Watching (some of) a 64 day Twitch Subathon

 

It’s often said that the under thirties enjoy most of their entertainment online rather than through conventional media like television, radio or cinema and this has led those of us more familiar with the latter to scratch our collective heads and go “Huh?” Last year I explored the world of streaming only to find the actual gameplay was too busy for me yet what I did discover was that this is often only the best known part of this online community. One the most gruelling ideas someone had was the subathon where a streamer will remain online IRL all the time. Even when sleeping!! What would this be like I wondered so this year I decided to dip in and out of one of the most ambitious subathons there has so far been and what did I find? Joy and whimsy! Brain rot! Burning toaster! Storms!

Short for `subscription marathon`, a subathon is a livestream whose duration is continually extended by subscriptions until the time runs down to zero. Each sub adds a minute or whichever iteration a steamer may choose.  Brighton based Twitch streamer Toby Smith, 20, known online as Tubbo has done subathons for the past two years managing twenty seven days last time but for 2024 he had a more ambitious cut off point of ninety days.

This is a very long time however you slice it and to fill those days he and his team devised a whirlwind of activities to keep the viewers and themselves alert and engaged. Its important to mention his team because while a lot of streamers appear to be solo the more popular ones rely on backup to get them through. Tubbo’s subathon, inevitably dubbed Tubbathon, involved not just the streamer himself but his Dad, PA Dani as well as several friends doing the filming. All of these can probably be called long suffering! Once Tubbo left the confines of his monitor someone had to carry a bulky looking backpack and portable camera and as Dani often mentioned it’s really heavy. There is clearly a lot of expertise in putting all this together and occasional references to microphones, servers and the  “ingest” hinted at the technical achievement. While the picture sometimes glitched or delayed the general quality of the footage was so clear that if you watched on a widescreen tv it felt you were walking through the streets or shops. 

Luckily for those of us observing from a remove and with other things to do each days’ activities were recorded and posted as VODs enabling you to skim through to the interesting bits. By the way you may wonder what happens when streamer is asleep; well though the camera remains on them you hear the moderators (Mods) chatting away or they play back recordings of previous days. Streamers often keep near nocturnal hours staying up till three or four am (partly because a lot of the audience is American) and then surfacing at three or four in the afternoon. For this subathon one decent activity usually filled the daylight time allowing the night-time for mostly indoor stuff or gaming. To start the event Tubbo and co opened a new office in a community building in the centre of the city allowing them several rooms which were needed due to some of the planned events.

And what a programme of events  it was. Amongst the activities in which various friends and fellow streamers also took part: (deep breath) axe throwing, go karting, paintballing, crazy golf, a treasure hunt around Brighton, paddle boarding, pottery, archery, basketball, woodworking, song writing,  painting, going on a lifeboat, playing football while wearing large plastic bubbles, giving out Easter eggs and probably more. Tubbo also spent one evening as a bartender and another afternoon serving in a café.  He even had his hair cut live. There were also three recurring series, each promoted by superb posters with anime style caricatures of the participants -
`No Dice`  -  a Dungeons and Dragons game which really seemed to engage the people in it .
`Liar Liar` - a variation on the tv show Would I Lie to you where people had to guess each other’s claims were either true or false.
`Recipe for Disaster` - a cooking comp though a somewhat more anarchic one than Masterchef.

The kitchen was also the scene for the event’s most clipped moment when, attempting to see what would or would not toast, the team caused a fire to break out. Other times there was a lot of more standard gameplay in the likes of Valorant, Astroneer and of course Minecraft. We get to accompany groups to eat or drink and, in some cases, get far too drunk! The event also received wider media coverage including from the local BBC news whose sobriquet “Sussex Gamer” became something of a running joke amongst the gang.

Despite the occasional conflagration, by any standards this was a well planned sequence of events; for every endearingly ramshackle moment there were also funny, lively happenings. I suspect some participants may regret more outrageous outbursts but it was funny to see them interact with local public as well especially at the beleaguered Pizza King. “It’s all in your mind,” one passing stranger informed them. The amount of planning that goes into something like this must be immense as is the gradual exhaustion of all concerned. In the last week there was plenty of talk of brain rot with the “joy and whimsy” Tubbo had talked about weeks earlier struggling to shine through.

It is also an unfiltered study of how some young people behave, what they think, even their values. True, there wasn’t a lot of time for philosophy but it’s funny how exactly the same sort of stresses and strains that we might see at work manifest themselves sooner or later in an event like this. Some of the `No Dice` episodes proved to be surprisingly emotional for those taking part though I don’t really get role playing. It was an insight to see it unfolding though.

Of course even on an event like this we are not quite seeing the real people. Someone mentioned their “streamer voice”  suggesting that they might be a bit different off screen. However they all seemed unbothered by whatever the camera picked up. I began to understand why people watch shows like Big Brother because if you follow any group for long enough you feel like you know them even though the relationship is one sided and parasocial. Unlike Big Brother the Tubbathon and its kind are unrestricted and uncontained. Its participants are not trying to win something. They are just, as the famous line from Dazed and Confused goes “L.I.V.I.N” .So I may have come to farm characters and language but it wasn’t a chore and I ended up watching more than I was planning to.

 One of the things you have to try and do watching this is see what the chatters are saying, their messages scroll up one side of the screen and reflect an instant viewer reaction. Chat is very much part of the whole thing and Tubbo often talks directly to them. You can easily imagine how more impressionably teenagers feel as if they are part of this social group. Interactions when encountering followers face to face on the streets were more regular than the hysterical reaction you sometimes see when people meet a pop star suggesting that these fans have a more realistic view. That came through in the Chat too; for all the silly emotes there was plenty of practical observation.

The most filmic moment occurred a couple of days before the end of the event, at about three am, Tubbo and American streamer Coy Piso went to look at a violent thunderstorm and had to shelter under Brighton’s sea front bandstand. With old music (`Singing in the Rain`, of course) playing they danced about and marvelled at the violent weather in the distance as rain, thunder and lightning raged over the beach. It felt like the moment where fiction met real life. I just hope Richard Curtis wasn’t watching.  A memorable scene to cap an event of the kind that one day probably will actually be developed for a tv show. 

Tubbathon 3 didn’t make the cap of ninety days because that would be crazy but it did reach Day sixty four and you could see how glad they all were to finish there. Yet you know that they will be back sooner or later and next year’s event, already tipped to be a travelogue around Europe, will be even more ambitious. The other things I’d say from watching this is that some of its participants, if they wanted, could easily have careers in commercial broadcasting both in front or behind the camera. Yet if you mentioned that to them I can just visualise a collective “Nah.” For now they’re happy as they are.