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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there.

However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly good, interesting or special.

I tried to tell myself it's like watching porn: you watch somebody else having sex, why not play video game? But something doesn't click for me.

I miss the point entirely.

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You enjoy the feeling of having friends, as you develop a parasocial relationship with the person on the screen.

It is essentially a hack for the brain's social processing systems. Generally, we'd have only seen others in real life and interacted with them. This confers evolutionary advantage so we feel good interacting further with people, and perhaps even seeing people do things we find enjoyable in the first place.

Now with video, we feel good as we "spend time" with the other person, even though they don't know of our existence. Our caveman brain doesn't know about this sort of one sided relationship at all, it wasn't present in the olden days.

We will see the same with AI and chatbots as the decades pass, only at least now we're actually able to interact in a two sided way. There are already people doing this with ChatGPT or even Replika.

I've explained it to myself like this: It's exactly like watching sports.

You want to watch it live on tv, even though the fact that you're watching has zero impact on the result. You're just watching other people play a game. You could do anything else and just check the scores afterwards, but still you want to watch it.

Some people will watch a recording of the game and still enjoy it even though the scores were determined hours ago.

The younger generation does the same thing, but instead of sports they watch someone play a game.

I don't understand either, but I can live with it =)

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207785

But I can live as well with it. I don't blame the kids that watch those. I just don't understand it.

After you've watched a person enough on YouTube or Twitch you start feeling that you know them (even though it's completely unidirectional). I think there is a term for this but it's for sure an established phenomena. At that point it feels like watching friends do stuff I guess

The term is "parasocial"

I've never developed a parasocial delusions myself but still frequently watch various YouTube millionaire's plays games.

For me, it's just low effort entertainment. Like I don't enjoy talking with people, but it's kinda nice to have someone talk in the background to remind me that I'm not the only human alive.

I'm in my thirties though, these parasocial teenagers might be less jaded then I am.

I get that. Humans can get close to anything or anyone.

But to get there, you have to spend time doing so before it happens.

Which means you have to watch many videos where somebody is explaining their school day or reacting to a movie trailer before you get to that point.

> Which means you have to watch many videos where somebody is explaining their school day or reacting to a movie trailer before you get to that point.

Indeed, which is exactly what these creators do. I've watched a few of their videos before and I can't get over how...mundane their content is. There really is nothing of actual substance there. But I assume watching more of that content over time cultivates the same feeling as bullshitting with your friends, hence the parasocial relationship forms.

It honestly for me depends on how deep one is in a community. I am pretty heavily part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Clone Hero community, and I watch a decent amount of such streaming. However, I also know many of them online, and a good few of them I've even met in person.

It's okay if you don't get it, if you don't enjoy watching others game. Doesn't mean others can't

I think people like to have something to watch and something to listen to. It makes it harder for your brain to go off at a tangent because it has more to occupy it. I think this reduces anxiety and intrusive thoughts. They may even be fidgeting with something to keep their hands occupied for the same reason. Maybe it is more like meditation than porn.

Why watch sports or tv shows or anything at all? It's other people having fun.

To be honest I never got that either, somebody scream for red or blue in front of a screen.

But at least for sports, you will see a level of play that is itself can be interesting because you can't just see it in day to day life.

Watching a video of a guy opening a kinder egg or playing badly at cod for the first time.

I get people watching streamers that are good at what they do. Rankers. Speed runners. Analysts. Jokers.

This is not what I'm talking about.

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