COMM 372T Media Curation 3

Fans of CaseOh made a Vocaloid called Caseohloid. Art by Pankekie, design by BeaMothy.

For this media curation and analysis of a YouTube channel, I’ve chosen popular gaming YouTuber and Twitch streamer CaseOh. His YouTube channel is @caseoh_ at 7.72 million subscribers, and his Twitch channel with the same username has 6.9 million followers. He goes by either CaseOh or Case, and the appeal of his content is his effortlessly hilarious commentary of the games he plays. Though he will occasionally play an AAA game (high-budget games produced by major publishers such as Sony, Nintendo, or SEGA) on stream, his YouTube videos, which are semi-edited from his Twitch streams, consist entirely of Let’s Plays of smaller-budget indie games, particularly of the horror genre. By semi-edited, I mean these videos are all VODs, or past broadcasts, with minimal editing to cut bathroom breaks and censor curse words or other not-so-family-friendly material. In comparison with videos with many cuts, which can feel forced or overly polished, these uninterrupted VOD uploads make the often hours-long videos feel authentic and intimate in the way his streams do, as if the viewer is just hanging out with a friend in the same room watching them play a game. The only difference is you can pause the video and come back to it later.

The Twitch streams feel more intimate than the YouTube videos, though the latter shows evidence of how friendly he and his audience are, as he often interacts with the “chat,” who are his viewers sending messages as he streams. The chat log is shown in the top left corner, allowing both YouTube and Twitch viewers to see what has been said and by whom. Aside from constantly responding to chat’s messages, he encourages interaction, telling chat to type 1 if they’re “locked in” (ready), having them vote on what he should do next in polls, or getting them to bet channel points on predictions (which they can use to unlock chat emotes or send special messages).

Some might say his intimacy with chat is another large part of his content’s appeal. Due to his larger body and love of food, there is a running joke amongst chat to type “ofc,” short for “of course,” when he goes on a monologue about food or runs straight to the fridge in the game to see what’s inside. This joke can seem hurtful and mean, and certainly there are some in the chat who say nastier things about Case’s body, but he takes these comments in stride and takes pride in who he is, joking back that he’s actually a 6 foot tall bodybuilder under the hoodie. The joke never feels like it’s at Case’s expense. Instead, it feels as though we are all in on the joke that Case loves food and is a bigger guy, and we all love him for who he is.

The video I’ve chosen to feature here is one of his Let’s Plays of a very low-budget indie horror game. His choice of games also lends to his authenticity – while many gaming content creators will flock to the most trendy game at the moment, eager to give their reviews and draw in audience members who want to hear those reviews, CaseOh’s main source of content are these small indie games which practically no one would ever know about if he didn’t play them. His large following has boosted the success of many of these games, and the developers will either participate in the chat to thank him or give him hints, or they’ll go on to make another game, giving Case a cameo by making him a character in the story (which he will then play and react to with great excitement). It’s these things that convey CaseOh’s genuine love for what he does. Even when the games themselves look and play with comically bad performance, he still has a good time with them and praises the developers’ efforts by saying “W game” at the end.

CaseOh is a YouTuber I enjoy because his content always feels natural. While I have no way of knowing whether his personality is the same off-stream, spending hours watching him play these games makes me feel as though I know who he is. Having done streaming myself, it is hard to keep up an act for hours at a time, and he streams 6 days a week for about 4 hours each session. Case has also shared that he used to work lower-wage jobs before finding success in streaming, hailing from a small town in Arkansas, and that it took several months of consistently streaming before he gained widespread popularity. His background (and preference for wearing exclusively hoodies) makes it easier to think of him as an average person, more approachable than our Hollywood celebrities despite having millions of followers. Much like Petersen explains in her Buzzfeed article, people become fans of a creator because they feel a connection to their identity, facilitated by the intimacy and authenticity of that creator’s work. Fans of CaseOh support him because of the fact he is just a regular guy who loves video games, just like them.

Anyone watching CaseOh would get the sense that who he is on camera is who he is in real life, not a character he’s created for our entertainment. And this is precisely why he received both Content Creator of the Year and Gamer of the Year awards in 2024. Fans and jury members who voted truly love him, persona or not.

CaseOh's speech after winning Content Creator of the Year 2024