Hello and welcome to Let's Chat. Let's Chat is a live podcast where I talk with creators about live streaming and the ways that streamers and their community shape culture yesterday, today, and in the future.
I get on the game, have a good time, talk to chat, and just enjoy the moment.
It's what the kids enjoy these days.
You cannot lay the next brick without the one that comes before it. It took me so much time. Time is the most valuable resource in the entire world. And I still want to collaborate with a lot of different communities and sort of be the bridge between them.
Hello and welcome to Let's Chat. So, I'm Dan Clancy. I'm the CEO of Twitch and joining me today is the one and only and unique Sushi Dragon.
Yep, that's me. How you guys doing? Hi. How you guys doing? Thank you so much for having me, Dan.
All right, so Sushi, since you... What is your real name for everyone?
Stefan. So for those who don't know, I just call him Sushi and I always have to go, 'Oh, wait. What's his name?' Oh, yeah. It's Stefan. That's right. That's right.
That's so funny. Daniel. So, everyone loves calling you Dan.
Yes. So, so be ready everybody. Grab onto your seat. Okay. Things move fast with Sushi Dragon. Okay. You're not going to get comfortable. He doesn't like anyone getting comfortable. Okay. We're going to start simple though before he blows your mind with all of his tech stuff. And we're going to try to keep him kind of subdued where he tells us a little bit about how this creature came to be. And so, how did this creature we all know and love as Sushi Dragon come to be? Tell us about your background.
Wow. That's a heavy question. A lot to start. I don't even know what gadget to share that really embodies basically consumer technology. I saw consumer technology and I saw there are so many creative ways to do it to truly just express what goes in here. You know, your imagination, mine, right? I have a quote that's on my bio which is: 'For Mousel technology is the absolute necessity to advance human imagination.' So I kind of took that and started off with webcams, started off with one computer, ended up having eight.
Oh, geez, it was way before COVID. 2016 when I made my Twitch channel but I really started taking off probably in 2018. Chat help me out, chat. Look, I got floating chat.
2017, and did you have a day job then?
Yeah, I did. And I was going to get promoted at this... Well, I was going to get a higher paying day job.
Uh, it was working at Ross. Also before that I was working two jobs essentially. Target Electronics, at Ross.
All right. So it was a day job but it wasn't a day career yet.
No, I was going to get a day career working for the US governmental prison system.
Yeah. It was a stable job, benefits, everything. And then, you know what? You know why I didn't get the job? I missed the call because I was streaming. I was streaming my part-time thing as an affiliate. And I get a call. I missed it because I'm just goofing off with chat. I was like, 'Oh, geez.' I think that was the call from the interviewer. It's like, guys, I kind of needed that job. That was like a salary job. And then just life kind of blew up from there.
All right. And so for anyone who doesn't know Sushi, if you're looking for someone who's going to push the limits on technology in streaming, Sushi is your man. Okay. He's always thinking through new things. The interesting thing is, talk about your technical background because you were not a software engineer.
But you do all sorts of stuff now.
I had a joke that I was an MIT graduate. Not even... I didn't... I failed college. Like I dropped out of college three times.
Wait. So you were very successful at dropping out of college.
You're extremely skilled.
That's a good joke. Yeah. And really good at procrastinating and all that, but yeah, I tried three times. Chat, can I show chat real quick? Look, chat's on my screen and I see chat through my little phone, but also the phone can show me as well.
Okay, now remember Sushi, we're going to do all the wow stuff a little bit later. We're going to... You're going to have to talk for a little while.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, hi. I just want to say hi to chat. Hi, chat. Mom was proud. So, what? Oh, yeah. My background, right? So, Target Electronics, they loved me because I had such an enthusiasm for just consumer gear and tech and just tinkering. So they... I kind of knew what this camera did, what that camera, the memory card, the speeds and everything, the USB. And that's my background pretty much, tinkering with RC stuff, cars and video games.
So, okay. So, before we get into other topics, I'm going to start with this topic because I think everyone will appreciate this as they see the conversation and I'm curious about your thoughts about this. So, a lot of times streamers identify as being somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. I do. And it's almost like the way I describe Sushi is, Sushi is to people with ADHD, he's someone that has ADHD like squared or tripled or quadrupled.
Oh, yeah. What is the difference? There's ADD and there's ADHD. Hyperactive.
You probably have the ADD one.
No, I'm also... No, no, no. I have the hyperactive one too.
Really? Go Super Saiyan with me then. Three, two, one.
Super Saiyan Dad can't do it. Only Sushi Dragon.
See, the beauty is that we have talked about this before, but that's moved in and out of Sushi's focus mind. But so no, talk to me about how you think about ADHD and all that you do because your brain is always moving.
Yeah, brain's always moving. Well, it's a lack of stimulation. So, my stream kind of evolved around having ADHD. I couldn't just be on one camera. I had to zoom in. I had to just cinema. I had to do live actions. I had to... this thing I have on my wrist, if you're viewing with eyeballs, it's like a fidget spinner, but it's called a Twiddler. Twiddler 4. And allows me to do fidgety things. So, it keeps my brain locked in. On the website, by the way, if you want to go check it out, it's on my about section down below. They found my stream and they're like, 'What? We sold that as a keyboard. Why are you using video production?' I was like, 'Well, it works, right?' So, I like to tinker with unconventional. The same thing with the scouter. That's the scouter. People caught wind of my stream and they said, 'What? We normally use this for medical fields and everything. This guy's using it for video production.' So they hit me up with more of these. They send me free ones, streamer benefits, all that.
Yeah, the beauty of it is I think you are someone, if there's someone that was destined to be a streamer, I think you were the person that was destined to be a streamer.
I feel like streaming though is more podcasty like you. I feel like this is a very different field.
No. Because the reason is that for so many people with streaming, people with ADHD have a superpower of being able to process multiple things at once. And so you can be doing something and reading chat, and you can be gaming and reading chat and talking to chat while you're gaming and not be stressed out. Whereas a lot of times that could be stressful for people. And the beauty, the reason I say you're sort of destined is because you are at the very end of the spectrum that your brain moves so quick and you need constant stimulus, otherwise you start drifting. And that's why streaming is sort of perfect for you because you create this world of constant stimulus.
Thank you, Dad. That means so much. Is that a cool light effect? It's pretty cool, huh?
I learned that through streaming, too. But I agree with that. And I also agree that doing it live is different from sitting down and editing. I used to edit YouTube videos. My ADD would go everywhere. And my videos would come out like maybe once every two months. Wasn't a sustainable career, which is why I ended up working at Target, Ross. But the live aspect, I was able to just build out this vertical integration of tech that allowed me to express my thoughts, whether the thoughts are good or bad.
So now let's talk a little bit about tech because anyone who's watching can see that you're in a kind of warehouse.
Describe what is your space? What have you created there?
I created essentially a live maker space for me to make things that you wouldn't normally find at a consumer store. This robot for example, this really was made through a lot of pain. This robot has crashed into things and it's at its seventh version. I love just prototyping things and seeing what sticks. I noticed a lot of people in the creative industry, they make stuff almost as a gimmick. I didn't make this as like, 'Oh look at cool funny robot.' This right here is a cameraman that will work for me for 10 plus hours on a charge. Doesn't need health insurance. No employee will ever want to do that. That gimbal gets super heavy and he just cruises around. I have a remote. Sometimes he autopilots. It's all built on how can I be like Mysterio, making these immersive worlds because truly that word immersion is what keeps my ADHD locked in. If I'm not immersed, I drift. I just kind of like, 'Oh, all right. I'm bored.'
Well, now talk about this because when you're streaming...
You are at very high energy. Okay. Not all the time, but how long will you normally stream for? And what's it like when you're done streaming?
It depends on how immersed I am. And I noticed that even with all this, I can still get bored. So, I start building things on stream that will keep the immersion more expansive. I start thinking like a video game developer. If I make this one effect and the effect goes all over the place, how much value does it have? The flying chat, I can kind of twist the chat. I can make chat stop, and then morph it a little bit and then kind of resize, recenter it. That has a lot of replay value. So, it's like I'm going to add DLCs for myself to make my world more immersive, expansive. So, I'm starting to do software and developing on stream and that stuff is not high energy. That stuff I have to lock in and it takes a lot of hours, takes a lot of time. And shout out Claude Code for helping me with that because I can kind of just think of the idea and integrate it with the help of others.
Well, since you brought that up, and actually, hold on. I want to get to one thing and then I'm going to go back to Claude Code. So, how long do you stream in your regular stream?
Eight hours. Eight hours. Eight. Yeah.
And when you're done streaming, is your brain still moving or are you like spent?
I try to put everything... I try to put on a good show. So, I... what's it called where you put it all out on stage. That way I could just sleep. Otherwise I did have moments where yeah, I couldn't sleep after all that energy. So I need to kind of release it both creatively, physically, and mentally at the end of the stream. So at the end of the stream, I'm kind of like checked out. I'm like, okay. But I used up all my creative. Because I had improv artists watch my stream when they saw me doing this for 8 hours. They say their cap is like 2 hours. Their mind just fries, because you're constantly thinking of a new joke, what to do next. You're full attention. Whereas your normal sustainable stream is side attention. People have your stream on a monitor to the side and etc. But me, I'm thinking the eyeballs are on me 24/7. So, I got to do something. I got to figure out what to entertain the show people next. It's a live audience out there.
So, describe your... you of course do a lot of special streams of like cool stuff and oh, this stream, but on your regular stream, what are you doing for eight hours?
Challenging myself both creatively and technically, learning new things, what to implement, what camera would make sense to add next because there are... you see all the successes but you don't see the failures. You don't see the one time I opened up a Mac Mini sprayed it with waterproofing thinking that would work. There's a lot of prototyping on my stream. This whole desk here used to have MIDI controllers and I tried it out when you were in Austin, you saw some of it. I tried to see how I would like MIDI controllers for doing my stream production effects and I don't like it. So I'm actually going back to doing touchscreens and then these touchscreens are going to be completely wireless. Figuring out what works for me, what flows, what gets me in flow state. I'm doing live requests. So, I'm challenging myself with can I hear a song for the first time, get into flow state, and make live visuals. It's all improvised. The visuals are improv. So, I have to just get into flow state and see if I can match the visuals. So I'm doing stuff like that. I'm learning how to make my open-source software work with the newest and latest cool camera like DJI.
Oh my god, that's... subscribe. Let's go.
He was just here. Teammate, thank you. Oh my god. I saw you guys had a... Hey, Tmay. Let them know you're my boy. Can we collab? He's here. He's just... He's a little shy. Thank you so much for the sub. I get turned into a dragon from my boy Tmay. Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. That's how many months in now? 19 months. 19 months with TB. All right. Let's go.
Actually, I have a great topic now for T-Pain because why don't we go back to Claude Code?
Wait, wait. I didn't see that DM. I swear to God. Where? Where? Wait, wait, wait. Don't tell me I'm ghosting T-Pain. I didn't see it. I would love to find it. Where is it? Instagram. Instagram. Okay. Sorry. Go on. Go on, Dad. What were you saying?
Or I can connect you, Sushi. That way you're not ghosting him.
Yeah, connect me. IG. IG.
Actually, have you ever worked with T-Pain on any of the stuff he does?
NO. That's so sad because him and I, we love technology. I have a voice clip of T-Pain. Oh, Sushi Dragon is the best, bro. I understand technology a lot. And you know, back in Tallahassee, she was in the military. My kids are getting into it. Yeah. But all his kids, it's Tallahassee. And T-Pain's great.
So now we will go because actually y'all should really do need to work together because T-Pain loves his technology. I will tell you he loves his technology. It's very impressive. And I think you telling your story about what you've been doing with Claude Code might inspire him to also start doing that himself. So talk now about how Claude Code has changed things for you.
All right. Claude Code has hacked into my files. Okay. So, I've been kind of hesitant on AI. I've tried ChatGPT, you know. I've said like, 'Hey, it hasn't really helped with my making of effects because what I do is so proprietary. It's so creatively individualistic that AI didn't really get it.' That was until someone in chat named Clockwork Ninja gifted me Claude Code, which is like for six months it's like a hundred dollars. And I'm like, 'Whoa, that's a fat dono,' so I might as well use it, right? So I try it out. Also, Nastu, well, NAS was the one... Nast was the developer from Germany who also convinced me Claude Code was going to change my world. So me not being the drinking... I link it to my program, my open-source program, Chatane from a French developer. And then I say, I try to... I tell it to do something that took me personally eight hours to do by hand. And then I'm like, I'm doubting it. It's like, it's not going to do it. It spits it out in 30 seconds. And I'm like, 'Holy... he just did eight hours of work that I would have had to do.' When I showed chat how I would do it, I would show my desktop and be like, 'Okay, I got to link this, link this, this is why it takes forever for a human to do.' And it does it just like that. So the difference between Claude Code and the rest of the AI stuff is that it goes into your files, and it's not like... when I heard about OpenClaw, that's when my mind started turning because OpenClaw, everyone was starting to buy these Mac Minis, which I had plenty of. So, I started selling.
You don't know what OpenClaw is? Describe what OpenClaw is.
OpenClaw is like an AI agent that goes in your computer, reads your emails, and sends out emails. I don't need that. I don't need a management assistant. That's boring stuff for me. I just wanted it to be an agent to help me make effects because I take forever to make a new effect, whether it's or even clean up an effect to make it easier in the eyes. So, I found out OpenClaw just kind of does emails, but Claude Code goes into my files and understands my workflow and builds it out based off how I kind of teach it. So I had to teach it a little bit. Some mistakes here and there, but once I taught it, oh my god, this right here, chat, this was all built by Claude Code. And I love apps that can recognize Claude Code because what happens is there are certain apps that have a server that understands what's going on. It's basically a natural language. So Claude will understand the language of the app and then that app can be adjusted through Claude Code. So, for me to do this, it's so hard to do that manually because you got to make the button the right size, blah blah blah. And it takes forever. I tell it, 'Hey, make it fit this Mac Mini and then make the font this, this, this, this.' And it did it. And all I need to do is link it with the software that I use and it's done.
By the way, I think the interesting thing about Claude Code for you is, and I've talked to a lot of folks that use Claude Code, is there's a certain speed that our brain works in terms of our creativity and our ideas, but then it takes a certain amount of time to translate that into an artifact. And in the old world, the time it took to come up with a cool idea for an app or a program or something, and then the time to actually create the artifact that could accomplish that idea. In software engineering, sometimes it could be two, three, four weeks. And now with Claude Code, the frequency with which they can come up with ideas and then the time it takes to turn those ideas into reality shortens. And you're a great example where you're constantly coming up with ideas, your brain...
