally a few years back in JP’s chat as’well but this is men’t to be much more of a broad conversation about the topic.

So here is my explanation of the Forum topic:
When I say Broadcasters twisting the words I am refferring to their tendency to take anything that is written in a way that might possibly be taken as negativity towards the broadcaster as just that negative comment/feedback.
And of this is sometimes because of people like myself who don’t have English as their first language, but also sometimes it feels like broadcasters are looking for a chance to turn it into something negative.
I admit I am not a broadcaster nor am I in any spot where I get feedback on my work regularly so I might just not understand the atmosphere a broadcaster lives in.

For me, who admittedly is quite a sensitive person this can be upsetting. I really try to avoid writing anything to upset the people I enjoy watching so if I comment on something that I am passionate about and they take it as a personal attack it leaves me feeling upset especially if they proceed to ignore any attempt at an apology.

I am not sure if others are seeing these things happen to them as well when they try to add to the conversation or if it is my communication skills that just need improving. Of course does not happen every time I comment but more then I would like.

Anyhow, if others have any thoughts on this I would love hear what my fellow RP people think.

//Stabbe

#2

From my understanding, broadcasters, like anyone else that puts themselves on front of a public, face negativity on a regular basis. People deal with that in their own way, but I imagine it’s easier to ignore or brush off comments that appear negative, even if they were meant well.

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#3

View it from their perspective: They’re getting bombarded with thousands of questions, comments, or feedback every hour. They don’t have the time to adequately process the intent of a message they receive in a fast moving chat. If a streamer, or anyone in life honestly, takes something you’ve said in a negative light it’s on you to first apologize, and then express yourself more clearly.

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#4

Take the normal criticism you might receive in real life and multiply by a factor of hundreds (or thousands), received daily, telling you how you’re doing your job wrong, repetitively.

Now remove the interpersonal layer of understanding and mutual nuance in communication that you get from a face-to-face conversation with someone you know and regularly interact with. So you’re receiving those criticisms as a bunch of short, emotionless text blurbs from the faceless masses without the luxury of time to converse over your differences with every single person that ever disagrees with you.

Then add in the random chaos factor of maliciousness - trolls feed off of pissing you off with near-zero repercussions under the shield of anonymity. The best trolls will trick you into an argument that they don’t actually care about, just trying to get a reaction. Only the dumbest trolls will blurt out stupid low-effort shit that gets them auto-banned before the streamer sees it (“what is this shit sum fat ugly n3rd”).

Some people use the argument that many mainstream celebrities (musicians and actors, etc.) handle criticism much better than such independent content creators (Youtubers and Streamers especially). The difference is that there aren’t so many layers of detachment (managers/PR people/assistants that make it their job to sift through the bullshit and cherry-pick what their clients/employers see and say), and the business of content creators lives or dies by their audience engagement factor. Streamers specifically are having those interactions in real-time.

And ultimately, consider that streamers are just human beings caught in the emotion of the moment, not reading a comment hours/days/weeks later and processing their thoughts eloquently. Hell, even people in chat have a better opportunity to organize their comments as they think about what to type. They’re bombarded with opportunities to look bad because there is no PR barrier for them to organize their reactions. Catch them when they’re in a bad mood and you’re gonna get a real human reaction out of them, just like all of us. We are far from perfect, and again, their “flaws” are only amplified under our microscope.

It’s a slow death by a thousand cuts.

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#5

This is basically why I don’t bother with live Twitch stuff and tend to skip ahead/turn off when chat becomes the ‘feature’ as a cast. Of course it isn’t just broadcasters taking things the wrong way, there’s also chat rocketing from cult of personality worship to outright abuse at the drop of a hat and many more weird quirks in between.

In general broadcaster/chat interaction often just feels like some kind of dystopian mockery of human interaction. Of course it isn’t normal human interaction which is why it doesn’t behave the same way. I guess I just can’t get over the dissonance of it all though.

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#6

It’s certainly an interesting topic. I do think part of it is down to the ‘streaming mentality’, when you stream regularly then you will inevitably get backlash or negativity of some kind. Some streamers are capable of handling that negativity mid-stream better than others, and some streamers will be likely to lash out at those that deal the negativity in the first place; and this is only made worse when they’re frustrated at a game. That endless negativity grinds away at people, as VyRe40 said, it’s death by a thousand cuts.
And sometimes people just make mistakes, they make a response which they later regret. And that’s a normal thing for any human.

An interesting side to this topic is the perspective of the viewer. We are all told that online personalities are bombarded with negativity all day every day. And, while I do believe that, it’s easy for us who haven’t experienced it first hand to underestimate just how back breaking that can be to a person. And that because we are constantly told this that perhaps some of us are looking for negativity that isn’t always there, because we expect to see it. Perhaps we see a joke in a bad light or something, after all text is not a particularly precise medium for communication, it lacks the nuance and inflections that often provide a lot of context during a conversation.

The idea of it being ‘normal’ or ‘part of the job’ for a streamer is a sad and unhealthy way of looking at it. But as shitty as it is, it does exist. While there is a lot of negativity there is also a lot of positivity; it’s just that the negativity is often more memorable, as criticism always is, and perhaps that is where the biggest problem lies.

It’s interesting to think about though.

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#7

Oh I defenitly agree :slight_smile: Part of the problem I guess is the fact that its quite hard to get the apology across.

#8

Thanks for taking the time for a well formulated answer :slight_smile:

I agree that when thinking about this happening as a response to something I have said it has often been druing a stressful part of the stream.
Perhaps its more on people like myself to not take it personal when the message was not men’t to be negative, apologize and accept that the apology will sometimes be missed or ignored.

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#9

I almost always watch Twitch without the chat and this might be a big reason for why I feel like I have an unreasonable amount of comments taken the wrong way, since it usually has to be a topic that I actually care about on a perhaps to deep level to be talked about in something like a chat. (That’s one of the reason I wanted to make this a forum post rather then talk about it with fellow RP people in chat)

And let me just make sure you all understand this is something that has happened to me a handful of times just something I started thinking about late last night and thought it might be worth a discussion :slight_smile:

#10

The more viewers you get, the more difficult it becomes to treat them as a real person beyond initial interpretation. It takes a lot to retain a level of interpersonality when broadcasting to an increasing number of people. Every steamer has different magnitudes and capacities for interacting on individual levels, and normally how much time they spend thinking of any one comment is inversely related to their viewership. Some streamers perform in this way better than others. Some take it to extremes and ban you regardless of how much money you’ve pumped into that subscription, and therefore their wallets, others can take it on the chin and rationalize. All it is is a reflection of resolve and presence of mind, but none of it is easy.

#11

I find it a little disturbing that the entire responsibility of “proper communication” is being put entirely on the streamer.

Yeah, sure, this lacking layer of personal interaction, that layer of yaddi-yaddah, and pizza forty-two.

It doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, chat is annoying. Because it can be anywhere from dozens to hundreds of people who will not shut up.

A streamer might ask a question. And then for ten minutes, they will get answer. Even when they say “Guys, I get it.”

The worse part is, they will be given answers to questions they don’t ask, and don’t want to ask.

I remember during her Mass Effect run through, Anne Munition ended tearing through chat because for several playthroughs they kept telling her she was doing this wrong, or she should have done that, just an incessant stream of chat being demanding, until she rightfully blew up and tore them a new one. And they deserved it. And you know what the responses were? How they were just trying to help. How she’d understand that if they were talking on a more personal level. Basically a microcosm of this thread.

Now, am I saying that everytime that a streamer yells at a chat, chat deserves it? No. Well, maybe I am. Not really sure.

What I am saying, that I know for sure, is this. From what I’ve read of this thread, the burden of being proper, is being placed solely on the streamer.

“As they get more veiwers, they see chat less as people, despite the money we’ve poured into their wallets.”

Think about that paraphrase. Think about how your entire complaint is based on the premise that you’re not seen as a person, while you sit and say that someone else is a product.

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#12

In general I think there’s a higher burden on the listener when it comes to language, rather than it being a specific streamer issue. It probably has something to do with the presumption that the speaker is doing their best and the person who is receiving the information has to do their part in interpreting it for the conversation to really work.

The part that makes it hard for streamers is that they don’t really have the capacity for good interpretation - I mean, I have a hard enough time doing basic callouts in a game while playing so it blows my mind that a streamer is able to play, do commentary/voip AND deal with chat at the same time.

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#13

Okay. So if multiple people in chat, are saying “you picked the wrong class”, or “you need this skill to be a minmax dps priest”, or, as I once did during a Nebula Jazz stream, “Dodger, use your special to talk your way out the bar fight Rex started!”, which is something that a lot of people in chat repeated, at what point is the streamer “misunderstanding” chat? The first person? The second person? When the first person repeats themselves the first, or perhaps second time? At what point do we admit that the streamer, the listener, the receiver, however you want to term it, isn’t the only person responsible?

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#14

In all honesty I don’t get the impression that we’re talking about that kind of back-seat gaming situation, if I’m reading the OP correctly.

To be honest, in the situation you’re describing, I don’t think the streamer is misunderstanding chat at all. :stuck_out_tongue: I wouldn’t assume I’m pro-chat here at all, I can’t stand the sodding thing. I’m just observing why it makes me feel uncomfortable.

#15

I think that it’s important to separate the chat as a whole and the individual viewers, and usually it isn’t about misunderstanding at all, but more the chatting context around the comment. If one person were to say a comment like yours then it could be seen as friendly advice (which it is). However chat is a hive mind; if one person has a good idea then everybody will repeat it, and if a large portion of chat is repeating the same thing then it’s easy to interpret it as more of a command, which will naturally aggravate them. Reading dozens of people saying the same thing over and over can feel like mob mentality. It isn’t of course, it’s just a lot of people giving the same friendly advice, but the context of the entire chat is just as important as the instigating comment, and if they’re seeing these repeated comments more than interesting comments then it will frustrate them. Often streamers will get angry at the chat as a whole rather than any specific person within the chat which is an important thing to remember. But obviously the more targeted comments will, and sometimes should, be called out and addressed.

I believe that chat is actually more responsible than the streamers; because ultimately the streamers are always reacting to the chat. If chat wants to troll a streamer then they will, if they want to cheer a streamer up then they can do that too; there isn’t much any one person can do against a community of dozens if not hundreds of chatters at a time. Chat has the power over interactive streamers 100% of the time, for good and bad; unless the streamer wants to just stop streaming and earning money. The streamer is absolutely still accountable to their responses, but they are always the one that’s reacting rather than the instigator. Unfortunately they are also the one on camera, so it reflects badly on them and that context is lost.

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#16

Whoa man. Nobody said it’s only anyone’s fault. Just because I didn’t highlight chat’s role doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I just was addressing op’s point. Lot of assumptions on your part, friend. I am not complaining about anything, I’m stating an observation without saying how I feel about it. The point I made in what you quoted is something very common in most examples with fame. The generality of when people have more fans is that the capacity to see those people as individuals diminishes, ironically, as it tends to mean they make more money from it. In a different scenario where fame is excised for instance, such as one random guy giving another random nobody $100, that guy becomes very immediately significant to that random nobody. I was explaining how when you have many people doing that same thing, it becomes common, and people become used to it, even if they would normally be grateful on an individual level. This is nobody’s fault alone; it’s human nature to adapt. This helps explain how people in positions similar to streamers are able-variably-to react to certain comments and people based mostly on initial reaction instead of thinking about any one comment for more than 5 minutes.