30. Streamer Preparations
30. Streamer Preparations
***
Only when it was nearly lunchtime did I haul myself up and shuffle toward the bathroom.
Shhh.
After finishing my shower like that, I returned to my room, changed clothes, and turned on the PC just like any other day.
This had been my ordinary routine ever since I fell into this world.
Except for the first day, the start of every single day had been exactly the same, without exception.
"...No wonder my body's such garbage."
I let out a hollow laugh and got up from the chair for a moment to stretch.
My unbound silver hair kept drifting across my vision, but I left it as it was and loosened up my body out of habit.
Crack.
Pop.
Along with the sounds of knotted muscles releasing here and there, the stiffness seemed to ease a little.
Back in the world of Black Ark, staying still for even a moment had been difficult. But now, I rarely moved at all.
I just sat in the chair as if nailed to it, worked the PC, and browsed various communities and websites to learn about this world.
Since so much of history had changed and so many things differed from my common sense, honestly, just hopping from site to site made the time vanish in the blink of an eye.
After finishing my brief stretching like that, I sat back down in the fuzzy chair in front of the PC.
Feeling the plush softness, I grabbed the mouse and tapped at the keyboard.
Instead of another community or a major website, I went to NewTube first.
NewTube had established itself as the undisputed top video platform in this world too, so whenever I was curious about something, it worked well as a substitute for a search engine.
And what I was curious about right now.
—Becoming a tweetie streamer.
—Preparing to stream.
To get to the point, it came down to those two things.
A few days earlier, when the cheating controversy had forced me to prepare to go live, I had learned how to start a tweetie stream.
But simply turning on a stream probably wasn't all it took to become a streamer.
I figured some minimal preparation was necessary.
Sure, I'd ended up dueling famous streamers and my name had gotten out there.
But accepting their duels without a moment's hesitation had only been possible because I had rock-solid confidence in myself.
Within Another World, no matter what it was, I didn't think there was anything I was worse at than them.
So I'd been able to accept something like the Arena without much hesitation.
But.
"Reality's different..."
I muttered that and searched on NewTube.
Right now, I needed to learn more about streamers and internet broadcasting.
I wondered what to search for, then simply typed what I wanted into the search bar.
—Becoming a tweetie streamer.
Really direct wording.
Even as I typed it into NewTube, I laughed at how absurd it was.
Would anything even come up if I searched like this?
I thought that and hit Enter.
—[A tweetie streamer explains internet broadcasting]
—[5 surefire ways to succeed with a personal stream]
—[A detailed guide to internet broadcasting and tips for growing your viewer count!]
"It actually... comes up?"
It really did. Quite a lot, too.
I guess a lot of people think the same way I do, I thought, and clicked on a video with a decent view count.
—[How to do internet broadcasting and tips for growing your viewer count!]
The video started playing the moment I clicked it.
"Okay. For those of you who clicked on this video, I'll start with the key points!"
The NewTuber got straight to the point from the very beginning.
After that, the bright voice of a female NewTuber began walking viewers through the details.
1. How to become a tweetie streamer.
2. Escaping small-time status.
3. Income.
4. Why going full-time as a streamer is hard.
Honestly, I'd meant to just watch the first part and close the video, but the female NewTuber's voice was so pleasant that I ended up watching the whole fifteen-minute video without realizing it.
"No... why is this fun?"
My takeaway from the video, more than anything else, was simply that it was fun.
I guess you could say she was just good at talking. She brought up various topics at just the right moments to hold the viewer's interest, and contrary to my initial expectation, I ended up watching it to the end.
The information in the video all stuck in my head, too.
The method for becoming a tweetie streamer under point 1 was just a matter of installing a simple program and going live as long as you had a PC. The supplementary explanation mostly covered a streamer's mindset and how to treat viewers.
As for the remaining points 2, 3, and 4, they were about how hard it is when you have no viewers, how going full-time is risky at first because there's no income, and so on...
The NewTuber's voice had sounded bright and cheerful at the start, but from that point on it sank as though laden with hardship. I couldn't help feeling a little sympathy.
"...Attention-grabbing stream titles. A persona."
And when I picked out the key points I could apply to myself, it came down to roughly those two things.
'Baiting.'
'Concept.'
Honestly, while watching the video, points 2, 3, and 4 didn't resonate with me at all.
Because I never once thought that if I streamed, I'd become what people call a "small-time streamer" with few viewers.
Last night, after my duel with Plea, I'd briefly browsed the Another World communities before bed, and those communities were already overflowing with talk about me and Plea.
Honestly, if I went live right now, wouldn't at least a few hundred people watch my stream?
I was thinking that even now.
After that, I looked up more videos and saw ones saying all sorts of things about streamers: that gathering regular viewers was incredibly hard, that effort and fun weren't proportional, and so on.
And I began to think that being a streamer wasn't as easy as I'd assumed.
—You have to be an entertaining person.
—It helps if your looks are exceptionally good.
—You have to know how to bait attention.
—If you're good at a popular game, you can blow up easily.
—You need your own special content.
—You need a good voice.
As I looked over the various conditions needed to succeed as a streamer like that, I was able to reach one conclusion.
Putting all those videos together, successful streamers either had to be far from ordinary or have some standout trait of their own.
You didn't need every condition listed above, but the more you had, the better.
And.
Before I knew it, I was checking off those conditions one by one.
And I felt that I easily met about three of them.
Looks, baiting, skill.
"Ah, ahh. Ahh!?"
Wondering what my voice sounded like, I made some sounds, then got embarrassed without meaning to and just shut my mouth.
And carefully, I thought that maybe it wasn't three, but four that applied to me.
"Ahem, ahem!"
Flustered, I cleared my throat for no reason and went back to browsing NewTube.
As I was scrolling through NewTube like that, a title caught my eye.
[What is your reason for wanting to become a streamer?]
Click.
As if entranced, I clicked on the video.
"...The reason you're watching this video might simply be money, or wanting to get famous. Or wanting to work comfortably, or wanting to live while playing games, and so on. There are many possible reasons, but honestly, if you succeed, you can have all of those things, and they're all valid."
Those were the words of a man that followed.
The rest of the NewTuber's video wasn't a list of tips for becoming a streamer.
It was more like a straightforward explanation of the reality of the job.
Having to cater to the whims of viewers who were complete strangers.
Unstable income.
The insecurity of it as a profession.
The fact that you could lose everything in an instant over some trivial incident.
It seemed to be explaining how difficult the job could be in practice.
And while watching it, I gradually sank into thought.
"I..."
My reason for wanting to become a streamer.
When I asked myself how I'd ended up interested in streaming, the answer came to me immediately, without any real deliberation.
Simply because of the strong urging of a streamer named Plea.
She'd said I would definitely succeed.
And when asked what I was doing now, I'd also felt that I needed some kind of identity to present myself with.
A job that would let me keep playing Another World—the thing I was most interested in right now—and turn that interest into work.
And among those, the one I considered easiest and most comfortable was being a streamer.
And thinking about how Plea's viewer count had climbed to 70,000 yesterday, I also thought there was no reason I couldn't be a streamer.
As for baiting, talk about me was already flowing through the Another World community day after day.
Tap tap tap.
I immediately searched "Another World Rin" on NewTube.
Dozens of videos about me easily popped up.
Their view counts were all in the hundreds of thousands, and occasionally some had passed a million.
The only streamers I'd actually watched were two women: Hana and Plea.
Both of them were what people called "big-name streamers," with viewer counts in the thousands or over ten thousand.
Maybe I'd only seen the bright side of the streamer profession, but... I felt I was more than capable of it too.
"...But why am I thinking about this all by myself?"
And now that I thought about it, why was I agonizing over this alone?
There was someone who had clung to me, baiting me in every way possible, just to get my friend request and my attention.
So wouldn't it be fine for me to use her...?
The thought crossed my mind for a moment.
On top of that, I also thought that connections were meant to be used at times like this.
Come to think of it, I'd almost chosen the hard path while leaving an easy one right in front of me.
"Is she online?"
Serin had clearly intended to spend today learning about streamers, but in the end, she changed her mind and decided to log into Another World instead.