#week 10

@summer-of-bad-batch

he's actually disgusted 🥲

Okay, but can we talk about how gaming stopped being "just playing games" like a long time ago?😭 Because now it feels like gaming is basically its own social media universe. People aren't just gaming anymore. There are so many different ways people stay connected to gaming now🤭

Nowadays, they’re livestreaming, spending hours in Discord calls, watching Twitch streams like it’s a full-time hobby, dropping money on in-game skins, making TikTok edits and somehow getting emotionally attached to strangers screaming into a microphone during ranked matches 💀. And honestly? Sometimes people spend more time watching games than actually playing them. The Internet Turned Gaming Into a Community 🕹️ Online multiplayer didn't seem to be all that big before gaming was all about individual play. Back then, people mostly played with their siblings, cousins or friends sitting next to them on the same couch. Now everything feels connected.

Games like Valorant, Minecraft, Fortnite and League of Legends are no longer just a game. They have basically become online social spaces where people can spend hours talking, joking, arguing and making friends. Sometimes people do not even log into games because they seriously want to “win.” Let's be honest, some of the funniest chats are during games 😭.

When it comes to games such as Valorant where voice chat is half of the experience. Gaming in some way turned into a strange mix of competitiveness, friendship, and chaos. Gaming communities are social communities in which players continue to shift both within and between smaller communities in response to their interests and their experiences (Saldanha et al., 2023). And the truth is, it's so true online.

One day someone might be watching esports clips, the next day joining a Discord server, and later spending five hours queueing ranked games with strangers who somehow become online friends. Watching People Play Games Somehow Became Entertainment 📺🎧 I still think it is kind of funny that millions of people now spend hours watching other people play games online. But somehow… It feels like it makes sense.

Platforms like Twitch completely changed gaming culture. The experience of watching livestreams is quite different from watching normal videos as everything is happening in real-time. Audiences react immediately, spam emotes in the chat, clip funny moments and feel as if they were part of the stream. Sometimes streamers are not entertaining because they are exceptionally skilled at games, but because they are chaotic, funny, relatable and dramatic for absolutely no reason 😭.

A good example is streamers such as Kai Cent or Pokimane where the audience is not just watching the gameplay anymore. People usually stay for the personality, reactions and community interactions that occur around the stream.

Communities begin forming around streamers in the same way fandoms form around celebrities or TV shows. Inside jokes, memes and even streamer language eventually becomes the culture of the community. Hamilton et al. (2014) indicate that communities aren't just built around games but also streamers themselves. Honestly, I think that explains why livestreaming feels so personal compared to traditional entertainment. Gaming Communities Can Feel Like Real Friendships🤝 One thing I find really interesting is how online gaming friendships can sometimes feel surprisingly real. These people connect on Discord servers or livestream chats, on random matches and suddenly they start talking daily.

For many people, gaming communities create real emotional connections that simply happen online instead of offline According to Tausczik & Huang (2020) an online community is a “knowledge community” that is brought together by shared interests by participation and emotional investment. Players constantly help one another by sharing strategies, explaining mechanics, discussing updates and helping newer players improve.

In games like Final Fantasy XIV, players constantly share strategies, dungeon mechanics and character builds through online communities. But Gaming Spaces Are Not Always Welcoming⚠️ At the same time, gaming culture also has a darker side that people do not always talk about enough.

Gaming spaces can become extremely toxic, especially towards women, LGBTQ+ players, beginners, younger players as well as people considered “bad” at games. Sometimes people are judged immediately based only on their voice during voice chat. And honestly… Some gaming communities still act like gaming only belongs to a certain type of person. Taylor & Phillips (2026) addresses the stereotypical representation of a “gamer” as a male youth, which has historically been linked to a gaming culture dominated by men. This attitude still exists in competitive games to this day.

For example, female Valorant players sometimes receive unnecessary harassment the moment they speak in voice chat. Instead of focusing on the actual game, some players immediately become rude, dismissive or weirdly aggressive for no reason. Which honestly says a lot about how online communities can sometimes reflect real-world biases too.

However, there are many gaming communities that are slowly growing more inclusive. More creators and players are openly discussing sexism, harassment and toxicity in gaming spaces instead of pretending those issues do not exist. So gaming culture now feels a bit complicated. It can feel incredibly welcoming and incredibly toxic at the exact same time. Gaming Is Basically Digital Culture Now 🎮✨ What makes gaming so interesting now is that it no longer exists separately from internet culture. Gaming now overlaps with live streaming, fandoms, influencer culture, social media, online identity and digital communities.

hey lovebug,

oh gosh, this kind of rings a bell, but not enough that I was able to find a video, I'm sorry. :(

The only ones of Harry waking up / waking someone up I could find were these, but they're all pretty widely known, I think.

This part is from a longer docu (from Part 5 of Year In The Making from 2011) about their first year together as a band, where they return to Robin's bungalow to again spend time together there (if you haven't yet, do yourself a favour and watch the entire 8 minute video, it's so, so lovely 💖 and it also made me tear up a little)

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Lights Camera Unseen Action - X-Factor - Week 10 (found this with the help of the amazing searchable video master collection made by @callmeathief 💕) Niall and Harry waking up starts at 0:64, but the entire video includes super cute 1D moments

look at these babies 🥹

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and of course the part from This Is Us from 2013:

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(also this one from 8 Sep 2012 is funny as hell and I hadn't seen it in forever, so i'm adding it)

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but that's really all I could find.

Does anyone else know which video the lovely anon means? @voxina or @fookinhellcurlyyy perhaps? 🥺

EDIT: Voxina DID find it! HERE 💖

Games. Twitch. Streaming. Games build massive communities on live streaming platforms like Twitch today. The largest single communities on Twitch are built around mega streamers like Kai Cenat with over 20 million followers. Fast forward to the age of our grandparents when they were young, the word “games” stands for a completely different thing. It could mean some ball games they would invite their friends over after school, or some board games they brought to school and sat at tables and played together with. Then we shift the time pointer a little bit further to our parents’ time.

Gaming was then about some new console games their parents bought for them, or the new arcade section that just opened at the mall. Then the kids at that time would share it to their friends and arrange a game just among themselves. Since the very beginning, games are not just about the fun, but also the people and the communities that they form. And yet since the rise of twitch Twitch, the streaming platform has granted gaming experiences to be enjoyed by everyone on the internet. Globalisation and digitisation have entered the scene, causing a power shift - it's force, magnanimous.

The definition of a game:

A [classic] game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable.(Jesper Juul, 2003)

Gaming communities today are predominantly large and universal. Yet there is a noticeable change in the definition and nature of the gaming communities in its undercurrent. As live Twitch-streaming becomes the major game-sharing means to the world, we see the development of Twitch community culture, dominating the gaming sphere. Hopping onto a Twitch livestream enables live interaction between streamer and audience as Twitch chat features special emotes, memes, inside jokes and fan identities.

Parasocial relationships

Viewers become emotionally connected to streamers and Twitch streamers become online celebrities and influencers. Communities form as everyone supports and goes to their favourite streamers. The strong fanbase and interactions with the fans become crucial to the streamers' financial earnings as they rely on fans’ support for donations, subscriptions and memberships.

The gaming culture revolution

What I'm seeing is that the gaming community is obnoxiously rebelling, on its own pace and way.

1. Twitch culture drives the formation of niche groups.

Although the technologies of live streaming have allowed universal participation and endless communication between one another, we see a passive phenomenon rising - formation of highly specific miro-communities emerge around distinct streamers, generating a deeply personal sense of belonging (Johnson, M. R., & Woodcock, J., 2019). Back then games were for one another, and everyone would agree to having fun in this one board game. There’s not too much complication. A game is a game. In comparison, the introduction of streamer and Twitch culture leads to individual stance and emotional bias in the picture. People will stick to their own favourite streamer who expresses the style and taste which suit them, and they often just stay there. Back then games were for one another, and everyone would agree to having fun in this one board game. There’s not too much complication. A game is a game. In comparison, the introduction of streamer and Twitch culture leads to individual stance and emotional bias in the picture. People will stick to their own favourite streamer who expresses the style and taste which suit them, and they often just stay there. 

2. Modern gaming community experiences issues in harassment and toxic behaviour. 

Additionally, the problems and growing toxicity shouldn’t be overlooked. This includes the appearance of toxic fandoms, online harassment, influencer culture pressure (arXiv., 2026). Notoriously, Twitch is one of the platforms used for malicious intent. People have used Twitch to spread hate such as racism or sexism, or to do inappropriate behaviour such as sexting and grooming minors (Cai, J., & Bruckman, A., 2019). It is hard to argue against the fact that gaming communities are experiencing cultural and moral degradation compared to its history since the boom of its digital age. Building a healthier gaming environment requires shared responsibility from platforms, streamers, moderators, and community members to promote respect and positive interactions. 

Nevertheless, Twitch with its power in building communities can be a good place to promote positive values and developments despite ongoing challenges. Good news. Twitch is showing clear signs of inclusivity through a combination of enhanced creator tags, community guidelines, and platform-wide design changes. These updates help marginalized creators find their audience while giving viewers a direct way to navigate to diverse and welcoming communities The platform also enforces content classification and features like the Stream Closed Captioner, which adds captions for deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers (Twitch Safety Center,2023) . 

Let us hope that our gaming culture advances onto brighter footsteps with the ongoing platform operation adjustments and updates. Meanwhile we all should understand the future of the gaming digital community lies in the hands of everybody. No one can escape the responsibility in maintaining basic human decency, even when it comes to the gaming sphere.

Week 10: Gaming Communities, Social Gaming and Live Streaming: Twitch

References:

arXiv. (2026). Toxicity in Twitch Chats: An LLM-Based Analysis Across Gaming Communities. https://arxiv.org/html/2605.24000v1#:~:text=Prior%20work%20has%20identified%20Twitch,the%20social%20dynamics%20of%20chat.

Cai, J., & Bruckman, A. (2019). What are Effective Strategies of Handling Harassment on Twitch? Users' Perspectives. Companion of the 2019 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '19). https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3311957.3359478

Johnson, M. R., & Woodcock, J. (2019). Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335616330_Live_Streamers_on_Twitchtv_as_Social_Media_Influencers_Chances_and_Challenges_for_Strategic_Communication

10 Weeks have flown by! Thank you all so much for the support and for playing this silly little daily game. If you just found our page, or you missed a day this week, this recap is for you. 💜

Links for Week 10 are below the cut! ⬇️