La expresión del aburrimiento y la soledad no deseada en Twitch

Abstract

El consumo de contenido en streaming en redes sociales ha aumentado entre el público joven, especialmente desde que comenzó la pandemia por COVID-19, facilitando la generación de nuevas relaciones parasociales. La literatura apunta al aburrimiento y la soledad no deseada como los principales impulsores de este comportamiento. Ningún trabajo ha explorado la expresión de estos estados en la plataforma Twitch para determinar si incitan al consumo de contenido en streaming. Este estudio analiza las expresiones del aburrimiento y la soledad no deseada de los usuarios durante el consumo de contenido en streaming en Twitch para esclarecer si son las principales causas que lo motivan, comprender su naturaleza y establecer implicaciones prácticas. El método empleado es de tipo mixto, guiado por la etnografía virtual, para responder al doble enfoque cualitativo-cuantitativo de la investigación. Se ha aplicado sobre seis comunidades de streamers hispanohablantes con distintos niveles de audiencia, tomando como casos 3 streamings por streamer, emitidos de diciembre de 2021 a enero de 2022. Los resultados se han obtenido a partir de técnicas de observación etnográfica y análisis de contenido. Estos indican que el aburrimiento y la soledad no deseada son estados que motivan el consumo de contenido en streaming en Twitch. Su expresión es más visible en comunidades reducidas y de distinta naturaleza en función de cada comunidad. Los streamers deben prestar atención a su audiencia para satisfacer sus necesidades de mitigación del aburrimiento y la soledad no deseada y para ayudar a detectar posibles conductas desadaptativas motivadas por estos estados.

Contemporary myths on boredom

“…After this long journey—which can be looked at in-depth in my book (Ros Velasco, 2022a )—the reader will agree that it is hard to maintain the claim that we know almost nothing at present about boredom. With different nuances, all these thinkers have contributed to us all having an idea, even if minimal, about what this state constitutes and implies, which can be expressed as follows: boredom is a state of malaise that we suffer from when the environment in which we find ourselves immersed or the activity we try to engage in does not stimulate us in line with our initial expectations, resulting in the painful experience of meaninglessness.…”

“…Our alleged unawareness of what boredom is cannot be justified in any way whatsoever; not just because we all suffer from this in person, with different intensities and duration, but also because it is unfair to those thinkers who, since ancient times, have devoted their efforts to defining such a peculiar state. Starting with classical authors like Horace, Lucretius and Seneca, through to contemporary researchers like Elpidorou, Eastwood and Van Tilburg, boredom has been described as a state of unrest caused by an imbalance between what we expect from the context we find ourselves in and what we truly feel we gain from it; a turmoil that leads us, firstly, to re-evaluate our present situation and then to search for the change that re-establishes our sense of balance with the environment (Ros Velasco, 2022a ).…”

“…In the mid-20 th Century, researchers from the field of psychology, coming from a range of very different movements such as those based on the arousal theory or cognitive theory, among others, focused on discovering the intricacies of boredom more in-depth. Listing their conclusions here would exceed the space available to me and the aim of this essay, but an exhaustive outline can be found in Chapter 6 of my book La enfermedad del aburrimiento ( The Disease of Boredom ) (Ros Velasco, 2022a ). Among the most cutting-edge definitions is that of Greenson ( 1951 , 1953 ), regarding apathetic and agitated boredom; that of Warren ( 1934 ), who explained that tedium was an unpleasant condition of foggy attention, resulting from the automation of an activity and the difficulty in finding change; that of O'Hanlon ( 1981 ), according to whom boredom was a psychophysiological state produced by lengthy exposure to monotonous stimulation; that of Csíkszentmihályi ( 1975 , 1998 , 2000 ), creator of the well-known flow theory, who treated boredom as a psychological state of dissatisfaction caused by a decline in neurological stimulation as a result of the experience of uninteresting or repetitive situations; that of Mikulas and Vodanovich ( 1993 ), who pointed to a state of low stimulation and dissatisfaction attributable to an unsuitable environment; that of Sundberg ( 1994 ), who distinguished between passing boredom (state-boredom) and boredom as an individual trait or a recurring disposition (boredom proneness), or that of Campbell ( 1996 ), for whom tedium was a sentiment of displeasure due to a need for greater activity or to a lack of significant stimulation or an inability to perceive the stimulation.…”

“…We all suffer from this, more or less frequently, at different times and in different places, depending on both exogenous factors that stem from the possibilities of the context, and endogenous related to one's own personality and expectations. The person who is bored feels that their relationship with the present reality is damaged and they should do whatever within their grasp to return to an optimum state of stimulation, which translates into the sense of wellbeing yearned for (Ros Velasco, 2022a ).…”

“…This description is applicable to any experience of boredom in which what determines its ultimate expression is the interaction between such variables as intensity (superficial or profound), durability (passing or chronic), and the agent of the experience (individual or collective) in this relationship established between the person (or people) bored and the specific context (Ros Velasco, 2022a ). These are some of the variables quoted by Flaubert ( 1980 ) when classifying boredom in the categories of banal and existential tedium (Greenson, 1951 , 1953 , however, was guided by the type of response elicited to address the boredom to classify it as agitated or apathetic).…”