Research Question:  How does a streamer’s social media presence on the internet impact their mental health? Is the trade-off worth it?

 

The age-long question many have debated about is are video Games good for you? This question is subjective because everyone has their own take on how video games have impacted society. Regardless of their opinion, video games are a notable form of entertainment for many, and many enjoy watching people play games with live commentary with real time feedback from the person playing. One such live streaming platform is called Twitch, where many players try to climb the ladder to the top of the platform and create their own communities and source of income. Twitch consists of a streamer, the person who is playing the game, the chat, being the audience watching the streamer and any third party being whoever the streamer is playing with. The chat communicates with the streamer by sending donations with messages, which the streamer reads. The chat members communicate with each other and the streamer through the chat box, which streamers try to keep up with. Playing video games online can be a dream job but your presence in social media after doing so can also give you second thoughts about this career.

 

I went to Twitch to observe a streamer to see how they did their job. I went to a streamer named Sypherpk who had 5000 or more concurrent viewers, which is a lot on the platform, so that I could see what a streamer who had a huge audience had to do. Sypherpk looked like he was in his 20s but his ethnicity was hard to tell. He has a beard and he put gel on his hair. He was watching another streamer play Fortnite while having a discussion with his chat. They were talking about a mechanic in the game who was trying to provide a solution to his audience. He said “Creative solution for wall taking and I think it is better than coin flip because the solution is readable. Think of it like this, when you have your pickaxe out, what if you right click and it gives a different animation…If you right click for the pickaxe and do the animation, you take the wall. If you are defending and they do the right click animation, they take the wall. It is not fair that people could take walls first try and they have lower ping. The second solution is to make coin clips actually work.” I didn’t completely understand his explanation but it appeared that he was trying to make constructive criticism to improve the game, by trying to have ping or connection to the servers as less of an impact in the performance of certain mechanics. The consensus of his chat agreed with him but with the occasional few who told him that things are fair as it is, Sypher told him to listen to his explanation and be more open minded as his solution could make the game more playable for many more people rather than the select few with close connection to the servers.

Based on my time on the platform observing Sypher on twitch, I could see that the streamer and his chat were having a great time. Despite the good things we hear and see on streams, streamers are also at risk to life threatening scenarios because a lot of information about them is online. They have the possibility of being doxed, where their personal information such as address and real names are leaked onto the internet. If people obtain private information, some viewers actually report to the local police station near the streamer’s area that the streamer is doing something illegal with malicious intent for their own entertainment. This leads to the swat team showing up to the streamer’s door and in some cases, the viewers witness the raid live.  According to an article titled Swatting by John Vile from Mtsu.org, he said “In December 2017, police arrived at the Wichita, Kansas home of Andrew Finch who was reported to have killed his father and to be holding his mother and his sibling at gunpoint.  Police shot Finch, who was unarmed, when he opened the door and appeared to reach for his waistband.  Police later arrested Tyler Bariss of Los Angeles, who had previously called in false bomb threats, and who had apparently provided a wrong address after attempting to get back at another individual with whom he had a gaming dispute.  Although Finch appears to have been the first death that resulted from swatting, police had shot and injured Tyran Dobbs with rubber bullets February 2015 after a similar swatting incident.” The individual Andrew Finch was the first person on Twitch to ever die because falsely reported of having his parents at gunpoint all for a dispute on a game of Call of Duty. This shows the helplessness that a social media influencer can face, especially those who are real time broadcasting in front of thousands of people. This experience could have happened to anyone with the way that Finch was falsely accused and the swat team appeared. When streamers go online to play games, they accumulate fans, but they also gain haters and people who want to see them suffer. Finch’s social media presence on the gaming platform Twitch made him more susceptible to such people like Tyler, which led to his unfortunate tragedy.

Going back to Sypherpk, he was also a target for hate. Sypherpk helped the Fortnite community by advocating for Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite to get rid of Skilled-Based Match-Making (sbmm), which is a system where people play other players of similar skill level, which most players did not like. However, Sypher found a problem that there were too many in-game AI or not real players in the game, so he made a video with fellow streamer Ninja, in which they addressed the issue. A few days later, Epic seemingly added Skill based matchmaking back again and people thought it was because of Sypherpk and his video. As a result, Sypherpk got a lot of hate taken to him on twitter where people made #Fuck Sypherpk trending on twitter. Sypher responded to the trend on twitter by saying “What a crazy day. I’ve never been a target of a witch hunt. Really happy that I had support from friends and the community. If I wasn’t thick skinned and mentally strong today could have been a very dark day for me. Instead we turned it into a positive moment and bounced back.” This goes to show that social media can have a really bad effect on those who make their presence dominant on the internet. The trade-off some people make for playing video games online for a living is the possibility of being harassed by a lot of people on the internet.

In 2016, there was a large youtube channel called Dramaalert, which reported news channels, who found this story about a pedophile named John Philips. John was arrested after he was caught having sex with a minor in 2001, who he met through the game Runescape. Keemstar found this gentle old man named Tony, who goes by the online name rsgloryandgold, and labelled him a pedophile and his identity as John after seeing him play Runescape on Twitch. All of Keemstar’s fans came to Tony’s Twitch channel and they all sent him death threats, and called him nasty names. According to the metro article, Rob Waugh said “The 62-year-old streamer received death threats and a torrent of abuse, and showed off identity documents to prove his innocence, live on Twitch while crying. Keemstar has faced a huge backlash online, and issued an apology, saying, ‘I guess that’s because he kind of looks like the guy. But it wasn’t him.’” Tony was the victim of a huge allegation that wasn’t true and it resulted in his reputation being tarnished and he still has to live with people calling him nasty names. This incident continues to ponder the question, if the trade-off for some fame or social media presence on Twitch or the internet is worth it if there are consequences like this that may arise.

On the other hand, social media presence can positively affect the followers. Dan Avidan, a member of a youtube channel named Game Grumps talked about his depression in a video and some subscribers of the channel were able to relate to the story, Some even shared their personal stories, which intrigued Maria Mickles who wrote a scholar journal Trying to Save the Game(r): Understanding the Meaning-Making Process of YouTube Subscribers Surrounding Mental Health and Video Game Vlogging, May 2020. DigitalCommons . The journalist interviewed and surveyed four of the individuals who shared their stories and interviewed them. The objective of the study was to see why the individuals were able to share their stories and the conclusion of the study was that the anonymity of having the identity hidden allowed the subscribers to be more open. Also, the individual subscribers wanted to share their story to support the individuals for the sake of others as well. Finally, Dr.Lupo, another famous twitch streamer saved the life of one of his viewers who contemplated taking their life. According to the Dextero article “Viewers regularly donate and ask DrLupo for life advice but the end of his stream on May 27th ended with him receiving one of the most concerning donation messages a content creator can ever receive. One of his fans, Davy_wavy10, donated with a message saying that he was “ending it all” and donating the last of his money to his favorite streamer, a comment that DrLupo took very seriously and implored his fan not to act upon. He went on to tell Davy that he expects to hear from him in the morning, asked him to call a suicide helpline, and stated that he expected to see him in the chat during his Monday morning stream… We’re delighted to say that Davy did join DrLupo’s morning stream on Monday, May 28th, after emailing DrLupo the night before to thank him.” This shows that streamers can help people with their mental health and knowing that the trade-off of them risking the potential to have a swat team come to their house in return of possibly saving thousands of lives through their streams, then they would most likely say that it is worth it to stream.

“How does a streamer’s social media presence on the internet impact their mental health? Is the trade-off worth it?” This question is subjective to the individual so they have to see if they are willing to take the risk of leading such a career, where mobs of people can hate them but possibly save the lives of many others. Ultimately, in my opinion, the trade-off of the potential to save the lives of many would outweigh the possibilities of social media presence impacting me.

 

Works Cited

–        Mickles, Maria. Trying to Save the Game(r): Understanding the Meaning-Making Process of YouTube Subscribers Surrounding Mental Health and Video Game Vlogging, May 2020. DigitalCommons, https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=university_honors_program.

 

–        Vile, John R. “Swatting.” Swatting, www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1578/swatting.

 

–        Dey, Dipanjan. “SypherPK Defends His Stance About Fortnite SBMM Changes.” EssentiallySports, 12 May 2020, www.essentiallysports.com/sypherpk-defends-his-stance-about-fortnite-sbmm-changes-battle-royale-esports-news-2020/.

 

– Unilad, 9 Jan. 2016, 17:03, www.unilad.co.uk/news/youtuber-makes-62-year-old-man-cry-after-internet-witch-hunt/.

 

–        Waugh, Rob. “YouTuber Tracks down ‘Runescape Paedophile’ Online – but It’s the Wrong Guy.” Metro, Metro.co.uk, 16 Feb. 2016, metro.co.uk/2016/01/11/youtuber-tracks-down-runescape-paedophile-online-but-its-the-wrong-guy-5615544/.

 

–        Deason, Ross. “Popular Streamer DrLupo Urges Viewers to Always Seek Help After Distressing Donation.” Dexerto.com, Dexerto.com, 11 Mar. 2019,