All
views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own. Any person who is
referenced or quoted may not share the same viewpoints conveyed in this piece.
All quotations were taken from public communication outlets.
Edited
by: @pandamoz
Harassment that Twitch Streamers Face Daily
Hello everyone,
I’d
like to take a few moments of your time to discuss an on-going issue that I
believe is disturbing, pathetic, and unacceptable. There seems to be a trend of
male gamers verbally abusing female gamers for no good
reason. Whether these attacks are motivated from jealously, poor attempts of
hitting on these females, or pure boredom; the motivations are irrelevant. The
important thing is that these attacks are happening and the effects of these
attacks are damaging. The disturbing part is anyone who attempts to counter
these attacks is immediately labeled a “white knight”. Apparently, showing everyone
the same amount of respect regardless of their race, age or sex is still a
minority practice on the internet. The point of this blog is to address the
on-going harassment that female streamers receive on Twitch.tv chat.
If
you’ve read my other blogs it should be no secret by now that I am a huge fan
of Twitch.TV. I think the more accurate term is I’m a Twitch Junkie: I pretty
much have Twitch going whenever I am at my computer (which is everyday). In
January I joined the two monitor club so watching streams has become even
easier. Over my countless hours of watching streams I have found a select core
of streamers that I prefer watching and interacting with. I’ll admit most of them
are female. My reasons for this are:
1)
As a typical dude, women tend to stand out
and thus I check out their streams first.
2)
The atmospheres that these female streamers create
are generally really fun, comedic, and overall pleasing. There seems to be less
focus upon being the best ever in the perspective game and a larger emphasis on
making sure everyone is having a good time.
3)
The following are generalizations: Men in
general are more arrogant and in a male dominated community, women tend to be
more appreciative of their opportunities and achievements. This of course makes
me feel better and more welcome in their streams.
To
sum up these reasonings: I checked out female streamers based initially on
looks but many of the female streamers have kept me coming back because of
their fun and high spirited efforts. Thus, when these compassionate-female
streamers are verbally and sexually harassed by immature and potentially
jealous individuals, it becomes upsetting for the streamer and the viewers who
enjoy the broadcasts.
I
ask for you to perform the following exercise: Load up Twitch.TV and find a
female streamer and watch the chat. How long did it take for someone to say
something that was verbally or sexually offensive? I performed this exercise
for about a week while watching some female streamers:
Pretty
funny these tools trying to correct grammatical errors when they are sexually
harassing streamers (sarcasm), but I digress. These screen grabs did not take
me long to capture and I’m sure I could have captured way more if I was fully
paying attention to the chat (and not gaming on my other screen).
I
have come up with three important reasons why this type of behavior needs to be
addressed immediately:
1)
I believe that this type of behavior stems
from their being zero/little consequences. As this tool put it:
So this tool got banned and most likely found
another female streamer and repeated the cycle. Just banning the users from the
channel with nightbot does not stop the cycle. I believe further action is
required.
It is unfortunate but it seems humanity lives
by the following:
Many people on the internet are there are
little to no consequences because they don’t have to be accountable for what
they say; since no one can physically reach them. The only way to counter this
is to make people accountable for their actions.
2)
All of this verbal and sexual harassment has
an effect on female streamers.
3)
The most important reason this should be
dealt with immediately is Twitch.TV has a responsibility to its employees to
provide a workplace free of harassment.
Not only do I
believe there is a huge morality issue with the ongoing harassment that is
taking place, I also believe Twitch could be liable if its employees (partnered
streamers) demand repercussions for users who commit harassment and nothing is
done.
The
fact is, partnered streamers and Twitch entered a joint venture where Twitch
provides the system and the streamers provide the content and both parties’
benefit financially. None of this behavior would ever be acceptable in a
non-virtual workplace. As times change and technology increases, virtual and
non-virtual workplace boundaries have begun to lack differences. I believe
Twitch has to be responsible for its customers.
My
proposal is that Twitch implement sometime of escalation ban system:
- Any user that is banned from a channel he/she would go
on a list where the owner of said channel could state a case for why the user’s
account should be banned completely and even down to ISP/IP. If there were
numerous occurrences (say 3 for example) where blatant harassment occurred,
then enact the ban. This would actually make consequences for unacceptable
behavior.
For
now, my suggestion to all partnered-female streamers is to leave your chat in
subscriber mode only. There are two particularly good reasons for this:
1)
It should substantially reduce the amount of
harassment that occurs, as users would have to pay to gain access to the chat
(and even if they paid and were offensive at least the streamer would gain
something before banning the user in question).
Moxierawr is a great female streamer who used
to conduct viewer Saturday streamers. However, after a recent troll, Moxie
changed the Saturday stream to subscriber Saturday games because, as she stated
on one of her streams, “if someone is going to troll me again, at least I will
get something out of it now”. Leave it to one person to ruin the fun for
everyone else…
2)
It will allow streamers to focus on their
true supporters. The fact is, many of these female streamers provide great
content and I believe they do not need an open chat to be successful. Users
will catch the stream, see that it is a good time, and ultimately subscribe to
participate and gain benefits of the stream.
However,
what about the non-partnered female streamers? Or the male streamers who
receive harassment? I’m fairly certain that the non-partnered streamers
outnumber the partnered streamers. Should only partnered streamers receive
assistance?
My
answer to these questions is it should not matter whether the streamer is partnered
or non-partnered. A culture change needs to occur and Twitch seems like as good
a place as any to start. Great organizations that survive throughout the years
are innovative, groundbreaking, and refrain from accepting the norm. I believe
Twitch has an opportunity to set itself apart from the pack by taking a dynamic
stance on curbing harassment.
I
believe most users utilize Twitch for entertainment purposes. However, there
are a few users whose idea of entertainment is purely trolling and harassment. It
is these haters that detract from broadcasts and cause emotional turmoil to the
streamers and viewers. These are users that Twitch could really do without.
