TL;DL: On the Need for Diversity in Twitch Streams and Let’s Plays

One of the many things that we talked about in episode 97 of the podcast (it’s a good one and you should go back and listen to it right after you finish reading this post) was the incredible lack of diversity among the popular Twitch streamers and YouTubers. While there are a few women (comparatively) who regularly stream games and garner a huge following there are even fewer people of color or (openly) trans folks.

This fact begs a couple of questions. 1) why isn’t there more diversity in these groups, 2) what can be gained by diversity in these groups, and 3) what else would we like to see in these media? Oddly enough (if one can even say that about things that happen on the internet), when I first began to formulate this post it was simply in response to the discussion that we’d had on the last show and the shit hadn’t yet hit the proverbial fan about a round of slut shaming of female streamers.

First, let me start by saying clearly, openly, and honestly that I support female streamers and their right to  wear whatever they like and perform in any way that they see fucking fit. I mentioned on the last show that I was searching for female streamers that were appropriate for my daughter to watch and while I don’t think that scantily clad women (or men) are acceptable for her playlist I fully respect these women’s rights to dress in whatever manner they deem appropriate. This restriction of media is not limited to YouTube streamers, but also extends to video games themselves. It is not a question of what is acceptable to me as a feminist or a woman, but of what I consider acceptable for an underage child…my underage child..to consume. Now, that being said…

My daughter recently discovered Let’s Plays thanks to the new YouTube kids app and Stampy Cat and his playthrough of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch became a thing of fascination for her. She used her limited screen time (and a couple of days of unlimited sick kid screen time) to pore through the almost 100 videos in that series at a rate that was unbelievable. She knew the game well so it seemed to pull her in even more. She commented on his play style brought up her own memories of playing through the game two years ago and just generally had a blast. She engaged with it in ways that she has never really done with regular television. It was amazing.

And then she asked about female YouTubers. Were there “girls” who did what Stampy Cat does and could she watch them? That gave me pause. I thought back over the list of women that I had seen stream or post videos and a whole list of questions popped up. Could I find media that covered age appropriate games, in age appropriate language, with hosts that were  fully clothed? The pickings were slim. Thanks to our own Ashley I was able to find Cupquake, who plays a lot of kid appropriate Kinect games with her husband, Red, in an inflated suit. Apparently that shit is comic gold with the 6 year old crowd. Pea watched a couple of her videos and laughed like a lunatic. While Cupquake might not necessarily be my thing, she and Red are  right on for the kiddos.

All of this is a long-winded way of getting at the my first two questions that I list at the beginning of this post. Why isn’t there more diversity here and why do we need it? Let’s hit these in reverse order. First, the obvious answer is that we need diversity because we need to hear diverse perspectives and we need folks from diverse backgrounds to see themselves reflected in the communities that surround the media that they consume. In other words, we need to know what women, LGBTI folks, and minorities think about games too and folks from these communities (and folks in general) need to see themselves reflected in these communities. So why is it so blooming hard to find non-white male PewDiePie type streamers?

Again, let’s go with the obvious answer: the reception that these folks get from the community. As of late I have been watching a lot of streams and Let’s Plays and the comments that I have seen about folks that fall in these categories would be enough to drive anyone away. Racism, sexism, and homophobia abound. I can not imagine how it must feel to put the time and energy into producing a good LP or stream only to find this kind of vitriol thrown back at you or to find that people simply don’t watch because you don’t quite fit the stereotype of what they think a host should look like. This becomes even more difficult when we look at whose links get shared around as examples and exemplars on social media. When I asked for hosts appropriate for children I received a fairly good sized list that included 2 women and no (obvious) people of color (POC). That’s a problem. I shouldn’t have to go specifically to diverse folks to find other diverse folks. There is diversity out there. Cypheroftyr of Why I Need Diverse Games has started to stream and she is a solid gamer and there is tons of hilarious conversation going on in her chat, Shareef Jackson of #GamingLooksGood does some solid games analysis in his new series of LPs, Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry folks have just started their own Twitch channel with a diverse group of hosts, and while the hilarious and thoughtful brothers at the @SpawnonMe blog and podcast have done the #Spawn4Good stream I would kill to see some critical LPs from them (please?)!

A secondary answer to why we don’t see more diverse folks is support. Now, that’s not really separate from the reception answer, but I’m going to point it out anyway. This kind of media production takes lots of time and resources and if we want more of them we need to support them in any way that we can. Visit their sites, subscribe to their streams and channels, give to their Patreon campaigns…support them in whatever way you can.

And because this post is already pretty long, I’m going to save going into what we want to see more of from YouTube streams and LPs for another day. But I do want to say a little about what we need to see less of. We need to see a whole  lot less of the self aggrandizing, slut shaming, bullshit that we saw coming out of folks like POC, queer (and here I admit that I am making that assumption based on his pronoun choice when talking about his porn) YouTuber Sky Williams last week (nope, not driving link traffic), who spent almost 5 minutes going off on a tirade against female streamers that he felt dressed too provocatively and brought misogyny and sexual harassment on themselves and other female gamers without ever taking into  consideration that the responsibility of harassment lies with the people that do the harassment and not the people that are being harassed. Interestingly enough this is the same argument that gets used to explain away the presence of most non-normative minorities in spaces perceived to be the domain of the white, male, heterosexual. Don’t like racial slurs? Don’t go there? Don’t like to catcalled or otherwise harassed? Stay home where it’s safe (also a useful solution to not getting raped…stop being so damned tempting by being present). Don’t want to be gay bashed? Hide your “tea” (yep, that’s gay slang for Truth).

FFS, really? Can we move past the point of tearing each other down in order to bring ourselves up? We are in the fucking struggle together. It’s not a struggle against white, male gamers or any one group in particular. Our struggle is one that seeks to bring folks of all ilks to the table for a discussion of one of the things we hold most dear from a variety of viewpoints. That’s all I got.