Twitch’s Latest Sensation Is A Stop Sign Where No One Stops

Image: Twitch / Stopsigncam

A blue car stops at a stop sign. Against all expectations, he stops briefly, miraculously. The Twitch cat becomes ballistic. Lots of people spout “I was here” as pogchamp emoticons pour in. It is Stopsigncam, a Twitch channel that suddenly has over 125,000 subscribers, even though it’s just a camera trained on a single neighborhood hub in Salem, Massachusetts.

Ideally, every car would stop at the sign, but that would spoil the fun. The title of Stopsigncam’s stream says it all: “98.73% of vehicles don’t stop.” It’s almost certainly an estimate, but if you watch the flow, it’s truly amazing how few drivers stop – or even claim they might just be making a half-hearted stop. Most drivers pass right by, despite the precariousness with which they manage to enter wrecks with other drivers. It’s a totally useless chicken game that makes the viewing strangely fascinating, especially with the cat screaming at every stop and without stopping his collective Eye of Sauron seeing, giving cars nicknames, creating memes, and building a lexicon of terms. constantly expanding. like “rollers” and “zoomers”. It’s like watching a massive eSports event, only cars driving past the front yard of a hike.

With the channel’s popularity suddenly exploding, the Stopsigncam stream also got richer in events. Earlier this week, someone got out of their car and does a backflip for the camera. Other people showed up one evening and had a lightsaber duel. During the last hours of the day, a bystander approached the sign, identified himself in the chat, and removed a sticker from the sign, which had previously been applied by an infidel who sought to alter its purity (or to advertise). Shortly after, two more obvious snipers brandished their own illegible signs while standing next to the stop sign. Some have speculated that the police are now using the creek as a means of monitoring the stop.

The stream has some sort of weird intrinsic appeal, but that alone hasn’t propelled it to such absurd heights. According to longtime fans, it has been running for at least last year, but it averaged single-digit viewership when there were viewers. Then, over the weekend, two things happened: the flow I have a little game on Twitch dramatic hive become Kingmaker r / Livestreamfail, and probably most importantly, a big name, 100 thieves intern JhbTeam, promoted the stream to its audience. First he tweeted about it, but it wasn’t until he created a TikTok Monday things got out of hand.

“At first I thought it would be just a funny little joke between me and my audience on Twitter for just [one] night, because I deleted my tweet hours later, ”Jhb told Kotaku in a DM. “When people stayed and watched all night long, it made me want to create the TikTok to see if I could make it bigger. I went to bed that night when it had 400 viewers, and woke up to 4000 viewers along with my TikTok having 800k views in just a few hours. I am very happy with the result of TikTok because it was my ultimate goal to make it popular, and it has become more popular than I imagined.

The TikTok, which implores “bored” viewers to watch the feed and gives a quick summary of its appeal, now has over 2 million views. Since taking off, Stopsigncam has had a constant audience of 1,000-3,000 simultaneous viewers 24 hours a day. So for those keeping the score, it all happened because a streamer tweeted and TikTok on someone else’s Twitch stream. Oh, and he told it all in a YouTube video, as well as.

The channel owner ended up giving Jhb moderation privileges, which he occasionally exercises to keep the cat he personally turned into an avalanche of screams from getting too loud, despite being busy for a large gaming organization. first person in the feed and I was a verified user, the owner trusted me and gave me moderation privileges, ”Jhb said. “I’ll usually open the feed to the side and if I see an inappropriate post or anything that could be location-related, I’ll ban that user.” (Kotaku contacted the owner of Stopsigncam, who declined to answer questions for now, as well as a few moderators, who did not respond in time for the post.)

“First Person In Stream” might be a bit of a stretch, considering that others have been claiming to be watching Stopsigncam for a little while now. A, a writer and financial analyst named Daniel Connolly, says he found the stream last year in Twitch’s Travel & Outdoors category. “I often leave the location cameras in the background while I work,” he told Kotaku in a DM. “I really started looking at this stream during the winter, during a snowstorm.”

As a (relatively) longtime viewer, Connolly said he was “happy” for the owner of Stopsigncam, but the growth spurt didn’t affect his viewing habits, as it was only deep down for him. Others, however, fear that in its transition from an obscure curiosity to a sensational sniper target, Stopsigncam has already lost something essential. One of those people is a spectator going through the handle Ilikecorndogs. Backed by his love of the cat’s reactions to last-second stops and stunts like the aforementioned lightsaber duel, he created a subroutine for the Stopsigncam stream earlier this week. Now, however, he is about to end it.

“Honestly, after two days of knowing [Stopsigncam], I’ve already grown up, ”he told Kotaku in a DM. “I could jump into a stream here or there, but I feel like it grew too much from a weird stream in the corners of Twitch, I was spoken to one night.

Watching so many people introduce themselves during today’s clearly camera-aware stream, it’s not hard to see where it’s coming from. Some Twitch sensations persist and evolve into institutions. Others are just weird little moments. Before you know it, they’re over because they were never meant to be anything else.

There are also more practical concerns: It hasn’t been difficult for locals to figure out where Stopsigncam’s stop signaling cam is. What if someone doxxes their owner? PC Creator and Streamer Robert “OD_Technology” O’Donnell, who says he was one of the few people involved in the lightsaber fighting, doesn’t think it will happen, but he admits it is possible.

“We were able to find [the house] because we hang out in the bars in the neighborhood, but we won’t say precisely where it is, ”he told Kotaku in a DM. “I posted a post on Facebook asking where or who it was, but I took it immediately after thinking about it because we want it to be fun and not a risk … I really hope [the stream lasts] because the guy deserves it, but if the locals spoil it, it will be on them and not on him.

He is, however, optimistic about the chances of the stream: “I think it will last a long time,” he said.

The entire moment has remained remarkably healthy so far, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will, with thousands tuning in to watch the daily lives of hundreds of other ignorant people. Although he watches longer than most, Connolly thinks Stopsigncam feels temporary – like a brief looping stint rather than what the must-see red sign tells everyone to do.

“I assumed people would have moved on by now,” he said. “I guess it will last as long as the chat is active and friendly. It feels like a fleeting moment in a weird little corner of the internet. “

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