Twitch Streamers and Parasocial Relationships

I was having a conversation with one of my friends on the drive back to my college, and she had jokingly mentioned that I should become a twtich streamer. I thought it was funny and went along with the bit we had, pretending to be one of those shitty streamers that was constantly clip farming and just trying too hard for the attention, but that got me thinking about something I had talked about a while ago. I never really liked twitch as a whole, the entire company itself seemed toxic from the inside. I mean, have you seen some of the controvery they've had? Although there's a lot I could say about the company, something I think people fail to realize is that sometimes the streamers help create this toxic cesspool.

Something that I've seen a lot of streamers try to claim is "I am not your friend." I know a popular streamer Ludwig made a video literally called that, where he talked about what he does on stream is just a public persona and that the people that watch him don't actually know who he is. I do agree with what he said, almost every twitch streamer is putting on a fake persona. I don't think people like Kai Cenat are constantly screaming and destroying things when they're off a camera, but what I feel most streamers don't realize when it comes to streaming is that it's inherently parasocial.

In my opinion, content creation as a whole is inherently parasocial. Although you may be creating a persona where you might not behave the way you actually do, you're still creating a person that people will get attached to. One of the biggest complaints I have especially with twitch is the concept of subscriptions and bits. It's good to support creators you like don't get me wrong, but twitch incentivizes people donating excessive amounts of money to people they don't know at all.

Getting things such as badges for how long you've been subscribed to a channel, or for how many bits you've donated, gives a feeling of deservedness to the viewer. Because you've donated up to hundreds of dollars to a random person on the internet, and you're awarded for it by the streamer and the service, it creates this feeling of "I deserve to be recognized for all I've spent!" Whether streamers realize this or not they continue to push a parasocial relationship whenever they thank a viewer for their sub, donation, hell, even just responding to someone in the chat.

As a twitch streamer there is no way to not have some sort of parasocial relationship if you want to be a "good streamer". Unless you ignore your chat, ignore all the people donating, and never talk about anything outside of what you're doing you will be causing some sort of parasociality. If you arent doing any of that you risk losing your relatability, and whats more of a death sentence than people realizing you aren't some small innocent person who doesn't live in a multimillion dollar home? A lot of streamers tend to pretend they're more "grounded" then they actually are, they make their backgrounds their bedrooms, or something similar, to give that feeling of "I'm just like you! I stream from my normal sized bedroom, not my gigantic house!"

To be clear, I don't believe that twitch streamers are these horrible horrible people that prey on others isolation. I think that most streamers have realized the problems that things like parasocial relationships cause for them and their viewer. But what I think almost every streamer fails to realize is that their entire career is based upon that concept. There is no way to remove the parasocial relationships from being a content creator entirely, and I think streamers need to recognize that.

I'm not a twitch streamer, I don't have experience with any of this firsthand, but coming from the perspective of someone who's watched streamers behave in this way and how the industry behaves as a whole, I think it's fair to say that something needs to be done. I know no streamer is gonna find this page or even this article but if for whatever reason one does, I encourage you to think about what you do as a streamer and how it relates to the people that watch you. What are you doing that's parasocial, and what can you do to change it? In my opinion a stream should just be enjoyable and entertaining, and that's all it should be.

If anyone is actually reading this thank you again for listening to some dumb idiot rant about some stupid shit. Enjoy your day :)