To be fair, it ties in with it now being a career. You have to be able to pay creators if you want consistency of creation. Sure, you can try to tie it in to monetary donations, but that can wildly fluctuate and usually isn't enough to build a life on.
Do I agree with the ads every five minutes which are one minute long, even for videos that are shorter that five minutes? Fuck no. I honestly want a return to practices about 13-15 years ago. I feel like that was possibly a even balance. But I have a pretty bad memory, and rose-tints don't help...
Twitch almost struck a perfect middle ground by letting streamers trigger ad breaks of a couple minutes to let them have an ad-free stream for the next hour. They then ramped up ads when you click on a new stream - 30 sec ads literally every time you click between streamers while browsing.
Completely kills discoverability and everyone ends up complaining about titch ads
On my TV I use SmartTV Client for Twitch, and if I see an ad before I even get to watch the channel to see if its someone Id be fine watching on a livestream, I just leave and dont watch it and look for another lol.
On my PC however, Brave Browser is so good c: Imagine watching ads.
Yea I remember when YouTube was completely ad free and there was a complaint about monetization from creators and legit questions on how YouTube was going to make money as the site grew. I remember the controversy when I think NBC got an account there but you either figure out to make money or your site goes belly up.
Hell, before the pandemic the ads were scarce. I remember I'd get one before maybe 10% of videos, if that. No mid-rolls.
Now you can click on a 20 second meme video of a cat and get a minute of unskippable ads. They're at the beginning and then every few minutes, and then right before the end, and then tacked onto the end and it's every video.
Hulu is bad too. I'm at the point where I won't watch a TV show on it because it's literally every two minutes.
I haven't watched mainstream porn sites in awhile so I was shocked that every single video has an ad before and after. Of all the time you don't want ads...
The funny thing about that one is at least half the states in the US now require ID verification to even see porn sites, so advertisers are wasting their money advertising to half the audience they normally would because no one is uploading their IDs.
The whole system is somehow Kafkaesque, Orwellian, and Vonnegutian at the same time.
Yeah that was insane to me. I absolutely do not trust those sites to secure my government ID haha. I know that's normal in Europe but I just don't have faith in corps. here.
I think that was technically a benefit. I say "technically" because of course, they were mostly there to sell things, but it the idea was also meant to be that you'd step away for a minute. (Perhaps while still being able to hear said commercials.)
Of course, from what I remember, a lot of people just sat and complained about them anyway.
It's been fascinating to see the difference in this subreddit. I see people talking about how they got their first iPod in high school. I had a CD player. (Which I now miss.)
I had so many cd players 😂😂 I also remember not having a remote for the tv because my entire family refused to get rid of the giant floor TVs. My memory is a wonder to a lot of people because it starts at 2 instead of 4 like normal people.
Me and my little brother carved our names into the woodgrain of our first tv and had to split the 2nd knob across double duty after losing the first one
They were also shows. It was a piece of scripted entertainment.
This is what gets me. When I'm looking for a tutorial or a visual instruction manual for something, and I get spammed with a fucking ad, it's awful. It's a different thing.
When we get hit with commercials on TV, it's expected, it's a break. A commercial break. But like, it feels weirdly OK. Think of it for live TV; the people on the other side need a break too.
On the YT though, it's purely intrusive, and the setting is usually different too. Like, why are you advertising to me while I'm trying to watch this instruction manual? Now isn't the time for this.
Imagine how ridiculous it would feel to be advertised to in a classroom setting. That is how I feel about it often.
Oh man. I can't imagine. I like music. It's always been something I've really dug into. I have had Spotify premium since the first week it was available in the US, and I've never used a radio service like Pandora. Prior to all this it was a pirates life for me and the iPod.
I have never had adds play during my music, ever, but I cannot imagine how awful that would be.
I've had Pandora premium for years, no ads and I disabled radio breaks. It's not really 'radio' at that point, I just don't have to make playlists lol. Occasionally have to deal with new versions/album releases of songs I don't want but eh.
Same. That's my one real breaker. I pay for Spotify Premium, I have YouTube Premium which includes YouTube music so I haven't seen an ad during a YouTube video in years that's just the one thing I'm always going to pay for. I've been paying YouTube premium for 8 years now.
My wife uses YouTube because she claims there are live recordings / performances on there that aren’t on Spotify / Apple Music / pandora etc and yet she refuses to use an ad blocker so it’s a daily occurrence
Entertainment in general has changed a lot. What I generally don't understand is watching someone else play a game. Like a single player game. Just go play it yourself??? You arent experiencing anything, youre watching someone else experience it. How is that fun?
There are lots of reasons, but I'll say one, I've played mass effect so many times I can barely comprehend what it would be like to see some things for the first time, so I'm watching a playthrough of someone playing it for their first time, and sort of living vicariously through them.
You might think that wouldn't really work but it is for me, I'm seeing it fresh through someone elses eyes, and she even noticed some things that I hadn't!
I was about to make this exact comment.
It's like watching sports on TV. Some people jist enjoy seeing other people play and how they react to things.
If it's your thing then its your thing. Don't judge.
Just go play it yourself??? You arent experiencing anything, youre watching someone else experience it. How is that fun?
As someone who's been watching streamers for over a decade now, we do just play them ourselves, playing a game on the main window while listening to a streamer or youtube video is pretty common.
Also a lot of the time people don't actually care about the game and it's more of a personality streamer.
Same reason I can watch my roommate play games in the living room. Streaming isn't my thing, but you don't need to know someone to be entertained by, get this, an entertainer. Most of the successful people playing games for people are also entertainers, cracking jokes, adding commentary, and there's also a lot of people who already played the game but love to see someone elses opinions or reactions to a game they already love. I don't watch Football, I'm not entertained by Football, but I'm never going to go "You know you can just play it yourself, you're not experiencing anything."
Some games I know for one reason or another I won’t play, or finish but I still want to see the plot. Black Ops 6 was one such game when I found out you HAD to play a zombies mode style map in the campaign to progress. I like zombies mode with others, and open / not jump-scare prone maps by myself. Being forced to play through a map that starts the zombie part off with a jump-scare, nah I’ll watch someone else.
Same with the Resident Evil games prior to the reboots when they started doing first person: sounds damn terrifyingly for me to try and play, so I’ll watch someone else. By the way, the baby scene in Village made me pause and leave the room, all the NOPE energy ever.
Also, games I won’t spend money on get a campaign watch (the most recent cash grab Battlefield for instance).
I used to share this opinion but.. once you try it, it makes much more sense than you expect and can actually be entertaining with a good presenter.
After all, humans have been watching other humans play games for millennia. What difference does it make that now we watch them from the comfort of our homes, playing a game from the comfort of their game room?
Would you care if it were chess and only two players instead of single player? Like what difference does it make?
What do people watch sports for anyway? Tension, unexpected challenges, twists, feats of strength and endurance, quick thinking, overcoming obstacles and beating the odds…
What makes a single player game not that?
Archery is a single player game. We send those folks to the Olympics.
Hm... So, I've never watched a twitch streamer, ever. But, I do spectate some gaming tournaments from time to time. That, is fun. It's crazy watching these games get pushed to the absolute limit. Personally, I believe in the whole 'sports' bit, in 'e-sports'.
Speed running is also super interesting too. Another example of some, point blank, brilliant people and community pushing a game to the absolute human limit. It's impressive.
In these two settings, spectating someone playing a game can be rewarding and interesting.
The only other time I've watched someone play a video game is for a playthrough of a game I know I'll never finish, or complete, or even play at all. I don't have time for that. I don't have time to dump 100+ hours into whatever whatever story game. Am I interested in it though? Hell yeah. So, I'll sometimes watch a play through, which, will be several orders of magnitude shorter than playing through the game myself, which, I'll never do.
Sitting on twitch and watching some dude grind COD or Fork Knife? Yeah, absolutely zero interest in that. I'm with you here.
Mid episode cliff hangers and reveals just don't hit the same when there isn't a 5 minute wait time between the end of a scene and the beginning of another.
Not to mention, they actually put effort into commercials, and some of them could be quite clever (Old Spice, anyone?). They didn't just spam you with the same insipid, low-effort slop five times in a row.
Years ago I got flamed for suggesting that streaming services do a bit of work to better place commercial breaks, mostly so they could be used as intermissions. But that was before everyone had ads by default.
And I would simply either change the channel or go to the bathroom on those breaks. A commercial didn't play a mandatory 5-minute commercial as soon as I turned on the TV, unless it was just shit luck, anyway.
You can see this especially with shows from premium channels - HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. - where ads were at best between airings.
It's a compromise to see them the same way before or after a whole episode of a show ends, but when it goes in the middle somewhere it does disrupt the flow.
I remember when A&E aired the Sopranos and advertised for it - While I never watched that version, I can only imagine how it flowed with commercials in mind (alongside the significant amount of editing they had to do to make it watchable).
What I miss about commercials was they were mini cliffhangers planned throughout an episode. It was great on first watch with friends or family. You got a minute to pee or get refreshment. And you got to talk about whatever crazy shit just went down without interrupting the show.
Honestly this drives me batty. Give me back the poignant 90s sitcom line delivered to swelling music, right before the fade to commercials.
Now? You're watching a video, the influencer starts yakking about BetterHelp or Incogni or GroundNews or whatever sponsor du jour. In the middle of yakking about the sponsor, mid sentence, it cuts to an ad for a "tactical rain jacket" or whatever. Just bonkers. Such a downgrade in the viewing experience.
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u/CriticalOfBarns Sep 07 '26
The shows were also typically designed around commercial breaks and not just randomly interrupted mid-sentence.