“There’s no lack of painful things in this world, but hunger and loneliness must surely be two of the worst.” -Sakae Jinnouchi, Summer Wars
I really enjoyed Summer Wars, but this was the one quote in the entire movie that I remembered vividly. I won’t say that I’m entirely alone, but there have been points in my life where I feel like I’m in no man’s land.
Anyway, more to the point, I’m done with streaming for a while. I’ve been streaming very frequently since November and I’ve come to the conclusion that, contrary to my finished works, I’m not a very interesting or entertaining person. Not a lot of people really attend my streams and even where there are some people in attendance, my chat is dead for a couple of hours at a time, so I essentially feel just as alone as when I don’t stream. I’m responsive as far as the chat goes when people bring up a topic I can chip in or if I’m asked a question, so me not talking can’t be the issue (especially since I’m busy drawing anyway). After a while I even put on anime in the corner of my stream, but that doesn’t seem to really spark anything either. Request and commission streams don’t work for me, so that’s out. And while I don’t have a solidly consistent time for streaming, I’ve been streaming long enough and frequently enough for people to drop in whenever. Doesn’t help that I’ve been to several streams either early in the morning or crazy late at night with people in attendance. To make matters worse, even when I join a multistream, most of the people are there for the artist I joined and I’m more or less a side attraction.
So yeah, I don’t know what draws people to some artists and what has them chatty in other streams, but it’s simply something I don’t have. It’s not really the sort of thing that’s worth persevering and even if I did, by the time attendance became what I wanted it to be, I’d be so dead inside I wouldn’t even care. So yeah, gonna stop streaming for who knows how long. People can just enjoy my finished works and leave it at that.
