Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
"There are just eyes on you, always on you. Kids grew up watching me for 10 hours a day. It feels like it’s been my whole life.”
Full story: Up all night with a Twitch millionaire: The loneliness and rage of the Internet’s new rock stars
Streamers like Tyler form the backbone of tech giants’ “creator economy,” and with their lives on permanent display, they’ve pioneered a raw form of entertainment. While Instagram and TikTok value viral perfection, Twitch fans flock to more unpolished streamers; no one can stay perfect on a 10-hour marathon.
But the punishing need to stay relevant in a supersaturated market is also fueling severe burnout. After five years of building an unapologetically aggressive persona for an audience of mostly young men, Tyler is exhausted by the expectations of an unforgiving crowd. Tyler, whose father is Black, has endured years of personal insults and sometimes explicitly racist abuse. And as his online world has grown, his real one has shrunk dramatically. Tyler has millions of fans but no friends; before spending a recent day with a Post reporter, no one besides his girlfriend and family had visited his house in several years.
"There are just eyes on you, always on you,” he said. “Kids grew up watching me for 10 hours a day. It feels like it’s been my whole life.”
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