Twitch’s Bob Ross marathon is the most beautiful thing the Internet has ever created

I'm a Londoner, and as such, I didn't grow up with Bob Ross. Through the power of the Internet, I had some vague low-level awareness of him. I'd seen meme pictures of the man with the ridiculous hair and funny little tree-filled paintings, so I knew that he had some kind of a TV show. Beyond that, I had no appreciation of the man nor of his TV show, The Joy of Painting.

I'm sure I could have tracked down his shows on YouTube—his official channel has many episodes available—but I never had any particular interest in doing so; why would I even care? I'm not all that interested in oil painting—or at least I didn't think I was. My interest was piqued, however, by Twitch's Joy of Painting marathon that kicked off the launch of Twitch's new "Creative" streaming. I'm an avid Twitch viewer, watching many hours of professional Dota 2 tournaments and casual Dota 2 streaming. I was curious to see how the Twitch community would react to something that wasn't normal Twitch fare.

Twitch, or at least the parts of Twitch that I watch, has its own peculiar subculture. Twitch chat is meme-filled and thrives on repetition. Twitch has its own library of emoticons that are used to spam chat. The Kappa face , denoting sarcasm, is its iconic image. The weeping BibleThump  is my favorite. The whole ecosystem is chock full of repeated phrases (copy pasta) and shared jokes. It is occasionally amusing, often thoroughly inane, and frequently descends into crass sexism.

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