Toxicity in Twitch Chat

Warning: racism, homophobia, transphobia.

The Context

Summer Games Done Quick is a gaming marathon that aims to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, and it just wrapped up after one week of non-stop streaming on Twitch, raising over $1.2m in the process. The Games Done Quick events run twice a year and thousands of people come together to create this wonderful celebration of gaming and charity.

Many different groups work to make the marathon a reality. There are the runners who play their games as fast as possible to show off their skill, the commentators who dazzle the audience with their knowledge of the inner workings of video games, the GDQ staff who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure as little goes wrong as possible, the volunteers who try their best to provide a helping hand wherever necessary, and of course, everyone who tunes in to watch and donate to the cause.

I fall into the volunteer category. I’m unable to travel to the USA to attend the event in person, as are many others, but this is a fantastic event and I want to do what I can to help. For volunteers off-site, there’s really only one option: moderating the various chatrooms that GDQ has so that the audience watching from home can enjoy themselves. For the second time, I offered to provide help moderating the Twitch chat. After a peak of over 220k viewers in January at Awesome Games Done Quick, I figured that the GDQ staff could use all hands on deck this time around as well.

The Problem

Twitch chat is an interesting place. In smaller streams, it’s a place where viewers at home can hold a conversation with the streamer from anywhere in the world. Where the streamer can get immediate feedback from people at home, much like a stand-up comedian gets feedback when performing on a stage. Where people, who potentially had almost no chance of meeting before the internet existed, can discuss their interests and enjoy each other’s company.

But all communities have their bad eggs.

For those who don’t know, Twitch allows streamers to appoint moderators in their own chatrooms. Moderators (and the streamers themselves) have the power to remove chat messages, and to time-out or even ban other users. When a bad egg decides to pop in and say hello, or something not as nice, moderators can tell them to take a hike by preventing them from posting in the chat. Bans can always be reversed, so users are able to contact the streamer or a moderator in a private message to appeal it.

As streams grow, they attract more attention. Twitch allows you to search for streams based on the game currently being played, and the streams with the most viewers always appear first. Naturally, as the number of viewers grows, the number of bad eggs will grow as well. Depending on how many moderators the streamer has appointed, keeping a chat under control can become tedious work. Most streamers like having a relationship with their viewers, and the moderators work to make sure the viewers who genuinely want that relationship to continue are able to keep it going.

A few streamers believe that their chat is a lost cause. There are users that enjoy spending their time posting messages in chat that have no relevance to the stream (spamming), or are unnecessarily negative (trolling), and these messages drown out the ones that the streamer actually wants to see. I’m not going to go anywhere near why these people act this way, but it happens, and it happens a lot. In certain streams, it happens too much for streamers and moderators to keep up with.

Whenever anyone calls attention to this, you hear an oft-used excuse:

“Yeah, but that’s just how Twitch chat is.”

When a chatroom reaches a certain size, people start talking about it as unnecessary. They’re so full of spam that it can be difficult for a streamer to hold a relationship with their audience through the chat, and streamers will instead use other websites like Twitter to garner feedback and hold conversations. When I talk to people about moderating for GDQ events, some wonder why anyone would bother when the chat consistently has over 80k viewers.

GDQ events are very inclusive when it comes to runners. If you can play a game fast, you’re in with a shot to be accepted into the marathon. As such, people of every age, race, gender, and sexual orientation flock to this event to have a good time playing games with people who share similar interests. The rest of the world, however, isn’t so big on the whole “acceptance” thing. If anyone tried to pull something at the event, security would escort them out, so they try to push their agenda through safe avenues.

Twitch allows users to remain relatively anonymous. Just sign up with a username and you’re ready to go. Many users take advantage of this to be as disruptive as possible because they believe they’re protected from any real-world consequences. If one of their accounts gets banned, they can just make a new one and continue on. So why even try to prevent these people from being awful?

That’s just how Twitch chat is.

So many people believe this is a battle that can’t be won. So many people don’t try to stop Twitch chat users from being disruptive because, well, that’s just how things are. So many people want Twitch to be better, but see no reason to step in.

I’ve seen messages that are purposefully spelt incorrectly to make fun of a runner with a speech impediment. I’ve seen users openly admitting they’re going to try to stalk women they see on stream. I’ve seen hundreds of variations of “kill all niggers” and “trannies must die”. I’ve seen a chat completely full of an emote of a staff member’s face (shown below) because an explosion went off in the current game.

Why the fuck would you want to just let this exist?

The Fix

Putting an end to such widespread behaviour is tough, but simple:

Stop. Making. Excuses.

The culture on Twitch has reached a point where people behave this way because they expect no-one to tell them not to. Any time they see someone say “that’s just how it is”, they further believe that their behaviour is justified. It might be how it is right now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. If you want it to change, change it. Speak up. Tell them they aren’t welcome. Don’t let the people who ruin this incredible experience continue to do so.

I volunteer to moderate the GDQ chat because this event is one of the great things about the world. Thousands of different people from all walks of life come together to entertain, to create, to laugh, and to raise money for charity. Yet somehow the Twitch chatroom is full of hatred and malice, directed at anyone that the chat believes is unworthy. It shouldn’t be this way, and I want to do my part to try and fix it.