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A lot of this type of content is to drive "engagement". There are a lot of Youtubers who have more traditional content on their channels (battle reports, more normal painting tutorials, etc) who also do these livestream videos. The reason is usually to keep their overall channel views high to feed the algorithm. The logic goes, if I'm going to be sitting around painting, I might as well stream it and talk to my audience while I do so. For the streamer it's free audience interaction, more comments on their channel, more views, and so on.

That's not to say there aren't individuals out there solely trying to cash in on their looks but I think they're a usually pretty unsuccessful because it's quite difficult to fake enthusiasm for and knowledge of the hobby.

 Flinty wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Bob Ross did it.

2 things.

1. Was Bob Ross on TV in the UK?

2. I saw a pretty blonde lady on twitch the other day who was just livestreaming her attractive self painting a model. There was no real instruction... just her painting and chatting.

It was strangely intriguing. From a purely scientific and uh... anthropological perspective, of course.

Edit: word change

Rolf Harris was certainly on UK TV from about the 60s or so doing live art (alongside his terrible personal activities), while Ross apparently started in the early 80s. Harris was less on the instructional side, but Definately in the performative side.

We don't have to use him as an example. We (as in the UK, I don't know about the rest of the world) also had the wonderful Tony Hart, and fantastic Neil Buchanan. Both wonderful Icons that covered aspects of the genre in the 80s & 90s.

I was sure that Sophie Aldred also co-hosted a similar art show in the early 90s to their shows, but a quick glance at wiki doesn't list it, so either my mind is playing tricks, or she only popped up as a guest spot as a 1 time thing and it stuck in my mind. (I was sure it was after Doctor who, but before Zzap but according to wiki she did not so I must be wrong)

Youtubers follow where the audience and therefore money is. News at 11!

I look forward to where "Attractive people painting things" someone leads to the "Alt-Right pipeline" that inevitably happens as YouTubers follow where the money is at the moment.

 Easy E wrote:
Youtubers follow where the audience and therefore money is. News at 11!

I look forward to where "Attractive people painting things" someone leads to the "Alt-Right pipeline" that inevitably happens as YouTubers follow where the money is at the moment.

I sense... sarcasm.

I realize now, after a deep dive into the hellscape that is YouTube, that paintbrushes are just another prop for pretty people to hold while raking in cash from the lonely, who are looking for any connection they can find... no matter how tenuous that connection may be.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Youtubers follow where the audience and therefore money is. News at 11!

I look forward to where "Attractive people painting things" someone leads to the "Alt-Right pipeline" that inevitably happens as YouTubers follow where the money is at the moment.

I sense... sarcasm.

I realize now, after a deep dive into the hellscape that is YouTube, that paintbrushes are just another prop for pretty people to hold while raking in cash from the lonely, who are looking for any connection they can find... no matter how tenuous that connection may be.

I think this is an unfair generalisation. Hobby content has always taken different forms across many different hobbies and platforms. Twitch has developed a culture of facecams, wet palette cams and model cams, so it is unsurprising that the wargaming/our hobby has followed suit for YouTube. Additionally, this hobby is just catching up to every other one. The rise of this kind of content is due to how the youtube and instagram algorithms work. With instagram especially, there is an emphasis on Reels instead of photos these days, in turn seeing a rise of someone videoing their mini in their hand, or beside their face to a soundtrack. This isn't a recent development either, for instagram, this has been the norm for about 4/5 years now.

Not saying this is your opinion Lathe, but this kind of topic treads some dodgy territory in the sense that a vocal minority (incels/gatekeepers/rightwingers/alloftheabove) of hobbyists kick and scream when they see a woman on camera painting a model. The attractive people who make this kind of content (in our hobby) are more often women, so this feels more a bit of a complaint about women in the hobby rather than an actual discussion/observation.

I think we should be more annoyed at the folk like Squidmar or Discourse Miniatures who post absolute dross for clicks. At least those aforementioned attractive people painting are actually doing a bit of hobby vs posting clickbait (Squidmar) or ragebait (Discourse).

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Youtubers follow where the audience and therefore money is. News at 11!

I look forward to where "Attractive people painting things" someone leads to the "Alt-Right pipeline" that inevitably happens as YouTubers follow where the money is at the moment.

I sense... sarcasm.

I realize now, after a deep dive into the hellscape that is YouTube, that paintbrushes are just another prop for pretty people to hold while raking in cash from the lonely, who are looking for any connection they can find... no matter how tenuous that connection may be.

Not sure any of these people are "raking in the cash". I'm sure there are some people who watch them for their looks over their hobby skills, but I don't think they're attracting an audience from outside the hobby. As I said previously, anyone who's literally just a pretty face/body is likely not going to last long because there has to be some useful content beyond their looks.

As a parallel example, I play guitar. There are many guitar Youtubers. There are many very attractive female guitar Youtubers. One of the most successful absolutely trades off her looks. She's also very talented and has toured with some big recording artists and done many successful solo shows. I have no doubt her looks get her noticed and probably drive a lot of views her way, but she can't maintain her level of success based purely on looks alone. If she was just using a guitar as a "prop" she'd get found out pretty quickly and views would drop off a cliff. The same holds true for hobby streams.

I mean, we're talking about the internet here. If you're going to a YT hobby stream just to get a look at some pretty ladies you're doing it wrong.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I think we should be more annoyed at the folk like Squidmar or Discourse Miniatures who post absolute dross for clicks. At least those aforementioned attractive people painting are actually doing a bit of hobby vs posting clickbait (Squidmar) or ragebait (Discourse).

I got booted from one of the local painting discords by this one moderators who threw a tanty because I "badmouthed" Squidmar, because apparently he's perfect and doesn't deserve to be criticized "by the likes of me".
Dude was a haaaaardcore brown noser. Bit of a shame as there were some genuinely good people on that server. Just a shame about the douchebag moderator.


The other one who should be publicly ridiculed at all times is that Noki Studio guy. Not sure if he's on youtube, but he is (was?) quite big on instagram. He's a talented painter, but is a real sourpuss when it comes to fact that he has 9 golden daemons statues yet they're all silver/bronze. And he's so hard done by and he should have gotten the gold for this one, because it was much better then what actually won and Blah Blah Blah cry me a river you big sook. He also showed himself up to be a scuzzball when he tried to grift people with his "revolutionary" weathering sponge nonense. Big crocodile tears when he immediately got called on his bs by the community. It was great to see.

Just so you know, I had a decade gap in gaming, due to a bad relationship where I tried to be someone else, because thats what I thought love required of me... so I wasn't really following online painting videos.

To be honest, looking at anything gaming (miniature) related really depressed me, so I would just skip past it.

That's why I might sound a little naive on the subject due to a hole in my gaming resume.

Honestly, trying to do anything in the online space to make money now, is like going to trying to make money of NFT's. It is too late, you missed the boat all ready.

No one is making money off blogging anymore. I recall when people were actually making a living and reputations from Blogging. Blog content was turned into big budget movies with Meryl Streep! Those days are long gone.

Sure, now "Bloggers" moved to Substack or Podcasting or TikTok (or whatever); but real money players have squeezed all the juice out of all those places. You can get a few shekels, but very, very few people are earning more than pocket change from being "Internet" people.

It is like the early days of radio or TV or cinema. A few early adopters made some cash in the wild west of the medium. However, now it has all been co-opted, codified, and monetized by the Corpos to lock everyone else out. The digital Frontier has been closed.

 Easy E wrote:
Honestly, trying to do anything in the online space to make money now, is like going to trying to make money of NFT's. It is too late, you missed the boat all ready.

No one is making money off blogging anymore. I recall when people were actually making a living and reputations from Blogging. Blog content was turned into big budget movies with Meryl Streep! Those days are long gone.

Sure, now "Bloggers" moved to Substack or Podcasting or TikTok (or whatever); but real money players have squeezed all the juice out of all those places. You can get a few shekels, but very, very few people are earning more than pocket change from being "Internet" people.

It is like the early days of radio or TV or cinema. A few early adopters made some cash in the wild west of the medium. However, now it has all been co-opted, codified, and monetized by the Corpos to lock everyone else out. The digital Frontier has been closed.

I try to explain this to my son, who's main ambition is to be a youtuber.

That aside, because of how my workplace is, I watch/listen to a lot of youtube. . . like, a LOT. One thing I've noticed, especially in our current era where it is incredibly hard to have and maintain a monetized channel, most of the people who have social media as a career (like Hobby Night mentioned earlier in thread, or Studio Blue (formerly Studio Blue Ocean), Boxman Builds, Plasmo, The Fat Electrician, etc) is that they opt for in-video advertising where they verbally do the pitch, and the advertiser pays some amount to them to be mentioned on the video. Now, not everyone I just mentioned does that, some post so sporadically that there's no way they do their videos as a living.

But yeah, on the whole, I've noticed that much of youtube has sort of metastasized into this thing where, there are a number of long running channels within any given sphere, and it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible to gain a following to that point. I'm sure most of us on this forum have a preferred video game reviewer, preferred hobby channel, preferred cooking channel, preferred. . . well, you get the idea. Sometimes you may get a diamond in the rough find that you didn't expect, but for the most part, between the algorithm, and the mass following of certain channels, it's very difficult to break into the space.

Right, my comment was removed as "spam" so I guess I should elaborate.

Is the same criticism levelled against people who are not conventionally good looking or is this an arbitrary dislike based on appearance? Are there hot tub painting party vids out there that I am not aware of, like how video gamers are now cursed with the same on platforms like twitch? Until it gets to that point I'm going to chalk this up as a nothingburger.

Just be glad for the content.

 Hairesy wrote:
Right, my comment was removed as "spam" so I guess I should elaborate.

Is the same criticism levelled against people who are not conventionally good looking or is this an arbitrary dislike based on appearance? Are there hot tub painting party vids out there that I am not aware of, like how video gamers are now cursed with the same on platforms like twitch? Until it gets to that point I'm going to chalk this up as a nothingburger.

Just be glad for the content.

On the plus side. . . a hot tub minis painting party would make thinning your paint a lot easier

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Hairesy wrote:
Right, my comment was removed as "spam" so I guess I should elaborate.

Is the same criticism levelled against people who are not conventionally good looking or is this an arbitrary dislike based on appearance? Are there hot tub painting party vids out there that I am not aware of, like how video gamers are now cursed with the same on platforms like twitch? Until it gets to that point I'm going to chalk this up as a nothingburger.

Just be glad for the content.

On the plus side. . . a hot tub minis painting party would make thinning your paint a lot easier

It would put a whole new twist on "washing" your minis.

I am not even going to touch the paint consistency joke that's hanging here, all low and ripe.

 Hairesy wrote:
I am not even going to touch the paint consistency joke that's hanging here, all low and ripe.

Please do. Low hanging fruit is the highest form of comedy in my book.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Honestly, trying to do anything in the online space to make money now, is like going to trying to make money of NFT's. It is too late, you missed the boat all ready.

No one is making money off blogging anymore. I recall when people were actually making a living and reputations from Blogging. Blog content was turned into big budget movies with Meryl Streep! Those days are long gone.

Sure, now "Bloggers" moved to Substack or Podcasting or TikTok (or whatever); but real money players have squeezed all the juice out of all those places. You can get a few shekels, but very, very few people are earning more than pocket change from being "Internet" people.

It is like the early days of radio or TV or cinema. A few early adopters made some cash in the wild west of the medium. However, now it has all been co-opted, codified, and monetized by the Corpos to lock everyone else out. The digital Frontier has been closed.

I try to explain this to my son, who's main ambition is to be a youtuber.

That aside, because of how my workplace is, I watch/listen to a lot of youtube. . . like, a LOT. One thing I've noticed, especially in our current era where it is incredibly hard to have and maintain a monetized channel, most of the people who have social media as a career (like Hobby Night mentioned earlier in thread, or Studio Blue (formerly Studio Blue Ocean), Boxman Builds, Plasmo, The Fat Electrician, etc) is that they opt for in-video advertising where they verbally do the pitch, and the advertiser pays some amount to them to be mentioned on the video. Now, not everyone I just mentioned does that, some post so sporadically that there's no way they do their videos as a living.

But yeah, on the whole, I've noticed that much of youtube has sort of metastasized into this thing where, there are a number of long running channels within any given sphere, and it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible to gain a following to that point. I'm sure most of us on this forum have a preferred video game reviewer, preferred hobby channel, preferred cooking channel, preferred. . . well, you get the idea. Sometimes you may get a diamond in the rough find that you didn't expect, but for the most part, between the algorithm, and the mass following of certain channels, it's very difficult to break into the space.

I think that’s entirely natural.

You find a channel you like, and run with it. If your itch continues to be scratched by that channel? You’ve low incentive to try others.

Granted, the Algorithm doesn’t help there, as it tends to push already popular stuff. But I know for me, the cadence of someone’s delivery makes a difference. Any factual type show where the voice always ends on a question sound is right out. It can be well researched, with solid production values and interesting topics. But if your voice gets on my pip? I’m afraid I’m out.

The other current issue is AI Voiced stuff. Given my criticism above, I get not everyone has “a voice for radio”. And some just may be too shy, or lack suitable voice recording equipment. Heck, some might not be native English speakers and so use AI translation software. But I’m afraid that’s still a Strong No From Me. For all the caveats I offered? Too much of it is just low effort drivel which, frankly, deserves no reward or enthusiasm.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


You find a channel you like, and run with it. If your itch continues to be scratched by that channel? You’ve low incentive to try others.

Granted, the Algorithm doesn’t help there, as it tends to push already popular stuff. But I know for me, the cadence of someone’s delivery makes a difference. Any factual type show where the voice always ends on a question sound is right out. It can be well researched, with solid production values and interesting topics. But if your voice gets on my pip? I’m afraid I’m out.

The other current issue is AI Voiced stuff. Given my criticism above, I get not everyone has “a voice for radio”. And some just may be too shy, or lack suitable voice recording equipment. Heck, some might not be native English speakers and so use AI translation software. But I’m afraid that’s still a Strong No From Me. For all the caveats I offered? Too much of it is just low effort drivel which, frankly, deserves no reward or enthusiasm.

Yeah, I was trying to point to the algorithm "forcing" you to stay with certain folks, which isn't helpful when you're not looking for their work.

100% on the AI slop nonsense. I make every effort to report that garbage as soon as I come across it.

As folks have suggested, there's a few things going on here.

1-Just a continuation of the sorts of how-to shows and videos that have been with us almost since the dawn of television. From Julia Childs through Bob Ross to the cooking channel.

2-It's just part of the internet culture that wants to watch videos of everything and is not at all plugged into network/scheduled television.

3-In many cases it's just an excuse to look at an attractive presenter for an extended amount of time. Not necessarily that different from many TV shows....

4-There is a real benefit to many hobbyists in being able to have access to tons of tutorials on very niche and specific hobby models and techniques, in the comfort of their home and at little or no cost.

5-Possibly related to some of the above, there's also the para-social aspect where a person (often without realizing it) forms a sort of pseudo-friendship with a particular presenter who they find enjoyable.

These sorts of videos are usualy not for me as I generally find I can almost always get the same information reading a blog post for 5 minutes than watching a one hour video tutorial or battle report. Also, I engage in hobbies to get away from screens. Still I completely understand why some folks are into these sorts of videos.

 Ahtman wrote:
.

As for something more on the subject I couldn't think of anything that really fit but then I remembered Hobby Night. When I originally came across the channel it was primarily focused on hobby news and painting projects but slowly morphed into what Lathe seems to be describing with the youtube channel seemingly at this point being an advertisement for their OnlyFans page that is described as "Hobby Night after Dark", which I'm not really sure what that content is. Topless painting? Other more industrious activities? I have nothing against the endeavor but once they stopped doing news regularly, and I had no interest in paid "adult hobby" content I moved on. Wish them all the best but it just wasn't what I was there for.

Same experience here. When she started to focus more on the spicier content, I started to watch less. I don't blame her, though. I did watch a Q&A video she recently did where she said the OF stuff "pays the bills, oh boy does it pay the bills". Such is the Internet.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
.

As for something more on the subject I couldn't think of anything that really fit but then I remembered Hobby Night. When I originally came across the channel it was primarily focused on hobby news and painting projects but slowly morphed into what Lathe seems to be describing with the youtube channel seemingly at this point being an advertisement for their OnlyFans page that is described as "Hobby Night after Dark", which I'm not really sure what that content is. Topless painting? Other more industrious activities? I have nothing against the endeavor but once they stopped doing news regularly, and I had no interest in paid "adult hobby" content I moved on. Wish them all the best but it just wasn't what I was there for.

Same experience here. When she started to focus more on the spicier content, I started to watch less. I don't blame her, though. I did watch a Q&A video she recently did where she said the OF stuff "pays the bills, oh boy does it pay the bills". Such is the Internet.

This is what I was trying to ask about.

But I guess people need to follow the money. I can't blame people for being entrepreneurs.

Ultimately, bills are the reason a lot of people are turning their hobby into a revenue stream.

Life isn't getting any cheaper, and everyone has to find a way to live.

Also don't forget many people can be guilted into thinking that they must recover what they spend from a hobby.

Or they can make it a way to share what they do and make a little bit of money that maybe helps cover a new box of models or such.

or its part of how they connect with others in the hobby. Not everyone has an active local group; or even a local group or a local group in the same age/interest segment as them etc... Reaching online can help them make connections with people