*looks for old man shouting at clouds pic*
I know a few people that watch twitch type streams because, and this is odd, they find the people doing them entertaining!
It's no different to watching TV, going to see a local performer at the pub/church hall or the local amateur dramatics group doing a play, except that it's a different subject matter.
My brother loves watching/listening to one of the twitch streams because he enjoys the chat between the streamers and seeing them play games he personally doesn't have the time to play or doesn't like playing much but enjoys the story of. The guys he mainly watches would probably have once been on the pub circuit doing musical/stand up 30 years ago (or doing it as a side job on weekends), or possibly working behind the scenes for a "name" in TV/Radio (helping write the scripts, do the music etc), what streaming does is allows them to get a larger audience who can see/hear them daily/weekly without having to spend hours travelling (and they don't have to travel all over the country either).
I watch the odd twitch stream of games both "video" and "tabletop", even one group who build models/lego for much the same reason, it can be fun (especially in the background if I'm doing something that would otherwise be slightly boring*)
The thing is, to be successful you do have to have a talent for it, either to be a very good technically (IE you can play the games well), or to be a good entertainer, the ones that tend to stay and make a living off it are a combination of both, often with some training or education in the field of entertainment.
You also tend to need to be pretty dedicated to it, as if you miss a few streams or don't keep your content going up people stop watching pretty fast, so it can lead to burn out as what started out as fun can turn into something that makes your favourite hobby a Job.
I've seen people in several parts of the entertainment industry describe how they landed their "dream job", only to come to start to hate what had been something they loved because spending 40+ hours a week dealing with it as a job resulted in them getting truly fed up with it (the video games industry is a good example, people might love the idea of being paid to play games, but when they've spent months doing nothing but playing the same few levels of a game repeatedly 8 hours a day to find bugs, they tend to find their passion for it as a hobby has gone).
Also some streamers make a load, most will likely be making not much more than a living wage if that, some of the ones I follow are very good at what they do but it's niche (wargaming) so they don't really make any money out of it directly, but they do it to make a bit extra as it costs them nothing and they're doing it whilst working on something they'd have done anyway (either painting models, or playing the game), so they're effectively monetising what is a hobby, and getting some social interaction from people with the same interest at the same time.
Interesting that this has come up , I don't watch/use twitch except for the mods section of it. Can anyone explain the whole gifting subs business? Curious as I've seen it mentioned a few times and don't know what it means. Is a streamer literally "giving away" their subscribers?
As I understand it, some platforms (Twitch) offer both free streams and subscriber streams, if you watch the free stream you can only watch it live/with minimal ability to rewind, and less ability to interact with the streamer so people will buy a month's sub (so they can say pause the stream, or rewind it to watch it again).
What people can do is buy additional subs and "gift them" to other viewers of the stream, and as the streamers get a large percentage of the cost of every sub used for their channel, it's basically a way to give them some money (whilst at the same time giving other viewers the additional benefits that come from a sub to the stream).
IIRC if you've got Amazon Prime you get a free sub a month on Twitch, so if you use that for your favourite streamer they'll get some money from it
*If I'm assembling models or painting them I tend to have an audiobook, radio play, or twitch type stream with people who are entertaining to listen to as background.
