It’s no secret that the streaming world is dominated by men, with 9 out of 10 of Twitch’s current top broadcasters being male — a trend that xQc gave an eye-opening reason for during a recent podcast.
Think of the most popular broadcasters on the internet right now. Chances are, you probably thought of names like Dr Disrespect, Ninja, Tfue and shroud.
Of course, it would be amiss to leave out female content creators who have made a huge name for themselves in the space, such as Valkyrae, Amouranth and Pokimane, just to name a few.
However, Dexerto’s most recent report on Twitch’s Top 20 most-followed broadcasters shows that all but one of the platform’s Top 10 creators are male, with Pokimane being the single woman among them at 7th place with over 8 million followers.
This topic was brought up during a recent episode of Trainwrecks’ Scuffed podcast. Amidst the debate, xQc chimed in on the conversation with an eye-opening take as to why the field is so male-dominated.
xQc disagreed with the sentiment that women put in less time streaming than their male counterparts, and instead argued that women are discouraged from streaming due to the sheer amount of criticism, sexism and creepiness endured by viewers.
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“It’s a male dominated field,” he began. “It has been for the longest time. Gaming and streaming. Right? And a lot of women get a lot of hatred, a lot of misogyny or whatever. They get much more backlash for just going live and existing. Therefore, it’s obvious that they will stream less, because they’re getting more s**t. Everybody knows this.”
Lengyel isn’t wrong about the sheer amount of weirdness that women streamers have to go through on a regular basis. In fact, Pokimane has made an entire YouTube series reading through creepy Twitch chats, while names like Sweet Anita have even been outright stalked to their own homes.
It’s clear that being a female broadcaster isn’t always sunshine and roses, but quite a few women are making huge waves in the industry. For example, Valkyrae won Content Creator of the Year at the 2020 Game Awards and is one of the most-watched broadcasters on YouTube.
While xQc’s sentiments on the matter certainly aren’t amiss, more and more women on Twitch and YouTube continue to make strides in making their voices — and their content — heard.