the year is 2020
you’ll come to find that i’ll be separating these posts into pockets of my life, which currently, i find fit into neat chapters by year. there still is something finite and complete once i drink myself into oblivion on nye of any given year. as if needing to hit the reset button meant needing to find the reset button, only unlocked by overclocking my liver. when i’m not working in an office in a writers room or needed on set, i’m typically free to roam and write from wherever i choose. for some writers, they require the peace, quiet, and solitude of their home. this doesn’t work for me because my home is riddled with distractions. i, therefore, have always loved going to coffee shops. this started as a kid who didn’t even like caffeine but rather found myself having study dates at boba shops. ever since then, i’ve loved the people watching. it was a distraction when trying to study biology or finish math problems, but now as a writer, when i have writers block, i’ll allow myself to create the narrative of any cafe patron and somehow it gets the gears turning again. that ritual of getting an americano, plugging in headphones, putting on anjunadeep’s latest radio show… because implausible during the pandemic. i was subjected back to the peace, quiet and solitude of my home. with all its distractions. so i sought to create an experience that mimicked the cafe. i realized it wasn’t only the people watching, but also knowing there were others around me working just as hard as i pretended to be. even though they were strangers, i wanted to compete with them, or impress them. so now there was a void as i sat day after day in my suffocating apartment.
some other required context around the pandemic was that there were trends that i observed.
due to everyone being at home, twitch and live streaming was popping off in monumental ways. at the time, many who did not understand it, saw twitch as watching others play video games. why watch when you can play? well, there has been a lot of responses to this question. i wasn’t alone in yearning for community and closeness when we were required to socially distance and quarantine, alone. my best friend had started streaming, as an irl (in real life) streamer, biking around los angeles during the pandemic with a camera recording his point of view for all of it. people loved it. they showered him with donations.
co-work videos were a thing on youtube. several hours of someone studying at a library where you could study along with them to feel less alone.
vtubers were rising in popularity. virtual youtubers. popularized in japan through hololive, these influencers/performers would be able to stream without ever exposing their identity and could create any persona they wanted. and because their were also creating their own visual identity, it’s common to see their avatars exhibit the visual characteristics that they associate with or fantasize. expect to find many a anthropomophic animals or animal hybrids (read: cat girls). like an animoji, their avatars scan the streamers face to move just as they do. this was a huge subculture at the time and more and more vtubers were moving to twitch. digital artists and animators were receiving commissions to draw and rig the vtuber models of imagination.
so i wanted to combine both of these and become a vtuber myself. but what would i stream? i wouldn’t consider myself a dedicated gamer, but i did want to recreate that cafe environment. so i started to stream coworking streams, a somewhat novel idea at the time. and i fostered a small community that wanted the same thing i did. a place to hang out and be productive together.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/883281692
among other weaknesses, i find pitching to be one of the skills that i simply do not have. i can throw together a nice visual presentation but when needing to get vulnerable and pitch a story to executives… i simply was never trained for it. especially going on for twenty minutes met with blank stares (or worse: yawns, cell phone usage) plagues me with anxiety. so streaming was stepping out of my comfort zone where i would need to entertain for hours on end. i had a beautiful crutch though in the form of a pomodoro timer. see, with coworking, i had the luxury of being able to stream while getting work done and only needing to entertain during our breaks. the viewers became friends though and soon it became like hanging out… giving early metaverse. something beautiful did form, i found what cadence works for me, what sense of humor worked for me… and though i wouldn’t try to compare what i was doing with any stand up comic, i did begin to see how getting the reps in entertaining others only made you a more functional and well rounded human being. and this was put to the test when i gave my first pitch since i had started streaming… and it went really well!
i did however have a veil to hide behind. because i kept my identity hidden and because i was perceived as an anime character… could my persona be the real me? other vtubers allowed for individuals to explore their truest deepest selves. i’m exploring this theme in one of my high school shows that i’ll discuss in a future post. but this was happening in real time. i was making friends in this vtuber community that didn’t feel comfortable in their own bodies, as their born genders, but online, they could be whoever they wanted to be. as vtubers, they could recreate their personas, make friends safely, and live a true second life. i think if zuckerberg or anyone else racing towards the metaverse took a real study of what the vtubers are doing, they’d have a better understanding of what the tension point and needs really are. but my character was somewhat similar in likeness to me. i was hiding, yet fully open with my community. they, just like you, knew me as codax but at some point others knew my name. i’d self dox myself often and laugh about it. my real friends would visit the stream and do the same. and it was no problem. but perhaps the other vtubers took it much seriously… and for good reason. if they were born male but identified female, who was to stop them from streaming as a female vtuber?
like another defining moment in my high school life, i was once again tied to an internet subculture that freed my mind and allowed me to exhibit parts of my id that my own friends and family didn’t know. i sang on stream for heavens sake. several times. so why did i stop? at some point, we started exiting our homes and a semblance of normalcy returned. and with it, my return to cafes emerged with vengeance. sadly, the streaming ended with it. i miss the community and as this year comes to a close hope to return to it. and perhaps i’ll entertain a folk or two.