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Comment by prophesi | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually surprised this other tidbit of Twitch news didn't make it to HN; PirateSoftware's record for longest "hype train"[0] was broken by vedal987 and his AI Vtuber creation, Neuro-sama, on January 1st. He amassed tens of thousands of subscriptions, with PirateSoftware hoping to win the title back on April 1st[1] (which, in my opinion, is a weird proclamation considering it's directly asking your fans to give you a lot of money).

[0] Essentially, how many subscriptions/bits are bought by the community within a relatively short time-frame.

[1] https://xcancel.com/PirateSoftware/status/187464037594998397...

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> with PirateSoftware hoping to win the title back on April 1st[1] (which, in my opinion, is a weird proclamation considering it's directly asking your fans to give you a lot of money

he wants to make money, that’s not really an odd proclamation

Directly asking your fans for money under a guise is now prime entrepreneurship

Are you a gigachad who's up for the "give me all your money"-challenge?! I'll even say your name on stream!

Eh, it's patronage. Can't really be that mad at people giving money to folks they find entertaining where the content is given away freely even to people who don't pay.

There's so many sketchy business models, hard to be mad at one that's completely devoid of coercion and people enthusiastically participate in

When giving money to the content creator is the game mechanic that allows the cc to "win", it becomes something else imho.

There is "I tell stories and here's a hat you can put some pennies in" and there's "I'm in a contest, the one with the most money in their hat wins". I feel like there is some abuse of human traits to extract money going on here.

But I agree, there's many wat more sketchy MOs around. In a way I have to respect this one, they make it work with so few moving parts.

My gut feeling watching PirateSoftware says to me that something is wrong with this dude. Of course, he was a hacker for the government, worked at Blizzard hat made all the smart decisions, source is him.

Every time he's saying something obvious (basic computer science concepts) and people are pretending he's the ubergod of knowledge.

The dumb person's genius, I feel like. Something says to me there is much pretending involved.

I guess it's kind of like hoping for a new record on a charity stream? Works for GDQ right?

I suppose! Honestly, I wish it worked like Humble Bundle wherein you have a sliding scale on who gets your money; the platform (Twitch/Amazon), the streamer, and the charity. I'm personally subscribed to PirateSoftware and GDQ because I don't want to see ads and hope a few of my bucks make it to them.

Currently it's hard to know[0] how much you're giving the content creator versus Twitch/Amazon.

[0] https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2024/01/24/an-update-to-several-st...

Hype for the sake of hype? What are they hyping?

Young people want their generation to have its own "thing". Hype trains make them feel like their generation is unique.

least cynical HN commenter

Why do you believe it's cynical?

Imagine $FOOTBALL_TEAM fans vs $OTHER_FOOTBALL_TEAM fans, except instead of their fervor being a minor factor setting the general mood in the arena, it’s the actual competition

They are hyping giving Amazon and the streamer money (exceptions for the trusted charity streams). Like when the cable shopping channel hosts would go crazy about how many foot spas they have sold in the last 5 mins.

Except the host is some flashing message above the chat box showing what hype train "level" has been reached.

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