… is going to be an experiment in just winging it. With my gaming blog, it at least had that game focus. My other blog was more on the lines of personal investing and tech. It was early on when Diablo III was first released (May 2012) that I spun that off into that gaming blog. This one is for whatever else (though I am likely going to avoid politics since it’s just beyond polarizing at this point especially in the US). I decided to start posting beginning on April 1st (and not with an April Fools angle) since in Japan/Japanese culture, the month of April signifies new beginnings/renewals. It also represents the start of the academic and fiscal year.
QUICK 2025 NOTE: I merged my old tech/personal investing blog into this one when I migrated everything over from Blogger to WordPress in April 2025. The post entry preceding this one (from 2023) is what used to be my old “The Bit Stream” blog while this post onwards, is part of my new “Jisseikatsu” blog. My gaming blog will also be migrated to WordPress but be primarily archival mode.
Since January, one of the “accidents” I’ve been knee-deep in has been travel/outdoor/music type of IRL streams on Twitch (primarily Asian based streamers) while me/my other half are back in a long-distance situation again (she is back in Japan due to family reasons; she knows the money I used to spend in gaming is now being used to donate [*] to some of these streamers). While it has been a different, fun, and interesting experience, I also knew there was going to be this initial novelty factor. I therefore decided to see how it would actually hold my attention for the longer term, so I set the end of March as a deadline to decide how I would proceed (plus a bunch of gifted subs are going to expire in early April).
For the most part, I decided starting from April that I would begin paring back on the number of these channels I continue following as well as watching (and thus maintaining subs to). I’m often times not actually actively viewing a stream (I may have it running in the background)/not engaging much in chat with the exception of around 3-4 streamers. Those channels I consider the “keepers” which I also don’t mind continuing to support going forward (so long as the content continues being of interest). The music focused ones are a bit different since they are nice as BGM while you do other things. Many of the others though are like “pop in and then pop out”. And when several streams of interest are overlapping simultaneously, it’s not the most conducive viewing experience to me.
I guess one of the main issues surrounding this decision to pull back was the increased amount of time I found myself in front of a computer screen since January (there’s other productive things I want to do). Additionally, when most streamers start hitting the 4-hour mark, I begin fading. Even gaming for me in recent years was rarely in long sessions like that (I’d frequently be AFK in a game). There are also the time zone differences. It’s one of the challenges with this category where it has a higher degree of interaction with chat/community; it’s difficult past a certain point to have quality engagement and/or the ability to support a large number of folks (and for some, the streaming scheduling just doesn’t line up). I also have no desire to be a “professional viewer” on the platform.
But some of these interactions has provided me topics that I used to broach/partake of in the past when it came to certain aspects of Japanese culture/society; like why corporate progress is so slow, why the music/entertainment industry is the way it is, why extreme dichotomies exist, etc. Basically, perfect material for this other blog of mine.
[*] – early on, I set a “budget” for gifting subs/using bits on Twitch (given the percentage that Twitch/Amazon takes at tier 1 for subs). I deemed both a waste of money given that donating/tipping directly makes that money go farther.
