What are those TikTok NPC livestreams? : outoftheloop

[+] parpol@programming.dev 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] SwearingRobin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

But what does it all mean? How does it work? How does paying affect the stream? It baffles me how this kind of thing is entertainment for some people. I must be missing something about it

[-] Burninator05@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

It means that, from our perspective, there are a lot of people with more money than sense. I agree that it entirely stupid and I would never consider throwing money at a screen this way.

During live streams you can send creators messages. If you pay to send a "special" message the creator will do what the message says. That's it.

I was reading an article about a streamer who can make 10k a night by streaming her sleeping. She doesn't do anything other than sleep with the lights on and people give her money.

[-] BertramDitore@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Since this community has been pretty inactive I just gotta say, this is the perfect question for this place, imo. Ask more! I only knew about these weirdo NPCs from a random podcast that happened to mention it. Otherwise I would have never known about this dystopian cash disposal system.

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

In video games, NPC characters have pre-canned responses to stimulus. If you say something, they do a specific thing. If you walk past, they do a specific thing. They're like robots. They're programmed with a small set of responses.

On tiktok, these creators pretend they're NPCs with precanned responses. Give them an ice cream gift, they pretend to eat it. Give them a rose gift, they pretend to smell it. And those gifts make them money.

Why do people enjoy it? I have no idea. Some control kink? Some weird fetish? No clue.

To be fair, there's one guy on TikTok who does the NPC gimmick, but he's an actual blacksmith pretending to be a Skyrim blacksmith. He responds with Skyrim quotes and everything. That's moderately entertaining.

Out of the loop