How to Find Great Twitch Streams to Learn New Skills and Improve Your Life
There’s always something to watch on Twitch, whether it’s someone working their way through a Fortnite match, wrapping up a 24-hour marathon of some classic game you haven’t played since childhood, or revealing all the secrets of the brand to you. a new expansion from your favorite digital card game.
But while I risk pissing off the Twitch gods for saying this, you can do a lot more on a huge streaming service than on streaming games. Sure, it’s fun and all, but you can also use Twitch streams to improve your life in unique and engaging ways. (Or at least you can learn the basics of a new hobby you’ve dreamed of for so long.)
Consider Climate Fortnite Squad , which features science-themed Q&A sessions during Fortnite Battle Royale (and other streaming games) to keep viewers entertained and educated. Sure, you still watch someone play games from afar, but you are also getting your daily dose of worldly knowledge. It’s as if Bill Nye was in your Raider Guild.
Finding great non-gaming Twitch streams can be a little tricky, but it’s not an impossible task. Here’s how I did it, including some great examples you can check out, from learning to program, to self-education in astronomy and mastering some basic cooking techniques.
Twitch can even teach you how Twitch
Before I get into streaming, I would like to say a few words about the Twitch Creator Camp , a small helpful portal that you should check out if you are new to Twitch and are looking to host your own streaming. Are you planning to showcase your in-game achievements or want to try some of Twitch’s alternative categories (which we’ll cover in a moment).
While Creator Camp is not a Twitch stream on how to stream to Twitch (like the meta), it does contain a number of helpful videos from other Twitch streamers that are full of tips and tricks to get you started. Alas, learning Creator Camp won’t get you a million subscribers on your first day, but it never hurts to get a solid grasp of the basics.
Find hidden gems of Twitch using categories and tags
When you visit the Twitch homepage, you will see a variety of game streams. Twitch is, by and large, a place where people can go and watch others broadcast their gaming endeavors – there are few arguments against that. However, you will still see a small number of non-game channels making it to the Twitch Live Channels list or the homepage carousel at the very top of the page (or even at the top of the autoplay video, as was the case when I checked site right now):
To find canals that aren’t just people blowing up each other or building complex cities from neighborhoods, you need to do a bit of research. And you have two ways to do it: categories and tags.
Browsing through categories on Twitch is easy. On the homepage, you can either click on the “Categories” link in the “Popular Categories” section, or click on the large “Browse” link in the upper left corner. See a huge list of games with a handful of non-playable items here and there? These are categories. You will need to scroll down, scroll down and scroll down to see them all, and they are listed in descending order of total viewers for everyone currently streaming in that category.
But what I find even more useful is Twitch’s tagging system. Like most systems for managing large stores of information, categories are large general segments that you can sort to find interesting streams, but tags are a much more useful way to find streams that interest you, especially those related to educational diversity. …
You can see all the streams associated with the tag by clicking the tag whenever it appears below the stream thumbnail, for example:
This will take you to the aforementioned overview page with the tag already being used to filter your results. Click the large x on a tag to remove it and click Add Filter to find any other tag you want. As for what you might be looking for …
How to deal with multiple Twitch tags
When using filters (actually tags) to find new Twitch streams, you can miss out on a lot of what’s already there if you just mindlessly type in the topics you like. In other words, Twitch has many tags that streamers can use to organize their content on the service and attract new viewers.
Here’s another unpleasant detail. The dropdown menu that appears when you click on the Search Tags field is not even complete. While the list looks exhaustive, this is just a small selection of all the tags Twitch has to offer.
Twitch posted these tags elsewhere , thankfully. And you only have 248 to choose from. Feel free to browse this list – it’s a great lunchtime activity. I have, and I found some great streams worth checking out when you’d rather learn something new than watch someone else get anotherpentakill .
Some great Twitch streams for learning something new
Skylias : Her stream is essentially a set of questions and answers, but it covers everything from “history” to “space stuff” (with guests!) And “Miscellaneous with BRAAAAD”. Who is Brad? We are also interested in this now.
DevChatter : Learn to program – or at least watch a coder do their magic while you contemplate how much money you will ever make as a software engineer. (I’m also a fan of TimBeaudet thread if you need a similar coding approach.)
Suchikuti : Increase your skills with the skin in real life.
PennyArcade : Where to start? Watch Craftsmen drawing an absurdly popular web comic at work, watch Craftsmen brew their own beer and get back on their feet, or watch Coding PA on Friday’s Twitch stream show you the basics of how software and websites built.
CookingForNoobs : – said Nuff. And once you’ve gotten some kitchen experience, feel free to check out the official (re: endless) stream of Twitch Cooking Shows . I would call it Iron Chef Twitch , but, well …
The_Widdler : Learn to make all this club music wub wub wub wub wub for your future DJ career. Or, well, because you enjoy creating something new in your spare time.
PiranhaGames : The BattleTech universe is known for its gigantic, detailed, armed war machines. So why not watch someone work on these giant devices for the MechWarrior Online video game?
ZacFierceGuy : And if you want to learn more about the intricacies of creating video games, check out the eponymous “Bob Ross from Gamedev,” ZacFierceGuy.
SlowFuseGaming : I’m terribly paint miniatures. Absolutely awful. Fortunately, there are people much better than me that I can look at and learn from. Hope.
dwangoAC : You may not be learning much from dwangoAC’s Twitch streams per se, but you can see it replicate its famous TASBot, a special program turned into a “real” robotic creation that does things in video games that neither one mortal. someday I can do.
DeamonMachine : If you need a little brush up onhow to get your carrepaired , or don’t know how to do something as simple as “change the oil,” you’ll want to check out this helpful thread of mechanics.
TominationTime : Break . Or, at the very least, learn the correct techniques and exercises that you could (or should) do to get the break – or at least in a sensible way.