#this post will become stale literally tomorrow but hey

[ariadne-mouse]

Regarding the initial confrontation between Essek and Astrid, the tone of the situation, and what exactly Astrid's stance is right now, I have a couple of thoughts:

Astrid has presumably not joined Ludinus because she is currently hiding in a smut shop. She also presumably hasn't joined the Exandrian Accord because, again, she is currently hiding in a smut shop & the Accord is sending missions after her. Maybe she disagrees with Ludinus but feels she can't safely outright oppose him. We don't know yet! Provided she isn't rooting for Ludinus, it's very possible she could be enlisted to help (I hope this happens btw), but Astrid is first and foremost a survivor and ambitious achiever who has gotten to where she is now by working within the greater system, not against it, even when she disagrees with it. She remained a Volstrucker until Caleb and the M9 turned the tide against Ikithon, and she later took on the role of Archmage that Caleb refused, continuing her original trajectory ("race you to the top!"). She has a great deal of power now and we don't have much information about what she does with it. I am very curious, though, Astrid please tell us your secrets.

"Bren sends his regards" - we don't know if Caleb told Essek to say this, but whether or not he did, I do think it was meant to convey "this is all with Caleb's knowledge and direction", for whatever measure that means to Astrid, most likely "you are safe for the moment". The purpose of this encounter is to have a conversation instead of a fight. And Essek's intent in saying it does seem to be to disarm Astrid, but his presentation puts some layers and edges on it that are likely independent of whatever Caleb might be feeling on his end (other posts have summarized the juicy possible layers well so I won't cover all of that here).

More high level on Essek's angle: even if "Bren sends his regards" was meant to signal to Astrid that she is safe in this encounter, one of the very first things Essek does is declare Astrid as Trent Ikithon's "successor", which Astrid of course disagrees with ("I'm his usurper!") but nevertheless this is an insult and condemnation coming from Essek. The subtext reads to me like "I don't like you or agree with you and you're on thin fucking ice how I see it". Is she safe from physical harm? It seems so, for now. Is she safe from bitchy comments and thinly veiled judgement? Certainly not.

Notably, Astrid tried to bamf out after hearing "Bren sends his regards", so the mention of him or what that message would mean coming from Caleb is not enough to get her to play ball by itself. This is perfectly reasonable to be honest; shit's all fucked up now and Essek basically cornered her with a squad of unfamiliar adventurers. But her skittishness despite the "friendly" signal implies a great deal of tension in her position, and Essek's behavior shows tension on his part as well, separate from whatever Caleb might be feeling offscreen and the purpose of this little mission for the Accord. I am very eager to hear the conversation that comes next!

#this post will become stale literally tomorrow but hey #today's today #Caleb is currently Sir Not Appearing In this Film so we can't dive into his view on Astrid #i would guess it's “very complicated friends” considering their past as volstrucker and lovers and her current role in the Assembly #which is very opposite to Caleb's stance of “I want to take down the Assembly actually that's why i didn't take the job” #but anyway i hope they bring Astrid along so Matt can argue and snipe at himself it would be very funny #cr spoilers #c3e94 #astrid #essek thelyss #op #critical role

[yogpetshame]

That link

This link

So, to make a very very long story short - Taiga is a very small streamer with an average audience size of less than 300 (phrasing it like that is a kick in the teeth and I’ll explain why in a moment) who has been streaming very recently with Duncan and Pedguin. 

He has a ‘little’ fetish and collects shota porn. He claims to not be a pedophile but the distinction between that and admitting to being a ‘little’ and collecting porn of anime children is pretty much lost on me. He says it’s not important because he only commissioned shota “3 years ago,” as though 2018 was a different time where watersports involving children younger than five was commonplace.

I don’t find any particularly strong evidence that he’s a racist, that seems to hinge entirely on one screenshot, which Taiga says isn’t real, where he seems to be calling a guy of unknown race the n-word. So he’s more edgy and offensive than racist, technically.

Anyway that’s it for the explanation of why he’s par for the Yogscast, he’s a garbage person. But the part of it’s that’s really entertaining is the extra doc on egocentrism. Mainly because, like most things the Yogscast have breathed on, this breaks new ground and pioneers a whole new world of being toxic on Twitch. I wouldn’t really like going on and on about Taiga except for that I was expecting Twitch’s whole system to incentivize streamers to begin behaving in the way you are about to see and this was the first time I’ve actually seen it laid out.

First thing: moderators as analysts.

“In the above screencap a mod is informing Taiga about viewer statistics after the stream... For additional context, Taiga created his own special terminology to refer to viewer count ranges: (Okay <=300, Good >=300, Great >=360).”

I think ideally a moderator is just a good representative from your community. A streamer shouldn’t ask them to do much more than they were already doing without the title. Be a beacon for chat, smother arguments. No homework. And if your moderators quit watching one day, no hard feelings, they weren’t being paid in the first place.

Asking for a post-stream debrief and audience analysis and then berating them for it is megalomania. Why’s light green even doing this, just because Taiga asked? It’s pulling a favor out of whatever parasocial relationship light green feels as a moderator.

The only place you could justifiably place the blame of viewership on is Taiga. If Taiga streams Minecraft and people don’t like it and tune out, it was his call and it’ll be his responsibility to learn from it. There’s nothing in the world the moderators could do to make a more significant impact on Taiga’s viewership than Taiga himself... but of course in the next section he imagines they have more influence than they do.

Taiga makes his ongoing struggles with viewership the burden of his moderators instead of just himself, essentially turning them into a team of struggling Girl Scouts with increasingly stale cookies. If you like Taiga, then sell Taiga. Why is Taiga doing badly, do you not like Taiga enough to want him to succeed? I thought you liked Taiga, why are you a moderator if you can’t even help him do well?

This is, I think, one of the extreme conclusions of volunteer moderating. I think it’s very fortunate if someone is able to find a team of moderators that are willing to show up all the time, and are able to serve as good role models for the chat, but when they’re forced to prove themselves as fans and take responsibility for the income of the streamer himself, they aren’t immediately going to say no because, hey, they like the stream. But it won’t last.

It’s like scraping juice out of the skin of a lemon once all the parasocial juice is drained. Your mods will give you the juice they have. How much more do you expect them to give?

Second thing: community cannibalization

If a streamer has a discord, it’s just a lounge. It’s a place where people are talking. It’s good to have a community because it will encourage long term engagement but it doesn’t mandate it. It creates a place where people may make advertising materials for you on a whim, or turn up some community talent that can fit a particular need.

It is not, to bring back the fans-as-lemons analogy (guess what I’m drinking), an enormous rinding machine for forcing people to show up to your stream when they are out of juice and don’t want to. Parasocial relationships can make people do silly shit, but they’re not mind control. These folks show up to hang out, not to be fettered and forced into supporting Taiga whenever he’s live.

And the logical conclusion of a streamer who has streamed for any length of time, or who is reaching a downturn in viewership, is that the Discord’s affiliation with the streamer will always become looser over time. The habit of watching the stream will be lost because he’s not funny anymore or because the fan doesn’t have time to join anymore, but the Discord habit remains. All that can really be done to mitigate this distancing effect is to keep making good streams that might recapture the people who have gone inactive one day.

Or, you can do like Taiga, and go insane. Which is something I was also expecting to see streamers start to do as their Discords age.

Think of it this way. Taiga is live with Minecraft, meanwhile ten people who have begun to watch him less consistently are watching someone else stream Resident Evil in his Discord. He has two options:

1) Stream Resident Evil tomorrow. Advertise this heavily in the Discord. Potentially recapture the folks whose attention he was losing and leave those who aren’t brought back on the wagon to go about their business.

2) Ban all ten of them. None of them rejoin his stream because they think he’s weird and toxic. He streams Minecraft again tomorrow and more people leave because they want to watch Resident Evil.

There are literally no advantages to 2, besides the imagined “stop the outflow of viewers from my stream to Discord,” which is completely unsubstantiated.

But yeah. I think we’re reaching the sunset years for a lot of people who wanted to make it big on Twitch, and we’re going to see some interesting, toxic behaviors as people try to force a second wind that won’t come.

#yps mann #yps taiga