Politics is getting weird. Is Twitch ready?
In June, Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders joined Twitch, the livestream website mostly known for hosting video game content. A few months later, President Trump followed suit.
For years, Twitch has broadened its livestream offerings beyond the world of gaming, opening up avenues for streamers to broadcast IRL (in real life) and creative outlets like music and cooking. This month, it added the latest non-gaming category to the website: politics.
The addition came during the second week of presidential impeachment hearings, and after a handful of streamers had taken to broadcasting the inquiries on their channels. The most notable stream…
Anthony Fantano is the Roger Ebert of music — all thanks to YouTube
The music video for a recent remix of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”, a song that broke the Billboard music chart’s all-time record for most consecutive weeks at number 1, depicts the track’s featured artists storming Area 51 in animated form. The gates of the military base are guarded by a sleeping cartoon who appears to have dozed off from his shift guarding Thanos’s infinity gauntlet while playing Minecraft.
The animated guard is none other than Anthony Fantano, a popular YouTuber and music critic whose likeness sounds the “bruh moment” alarm to warn the world of an impending musical…
The video game streaming site is seeing a rise in people streaming anything but games
In 2016, two years after Amazon bought the company for $970 million, the livestream giant Twitch introduced the largest change ever implemented on the platform.
The website, known for its dominance in esports broadcasting and the burgeoning world of video game livestreaming, announced it would allow content not related to video games within its digital ecosystem.
Since opening its virtual doors to content outside the video game industry, Twitch has hosted an array of non-gaming content including partnerships to broadcast live sports with the NFL and Major League Soccer (MLS), and a catalog of classic TV shows like Power Rangers…
Robert Kelly
Robert is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, GQ, and Billboard, among other publications. You can follow him @RobbyKelly7
