When I was a teenager, my friends and I had a blast watching television together — often really bad television — and mocking it ceaselessly. We became the entertainment, not whatever clumsy dialogue or plot twist we derided.

Last week, I felt as if I were 16 again as I watched hours of a four-day, nonstop showing of “The French Chef,” Julia Child’s groundbreaking cooking show, with several thousand complete strangers online. It was a surreal experience and, at times, hysterical.

The Julia Child marathon took place on Twitch, a service owned by Amazon that has developed a gigantic online audience by letting gamers broadcast themselves playing Counter-Strike, League of Legends and other games over the Internet.

While there are plenty of other video streaming sites — notably, the much larger YouTube — a big part of Twitch’s magic is how audiences interact with each other and broadcasters in real time through a chat room adjacent to whatever video is streaming.