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The current state of Twitch
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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ootl is twitch expanding into the amateur porn market orrrrrr
For years, Twitch's "Just Chatting" section has basically been podcasts, Reaction content where streamers play a youtube and go take a shit, and (generally female presenting) streamers in various states of undress. You may have heard of "the hot tub meta" which involved putting on a skimpy bikini.
This has resulted in some pretty awkward front pages where it can look like you are looking out the window in a beach town or left a PG-13 movie on. Because, you know, bikinis.
This came to a head semi-recently when "the topless meta" became a thing where (generally) female (presenting) streamers would put on a tube top, position the camera like they are doing a face stream in the early 2010s, and make people think they are actually topless. So obviously a bunch of the most generic white guys with man buns on the planet (and Kai "Trick guests and other streamers into being raped by my violent rapist buddy" Cenat) lost their shit and competed to go viral with their Reaction content to putting something tamer than what TBS shows on daytime television when they play Austin Powers on the screen.
So Twitch/Amazon actually made a good decision for the first time in years by allowing artistic nudity and sexualized content so long as streamers checked a box that would add content warnings and take them off the front page. Which led to a race to promote OF/Fansly content by the streamers interested in that and to show how sexualized content is destroying the white man by the usual suspects. And Twitch, rather than try to moderate this, rolled it back.
Because, as OP demonstrates, there is this completely asinine "theory" that bikini streamers are ruining and taking over twitch. And, while I am not a fan and wish we had the content warning policy, they really aren't. The top 100 streamers by almost any metric are almost universally dudes (many in tanktops because they hit the gym and male nipples aren't scary) with the few female streamers being people like Pokimane or QTCinderella who actively do not do this kind of content.
But just look at people like andrew tate and like half of kick. There is a lot of money in pushing incel content and hate.
Exactly. Charalanahzard did a video on this a few days ago I thought was really good.
Essentially what you said: it's not really an issue. It only seems like one because there's a demographic that's intensely jealous and controlling.
With a big titty cam girl for a thumbnail... Talk about bait and switch.
Yeah. After watching Charlanahzard's video I went right to Twitch to the Just Chatting section and I saw that exact thumbnail on a video. It was playing old videos but it was just so absolutely perfect.
I agree that 95% of the reason is just men being uncomfortable with women having success in "their" space when it involves their sexuality, but I can also sympathize with being unable to find a mid-sized chill stream to watch because so many of them are half-nude ASMR streams or body painting. It's like how YouTube has so much trashy corporate garbage protmoted in its algorithm, it's just exhausting to wade through sometimes.
The way incentives are currently set up on both sites just happen to prioritize those types of content though, so it's pointless to get mad at the creators as if they're doing something wrong. Twitch is still a step above YouTube in this aspect as well, since at least you can't AI generate trash content that gets uploaded 100+ times daily on a livestream. You're at least getting real people.
I just loaded up the front page of twitch.
I see two streams where the face cam looks like it is a major part of the stream and I am pretty sure that was just "let's make a thumbnail". One workout stream which was a pretty standard gym attire. The only risque thing I found was one "Bodypaint Xmas (heart emoticon) !socials" and said body paint was good enough that I genuinely had to do a triple take to figure out she was not wearing a shirt. Oh, and a sumo wrestling channel that I followed because holy shit that is awesome.
Like most things: Your algorithm based recommendations mostly say a lot about you. Assuming you actually have a front page that looks like you left TBS on all day: Maybe stop watching the titty streams if you don't want to see more titty streams?
Their recommendation algorithm doesn’t care what you watch, it cares what other people who watch the same streamers as you watch. So if I watch a lot of shroud, I notice more titty streamers popping up in my recommendations because shroud viewers are more likely to watch titty streams.
More than anything it’s annoying. I come to twitch for gaming content. I really don’t appreciate my recommended tab needing to be censored. It’s not taking away viewers, but it is making the experience on the platform worse for many.
I still stand by not needing to actually censor something tamer than going to a public pool but...
That is literally what the policy changes were. Tag content that maybe shouldn't be on the front page of a site where over 50% of users are 16-44. And everyone lost their minds and killed it.
And I am not familiar with shroud's content. I know back in the day he was a "god gamer" but not sure what he streams these days. For what it is worth, after I "just couldn't" with moistcritikal anymore, my youtube recommendations cleared themselves right up. Because, shockingly, watching someone who Reacts to everything means you tend to get the same trash he is Reacting to in your feed.
Most of my twitch follows are weird channels (like watching otters play in a pool) or O(100) streams like Remap. But I'll tune into the occasional Pokimane or Disguised Toast stream and my front page is still pretty much gaming.
If I’m in public browsing through twitch, when that stuff pops up, it’s sure not looking like a public pool. 99% of the time it’s a woman with the bottom of the camera cutting off her nipples and a ton of cleavage right in your face. I have NSFW blurring turned on for every other service, because who would have known, people don’t want to see that stuff in public.
Everyone lost their mind because the problem got 100x worse the moment twitch loosened the guidelines, and there’s no way they could have subjectively moderated all of it.
Shroud is still 100% gaming. That doesn’t matter though, because as a large streamer, there’s a lot of overlap with the teenagers watching gaming content and titty streamers.
When I don’t watch any big streamers/fps streamers for a week or two the recommendations are almost always gone, except for the one I clicked on once out of genuine curiosity.
Just checked the Just Chatting tab. With five streams per row
And for funs, I checked the Beauty & Body Art tab. One person is getting a haircut, one dude (?) is face painting, and someone feminine looking looks like they are doing actual body paint but I can't tell if they are doing pasties or what.
So of forty-ish rows I see three things that I would give a second take if I saw it on the street. Big beefy sumo boys, cute little kitties, and a woman in a tubetop.
We go to very different pools I guess.
It wouldn't be on the front page anymore after the recent policy change, but if you go to "just chatting" it auto-sorts by view count, which is where most of that content is.
This is exactly it. Insecure CHUDS hate that female sexuality has power over them so they seek to assert cultural control over it. It's the same reason repressed assholes all over the world want to tell women what to wear and how to act.
Twitch is no longer a gaming only platform. It went full circle back to being an everything streaming site. People chat, people draw, people code, people make stuff with their hands. It's been that way for awhile.
A lot of the most popular streamers regularly have long gaps with the camera pointing at three empty chair so don't act like having a brief break is crime of the century, Sips is away for about fifteen minutes an hour making tea or whatever he does - and that's only real streamers, someone like xqc will watch an entire someone else's content while out the room then come in and eat silently while he watches another whole someone else's content.
I know a lot of people here will never be able to accept it but a lot of the bikini streamers are actually really interesting conversationalists too, like she's not someone I watch often but amouranth ripping the trolls can genuinely be the funniest thing I see in a day - she and many others are generally interesting, intelligent, and insightful -- and no before people imply it just because they have boobs doesn't mean they can't be smart.
Compared to Charlie, xqc, and most the popular streamers they put a lot more effort into their streams. Depending who you watch and what your tastes are they can make great background streams, I've discovered a lot of great music certainly more than any local radio station.
It's funny to me seeing people making a show of saying they'd never watch such content then acting like they know exactly what it's like - what they mean is they assume anything with an attractive woman is terrible because attractive women are nothing but dumb sex objects.
If you want Charlie to be able to tell dirty jokes, make god slap, talk about wild internet drama, and play violent video games without getting censored then don't side with the over boiled morality police, support the troops on the vanguard in the struggle for artistic liberty -- the bikini hulahoop girls are fighting for your freedom.
You know I'm partial to the explanation that none of the viewers who watch this kind of shit would really want to watch anything else anyways, because they're just here for the softcore porn market, so it's not really hurting anyone. Or, if they would watch anything else, they clearly have their priorities, and it's not the problem of the softcore streamer to stop streaming so kai cenat can have 0.5% higher viewership since theoretically they're "stealing the views with their feminine wiles". On the other hand, I do think a lot of people (mostly kids) tend to eat whatever you put in front of them, and it's not as though tastes can't change over time, with exposure, rather than something or other being necessarily higher value to the viewer. The only people who could probably attempt to know the truth, if they wanted, would be twitch themselves, because they have access to that collection of statistics, of what viewers are getting converted over to what streams. It's not so clear as to be just a zero sum game, but it's also not not a zero sum game, is basically what I'm saying.
FWIW though I don't really care about softcore on twitch because ALL of twitch is softcore. All of it. Most of the people who complain about this shit are just idiots sitting around doing react content or gaming and doing really dumb stand up, and all the viewers are parasocial andys. The only good twitch streams I've seen are a guy getting tortured in a closet and a dude doing amateur cooking for random people he meets outside, and then a very small handful of people livestreaming technical subjects and doing live tutorials because that's easier and provides more feedback than videos, even if it's not scalable. And the sumo guy, that guy's sick.
Also worth considering twitch makes a decent portion of its operating budget from them, if you want a service to keep continuing functioning so you can watch niche channels then don't chase their cashcows from the platform
They recently made a post saying sexual dancing would be allowed on the platform but then changed their minds after being roasted for it.