Ellen DeGeneres is a god among daytime television hosts. The sometimes-stand-up comedian has captured the hearts and minds in suburban homes and nail salons across the nation. Staying on top of the Nielsen ratings is nice, but Ellen (and her producers) want to grab as many eyeballs as they can in 2018. To get the reach that Johnny Carson had in the 1960s, you need to head to a much darker place: Twitch.
Last Friday, Twitch streamer Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, appeared on Ellen . In a crossover series that even Mr. Peanut Butter didn't see coming, Ninja showed Ellen how to play Fortnite in a much more boring version of Conan O'Brien's "Clueless Gamer" series. Watching a media darling flail around like a tuna in a garbage bin proved to be the formula for virality, with the clip on YouTube drawing more than three million times and hitting the Trending page.
Never one to let viral momentum go to waste, Ninja was back on Ellen on Tuesday. This time, there was a gimmick: he would be streaming live. The pitfalls of live streaming—like fans stream-sniping in front of a giant audience and the quirks of a game ripe with bugs—only get amplified when you throw a daytime TV audience into the mix. The whole thing was as sterilized as possible: Ninja didn't swear or kill while playing Fortnite , golfing instead.
"Are you doing a lot of dancing and killing right now?" Ellen asked, as the giant disembodied head of Ninja appeared on screen. The audience shares a good laugh, and then it's on to the next farting cat video or "Damn Daniel" reference.
If you were watching Ninja's stream live, you could actually, perhaps accidentally, watch Ellen . No subscriber or donation notifications were permitted during the stream, limiting an organic Twitch stream's usual erratic behavior. (Surely the producers don't want Twitch chat oozing it's toxic way onto Ellen's squeaky-clean stage.) The show was also taped a day before it aired, since there's no way this is going out live.
"I'm not freaking out, you're freaking out," Ninja said minutes before show time to his stream. He actually seemed nervous, shifting around in his chair and chewing more than regularly. For someone who streams to 60,000 to 90,000 fans daily, it's odd to see him sweat over daytime television. At this moment one of the show's producers tells him to "stand by," you can see Ninja immediately turn on, with the overarching smile of a virtual circus clown.
"We were live on the Ellen show, I'm pretty excited," Ninja said after the segment wrapped up.
"I was so nervous," he added, but it didn't stop him from doing Ninja things. He proceeded to wipe out the rest of the players on the map, earning a Victory Royale. Say what you will about the streamer, not many people can tape a television show while winning a game of Fortnite .
The idea to combine Ninja and Ellen was seemingly created in a laboratory to capitalize on the next viral sensation. Neither personality needs the other to thrive, but like a lamprey cleaning parasites off a shark's belly, both parties benefit. It might feel disingenuous and forced, but that's what you have to do to be the focus of conversation in 2018.
Maybe Ninja loves television because it carries his name over to a larger market untapped by internet stars. When ESPN The Magazine put him on the cover of its gaming issue, he watched late night host Jimmy Fallon roast him live on stream .. Without constant chatter, his channel could stagnate. And for some online content creators, irrelevance might as well mean retirement.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Steven Asarch is a tech reporter for Newsweek currently based in New York City. In high school, he started stand-up ... Read more
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