>>77007101Most viewers are unsuccessful in a variety of ways. The reason they watch is in part validation and in part escapism. It's the same reason that video game designers saw that only 20% of the players could become skilled in games, leaving the other 80% feeling humiliated. This in turn lead those 80% to quit games, so they changed how they designed many multiplayer games. They turned them into treadmills, where time invested compensated for genuine skill, and match-making that gave them the right amounts of wins to keep playing but not so much that they easily saw it as rigged.
Essentially viewers do not want to watch someone that is better than them in every single way possible, and requires no help, but at the same time cannot be an aspirational role model. They have to pretend to be stupid and dumb for failed men to support them and create the opportunity for viewers to feel like the big man helping out. The pretense has to be maintained, but at the same time they could not competently run their streams if they were actually that dumb, so it's a delicate balancing act to see how much you can get away with. This is a central part of their parasocial economy.
