CEOInterviews.AIDan Clancy talks to HOST AustinShow | Let's Chat Podcast EP 3

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Dan Clancy0:05

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 communities shape culture yesterday, today, and in the future. So, I'm Dan Clancy. I'm the CEO of Twitch and I'm happy to speak to Austin show or Austin, however we want to describe him.

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Austin Show0:32

Hello, Dan. How are you?

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Dan Clancy0:34

I'm doing well, Austin. And for those who don't know, Austin and I know each other well. So, this should be

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Austin Show0:41

This should be a fun chat.

Oh, yeah. Easy peasy. We know each other very well. Going back to

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Dan Clancy0:49

He really hates me. He really hates me.

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Austin Show0:50

Totally. Number one enemy.

I tell you big time, Dan and I rarely get along. We really do.

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Dan Clancy0:56

No, we'll have, you know, we're already planning a Laval Lada match one of the years.

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Austin Show1:03

That's right. That's absolutely right. I love I'm digging the hat there, Dan.

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Dan Clancy1:07

All right. Well, I went back and forth whether I want to wear it for the podcast. I realize it's kind of become iconic, so I should wear it on the podcast.

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Austin Show1:16

Absolutely. It's your thing, so you should embrace it as you have.

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Dan Clancy1:21

Yep. Yep. All right. So let's jump in here. For those that are listening, we're going to keep a little bit of an eye on chat and we may sprinkle in some questions from chat while we're going. I won't be calling out who it is in chat, but I'll say chat's got a question, so you can feel free to put it in. We're going to record the podcast and then at the end, we're going to have a little bit of time after where we're not recording the podcast where we may look at chat a little more. So if you have any detailed things, you may save it till then. So let's before we get into you as a streamer, tell me a little more about you growing up and in particular those aspects that you think were foundational in leading this to be your chosen career.

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Austin Show2:08

Well, first of all, thank you Dan for having me. I feel like a presidential candidate like I'm here running for office. Hello everybody. If you don't know me, my name is Austin Show. I've been streaming on Twitch since 2013. I have done a lot of things on the platform that I'm very proud of. I was born and raised in Oregon, beautiful Pacific Northwest. From a young age, I had a really strong interest in entertainment across the board. I grew up watching a lot of reality TV shows, American Idol, America's Got Talent. I used to even host my own little talent shows in grade school. I would bring people together and then do little talent shows during recess. I would do the same thing in my neighborhood. I always had a passion for being on stage even as a young boy and had a desire to be in front of the camera in some capacity. Sometimes it manifested as wanting to be a professional singer because my mom is a professional singer. So I was like, I want to sing. I want to do music. Obviously it's not my strongest thing or really my passion. But yeah, I grew up.

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Dan Clancy3:26

Do you remember the first time you were on stage? Not just in second grade, but what jumps out in your memory? Not necessarily the first time, but tell me one story about a particular thing you did that jumps to mind, like as a young child or in high school before you started streaming. In other words, anything that jumps out at you.

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Austin Show3:53

Well, I remember the first time I was on stage was I was in a play in second grade and we sang I don't know what the song is, but 525,600 the song from Rent. I don't know what the play was. Maybe it was Rent, but I played a jock in the play and that was one of the first moments that I remember really being on stage and performing. Another time that sticks out is getting the opportunity to just speak in front of a classroom. In 8th grade we all got the opportunity to speak in front of the entire class and I gave a speech and made everybody laugh with what I was saying. So those are some of my earliest memories of being on a stage in some capacity.

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Dan Clancy4:39

Yeah. I just have this image of a young Austin performing and it just seems like your parents probably have lots of good videos somewhere.

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Austin Show4:51

I was a terrible actor though, Dan. I was a terrible actor. I didn't get the lead role in the play and I was extremely jealous of my friend who got one of the leads.

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Dan Clancy5:00

So he didn't end up in entertainment at all. So clearly the producers missed it.

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Austin Show5:07

They missed it.

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Dan Clancy5:07

So now get us to when you started streaming. How old were you and what were you doing when this streaming thing hit you?

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Austin Show5:17

Well, I heard about streaming. I don't remember how I heard about Twitch to be honest with you, but I started streaming in 2013 right when Twitch was really in its infancy, the wild west of the platform. I heard about this Twitch thing. I was an 18-year-old. I just graduated from high school. I was going into college. I started streaming from my laptop in my dorm room at the college that I attended. Very early days. Twitch looks a lot different than it does now. That's how it started. I was streaming in my dorm room from freshman year into my sophomore year. It truly started out as a hobby because when I started, Twitch wasn't a career. It wasn't a career at all. This was not something that you would just start up and think this could be my job. So I always looked at it as a hobby. I made some pretty decent money. I remember I had made, I think, $6,000 from Twitch. And I remember thinking, man, if I walk away from this right now, I felt rich. I was like, wow, what a success, because I didn't expect to really make anything.

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Dan Clancy6:35

Did you finish college or did you decide no? You finished college and then when you finished, that's when you started? Because in addition to Twitch, you do a lot of hosting for esports and other things. You're unique in that you've been around Twitch since the early days, but you've always been kind of innovating beyond sitting in my bedroom playing a game.

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Austin Show7:06

Yes. From the moment I entered Twitch, I was always perplexed by the fact that everybody enjoyed, and this is no dis to gaming, I enjoy gaming, I came up on gaming, I played gaming as a kid, Old School Runescape, Madden, Halo, Call of Duty. I played a lot of gaming. But for me personally, I was always perplexed by why people on Twitch weren't doing non-gaming content because I found reality TV and non-gaming content to be wildly more entertaining than sitting and watching somebody play a video game. No offense, but for me personally, that's how I always felt. I always challenged that part of the platform from the very beginning, in fact getting banned because I wasn't adequately playing enough games. There was a time on Twitch where it was actually a bannable offense not to play a video game.

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Dan Clancy7:58

This is early early days.

And Austin, I am sure would have gotten banned a bunch.

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Austin Show8:03

Yeah, way back when for sure. Certainly did. But my philosophy has always been from the moment I entered the platform to push to create things that were different than what everybody else was doing.

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Dan Clancy8:17

Now, the thing that is interesting about you is not just gaming, but you've always leaned into exploring more shows, having a little more production value. So why don't you tell us the story? What was your first show that gained notoriety? Not your first one that nobody cared about. What's your first one that anyone cared about?

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Austin Show8:49

Well, the first show that anybody gave a damn about was a show called King of the Hill. It started in the dating realm. I would put four judges on the screen, male or female. King of the Hill was four female judges. Queen of the Hill was four male judges. We would bring on people. I was obsessed, and still obsessed, with the idea of bringing people in from the audience and putting them on the screen. I think that's such a fish out of water thing. You get to meet and get introduced to new aspiring streamers. We created a lot of our content early on driven by this idea of pulling somebody from the audience and putting them in a fish out of water situation. Dating is something I've always found extremely interesting, extremely entertaining, widely relatable. So we created this format called King of the Hill where basically you would come on and try to impress the judges based on your datability. If you were good enough, you'd hold the hill and compete against others. We would cycle through people like a schoolyard game. You have to stay on top. We did that. And by the way, the criteria was how datable is this person? The lines were blurred. Sometimes we had judges that were not in relationships or single that wanted to engage in dating content themselves. It caught on quite quickly and was one of the defining shows that catapulted me into a more mainstream conversation on the platform. That led into Lover Host, which became a massive show on Twitch that exploded. I believe it still maintains relevancy and when collaborating with people, the formula still works incredibly well.

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Dan Clancy10:56

Well, go through the lover host formula for those folks that have not seen. For those of you that don't know what Lover Host is, Lover Host is a dating show where we take a main contestant, typically a streamer of some sort, and then we pair them up with 10 people that are vying for their love. The key is that not all the contestants on the show are there for love. Some of them are there for host. Host used to be, I was actually really upset when they took away host because it kind of made the brand name, Lover Host. Now nobody knows relevant. We need to bring it back just so your brand people understand it.

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Austin Show11:30

I kept the brand because I really don't think that the name host really meant anything. Host means betrayal, right? The idea of the show is that you could either come on and choose love or host. Love meaning you're interested in the person, host meaning you want all the viewers that come at the end of the show. So if you end up winning and you chose host, you get hosted with all the viewers from the show. If it's love, you match and it's happily ever after. There's a multi-depth part of the show where the contestants are nervous because they don't want to be eliminated, and the main person is nervous trying to determine who's choosing love and who's choosing host. Even in instances where we had Syikudo on as one of the main guests, one time he got 11. We sometimes put 11 people on. 11 people chose love. But even throughout that, the idea that somebody could choose host even up until the end remains.

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Dan Clancy12:28

Okay. So were there any relationships that came out of Lover Host?

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Austin Show12:34

Yes, actually. Yes. I'm not sure if they're any longer. I don't want to speak on them publicly, but there are people.

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Dan Clancy12:44

You don't need to give any examples. You don't know of any marriages. No, I don't know any marriages.

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Austin Show12:50

But I think we're in line with the success of other reality TV shows when it comes to.

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Dan Clancy12:55

You're right up there with The Bachelor.

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Austin Show12:56

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

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Dan Clancy13:00

So one thing I know that you always are passionate about and you really thought a lot about early on, because you and I talked about it once, is being a connector. So talk a little bit about how you thought of your role of introducing streamers and helping people find an audience, and who are some of the folks that, as you were building a property, it became a good platform for them to broaden their audience and get people more aware of what they were doing.

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Austin Show13:33

I think one of the cool things about the shows I put on was that we had a lot of viewers and we would bring on people. I feel like we had a unique ability to identify people that were really entertaining because that was our goal, to entertain. These people would get on and build platforms for themselves. Some of them went on to get millions of followers. I have a hard time taking credit for those people, mentioning being like, Oh, it's because of.

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Dan Clancy14:01

You didn't make them. The beauty of it is the reality is it's always a bunch of things.

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Austin Show14:08

Yeah, but a couple of examples like Cutie Cinderella had early spots on my stream. Even even Hassan had early spots on my stream. This is before, but I didn't make any of these people. They went on to have very successful careers of their own. I see myself as somebody who wanted to collaborate and still wants to collaborate with a lot of different communities and sort of be the bridge between them. There's a lot of different communities on Twitch, and having the opportunity to put on shows where I'm mixing and mashing these audiences together in ways they never would be together before is something I've always prided myself in and hope to continue doing for a very long time.

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Dan Clancy14:54

All right, great. So a question that chat asked: did you promote your show on social or was it just popular naturally?

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Austin Show15:04

Interesting that you said that. I think you need a combination of both. With the Elon acquisition of X or Twitter, it has really put a wrench in my marketing strategy for my content and overall platform. Twitter used to be a place where you could send out a notification and it would reach your followers. Now it gets put into an algorithm. My ability to market my shows has been diminished and almost become like luck. It's not reaching the people that I know are going to click on a Twitch link. The people that follow me are going to watch on Twitch. If it goes out in the ether to random people, they may not even click it. To answer their question, yes, I did a combination of those things. My marketing strategy involved tweeting, putting it on all my socials, coming up with a banner that would get engaged with. I would talk with the creator coming on the show, appear on their stream, talk about the show, get hype, leak guests, start buzz around the show. But at a certain point you need the audience to buy into it to start generating that buzz exponentially. You need a product that people want to talk about.

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Dan Clancy16:37

Well, in fact, I liked this question because it led us into one of the topics I wanted to talk about: social media has really changed from back when some of your early shows. Yes. As you said, X was very different. It was not dominated by the world of shorts, TikTok, and Instagram. In fact, reels didn't exist back when you were doing Lover Host.

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Austin Show17:05

Not as much. No.

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Dan Clancy17:06

Right. I mean, did you create YouTube videos of Lover Host?

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Austin Show17:11

Yeah, I did YouTube videos. Short form did exist. I look back at some of my early TikToks and we were uploading in 2021 clips of Lover Host and they were getting millions of views at the time. It was a blind spot for me and it's a regret that I didn't take it more seriously and didn't understand. I find this really interesting about Twitch streamers in general. Twitch is much bigger than it ever has been in terms of recognition and reach, but a lot of people don't realize how insulated we are as a platform, especially back then. I didn't care about anything but Twitch, the numbers on Twitch, the views on Twitch. A lot of Twitch streamers still feel that way. But there is a huge world of social media that can benefit and elevate your brand beyond just Twitch. Sorry, I'm on the Twitch channel, but you know.

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Dan Clancy18:23

No, no, it's okay because that's the topic. One of the topics I want to talk about is how it's changed in terms of long form and short form. I often talk about how people ask how can I get discovered, how can Twitch help me discover? The reality is short form content is just much better for finding new audiences and even for reaching your existing audience because they don't have to show up at any time; all they have to do is watch you for 30 seconds.

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Austin Show18:55

Yep.

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Dan Clancy18:55

Right. Yeah. And the world's totally changed.

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Austin Show18:58

Yeah. So for me personally, I have a short form content strategy. I tell the people I work with that this is the end all be all. Short form has to be the top priority of anything we do and produce. It needs to start and end with the short form strategy. How are we capitalizing on every singular moment from our broadcast, pushing that out, creating clips and pushing them into short form on YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, TikTok? That is the strategy. There is no faster way to grow than through short form.

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Dan Clancy19:40

Well, and I think for you, of course, there are some people that create special content just for one of those platforms. For you, you create shows and live content from which you derive short form content, right? All of your short form content for the most part is downstream of something you have done rather than just editing a singular TikTok video that comes from taking a picture. I do think that is one of the things live streaming really helps for a lot of people because trying to figure out how to do a quirky TikTok video can be tricky, whereas you just go and create good live content and you say, okay, there will be 10 shorts from this. What are those 10 shorts?

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Austin Show20:32

Yeah, it's something I need to still improve at. I think creators should have a combination of doing the TikTok that's just built for TikTok or built for short form and their stream stuff. I also have doubts as to whether I'm pumping out enough clips from my content. You see these clip farmers pumping out thousands of clips. I'm not doing that. I haven't employed that strategy. I'm a little old school. I come from a quantity, quality over quantity type of mentality. There's a new generation on Twitch that pumps out a lot more.

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Dan Clancy21:21

They do. They're very explicit that they're going to let the algorithms find the good stuff.

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Austin Show21:27

Yeah, right.

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Dan Clancy21:28

And then they just put a lot of stuff out there and the algorithms find the good stuff. You are a little more old school, trying to create 10 good clips or something like that.

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Austin Show21:40

Yeah. In terms of my Twitch strategy, I still believe in creating intellectual property. For shows like Lover Host, Name Your Price, the flight stream show, and a show called GDAR where we cast people from the public using traditional casting agencies live. I stand by my theory that if you create a show, you need to allow it space to develop its own individuality and moment so you can create something people remember. My goal is that whenever I make a Lover Host, I don't want to whip it up the day before. I want to spend a week to two weeks putting together the cast, really curating and strategizing about what the show will look like when we put these people together. Then hyping it up, getting to that moment, creating a show that builds to a crescendo and gives people an impactful moment. When you think of Lover Host, you think of those moments, not just rushing through a content slate. That's not something I want to do. Things move so quickly these days, we forget a lot about what just happened.

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Dan Clancy23:30

So, from our conversations, you've evolved a lot in your content and how you approach content on Twitch. You've gone through periods with Misfits and other third parties that were getting you to produce content, and now you've been thinking more about production but also about streaming regularly and building community. Talk about how that has changed over the last few years, how frequently you stream now, and that experience because you've always been more on the production end than on building community. Talk a little bit about that. Well, I think historically I used to be able to get away with doing less. I always thought less is more on Twitch. I would tweet something, the tweet would get 50 to 100,000 likes of of of

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Austin Show24:31

Marketing. I would hype it up, the show would go live, it would get 150,000 views, and then I would go dark and get ready for the next show and hype that up. I would do two shows, two to three shows a month, and that doesn't work anymore. I think for several reasons. Number one, the platform doesn't reward that behavior anymore. So the algorithmically on the platform, if you're not live as much, your channel will be at the bottom of everybody's directory. So that hurts. I have to be live more often to combat against that. The other thing is just people are live more now. This next generation is like people are live more or less in some respects 24/7. And I need to be able to stream more often to keep myself in the conversation.

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Dan Clancy25:25

But you're still not... how many hours a week do you stream now?

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Austin Show25:28

Oh god. Still very little. I mean I still stream.

Yes. Depending on the week. There are weeks where I go 15 to 20 hours, but there are also weeks where I go four. So, I think the nature that I wish it wasn't that way, but that's just the way it is. And I have to compete. Truly, I don't enjoy sitting at my desktop and talking to my chat as much as I enjoy making shows. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to make shows, events. That's my job. But in order to make those events happen, it needs to be a multi-dimensional strategy where I'm building the shows, but the shows have to feed the desktop, which feeds the next. I need a marketing vehicle to promote my next thing. That used to be Twitter, doesn't exist anymore, right? So I lost that. That was a huge hit.

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Dan Clancy26:24

Right? And so now you need to be that marketing vehicle by at least maintaining some type of regular content creation.

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Austin Show26:31

Exactly. Exactly. So, this isn't to be said that I don't want to work as much. I love to work. I spend a lot of people...

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Dan Clancy26:40

And you work in a different way than your average streamer. You're you're and really I can't even think of, you know, a lot of times you say, 'Oh, they're unusual.' But then you can think of 10 people that are kind of like them, right?

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Austin Show26:51

Right?

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Dan Clancy26:55

But I actually can't think of any other streamer that I'd say, 'Oh yeah, that's kind of like an Austin Show in terms of their approach.' Can you think of any?

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Austin Show27:07

I mean the closest... No, not really. I try to think, but I don't really know of anybody that doesn't stream as much as I do. Yeah.

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Dan Clancy27:22

Also focus, you know, in many ways I think something from chat was, and I think I'll ask this question: Did you model yourself after someone, or did you just learn to do this as you went along? Like did you ever take a production class?

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Austin Show27:38

No, I just kind of created my own. I knew from the moment I started on Twitch, viewers of Twitch have always thought anybody that's not streaming 8 hours a day is not working. So a lot of people think that when streamers are offline, which in many cases used to be true, where the only time we were doing anything was when we were streaming our video game or whatever and maybe we didn't prepare as much. But from the very beginning I was like that's not me. So I would put in, I used to have to adapt to that model and I would be live 3 to 4 hours a day but I was still called part-time back then. I was never called a full-time streamer. People would make fun of me for the fact that I wasn't live 8 hours a day. So from the very beginning I was like this isn't me. I very quickly stopped obsessing about the subscriber number and was like this isn't sustainable for me. I'm going to burn out. I don't like that stress. I'm going to carve a niche for myself where I can create meaningful content that isn't as much of a daily presence.

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Dan Clancy28:47

Yeah. Interestingly, I'll state this as opposed to asking a question because I have something in my mind. I just ask a question and you may go in a different direction. I don't want to let you do that. In a strange way, you're someone in a different life. You would have gone to film or TV school and gone into production. In a different world you could be producing reality TV shows right now. You didn't go into film TV production when you were going to college, but you really love to do production and you just do it online. And you learned it all yourself as opposed to going and having someone teach you how to do TV production.

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Austin Show29:33

Yeah. I definitely wasn't in front of the... I definitely enjoy being in front of the camera. I think, you know, my degree is in business administration. I think I would have probably ended up being a commercial airline pilot because that was one of my passions growing up as a kid, which I failed to get into in the beginning, but laid the foundation for where I am now. That's probably what I would end up doing. I don't have as much interest in being exclusively behind.

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Dan Clancy30:07

You like being talent. The reality is you do both. The interesting thing is that you're allowed to do here. You're allowed to be in front of the camera. You're allowed to be a Jeff prop, but you also are coming up with the ideas.

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Austin Show30:21

Yes. Yeah. And I like to, I have a fantastic team that pitches me all the time. But I've always prided myself as having the gut instinct on what's going to hit or what's not going to hit. You know, and what's going to work and what's not going to work. I think Twitch streamers are uniquely talented in that regard across entertainment because we have the benefit of getting instant feedback for everything that we do. And that develops an intuition unlike any other in entertainment because a lot of people are very reactionary and things in this media landscape are happening so quickly. Twitch streamers, I think, are best equipped to have the best instincts on what is going to be good and what is not. Not everybody's going to be that way, of course, but the platform creates an opportunity to develop the best instincts in media.

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Dan Clancy31:22

Yeah. And have you ever been someone that aside from the people you know that watches a whole bunch of Twitch?

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Austin Show31:34

Have I ever been somebody that watches a whole bunch of Twitch?

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Dan Clancy31:36

A whole bunch. Right. Except for there's some streamers you know well that I'm sure you've watched some of the streams. But have you ever been someone that watches a whole bunch of Twitch?

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Austin Show31:46

No, I've never been somebody who has been a consumer across the board. I watch Twitch every day. I'm watching my favorite streamers every single day, but I'm attracted to non-gaming content, eventized content, political content. I really enjoy watching that on Twitch. Whereas I used to be more engaged in seeing what was going on. And I think as I've gotten older, I...

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Dan Clancy32:14

Back when you were playing Runescape, would you watch Runescape streams?

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Austin Show32:17

Yeah, I would. But even then I was just there to socialize. It's always been a social thing for me. I like to get in the chat and talk with people and have a stream on in the background or see what's going on. But I've never been one to sit back because predominantly it's gaming and I enjoy playing games myself. I enjoy entertaining people with games, but I don't enjoy watching somebody play a game most of the time.

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Dan Clancy32:44

Right. Which, by the way, just an off-hand question. Have you streamed Runescape in ages? Do you ever think about going back? It's not something you've played in ages, probably.

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Austin Show32:54

Oh, I've played it actually recently. I have a great relationship with Jagex and Old School Runescape. I'm a believer that I remember that community and how many friends I have in that community and what they did for me and what that game did for me. So I'll never forget them and I always make an effort to be involved in whatever I can with Runescape. I started when I was 11 years old and I will always be a part of that community. And I'll never forget the people that have helped me over the years. I got an opportunity to actually host the Golden Gnomes at Runefest this past year, which was great. I got to host in front of a crowd of 2 to 3,000 people, which was a dream come true. If you could tell me back then when I was playing Runescape that I'd be hosting the Golden Gnomes at Runefest, how cool would that be? So, talk about some of your older shows, but you've been doing a lot of new stuff lately. So talk about the shows you're doing now. What's one of the ones you're most jazzed about?

Well, it's always what's right in front of me that I'm most excited about. But I just did this stream called Drag to Brunch. That's a stream that I'm really happy with. I think it's wildly entertaining, but also some of the more impactful work that I've done. I had an opportunity to, for those of you that don't know, Drag to Brunch is a show, more like an IRL stream where I pick people up in a party bus and we go to drag brunch. For those that don't know what drag brunch is, drag queens are performers and they typically do a lot of lip-syncing and dancing dressed in full drag. You eat brunch and get drunk and drink mimosas. I got an opportunity to take YourRage. He had never experienced it before. It's one of the more impactful things that I've done because I got in front of a community that accepted me for who I was. Historically, there has been some homophobia, but I think homophobia doesn't necessarily mean you're a hateful person, it just means you might be uncomfortable and need to be educated. I got an opportunity to get in front of tens of thousands of people that historically maybe were a little uncomfortable and show them that it's no big deal. Rage was great and I give all the credit to him for accepting me and opening himself up to a new experience. I also got to live in his culture and see where he grew up. It was a cultural exchange. I really like Drag to Brunch because it gives me the opportunity to make an impact in my own community, something that in my career I haven't really felt as much as my shows have made impacts on people's careers and been entertaining, but this was much more meaningful.

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Dan Clancy36:48

Yeah. So, since you're a creator who's outspoken... you're very upfront about being gay.

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Austin Show36:57

Yes.

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Dan Clancy37:01

Was that always the case, or was there a point where it was not known that you were gay and then you publicly shared that?

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Austin Show37:14

Yeah. No, there was most of my life to this point was me being uncomfortable with my sexuality. I've been very comfortable in the last six or seven years. I think I came out professionally in 2020.

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Dan Clancy37:31

Okay. Is that when it was? And when did you come out privately? Well before then?

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Austin Show37:36

2019 I came out one year before that because I had a boyfriend at the time and I had bought a house and I needed to move in with him and my parents needed to know.

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Dan Clancy37:46

Okay. So your parents didn't know until 2019, right? Publicly in 2020.

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Austin Show37:51

I was like 24 or 25. There was a progression of my sexuality through time. I didn't know I was gay when I was younger, but once you process it and you're old enough and mature enough to understand and connect the dots, you look back and go, 'Oh, that makes sense why I felt that way. I just couldn't connect the dots.' I've been extremely fortunate to come out on Twitch at a time when the platform was extraordinarily progressive and accepting of LGBTQ people. During COVID, it was a very progressive audience. That landscape unfortunately I think has changed. But to put it bluntly, I just don't give a damn anymore. I don't care what people think. I'm very proudly and openly gay. I don't think anybody should care about any of that stuff. I think it's silly. Anybody that feels uncomfortable with people that are gay are probably projecting their own insecurity and need to take a look in the mirror. I really don't care. I feel very empowered to say that I just do not care what people think. I'm very proud to be gay.

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Dan Clancy39:25

Well, I think it's important that you're out there and you talk openly because that gives somebody else who's listening that's uncomfortable, if you will, the Austin Show of 2018. There's somebody who is Austin in 2018. And you weren't young then, you were 22. By you being out front, it helps them.

A

Austin Show40:02

Yeah. I remember going through it, which is why I don't want to shut anybody out. If you're being hateful, we don't have time for that. You're not ready to have a conversation. But if you're just like, I don't know, I'm not going to be somebody who shames somebody for not understanding. I think a lot of people just need to be educated on it. As I did, I needed to be educated and I'm gay.

D

Dan Clancy40:31

So, Austin, why don't you talk a little bit about the GLAD hosting that you did at the Grammys. Tell folks about what that was.

A

Austin Show40:38

So, I got an opportunity to host at the Grammys on the Grammys red carpet with an organization called GLAAD. GLAAD is an organization that elevates LGBTQ people in media. It stands for Gay and Lesbians Against Defamation. I always trip up on that acronym. But they asked me to co-host with them on the red carpet at the Grammys and I got to interview Paris Hilton, Reba McEntire, Will.i.am, Zara Larsson. It was a tremendous experience. GLAAD is a tremendous organization. They have asked me and I invited Will. We're hosting on the red carpet of the GLAAD Awards tomorrow, Thursday. So the GLAAD Awards, they give awards to the community. I think it's more important now than ever to represent and be very proud and out there. So I'm hosting with Will on Thursday. I did it last year and they invited us back. We'll be live on Twitch actually doing those interviews.

D

Dan Clancy41:52

I'll have to check that out. So, talk a little bit. I know you just went to China. As I ask you about your trip to China, talk also about how you think about IRL streaming because it's something you obviously did some there. But talk to me how you think about IRL streaming and how you weaved that into your trip.

A

Austin Show42:14

IRL streaming is a lot of fun. I was a part of the original IRL initiative with the original IRL backpack. I went on a tour around Europe with my friend Kirk and we did IRL streaming. I think my IRL streaming is very uncomfortable for me because you really have to shut down a part of yourself that has any shame. You have to shut out everybody else and be as polite as possible, but just know that you're there to do a job and entertain the people watching at home. I do enjoy doing it. I enjoy exploring with chat. But the older I get, the more I want to stream in places where I have explicit permission. I want to know where we're going and that we're not going to be in uncomfortable positions where people have an aversion to the camera. As long as that is clear, I really love doing IRL streams. This is not to disparage any other IRL streamers. It's very difficult, probably one of the hardest types of streams. But you do have to just kind of...

D

Dan Clancy43:43

I also figured that it does take a lot of energy, right? And my sense was that if you're doing it, you'll do it. But for some folks, like Jake and Bake, he's just comfortable doing it all the time. For you, it's probably the type of thing that if you're going to do something, you'll do a very intentional thing, but you don't want to do it too much.

A

Austin Show44:12

Like we went to China and that's a very natural time to do it. Yeah. And every time I would do the stream, I wanted to do something very intentional. One of the streams that I planned was we got an opportunity to work at a restaurant. Literally cook the food. You could never do this in the United States. You need licenses and permission. We worked the cash register, served tables, got in the kitchen, cooked the food, and we were operating this restaurant. We actually drove a tremendous amount of business to this restaurant in Chongqing, China. Those are the types of things I like to do with IRL streams that are very intentional. For example, this GLAAD stream is technically an IRL stream. I'm going to stream myself getting ready, then go down and stream myself doing the red carpet, and that'll be a wrap. Drag to Brunch is very much an intentional live stream where we start in the party bus and then go to the...

D

Dan Clancy45:09

Right. It's like you do very intentional IRL streams. Drag to Brunch is a very intentional IRL stream.

A

Austin Show45:17

Yeah. Because I'm obsessed with the beginning, middle, and end of a broadcast.

D

Dan Clancy45:23

Yep. You like an arc. That's why I struggle with these desktop streams because they seem like they have no end, no beginning, no middle, no crescendo. I'm not as interested in those.

Right. Okay. So, last question.

A

Austin Show45:40

Sure.

D

Dan Clancy45:40

Just talk a little bit about obviously live streaming has changed a lot. So talk to me about both where you see live streaming going and where is Austin going? Who is Austin in five years? How do you think about that and how you fit into live streaming in five years?

Better sometimes as opposed to having to predict, talk about where you want it to go.

A

Austin Show46:21

I hope that the platform continues to expand into more formatted content, more show-driven content, more intentional content. I hope more streamers lean into that type of content because I think it's more sustainable for a career to build products and IP, shows, non-gaming content. I hope the platform continues to expand in that. For me personally, in the next five years, I plan to continue to build shows. I'm looking for what's next that nobody's ever done before. That's what I'm looking to do. I've shared some ideas, but the biggest challenge I've faced is that the ideas keep getting bigger, but the money that would pay for them isn't exactly there. There's a disconnect.

D

Dan Clancy47:25

Yeah. I think I'll state my view of where Austin possibly fits in. I do think there's still lots of exploration in this synthesis of live and streaming TV where you have content that is shot live but still has a strong life as a VOD artifact. We see a lot of reality TV obviously is important and there's some folks that have played around with this merging of live and reality TV. I still think we're very early in that. As I think of you, I think of someone that could pioneer and explore that. That way you're tapping into larger budgets for your creative exploration and you deeply understand live. I think there's still a lot of opportunity there to understand how these two things merge.

A

Austin Show48:13

Yeah. I hope to be a big part of it. I think there's still a disconnect between traditional media dollars and our platform. I hope they continue to sort of unclench their fists and send a little stuff our way so we can make some cool stuff on Twitch.

D

Dan Clancy48:32

Yep. All right. So, thank you all for tuning into the podcast. We stream it on Twitch with a live audience. So join us on twitch.tv/twitch for the next show where you can participate in chat. Follow Twitch on socials for announcements, timing, and guests for future shows. And don't forget to rate and review. And we will see you in chat.

Dan Clancy talks to HOST AustinShow | Let's Chat Podcast EP 3

About Dan Clancy