Streaming as a female: Let me tell you a story

I started streaming when a friend mentioned Twitch to me at work. He knew that I liked to play video games and said I’d do really well as I was a girl. It sounded like fun to me so I thought I’d give it a go! I started streaming back in November 2017 with a basic setup of my playstation and my headset! I didn’t know a lot about streaming so I just jumped straight into it starting with a playthrough of Resident Evil 0

As is the case for most people, I didn’t get a lot of viewers when I first started; I believe my own sister was my first viewer/follower! This continued to be the case for a while as I didn’t know what I was really doing and how I would grow. I was confused, as I was told being a female, I would have been in the minority and more likely to get views, but this wasn’t the case.

Cut to January and I still wasn’t getting much luck. Then someone joined the chat who said they could help me get more viewers; and no this wasn’t a bot, but a real person. They sent me a private message and showed me how they’d helped other females grow and indeed, these channels were getting a lot of viewers. I felt like I didn’t have a lot to lose at this point and so took them up on their offer.

They messaged me privately and said they had a community of people that they would tell to come by my stream. However, they first suggested that I wear low cut tops and tiny shorts. This immediately made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to have to show off my body but I wanted to have more people see my stream and so I said that I would wear a slightly lower cut top.

My next stream came around and I was wearing this lower cut top they had suggested I wore. They kept to their promise and suddenly I had a decent amount of people come in, (as high as 10) which I was thrilled about! But then they started chatting in my stream. They asked nothing about the game I was playing or about myself, but instead asked me to do things, like come closer to the webcam, stand up and pick something up from the floor. I felt incredibly uncomfortable and ended the stream instantly.

https://www.eliteteam.tv/twitch-streamer/

Shortly after, I started receiving private whispers asking for lets say, ‘sexual content’ in exchange for donations. I realised that this was not the reason I started to stream. I wanted to play games and have fun, and maybe make people laugh? I went back to my old appearance of geeky shirts and very unfashionable clothing choices and felt like myself again.

Not long after, I joined real communities, who treated me with respect and like one of their own, and not because of my gender. I am now part of Elite, and have made so many friends who like me, funnily enough for me! Feel free to join me and my friends in the Elite (click here)

The moral of this story is, be yourself and don't ever let anyone make you feel uncomfortable while streaming and in life in general! People of any gender should be able to wear whatever they like (within TOS) and be treated with respect. At the end of the day, if people don’t enjoy your content for being you, then they can go watch someone else. Remember to love yourself always!

externalId=elite-article-detail-2.1.2&filter[active]=1&filter[category]=/articles&filter[not uuid]=941dffc6-4f77-4d38-94d6-51a00f9853f1&sort=date.desc