A livestreamer named sodapoppin has plenty of thoughts about Twitch and those who spend plenty of time on the site. Basically sodapoppin, whose real name is Chance Morris and who has 2.2 million followers on Twitch and another 940,000 on YouTube, said Twitch is like a “mental hospital”—and not in a good way.
“You’ve got moderators who are glorified internet janitors,” he said this week. “You’ve got clip chimps who are trying to farm a resource that actually doesn’t mean anything but gives them validation. You’ve got some people who watch the streams and relax and are normal. Some. But you’ve got people donating to millionaires. You’ve got people who ‘white knight’ in the hopes they’ll maybe get laid by their favorite streamer when, in reality, they’re already married.”
This isn’t the first time Morris has called out so-called clip chimps, aka those who race to Reddit to post a clip from his stream so that the person can then reap karma points. He did the same thing in April when he said, “They’re so fucking thirsty, man. It’s sad.”
“Imagine,” Morris also said this week, “seeing something funny happen on this stream, and your first thought is to race to clip it and post it to Reddit for karma. Again, mental illness … It’s really weird. That’s what Twitch is nowadays.”
Morris also is likely correct about users donating money to the streamers who are already wealthy. According to one Twitch user, a popular streamer can make tens of thousands of dollars per month, thanks to donations, advertising revenue, and subscription numbers (earlier this year, Ninja revealed that he makes more than $500,000 per month playing Fortnite).
Morris’ conclusion about the platform, then, is simple. It’s like one big asylum.
“Twitch is a giant, glorified mental hospital,” he said. “It’s just fucked in so many ways.”