JesseDStreams is a Twitch user who had a modest base of less than 1,000 followers. But the simple act of falling asleep during a recent livestream has shot him into viral superstardom.
JesseDStreams was eating and watching TV while streaming this weekend. Without any chat interaction from his followers, he apparently got bored and fell asleep. Then, people started tuning in, and by the time he woke from his nap, he discovered more than 200 people were watching him.
One redditor explained what happened. Wrote BobbyJ:
My [girlfriend] was browsing just chatting and linked me his channel, there was 3 of us sitting in there having a chuckle at him snoring. I posted the link to his stream on a few discords and we got our friends to come into his chat. We all started hosting and tweeting out his stream in efforts to get him to 50 viewers. That snowballed pretty quick in our Twitch Australia community and he got over 100 viewers fairly quick.
He then got raided by another stream that peaked him to over 1,000 viewers.
As of this writing, the clip, termed “The Awakening,” has received more than 1.6 million views and has zoomed to the top of Reddit. All to watch a few seconds of a clip of a dude sleeping on his couch.
When JesseDStreams startled himself awake and noticed the number of people tuning in to a livestream that featured him zonked out with an open mouth, he gave a disbelieving smile. While looking at his chat, he responded by saying, “Hi, guys. Hi, folks. My nap was good. I’m in shock. Yes I am. There are 200 and fucking 13 people here. Holy shit. Why?”
That’s a good question. Besides being an invasive and creepy troll by the Twitch community at-large, the viral fascination harkens back to the 1998 film The Truman Show, where people watched Truman sleep from all over the world (even though it was fictional, perhaps that was the first ever true livestream) and somehow drew comfort from his peaceful slumber. Perhaps people think that if JesseDStreams is napping without a care in the world, we can watch him and know in our hearts that everything in this weird world is going to be OK.