Not only does a streamer have to compete against others who play the same video games, streamers now find themselves competing against content creators from a whole other league — sex workers.
Twitch vs. Capitalism
Surviving on Twitch is a fraught prospect, even for the most dedicated of streamers.
Once touted as a platform for gamers to livestream their hobby and socialize with other geeks, Twitch has strayed far from its original purpose. Having diversified its reach outside of gaming, Twitch is now at a crossroads. To whom does it cater, and how can it appeal to one audience without alienating the others?
The platform’s rapid descent into smutty content comes from Amazon’s increased demands for better quarterly earnings. This much is evident with the latest development, reported by Bloomberg, that discussions are now underway within the company to dramatically change content monetization — with some of the proposed changes potentially going live in just a few short months.
One of the options being considered is a pay cut for the platform’s highest-paid partners, reducing their revenue take from subscriptions from 70 percent to 50 percent, and the introduction of various tiers of partnership with different rates and requirements — all while partners are prohibited, via exclusivity contracts, from streaming on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.
Twitch’s predisposition toward earnings at all costs means giving preferential treatment to “Twitch Thots” — women who monetize their bodies for quick bucks — at the cost of community values. As a platform designed for minors aged 13 and up, there are next to no safeguards preventing minors from viewing adult content. If anything, it has been promoted on the main landing page of the website, with many “adult audience only” streamers providing links directly to their OnlyFans pages.
The gateway of users being able to access or promote adult content is fueling the oversaturated meat market, which sees impressionable adolescents forming parasocial relationships with content creators, or young women selling their intimate content for as little as $7.50 a month, with the average OnlyFans creator earning just $145 to $180 per month.
Twitch allowing this to continue is a far cry from its beginnings as a wholesome video game-sharing platform. With the increased pressure to placate shareholders with higher quarterly earnings, Twitch has not been impartial in regard to its content moderation, shifting their attention to woke initiatives like LGBTQ inclusivity and addressing toxicity in video games — rather than facing head-on the real issues the platform faces, such as abuse and exploitation of its users and content creators.
It’s almost as if Twitch is keen on creating new problems, or addressing nonexistent ones, instead of dealing with the problems it already has.
Twitch’s issues have not gone unnoticed. With the looming revenue cuts, the platform’s top content creators are going to raise a fuss and are very likely to look to greener pastures, like YouTube, which already has strict content moderation in place to prevent sexual content from being pushed on minors.
Parents, too, are keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing, especially with revelations that minors are being groomed by online influencers for sexual gratification or transgender ideology. These are developments that will undoubtedly put a damper on Twitch’s profit margins, which have been largely driven by its inconsistent moderation standards.
In the pursuit of profit, Twitch could ultimately destroy itself.
While it’s hard for an audience of mostly teenagers to deny the atavistic lure of scantily clad women who flaunt their sexuality, the platform itself need not dismantle its core audience by attempting to cater to every fan base in the naked pursuit of profit.
Twitch must decide what its core values are in order to determine what the platform will look like in a decade — assuming it isn’t supplanted by more focused alternatives in the not-too-distant future.
Just as an example, you can gauge your level of twitch with the header model here, Amouranth, or you can catch one of our personal favorite, Sasha Grey, as she conquers the world(s) and all. You should probably spend some time on both — y’know, for science. As a matter of encouragement, we even included a few potentially twitch-inducing photos of Sasha, who happens to be our July, 2007 Pet of the Month. We did that also for science, of course. Everybody love science (at least if presented properly).
