Twitch CEO Dan Clancy on Why We Mistake Ourselves for Rational Beings

People tend to make decisions based on emotion and then rationalise later, says Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, who views businesses' dependency on data as an obstacle to community building.

Sharing his own experiences with Twitch users in an interview at SXSW Sydney, Dan said his willingness to participate on the platform demonstrated a vulnerability and transparency that users appreciated.

Dan credits minimising the distance between Twitch and its users with reinforcing the platform’s commitment to building community.

“The biggest skill that we as humans have is this ability to try and put yourself in someone else's shoes,” he said.

“That's actually what customer obsession is about. It's about developing the ability to see the world through their eyes, instead of just trying to get them to see it through your eyes.”

For Dan, creating trust is a long-term process that grows out of repeated, everyday interactions. He believes most of what people hold to be true isn’t based on rational, logical arguments, but rather on what the people around them believe.

"We believe it because people we know believe it," he said. 

This dynamic, to Dan, is essential in understanding why a sense of community thrives on trust.

In his early days at Twitch, Dan noticed a disconnect between users’ love for the platform and their feelings towards the company.

"There was a real issue – they had a ton of passion for Twitch the product, but not necessarily for Twitch the corporation," he said. "Twitch was bigger, and so they lost that emotional connection to Twitch the company, even though they loved Twitch the product."

Dan decided to take a proactive approach to address this, believing that his own transparency and engagement with the community was key to rekindling that emotional bond.

"I felt that it was really important to be using the platform right and being very transparent to them," he said.

"We mistakenly think of ourselves as these rational, thinking beings and all the research suggests the exact opposite.”

Citing the work of late psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Dan explained that people tend to make snap decisions based on patterns, often bypassing logical reasoning.

"Sometimes, because we like data, we undervalue human judgement and intuition because we'd like to turn everything into a formula," he said.

Coming from a technical background himself, Dan acknowledged the temptation to reduce complex human behaviour to numbers but cautions against doing so.

"We [engineers] create this culture where we don't allow ourselves to use that intuition because [datafication] plays to my strengths, right?"

Dan remains confident that the fundamentals of community building will remain the same in future, even as artificial intelligence plays an increasing role in our lives.

"I think it’s the same way it has always been – lots of light, casual interactions that eventually build over time," he said.

"I think, as human beings, we will find some way to seek and find community. And I don't think AI will stop that need and that desire to connect with other humans."