Drama on Twitch has often led to a more toxic culture in gaming by popular creators endorsing that behavior. Despite the fact that some gaming cultures can be inherently competitive, most communities are very kind and accepting towards newcomers. However, sometimes streamers can be problematic to another streamer or their community, and then it becomes a widespread controversy across Twitch, YouTube, and other social media until a new spectacle draws the spotlight. It isn’t only on the streamer for playing into it, but the audience has to be big enough to understand how harmful these situations can be on the real-life people behind these channels.
The best TV dramas can be very interesting to watch because they’re scripted and everyone knows the drama is strictly entertaining. However, the issues for streamers are the insults and degrading behavior that some have directed towards other streamers and audience members. Frankly, it can be very disappointing to hear how far some will go in order to step on a streamer that has a much lower following than them. Many do this knowing that their audience will take and act on their words in stride, as well. This drama tends to ripple through the community in a way that makes these streamers’ fans think that it’s okay because it’s all friendly rivalry, when it isn’t always.
Despite how viewers experience it, the toxicity and drama doesn’t leave the streamer’s life when the camera goes off. Take for instance the mass amount of groups with representation problems on Twitch, including the Black Lives Matter video, because they have had to deal with a slew of sexist and racist rhetoric directed at them. It’s despicable that it happens, and even more so that Twitch has often had no strong way of defending against it.
Streamers have to choose whether to suck it up or give up on streaming, without many tangible alternatives. This has real life mental health consequences, as these attacks on someone’s identity can lead to anxiety, personality, and other mental health disorders.
There are examples of streamers encouraging this behavior all over Twitch, but the biggest and most recent perpetrator by far has been Felix “xQc” Lengyel. Already an infamous streamer for his behavior in the past, xQc used his opportunity on stream with the OfflineTV Rust server to lash out at Twitch and chose to berate a female streamer, Ash_on_LoL, who was trying to help him. This resulted in Ash receiving death threats, all over what had happened in Rust. Much of xQc’s stream popularity has stemmed from controversy, and so the fans of drama have flocked to him, attacking other members of the Rust server in an attempt to stir the pot.
These controversial streamers only continue to work because of the viewers that tune in. The more viewers watch and feed into their madness, the longer the streamer feels they can run on pure controversy. The result is that the fans can’t seem to recognize that the game they’re watching is just that. The interactions they then go and have with these people outside of the game is very much real, and the streamer death threats can have a terrible effect on these people who just want to entertain. While streamers should be less problematic and stop giving in to the temptation of easy drama, it is also up to the fans to hold streamers accountable when they’re being problematic.
That being said, it would be near impossible to stop any and all drama on the platform. Practically anyone with a webcam can start streaming on Twitch, and that goes for those who want to do good and bad. One can hope that Twitch might provide better guidelines and systems that protect streamers. However, even if it doesn’t, it’s important that streamers and fans alike take it upon themselves to create unifying and empowering communities, whether they be co-op or competitive.
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