A while back two people, one friend and one YouTuber, tricked me into playing a game regularly. Lately I’ve found myself watching the game more than playing it. I call this studying.

As much as I enjoy the game, every now and then I’m not in the mood to play it or I’ve been playing it and I’m no longer in the mood to do so. I’ve got a bad internet connection to the USA so playing the game involves watching my tank hop around and die rather than moving around smoothly than dying. (That says a lot about my play style, now that I think about it.) Or, on the Asia server, I’ve got a better connection but the play style there is maddening enough to make me prefer doing work.

However, instead of doing work anything even remotely productive, I inevitably track down a couple people livestreaming the game via Twitch.tv. and watch them play instead. That’s right, sometimes I’m so lazy I can’t even be bothered to play the game myself. I make someone else play it for me.

The streamers playing World of Tanks fall into several categories: 1) the Ragers, who’ve been known to break their keyboards during play; 2) the Teachers, who carefully explain what they’re doing and why they are doing it in an attempt to make other players better; 3) the Nice Guys, who don’t teach but seem to be having fun; 4) the Hot Chicks who, well, you really don’t care how well they play, and 5) the Scary Good Snobbish Assholes. They are so good they’ve lost the ability to empathize with people just learning to play the game at higher levels. This group is also known as the Whiners.

I have learned a lot about the game and the best streamers are more fun to watch than most television programs in the world. Every now and then life intervenes for some of the streamers–one man’s fiance broke up with him while he was streaming–and they get real to the point that you can’t help but watch even as you want to look away.

Very raw, but it beats playing the game. It also beats working.