Gratitude #5: Twitch DJs
Usually I don’t take “pre-Covid” and “post-Covid” differences seriously. Stuff was happening, then Covid paused it, then it restarted. But what specific things increased during Covid and remained? Maybe FaceTime dates, Zoom funerals and Twitch DJs.
But whatever. I just want to tell you that a day on the computer alongside DJs on Twitch is pretty fun. No essay; you get why. They’re live, lots of genres, there’s chat, emojis are flying, viewers make custom stuff happen (for free; every streamer on Twitch can personalize a list of interactions that viewers can trigger), and DJs talk about previous jobs they hated.
My six faves, alphabetical order:
DidiMoscoso. From Haiti, lives in Miami, funky disco house? All easy and pleasant. More info by his chatbot in the screenshot. Hopefully signed by Rockstar to be a radio DJ in GTA VI. Was live while I wrote this post:
djthiagoXA. São Paulo area, Brazil. Lots of pretty Brazilian and Portuguese stuff. The best to actually be productive to. Loves saying my Twitch name (twae; he says “hey tee-WAE! welcome back!” every time I join a stream and write in chat.) My friend enjoyed him so much that he bought Twitch bits for the first time and sent Thiago money.
Jekalez. Germany, EDM/dance; 90% of them are German, most of the communication is in German; when you follow them there will be some message like “[your username] folgt jetzt!” Super friendly, plays dozens of songs I get addicted to, mixes them well, great shark emojis, when he’s not live I listen to recordings of his streams on YouTube.
If you at all enjoy catchy creative EDM-y/dance-y melodies, Jekalez is AMAZING! Try his YouTube channel.
Mura_T_Mulatino. From Kobe, lives in Osaka, lots of Japanese city pop, was playing this fun awesome song Lip Stick from 1988 that I 99.9% would not have found otherwise and isn’t on Spotify.
Skittish and Bus. Salt Lake City couple, dance, Bus is on the left, Skittish on the right. Best and most fun interactions that viewers can trigger. This week did a 24-hour stream. You can try to slap them with virtual cheese and see if they avoid it or not, mostly not. (But again, most of the time a Twitch DJ is in the background of your day, and you’re just listening to this chaos.)
vlouue. From Quebec, 10/10 French Canadian accent, really good at what she does. “Hard, Schranz, Industrial, Melodic and Dark Techno.” I don’t listen to these genres, but through vlouue it’s fun. This week I dual-screened a David Foster Wallace essay with her stream.
Shout outs to dj_urban_o and theClamJam, very fun but don’t stream live DJ sets any more.
And hell yes I want to Twitch DJ at some point. ;)