Twitch community warns of impending ‘adpocalypse’ in midst of crack down on ASMR meta

Even after Twitch took action against several high-profile streamers dipping into the platform’s controversial ASMR meta, many community members believe the service is still careening towards its own ‘adpocalypse’ advertiser pullout.

Despite several major changes by Twitch to address concerns, the platform’s hot tub meta remains a highly controversial subject. However, many so-called ‘hot tub streamers’ have now forsaken that content for a new ‘ASMR meta’ that has the platform divided yet again.

After only a few days, Twitch banned two of its biggest personalities — Amouranth and Indiefoxx — for their participation in the new meta, but despite that action, many believe the platform has set itself on an irreversible crash-course with a YouTube-esque adpocalypse.

Twitch / Amouranth

While Twitch has taken action against some creators for their ASMR content, many believe it’s too little, too late.

After Amouranth and Indiefoxx were handed out their bans on June 18, many saw this as a victory against the types of content they argued do not belong on the platform. Others have a much darker outlook on the situation, however.

‘ShannonZKiller,’ wife of powerhouse Twitch streamer Christopher ‘Sacriel’ Ball (and a Twitch veteran and frequent platform commentator) issued a dire warning after hearing another streamer, ‘SweeetTails,’ speak out against the ASMR meta.

In her Twitter response, Shannon predicted a grim outcome for Twitch as a whole because of these controversial metas: a massive advertiser pullout, similar to the platform-altering ‘adpocalypse’ events that slammed YouTube creators with massive revenue losses.

Shannon is not alone in her assessment of Twitch’s ad trajectory. Ali ‘SypherPK’ Hassan, one of the platform’s biggest personalities, shared his own concerns about the metas, and also revealed that some companies have already changed their ad strategies — and not in a good way.

“There are some companies out there that are hesitant right now on the Twitch side of things, which is not a good sign,” he revealed. “We’re thinking ‘adpocalypse 2.0’ but on Twitch,” he continued, echoing Shannon’s thoughts on the situation.

“I’ve literally had a company hesitate on their ad campaign because they’re worried about hot tub streams. Even though it has nothing to do with what I do, sometimes these companies think big picture: do we want to be associated with this [content]?”

While Twitch stepped up their moderation of the ASMR category much sooner than many streamers had anticipated, the platform’s future advertising outlook seems bleak — something that has been a major concern for creators since the start of the hot tub meta.

Only time will tell how the situation unfolding in the platform’s two most controversial categories is ultimately resolved, but many of the space’s most influential commentators and streamers have quite an adpocalyptic outlook on what’s to come for Twitch in the future.