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.

[–] snuff@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Stream chat is something I never understood... it scrolls way too fast.

[–] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 26 points 6 months ago

Watch less populous streams.

Streamers with 100-1k viewers are actually able to read and respond to chat, and you will likely get responses to actually engaging chat messages.

[–] Klystron@sh.itjust.works -5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I watch forsen a lot on twitch, and his chat streams at a hundred messages a second so no one will ever see your individual chat. It's awesome because it's like a hive mind at work. Everyone is spamming one emote, and then something on stream happens and then every single chatter simultaneously starts spamming another emote in reaction to that. It's fun.

For me smaller streams aren't fun because everything's (generalizing here) super moderated. No unrelated chat, nothing negative, no backseat gaming, etc. It's basically post something positive about the streamer or the game and that's it. Of course if you're watching your buddy with three other guys not applicable.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You've just described the two extremes of streaming and sort of just ignored the whole middle area

[–] Klystron@sh.itjust.works -3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Nah I covered that with my second paragraph... Basically anyone over 100 viewers is like that.

[–] giotheflow@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

I think your brain is so warped from hyperspeed scrolling chats that even people having what would be a normal conversational pace everywhere else feels like an absolute zero temperature.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago

I regularly watch streams with 500 - 3000 viewers and the chat is nothing like what you describe

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 2 points 6 months ago

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.