Gaming technologies foster connections
It could be argued that this week was all about technology facilitating connections between people. Not communication generally, but connecting new people together. We discussed dating sites, the usage of technology in facilitating revolutionaries in Syria, and last week we discussed how people are forming both working and personal relationships through games and other virtual worlds. I can attest personally that gaming can bring people together, but I’d like to focus on more unidirectional media; YouTubers, podcasts, and streamers.
The social media phenomena has allowed “tribes” to crop up around content creators on YouTube. The creator can broadcast to their communities, and information flow is a trickle in reverse. The creator is in some ways “above” the community that has grown around them, simply because they don’t have to struggle to break through the noise. Community members have a much better shot of communicating with each other than with the content creator themselves. Nonetheless, this has created a strong sense of belonging in some channels. When TmarTn and ProSyndicate advertised gambling sites to their young audiences without disclosing their ownership of those sites, their communities lined up to defend them. This is in spite of the fact that the defenders are the most victimized.
A channel I follow is Red Letter Media, ostensibly a channel of movie affectations. Their best work, in my opinion, is their Best of the Worst series, in which four of the creators watch a number of bad movies, compare and contrast them, and finally vote on a “best of the worst.” The thing I personally like about the series is that it’s really four friends hanging out, talking about something they love with people they’ve known forever. Despite the fact that none of them know I exist, I feel a personal connection to these guys, as if I’m one of the gang, too.
Podcasts can fill the same role. These audio recordings come in a staggering number of formats, but in my opinion, the best ones are always friends discussing something they love. There is a candor expressed that evokes a sense of intimacy with a community that can’t actually interact with the creators on anything like an equal level.
Finally, live-streamers thrive on building a regular community of viewers. For individual streamers, the back and forth is much more immediate, as a good streamer can interact with the text only chat in very nearly real time. These streams evoke the sense of “hanging out with friends” even more strongly than other media, because the “chat” can react in real time to what the streamer is doing, and the streamer can poll their audience for what to do next. I’ve experienced all up debates in twitch.tv chats, on a broad range of subjects, and with the moderating influence of channel mods and the streamer themselves, they’ve been amongst the most civil online debates I’ve ever taken part of.
There’s something about the sense of community that has enraptured late Gen Xers and Millennials and is transforming even older media. Major sporting events are streamed online complete with a chat section. I personally don’t understand the appeal of tossing chat into a channel moving so fast you don’t see your own post before it’s buried, but to others it’s a vital part of enjoying passive entertainment. These new vectors for community can only enrich the lives prepared to embrace them, and will almost certainly continue to grow as new media becomes available.
