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Dying From Toxic Poisoning: Boycotting Twitch?

  • Writer: Kevin White
    Kevin White
  • Oct 29, 2015
  • 3 min read

I'm sure this isn't new to anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in a stream with has more than 50 viewers, but Twitch.tv chatrooms are filled to the brim with "trolls" and degenerates. I have been an advocate watcher of many streamers since 2011. I started off watching AngryTestie and everything was nice then, but over the years, and with the more recent popularity increase of Twitch, there has also been an increase in the abundance of "toxic" behavior in almost every streamer's channel.

Now the idea of having everyone get along and being able to rid the internet of troll, are both absurd. It just wont happen... So what the solution? From the articles I read from other users, they simply turn off the chat and put the streamer's video on fullscreen. I guess this would work fine for a lot of people, but if that is what it comes down to, then the "trolls" win. "Well, what about the moderators or bots meant to regulate the chat?" you may ask. From what I see, most moderator due a poor job of actually being able to control the mass. It almost like having a full-time job just to be able to keep up with all the users. Bots work well, but are generally set to kill. Usually with only one warning (sometimes with no warning at all), these bots with drop the banhammer faster than somone given a red hot coal. This is also why some streamers have set their chats to subcription mode, which lets only the people who has paid to support the stream the ability to chat.

But where does that leave people who want to enjoy themselves and talk to other gamers/veiwers in the community? Well from my experience, I was left demeaned and frastruated. Last week, I was watching streamer MitchFlowerPower as he was trying to complete his super hard and amazing level in Super Mario Maker. I spent a total of three days in the chat, coming back often to check on his progress. I was trying to have fun and enjoy the stream, so I thought I would actually try to join in on the chat. This was a mistake... As every comment I made was ridiculed by the chat. The moderator claim to have not noticed (again going back to how hard it is to monitor 3000+ people), so the behavior continued to the very end of the stream.

There was one person so bad that I felt I had to try to take things into my own hands. I opened the snippet app, took photos of the conversation, uploaded them to the internet, and sent them directly to twitch via their reporting system. I don't know if anything ever happen to this vile user or if there is anything that can be done to stop such users from existing in the chatrooms. Even if Twitch bans his account, the user could always create another one. So would Tiwtch go as far as banning that IP address? Would that even stop them? They could just proxy their way around it. It almost seems like an impossible scenario.

At the end of MitchFlowerPower's stream, I sent him a personal message explaining my experience in his chatrrom and I never recieved a reply. I decided that I'm simply not important enough for him to care about and therefore I have decided I would never return to his stream. I honestly have let this bother me more than I probably should have let it. But when the streamers, who are support by the thousands of individual people, don't try to at least be courteous enough to reply to someone who really wants to enjoy their stream, then I say that they deserve the community that they are left with. I wont be apart of it. So what's your opinion? How do you deal with these users? Do you ever think there would be a way to stop such behaviors?


 
 
 

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