Oh, hey, I sort of fit into this group, since I stream with a VTuber (virtual avatar) persona and play niche indie games. Sometimes a friend or two drops by and we chat, other times someone new drops by and says hi, but there are also those times where I spend an hour or two playing a game alone and talking into the void, expressing my thoughts, maybe getting a clip with something notable in the process to link to friends later, or maybe upload the full video somewhere later.

I'd say it's not that dissimilar from working on my own personal programming projects or even some of the blog posts that I might end up writing off and deleting, since nobody is going to see the majority of those either - if they turn out good and someone does, then great, but if not then it's still a nice experience, that's also mostly free of any expectations.

As for related things, streaming lets you practice expressing your thoughts better and speak more clearly (which is especially relevant if English isn't your first language, at a point where you can use it well enough, but your pronunciation just needs more practice). It also lets you figure out how to have decent audio/video quality and create content - something that has also helped me in meetings and while working on a programming video series.

Something about that name is hauntingly sad.

It’s a great way to support and meet people.

When you say the majority of 95% have exactly zero viewers, do you mean at a given point in time, or ever? That makes a big difference for how to think of their situation to me.

I do it in part just because I'm playing the games anyway and have the equipment, might as well stream it. If no one watches, oh well, no big deal, I'm still playing the games I was going to play with that time anyway.

And secondly, I am wanting to start doing some coding in public more. It's fairly stressful having to articulate what you're doing while you're doing it (tried it a couple times), and it sort of feels like I'm in a whiteboard interview at times, but I think it's good practice to become more comfortable doing it, and articulating what I'm doing as well as getting feedback from others could help me become a better coder.

Also the game I'm working on in my spare time (a sequel to my old Proximity strategy board game that was popular once upon a time as a Flash game and on Xbox 360) will eventually have support for a Twitch audience to play along via the chat, so I'll need to stream in order to test the game properly anyway, and hopefully by the time I get to that point I'll have at least a small handful of people who will be on there and can playtest it with me.

Also part of the reason I took a break is it turns out using an ultra-wide monitor isn't ideal for streaming (aspect ratio is off). I love my monitor but when I go into games I have to mess with borders and things can get cut off without adjustment, etc. I did get a Cam-Link recently though and got streaming from my Switch to work (and presumably my PS4), and it let's me stream 1080p without stressing my computer (no worry of dropped frames) and also letting me use my monitor still for Twitch chat, so that'll probably be easier to manage.

I've got some time off starting next week so I'm hoping to start getting into the habit of it again. If anyone's curious, I have the same account name on Twitch as on here, although I'm debating changing it to something that can be a bit more ubiquitous online, and haven't decided what yet.

Truly interesting.

Only one of my few papers has ever been downloaded by someone not on the author's list (we can compare with each other). Granted, that one's been downloaded a lot. But still, most of that hard work and going back and forth with editors is for naught.

Of course the couple that I bothered to do that with also have basically no views as well :)