YouTube streaming – yes or no?

27/100

I am sure everyone youtubes. I am hooked. I have some personal favorite youtubers whose videos I never miss. It is strangely therapeutic and engaging. I love gaming, funny, cooking and makeup videos a lot. Today however, I want to talk about a specific portion of YouTubing which is streaming.

Youtube streaming has been around for sometime but I have been into it since 2020, thanks to covid and lockdown. However, even after things did open I have found myself hooked to YouTube in general and streaming in particular. My partner hooked me onto it as one of our favorite standup comedians, Samay Raina, started streaming chess. He streams other games and random stuff too but majorly chess.

I think I was hooked because he adds humor to the game which otherwise can be a bit monotonous for someone who does not understand it completely. Even now, I am mostly hooked to his streams but I can watch other people stream chess as well. I even understand and guess the moves. I still don’t play it and that is the portion I am most amazed about. Essentially, that is the reason I decided to do a post on steaming. YouTube streaming is basically you watching someone else do things. Whether they are playing games, surfing on omegle or simply reacting to other videos. You are watching someone else play (chess in my case) and having fun without actually playing the sport. Isn’t that mind blowing? Don’t tell me that is what audience does on tournaments, this is different. I have access to everything that guy has and I can play the game but I choose to instead watch him play. Oh and it’s super fun, even addictive. In 2020, India was part of a international national online chess tournament and this guy streamed all those games online with help of official chess commentators. Let me tell you this, I enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed live cricket. Even more because there I am not able to see it this up close. Not just that, India was in finals and our player seemingly lost the game due to website glitch. All the people watching the game appealed to the authorities and the decision was A TIE. We won a gold and some contribution came from that youtube stream. Isn’t it amazing? Gives me goosebumps to even recall it.

Streaming has also evolved so much. With lockdown, most things are virtual and it makes more people to join in. I have seen Viswanathan Anand play and teach along with Magnus Carlsen while a comedian was commentating. It is just too mind blowing for me, I am so sorry if you are unable to comprehend the same. Recently due to covid situation in India, Samay Raina and Tanmay Bhat did streaming for two days last weekend for 9 hours each with tons of people joining in and collected more than 6 million rupees, that should help you gauge the power of streaming. They were able to get likes of Konkana Sen, Raftaar, Badshah, all comedians, actors to come and play games while people got entertained and donated as per their wish. I was happy to see it in bits and pieces and can attest 100% entertainment.

The purpose is to introduce people who don’t already watch it, to streaming. YouTube in general has made me happy and kept me sane in these tough times so I thought I should share the happiness. With that, can you tell me if you too stream or watch streams? If yes, which streams do you watch? Tell me so I can do too and expand my horizons 🙂