This article is fascinating for the effects it has on readers.
We likely all understand that one of the toxic forces in our culture today is the compulsive need to turn every story and news article into a clear moral narrative with a pure protagonist and a villainous antagonist. Reality isn't like that at all, and when journalists force reality into that framework, it distorts our perception of the world in unhealthy ways.
But when an article comes out that doesn't do that, that just says "here are some people and what their experience is like", it seems many of us are unprepared to handle it. In the comments here, I see this rorschach-like phenomenon where each reader imagines a morality play, superimposes it on the article, and then gets surprised when others saw something different.
This isn't an acticle about good guys and bad guys, winning and losing, the good or evil of capitalism. It's just a window into one person's life. It's a useful article because this is a kind of person whose life affects many of us—a lot of people here watch popular streamers—but where we have little insight into the whole picture of how that impacts their life.
We should relish journalism like this. There is no need to jump to any moral conclusion. Just witness and understand a bit more about the variety of lives people live today.
Agreed. I'm kinda shook at a lot of the comments here, IMO missing the point (or lack of point) of the article. It's a slice of life view into a poignantly tragic story of a kid "lucking" into a terrible pair of golden handcuffs - a view into the apex of parasocial relationships. Someone who so clearly lacks any semblance of a social life, in the same hand creating a social environment for thousands of people - chiefly centered around making fun of him. There's no moral "good" or "bad" here.
As readers we can draw our own conclusions here, but to call the author biased into making the life/platform/phenomenon of twitch streamers bad? That's just a really narrow view of a fairly compelling article.
Sure his life seems like a nightmare, but to be honest, wouldn't it have been even worse without the streaming. Then he'd probably still be playing computer games all the time, still living in squalor, but he'd be broke. Now he's at least able to save up a lot of money.
We likely all understand that one of the toxic forces in our culture today is the compulsive need to turn every story and news article into a clear moral narrative with a pure protagonist and a villainous antagonist. Reality isn't like that at all, and when journalists force reality into that framework, it distorts our perception of the world in unhealthy ways.
But when an article comes out that doesn't do that, that just says "here are some people and what their experience is like", it seems many of us are unprepared to handle it. In the comments here, I see this rorschach-like phenomenon where each reader imagines a morality play, superimposes it on the article, and then gets surprised when others saw something different.
This isn't an acticle about good guys and bad guys, winning and losing, the good or evil of capitalism. It's just a window into one person's life. It's a useful article because this is a kind of person whose life affects many of us—a lot of people here watch popular streamers—but where we have little insight into the whole picture of how that impacts their life.
We should relish journalism like this. There is no need to jump to any moral conclusion. Just witness and understand a bit more about the variety of lives people live today.