We typically love the idea of gifts, well, except when you feel like you owe someone a gift back because you feel obligated to do it. In some cases, the overused phrase of “giving is better than getting” is true but there is also a twist to that idea that is typically not talked about. Whenever you give something to a friend or give out of generosity even though you have good intentions, selfish implications can be present as sometimes people can use that gift to feel like the bigger and better person. This of course can be on the extreme end of things, but it is important to remember that this is similar to the idea of the gift economy that Marcel Mauss talks about.
Ok so hopefully, we are not that selfish and do not have the “so, what are you going to do for me now?" toxic mentality, but what we do know is that friendships (healthy ones at least) are built out of mutual respect and understanding. Usually, gifts are the best way to show love for another friend, and that gift is often reciprocated in the form of another gift or even time and effort for something else. This is how a typical physical friendship may work, but how does the gift economy translate into the social media world? This question becomes increasingly intriguing to dissect if one of your relationships is solely based on online interactions and not having that intimate foundation of physically being in the same room as the person you are friends with. We can see this idea prominent in many different forms of social media with one of them being Twitch as one of the biggest examples of the gift economy in action.
Twitch is an online streaming platform that allows people to go live from the comfort of their home and it allows them to do numerous activities ranging from ASMR, gaming, chatting, and so on. This platform has become increasingly popular since its release and many people enjoy watching their favorite streamers with who they build relationships. These relationships are built on the foundation of an audience member to performer not unlike how a concert goer watching their favorite band member only that it is online and often times become more personal. For a world dealing with a pandemic, this is a great solution to the boredom of staying home all day and avoiding people in public. So, what exactly does this have to do with the gift economy? Well, Twitch has its own form of an economy that is separated into two parts: subscriptions and bits. These are what streamers rely on to make money for their time and effort put into streams, which is a lot more than many people realize.
This is the type of hobby that can turn into a job as you can imagine, yet many streamers feel uncomfortable when asking for donations or subscriptions even at that because many of them claim that they are simply doing it for fun. There are still of course many streamers who have no problem asking for these things (and might even be really rude about it), but a good majority of streamers seem to hate to ask for people to give something to them. Some of the bigger streamers even cap their donations or take donations off entirely to avoid missing out on reading a donation or feel weird about it. But why is this an issue? Receiving money is something that we would all be excited about is it not? Not necessarily. From Mauss’s point of view, we create a dynamic through gifts that makes people feel as though now they owe something back in exchange for their generosity. This reminds me of the time I gifted one of my friends a game recently on Steam because I wanted to play it with her and she told me, “No, don’t do that, I don’t have the money to pay you back!”. Even though this was clearly a gift and I was not expecting anything in return, this is the perfect example of how a streamer might feel weird about accepting donations and subs as some of them feel as though they can not pay you back properly.
This does not mean that this is a
bad economy though and many people are appreciative of the fact that you give
them something. One of my now close online friends who goes by PerditaVulpecula
on Twitch is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet (y’all should
totally follow her) and she is thankful for all of the donations and subscriptions
she receives. By the gift economy standards, her content is what we are receiving
and in exchange, we are viewing it as time is also a valuable resource on both
ends. Sometimes, time can even be more valuable than money in this case as setting
up the stream and overlays can take quite a bit of time and of course, the
viewer themselves watch the stream for entertainment and for support of that
certain streamer. This idea is taken one step further though when donations or
subs are incurred. Again, we see this exchange of gifts from one person to
another. In Perdita’s case, if someone donates or subs to her, she will then thank
them for what they gave her. Subscriptions go one step further as they will receive
custom emotes for their subscription for as long as the subscription lasts, thus
further extending the gratitude of the streamer like Perdita. In this case, there
is a duality of obligation and no obligation present here. Perdita does
obviously not have to stream, and she does not have to make emotes for people
who are subscribed to her, but she does it because she enjoys spending time
with her audience and wants to make sure that they feel appreciated. This is
the same concept for the viewer as well; they are not obligated to watch nor are
they obligated to give any kind of money, but they do it because they enjoy spending
time with her and want to make sure she feels appreciated.
This sort of gift economy is unique
as it blends the idea of friendship and celebrity into one. Many viewers see
streamers as this amazing individual similar to that of celebrity status but
also as a friend whom they can potentially confide into about certain situations.
We see that Mauss’s theory still holds to be mostly accurate even in this
situation as this sort of relationship is not something we are forced into nor do we feel it to be truly necessary, but
it is done out of a social obligation that does not seem so sinister as mentioned in the first paragraph due to the fact that the viewer and streamer feel
a genuine human connection present. There are many viewers who donate even without
being asked to, which can only be derived from a special type of relationship
as in many other cases people are not willing to spend so much money otherwise.
This intimacy perpetuates a dynamic that will continue to grow as the number of
streamers continue to rise and so do the number of viewers which will then
continue this particular cycle within the gift economy.
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