OG video game streamer Markiplier got popular playing some of the most terrifying games ever made, games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Slender Man. In one famous video, Markiplier explores the pixellated Dreadhalls, gingerly navigating through an endless, impossibly dark 3D maze. He screams in terror at seemingly nothing at all while you lean in close, hoping to catch a glimpse of the monster through the gloom. You (and millions of other viewers) are simultaneously thrilled, horrified, and mystified as he shrieks and smashes the Shift key to run away at top speed.

Another of my favorite streamers is variety gamer Lirik, who plays Counter Strike: Global Offensive and other PvP shooting games expertly. When he gets a headshot, the live chat erupts with a stream of messages – mostly custom emojis and decades-spanning in-jokes. My favorite streaming memory of all time is watching Lirik play Trombone Champ, an impossibly difficult mouse-based game where the player attempts tricky tunes on a virtual trombone. Lirik does what I can only assume is an incredibly skilled job, yet still produces warbling, flatulent melodies to uproarious (silent) laughter in the chat.

It’s uncomfortable to admit that vibe coding with Claude feels eerily similar. It evokes the same relaxed pleasure, easy confidence, social inclusion. It’s a buzz. I’ve had to reflect on my relationship with streaming to understand why.

I think streaming, especially of horror and competitive games, is popular for a few psychologically poignant reasons:

• Vicarious skill & victory. You may never be able to reach Global Elite in Counter Strike or wipe the floor with a nationally ranked team, but Lirik can. He makes it look oh so easy. Watching him pick them off, you’re filled with a sense of “I could do this too”. Of course, you couldn’t do that. When historically significant streaming events happen, like when Lirik won third place and $40,000 in a virtual gaming competition, you’ll sometimes see people in the chat say “I was here”. The viewer did absolutely nothing, but they were part of it. Their presence in some way contributed to Lirik’s win. Right?
• Dampened emotion by proxy. Horror is less scary when someone else is going through it, and pressure is less stressful. I tried playing the original Slender Man game a few times as a teen. The goal is to gather 8 journal pages before the titular villain catches you. One time, after gathering 7 pages, Slender Man spawned right in front of me, killing me instantly. It left me shaking, with a heartrate at “sprinting to class” levels. I couldn’t escape visions of Slender Man at night in the darkened shapes of my room for a week, at least. Yet, I continued to watch Slender Man and other horror content on Markiplier’s channel regularly and was never much bothered. Markiplier acts as the viewer’s proxy, and the fear-inducing game elements are routed through him. Just like a human resistor, he dissipates some of the emotional current before it reaches you.
• The managerial brain. Even while someone else is wielding rare skill, by virtue of your status as a watcher, you can spot things they do wrong. Or, at least, you think you can. Many streams are plagued with “backseating”, where random chatters pedantically point out trivial mistakes, or even non-mistakes. Another of my favorite streamers, Roffle has built a following playing Balatro, a poker-based card game. He is constantly heckled with “why not x, you should have done y” type comments. “Why didn’t you take that joker?” “Skip for the negative tag.” Most are flat out wrong, but surely they give the viewer a sense of superiority that, even if temporary, is as thick & sweet as honey. Streamers often try to redirect this rabid human impulse by inviting viewer collaboration — having viewers bet virtual points on game outcomes, pick levels, or even play with them. This technique increases retention, surely, but I think it also dampens the barbaric need to lash out at the famous, accomplished person on display for your entertainment.

A popular question for Roffle is: “will you play the black deck?” It’s a notoriously punishing deck. Notoriously unfun. His canonical response is, “No, but you can.”

The question-asker wants to watch him do the hard thing, the thing they can’t do. They want to see him suffer as they suffer (or as they don’t want to suffer). More charitably, perhaps, they want to see him prevail, so they can bask in the glow of the “You win!” screen. And, of course, “I was here!” After all, he wouldn’t have played the black deck without the question-asker. Without them, this victory couldn’t have happened. Right?

It has been strange to realize that vibe coding provides a similar buzz to watching accomplished gamers. Claude is my new favorite (token) streamer. After all, it provides the same psychological rewards:

• Vicarious skill & victory. I often ask Claude to do things I am completely unable to do. I have written probably fewer than 100 lines of code in Swift, yet last week asked Claude to create an iOS workout tracker from scratch complete with a live activity that allows the user to log an entire workout from their lock screen. It’s published on my GitHub, under my name. Except for Claude’s commit signatures, you’d never really know I didn’t write it myself. I get to claim intellectual victory: copyright. In a sense, the vicarious sense of skill is amplified compared with streaming. The triumph is mine, not Lirik’s nor Markiplier’s.
• Dampened emotion by proxy. Did you ever imagine having a clone of yourself that you could send to school while you did whatever you wanted all day? In a sense, Claude Code is that clone. The work gets done and you can play all day. I use Claude Code in verbose mode, and sometimes it prints thousands of tokens of intermediate thinking (with a lot of “wait actually”) while I’ve been doing something like cooking dinner. Claude did deep work while I dressed the salad – or read the news, or sunbathed with my dog, or zoned out even. When Claude encounters a concerning bug or a difficult research task, I don’t feel worried or frustrated. Claude can handle it. It never gives up. Just like when I watch Markiplier get jumpscared by Slender Man. I startle and laugh, but it doesn’t keep me up at night – just entertained.
• The managerial brain. Your job as vibe coder is to review, not to produce. You watch Claude perform the immense cognitive labor of refactoring your entire app, while you recline on your chaise longue and eat dates and other delicacies (I imagine), occasionally hitting enter. Like random chatters on Roffle’s stream, my editorializing is often wrong – especially since Opus 4.5. Recently I asked Claude to refactor an iOS view it had designed. After seeing the results, I realized, “oh, that’s why it was that way.” I ran /rewind to go back to the previous version. Human in the loop: what a drag on productivity. Claude also tries to invite your participation in small ways, to make you feel like this thing is yours. (It often comes with a strong nudge towards one outcome.) Just like the streamers who let you pick the next level. In a recent project, Claude asked whether I’d prefer a date picker (RECOMMENDED) or to have the user type the date directly. I hit the 1 key and let it burn 80,000 tokens to code everything up. It’s hard to see how the resulting flow was better than it would’ve been without my input, but I certainly felt … cared for. Included. Like my opinion as the ACTUAL developer here was considered.

This set of parallels has been an uncomfortable realization. I used to think of vibe coding itself as a hobby, alongside reading novels, journaling, and working out at my local gym. But now I’m not sure if hobby is the right word.

To be clear, I think that AI coding assistants are the future of software. Even stronger than that, they are the democratization of software. Soon, everyone will be creating their own custom apps – improving their data privacy, building features for themselves, going ad-free. The challenge of “what problems need to be solved?” is still incredibly acute in this kind of environment. If tokens are cheap, ideas become the bottleneck, and personal data becomes precious context. So, there’s a role for me, a person, in all this.

But is vibe coding closer to creating or consuming?

When I code apps with Claude, I’m chasing a breathless concoction of inspiration, creativity, accomplishment, skill. I proudly show off “my” custom apps to friends & family. But the relaxed sense of enjoyment that pervades my coding sessions reminds me of posting up cozy on the couch to watch Markiplier, Lirik, or Roffle. I get to enjoy a parasocial relationship with my AI buddy Claude as it works hard for my entertainment while I sit back and criticize with my hazelnut latte in hand.

I get these positive feelings when I vibe code, but I haven’t created anything. And I’m ambivalent about that experience. I do think there’s more to vibe coding than there is to streaming. After all, Markiplier has been making videos even though I stopped watching in high school. But I can’t escape that the enjoyment comes largely from Claude’s hard work, not from mine.

It’s hard for anything to feel worthwhile when the journey is such smooth sailing.