The Twitch creators explaining the news to Gen Z

0:10Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore, where we are talking to the most interesting people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Taney. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore. I'm the co-host of the show. And with me, as always, is the other co-host of the show. It's Ben Smith. Ben, you're a little bit under the weather, but you made it, and you were, of course, got your energy and excitement up for our guests today. You would never miss these guests.

0:38Max:I am excited to be here. I'm ready to learn. We both have a lot to learn on this episode. Sometimes we come in and we've got like one million questions about a guest who we know incredibly well. Sometimes they're friends of ours. David Remnick, the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, was on here talking about Ben's parents and their personal politics. And other times, we are completely in the dark about this new corner of media, which is always exciting and honestly a little bit terrifying. I think we consider ourselves to be expert ball knowers when it comes to media. So it's always really shocking and honestly kind of terrifying when there's just this massive, huge corner of the business that we don't know.

1:17In this case, Twitch. Our guests on the show this week are two of the three hosts of the popular podcast from Vox Media, Lemonade Stand. One of those guests is Doug Reden, who's better known as DougDoug. He has millions of followers on Twitch, Instagram, YouTube. And the other is his co-host, Aiden McCraig. Both of these guys are really big gamers on Twitch. They host other podcasts. They're kind of like these new media kind of do-it-all figures who have kind of evolved from being gamers on Twitch and streaming there to having an actual interesting, widely listened to podcast about business and news and politics.

1:57Ben, are you as confused as I am by the pivot from like gaming and streaming yourself playing League of Legends to talking about like Fed mortgage data, which is what they do on their podcast?

2:11Max:Yeah, I mean, I do feel the last time I really checked in on Twitch, it was kids streaming and in voicing over their streams of, you know, video games. And I do have the sense that things have changed a lot, but I'm very eager to learn from these guys what is happening over there at the moment. We have a lot of questions to ask the Lemonade Stand guys. So let's jump in. I was explaining to Ben kind of the idea for, you know, for us having you guys on the show. And I was trying to describe who you all are. I was struggling because I was like, okay, do I describe these guys as Twitch streamers? Do I say that they're podcasters?

2:48And how do I describe the podcast? Is it a business podcast? But they talk about politics also on it, and they talk about technology. And I think that our audience probably also is kind of wondering some of the same things. So can you describe what Lemonade Stand is to people and kind of start there? And also kind of talk about like the genesis of the podcast. How did it kind of come together? Aiden is the genesis, so I will let him kick it off. I think the way it really happened was Atriok, our third co-host who isn't here, aka Brandon, you know, take your pick. He was making more content that focused around these topics of business, politics, and tech on his own YouTube channel.

3:26Like his work that had primarily focused around fun gaming stuff for a while he worked at NVIDIA had slowly transformed into this channel that focused on more serious topics like that. And then his kind of ability to navigate, parse them and show it to this younger audience that he had, like primarily in their 20s. And I've known Brandon for a really long time. I've been friends with him for around 10 years now. And we, you know, we just chat about politics and business stuff because we're one of the only people in each other's lives where we could talk about that stuff with like our other friends aren't very excited to talk about it.

4:06So naturally, we just come together and like, you see this thing? You see this thing? And had fun with it. And I started to have the idea of like, what if we did a show together? Because I think his content was starting to find this nice, I would say, non-reactionary niche on the internet that I really liked. And I think it fit the way I wanted to go about things and explore these topics in the world. and I asked him I was like hey what do you think about doing a podcast together like the two of us so that evening after we had chatted about this we have a weekly basketball pickup game that Doug also goes to and after we had talked about this at the basketball game Brandon was streaming alone on his phone at a Chili's and and at the end of the stream drops this idea that you know Aiden came up to me today and we're thinking about doing a podcast and that's all I really know about it Doug who doesn't normally watch Brandon's stream happens to be tuned in for this little thing like happens to be watching for this five minute space and time sees that we're doing that and then came to us and was like hey I think this sounds really cool I think I can kind of complete this triangle of like business politics and tech and like really show my interest in that area specifically as well as my mutual interest in these other things.

5:25What if we all did the show together and we all got dinner and discussed it? Like, what could this show look like? We're really happy with what we came up with. And that was the genesis of the show. Was that was Brandon choosing to talk about it publicly in Chili's basically. So, Doug, you were watching you're watching the Chili's live stream. So, yeah, you're like, OK, you know, Brandon, Atriok is streaming from Chili's. I How do the people in Chili's feel about that, do you think? That's a great question. It was the instant I saw that a friend of mine was streaming himself eating at Chili's, I knew it would be a cultural touchstone moment that I simply could not pass up on.

6:07Me and 2 ,000 other people. We all realized, and it really had been an exclusive kind of club ever since. For me, the way I came across it was largely at this point, I don't, you know, as a pretty busy person, I do not have the time to sit around watching 10 hours of Twitch a day. there are plenty of people who do that. Streaming is a platform that requires an enormous amount of time investment as a viewer, right? Kind of by definition. And so I'll often do what I call scrolling, flipping through channels. You know, you open it up at night, kind of check in and see what everybody's doing. So I have 30 channels and I'd be like, oh, this person's doing something.

6:39I open it for a couple minutes, check it out and then close it. So that happened here. I am in the type of what I would say is a normal human being who has no interest in streaming myself eating at a Chili's. Brandon has the ability to just be confident and do that. To be fair to him, though, there are, I'm sure you've all heard stories of very disrespectful or controversial people who are just, you know, streaming themselves out in the world. That is not Brandon. That was a one-off thing where he was at a table by himself in the corner, not bothering anybody. But yes, it is quite ridiculous.

7:09Max:So much of what we talk about in this show, what we were talking about with the Instagram CEO, was this sense that there's kind of a convergence on something that starts to look like television? Guys talking about news and politics, news of the day, things like that on a screen that increasingly is the big screen, not the phone or the laptop. I'm curious how you think about that. I would disagree. I mean, I think to me, the hallmark of television was it's a curated number, a limited number of curated channels. And I think the big distinction between that and user-generated content now is you get funneled into your niches.

7:44You know, I am in a niche for a specific video game that came out 23 years ago for the specific guy in the specific competitive scene. And then I'm really into a specific type of Japanese cooking channels, not all of them, specifically ramen, right? You know, it's like you get into all these very niche channels and we've actually discussed this on the show and the sort of worry that people are having a harder time culturally connecting over a single moment because with TV, there was so few options that everybody would see the Seinfeld finale. But But I actually, I would disagree in the sense that I think most people are now in their tiny little silos.

8:17And maybe there's 10 of those silos, but they're increasingly become, you know, microscopic relative. I mean, that's the only reason we are successful, right? Nobody would have approved what I do on Twitch or YouTube for television in the past. But the only reason it works is because there is, let's say, a million people who are really passionate about this particularly strange thing that I do. I think more so people are really getting into these specific niches and following individuals rather than allowing, let's say, a Netflix to curate it for them.

8:45Max:And just, you know, I mean, the story you're telling is sort of the story of Twitch, as I understand it, over the last several years, which is, in some sense, like the last time I really checked in on it, it was really a gaming platform. And now it seems it's broadened so much and so much of the conversation isn't about gaming. I'm curious, like, if you could, I mean, your own story and then also how you've seen Twitch evolve in that. We're not necessarily away from gaming because obviously gaming is still this kind of huge cultural pillar. But it does feel like the platform has broadened really dramatically.

9:15Right. To, like, now you're watching your friend live stream from Chili's. Yes. Yeah, it's interesting how it has evolved because, you know, I first became interested in it a decade ago when it was 100 % gaming. Like, that's what drew me in. And then over the years, particularly in say 2016, 17, Twitch opened up this category that they called IRL, which is short for in real life, the sort of gamer acronym for not playing a video game, literally anything else. Actually, it was called just chatting for a while, but it's kind of alternated between the two. And that quickly started to kind of surpass everything else with gaming because gaming is a particular hobby that people do and going out into the world could include literally anything.

9:54So all of these different creative fields started kind of flooding into it in the mid-2010s, like musicians, like programmers, like people talking about stocks, people talking about news. That's when you started to see the news and politics streamers start to pop up when there was actually an allowed category for it. You weren't even able to stream on the website without playing video games in the first few years. So it just kind of started to take off. Well, I think there's actually an interesting cycle. cycle so before twitch was twitch it was a site called justin tv and the founder of it and forgive me his name was justin i forget his last name but him and his friends founded the live streaming company to stream their life 24 hours a day and that was the idea like sharing their life very directly and then i think after a year or so they launched twitch as like this secondary section of the site to stream video games and twitch became way more popular than justin tv i think gaming was sort of the vehicle that brought the site and live streaming like into the semi-mainstream at the time and then it kind of curved back the other way which is interesting to see it's like a lot it was formed with the idea of what it's servicing now but i think culturally people weren't really ready for that, like these constant 24-7 in real life live streams.

11:14And then now it's the way to like gain viewership on the channel. Like you're kind of trapping yourself in a box a lot of the time if you're a person who streams only games on the platform.

11:25Max:Yeah. Did you feel like in your kind of in your own experience that you were getting bored of just talking about gaming and branching out or that your audience was getting bored of gaming and pulling you toward other topics? I mean, for me, my interest shifted. I think with a platform like Twitch, there's platforms that are, let's say, more about viral moments or cultural moments like TikTok, where you really need to kind of stay in the cultural zeitgeist. Twitch is a little bit different, which is that you're getting an extraordinarily dedicated, smaller audience. It's a little more similar to, I would say, New York Times versus Substack.

11:55You know, with Substack, you just have that audience that's going to show up and read whatever. Now, there's a comparison we understand. Yeah. And so I think it's somewhat similar there where your audience is pretty dedicated once you get them on Twitch. It's extraordinarily hard to convince somebody, hey, come watch me for eight hours a day, do whatever I feel like. But once people are there, they're bought in, right? And so at that point, you do actually have flexibility to sort of explore what you want. For me personally, because I came from a programming and software background, I just kind of naturally started to explore that and realized it was quite interesting and unique compared to what other people are doing.

12:28So I just sort of followed my interests at the same time that I started getting too addicted to Twitter, which got me interested in business and politics and whatnot. So my interest just naturally kind of expanded beyond gaming. But part of the reason I did then message Brandon after that Chili's stream was because I was feeling like there wasn't an avenue on Twitch to talk about these things. You know, I was really, I'm doing silly comedy gaming type things. And it was not a natural transition to suddenly talk about the policy consequences of AI data centers, right? And so for me, it was like, okay, this will be a distinct project where that is really definitively what we are trying to do.

13:04And I actually keep that separate from my personal Twitch channel, which is still me being wacky and making phallic jokes. But yeah, whereas for – and you can do either. For Brendan, like he slowly morphed his main brand and content to be about politics and technology and business. For me, I've sort of kept my own brands, let's say lighthearted, open-ended, non-political, and then started this podcast specifically as a way to channel that interest. What's the differences between the audiences for Lemonade Stand and for, you know, your Twitch stream and Aiden for your other podcasts? Like, what's the Venn diagram look like?

13:39Are these completely different audiences? Are they a lot of the same people? Is it easy to kind of keep them separate or are they starting to bleed? So it's hard to know for certain, but from the you know the little bit of data we do have for example you know youtube will tell you oh these channels you have a lot of overlap with the viewers in this channels and that will include our podcast channel and it will include brandon atriox channel as well my conclusion is that the reason the show works at all is because we basically the three of us all had a large kind of young gamer audience that wasn't directly watching us for anything serious at all but then once we proposed to this project and say, hey, we're really passionate about this, it was a natural kind of flow into that.

14:20So I would argue the Venn diagram is nearly a circle. I think there's very few folks who, you know, from the traditional media world would like, you know, I'd like three young white guys to talk about these issues in an uninformed way. You know, we put in serious effort.

14:35Max:That's not that unlike cable news. Yeah. But, you know, we certainly are not, we are not journalists and we do not claim to be journalists, we're really pitching as we're three friends who are interested in this stuff. This is what we like talking about off of Twitch anyways. If you, person who already likes us for the type of creative voice we have or personality we have, is interested in either starting to learn about this stuff or you, like us, have wanted to chat about it, but you're not seeing that very commonly in the normal YouTube Twitch ecosystem, here's a place to do it. Is the audience, I assume the audience is largely Gen Z, maybe some Gen Alpha men.

15:10Is that kind of like what the target is or is it kind of broader than that? Is that reductive of me to assume? It leans a bit more millennial, to be honest, like the higher end of Gen Z and lower end of millennials. Like our biggest pocket is people who are age, I think, 25 to 32. That's like our largest portion of our audience. And then I think like 18 to 24 is the second biggest. And then like 33 to 40 ish is the third. So it sits around there. We don't have, I think, as many young people as I think outside parties would expect. Like there aren't a lot of like 16 year olds watching this show.

15:49It's definitely I would say the face of our viewership is the 24 to five year old who graduated within the past couple of years and is trying to figure out their career.

16:04because the show is broad there's a lot of politics news of the day as well as business tech you know some kind of evergreen roundup type stuff how are you guys deciding what makes an episode of of lemonade stand i think week to week we we have a meeting where we either pick some sort of ongoing current event we think is particularly interesting that could be at the forefront of everything, or we'll try to create some sort of evergreen concept that will be interesting for a much longer period of time than an episode that focuses on a current event. And maybe some weeks we have a guest. And we kind of balance between these three things, trying not to get too caught up in one or the other, because I think all of these directions are interesting to us personally.

16:51And also, we want to perform well in the YouTube algorithm. them. Like we want to have something that draws your attention with the title and the thumbnail that makes it like a reason to click on it and be invested in it. And is the reason why you guys do like evergreen content? Is it because you're thinking about YouTube and what does well there? Like, are you thinking like, we don't want this to be disposable and like not relevant in a day? Like we want this to be something that can live on for a long time and kind of get picked up by, you know, whatever magic is going on with YouTube? Yeah, absolutely.

17:24Like it's so if I were to compare this to the other podcasts I do, that's a comedy show. There's almost nothing about each episode that depends on current events. Not a lot would like date each episode. So when you look at the backlog over time, a lot of people that became fans of the show, like maybe two years in, will go and listen to the entire backlog. And when you create a show that's primarily built around current events. You just do not have that same appeal. But when you look at some of our strongest episodes, I think like one of our personal favorites is the conspiracy episode we did where we cover a bunch of different historically prevalent conspiracy theories, at least in the US.

18:03And we go through them and what the like what the origin of the conspiracy is, break them down. We have like costumes aboard behind us. We're having a lot of fun with it. And that episode, if you look at its performance over time is dominating the other episodes around it that performed way better in a 24 hour or 48 hour period. And we want to have episodes that fans can access, either get, you know, directly recommended later, or if they're just sifting through the backlog of the show because they like it, there's more of a reason to click on that. Do you feel pressure to have your entire life as a part of these streams and like benefits for your viewers and subscribers?

18:40Have you felt like your private life becoming almost synonymous with the types of content that you're putting out on one of your two podcasts and all of the extras and bonuses and whatnot? Yes, is the answer. It's hard. It's hard. There's no separation of work and personal life really in this business. And that can mean that you are literally putting a camera on yourself as you're walking around your day, as some people do. but even just for the average content creator like myself you know essentially we've all monetized our hobbies i enjoyed video games and so i made it my job and now when i play video games i'm thinking about my job same with youtube same with twitch like what you know engaging with any of the things i normally enjoy and then the my getaway was reading about technology and business and now i've turned that into a job and now that also is really so it is extraordinarily hard i think to set a balance.

19:32And that's any YouTuber and Twitch streamer you talk to will basically complain about that same thing. When we're all in a room together, we talk about this and we say, I'm stressed out. It feels like there's too much going on. It feels like there's endless pressure to do this. And that's just true of, you know, any kind of gig work, I think, but certainly the ecosystem is encouraging you do more all the time, monetize everything, or at least make content out of it in some way, go forever. I think you have to pick and choose where you, where you kind of draw the alliance. Because if you just, I think if you ride the wave of this type of work, you wind up losing a lot of that privacy or separation between your work life and your personal life.

20:14I guess this is maybe mostly a question for Doug, but I'm curious as well, what you think about this, Aiden, like, who is the oldest Twitch streamer who's popular? And like, can you age out of Twitch? Because you mentioned it before, like, you've got to be doing this, like, all the time, all the time. And the people who have time to watch this stuff all the time, it tends to be people who have more time on their hands, a lot of like younger people. Like, is there a point at which you age out or are you going to be like 55, 60 year old, like you're going to be on social security eligible and you'll still be on their streaming?

20:43I mean, obviously every individual handles things differently, but I would say broadly the trend is that people, as they get closer to 40, even mid thirties or early thirties start to kind of taper off. That being said, you I'm about to turn 35 and I have a very hard time seeing myself doing this consistently for five more, you know, six, seven, eight more years. That being said, with Hollywood, for example, you've had entire generations go through that industry, right? The first generation is people around my age, right? Maybe early 40s, mid 40s is kind of the oldest. And those are the folks who got in 2010 when this stuff was brand new and they were, you know, 20 or whatnot.

21:22They were 25. And so you have that kind of old guard, some of whom are still around, generally not as influential. And then every five-ish years, you kind of have a new cohort who comes in. So I was in that sort of second or third cohort. Nowadays, you know, the names you hear about, Kai Sanat or I Show Speed, like these are names that to any kid in high school, like they are celebrities. And also they're so large. They're literally on Super Bowl commercials, right? So it's getting to this kind of crazy level. But they're in a different world. Like that is a – not only is it bigger, it's completely different than what I did, what I grew up with.

21:53So I feel like I'm solidly kind of retiring out of that phase. But really, the answer is it's extraordinarily young. We just don't know. There was, you know, nobody really was doing this at age 40 in the 2010s when this started. And so it's to be determined, really. Yeah, I think the main thing looking at the people who have been successful for long periods of time is they've managed to age like well alongside their audience. So there's some like timeless appeal to them or the way they approach content or they changed to match the trends of their viewers as they got older. Like some way to make sure that your content stays relevant, which is a really difficult tightrope to walk.

22:36And that's why a lot of people fall off of it. And then some people also just don't want to do it anymore. Like they just get over being a streamer or don't want to put the, I would say the insane hours that you have to put in as a streamer as well. Like the amount of time you need to be online streaming for that specific career is very, I would say, very disproportionate compared to doing a podcast where maybe you're recording once or twice a week and you're doing prep for one episode. But a lot of streaming demands you to be like maybe live five days a week for six to ten hours. And that's just the time you're live and not the time that you're prepping and things like that.

23:15So last question, because it's five o 'clock here on the East Coast. You guys have been really generous with your time. Where is this going? You guys have had this show for a year. Where do you see it? Where do you see it all going? And you guys were joking about bidding on the Mozambique tuna boats that were up for sale at auction. Is there a world where you guys do where the show is successful enough where you could do some kind of stunt type of things like that? And where do you see it all going? I think that we already have a trip planned in March of this year to go to China together for a couple weeks and go to a bunch of cities, maybe record some videos while we're there, but record episodes while we're traveling around.

23:57Hopefully scheduling some tours of some Chinese businesses and factories, meeting a lot of people and having just conversations with people on the street.