Although Toph, an American, had friends and a relationship in Japan, he found living there for the past eight years to be oftentimes quite lonely.
When he discovered Twitch in 2016, it seemed like the perfect way to meet others with mutual interests while he spent time gaming. So Toph, who was working as a teacher abroad, started to build a community on the platform.
He prided himself on the “soft, comfy vibe” of his streams, during which he played games like Animal Crossing and Kirby and the Forgotten Land in front of a virtual audience. Twitch served as a respite for him when things in the real world were getting tough. So last week, shortly after returning to live in his home state of New York, he was looking forward to streaming. He’d broken up with his partner and uprooted his entire life, and it would be nice to forget about that for a while.
Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way. “In that moment, someone came in and trauma dumped about a breakup from an abusive partner who’d cheated on them. And of course, my community is very sweet, so they started responding, and it just kept going and going,” says Toph, who has 33,800 followers on Twitch. (Toph does not disclose his full name or age to his audience.)
The emotional purge, which took place in the text chat of his stream, went on for 11 minutes and put Toph into a sour mood — the very state of mind he’d been hoping to escape. He’d been in a similar relationship to the one described, and although he says the conversation didn’t “trigger” him, he felt defeated and canceled his stream for the day.
“So much is going on in my life,” he says. “Twitch and streaming are some of the only things that take my mind off it. And now it's getting taken away from me. Why can’t these be my safe space, too?”
Toph is one of many Twitch streamers worried about the issue of trauma dumping, the act of offloading emotional problems without invitation. According to content creators on the platform, viewers are increasingly bombarding stream chats and their accompanying Discords with their IRL problems, which streamers are often not equipped to deal with.
The issue has become so prevalent that some streamers have started speaking out on Twitter. One influencer even put out a guide to dissuade people from trauma dumping on her streams.
Trauma dumping is a problem that affects streamers at all levels. Rob Logan is a variety streamer and podcaster from Massachusetts who has been broadcasting on Twitch for the last seven years under the name @theRobLogan. He has under 800 followers, but still deals with the issue.
“I had one viewer who just vented every time they were in chat,” Logan says. “They never really contributed to the conversation that was going on. They just derailed whatever was happening to talk about their problems.”
Logan recently went viral on Twitter after he tweeted a message to viewers — “PLEASE stop dropping your insanely depressing news into chat” it began — motivated by Toph’s trauma-dumping experience. “Even this morning, I was watching someone raise money for Ukraine in a charity stream, and somebody came in and said, ‘I’m pregnant. I just found out, now I’m sad,’” Logan says. “Everyone else had to stop the conversation and deal with it.”
Toph echoes Logan’s sentiments, saying that the issue often impacts the entire community. “There was a member of the community who kept talking about their dead pet. I asked them kindly to stop and take the conversation private instead, and after one of the streams, they posted a graphic picture of their sickly pet in the Discord,” he recounts. While Toph sympathized with his viewer, having previously lost a pet himself, he didn’t want other followers to feel triggered or upset, and he deleted the picture.
“I was trying to be there for them while making sure everyone else was comfortable and safe, but they immediately got angry at me,” Toph says. “They told me that I was in the wrong for deleting it and that I was heartless. They left the community after that.” Power dynamics
Twitch insiders believe the growing problem of trauma dumping stems from the combination of viewers’ access to and power over streamers.
“It’s a problem for bigger Twitch streamers because people will pay to have their messages read out, and they’ll share the minutiae of their problems,” says Terrence Wiggins, a 34-year-old part-time streamer, podcaster, and coin photographer from Virginia who streams as @TheBlackNerd on Twitch, where he has just over 800 followers.
“It’s the whole parasocial relationship thing, where people view the streamer as their friend, when really they’re not. [The streamer is] being paid to listen to whatever you have to say. It’s extremely unhealthy.”
Mental health Twitch streamers are struggling with 'trauma dumping'
Viewers are derailing chats with their personal problems, and streamers feel ill-equipped to deal with their issues.
(rest in comments)
This applies to anything that even smacks of celebrity. Actors, musicians, performers of all kinds have to deal with this. The difference with streamers is that there's more immediate access so instead of dealing with big scary things like stalkers they're dealing with smaller, more immediate problems of people who can't deal with parasocial relationships.
Twitch streamers also have to deal with stalkers, the immediate access arguably makes them even more vulnerable to stalkers if not in a directly physical sense.
Mental health struggles are not trivial, and as someone who has been affected and has affected others in the past with trauma dumping, that shit isnt fucking trivial either in how it affects someone whos potentially already stressed and struggling, not cool to dismiss that.
You literally said that stalking is a "real problem" in contrast to trauma dumping, fuck off dude and dont dismiss mental health problems to win debate points.
fuck off dude and dont dismiss mental health problems to win debate points.
Both are real problems, one might be more intense but its also more rare in comparison, while having viewers dump trauma and stressing you out is something that can happen way more often and compound into significant stress and affect someones mental health.
Already explained I have personal experience with this on both sides of it, please now actually fuck off and dont bother replying anymore, Ive made my points very fucking clear about what I mean with them both being "real problems".
i do not undersatnd how you think mental health struggles are not trivial but thn you blame the people who 'trauma dump'. do you think those who spill their guts online are privileged normies? if you bypass the natural inclination to not make people uncomfortable you are either not aware of it being able to make people uncomfortable or are too desperate to care. either way. the people hearing the dumping in these streams are almost always going to be in a better place than the person doing it.
it angers me that the article mentioned the pet picture because deleting a sick pet makes sense, because people dont need to shrae traumatizing pictures to vent. but otherwise i dont get how stigmatizing 'trauma dumping' is anything except stigmatizing the existence of the mentally ill and suffering, and expecting them to pretend they aren't suffering.
this shouldnt be an issue at all. only people with no friends would pour their heart out to streamesr. we need to get these people friends. not attack them
Strong disagree. There are scads of magazines, blogs, videos, interviews, and all kinds of other media that are designed to create a sense of closeness and intimacy with celebrities. IDK if it's still a thing but when I was a kid kids would have their whole room covered in pictures of their favorite pop stars. "Parasocial relationship" is a new term for me, but it describes the process of creating "Celebrity" That's been ongoing for decades. Hell, look at the "Free Britney" campaign as an example of millions of people who feel an entirely one-way relationship with a celebrity. This stuff is much older than Twitch. It may be manifesting in new ways with important differences, but twitch streamers aren't the first set of performers that people intensely fixate on.
Actors, musicians, performers of all kinds have to deal with this
Danny Brown getting sucked on stage by some random girl :sadness-abysmal:
It's weird and annoying how the internet keeps creating these really ambiguous spaces like this.
Twitter is just a mosh pit of different use-cases. Some people use it for news, others to push their own personal brand, others just to hang out and make jokes, others for political organizing. I guess Twitch is similar in that it's just like a "space" that they want to profit off for various uses. And streamers can't really pick and choose how they want to stream on Twitch on their own terms so they're forced to use what little influence they have by creating like these little rules and personal enforcements.
It reminds me of seeing someone on Art Twitter spitting out these rules about what people who retweet art should or shouldn't do, and it's just like they've turned actual social conventions and moral/power relations into barely enforceable posting etiquette because website gave up any personal responsibility to posters and algorithms. Like, I get someone small time video game streamer just wants to hang out but Twitch wants to commodify the entire gamut of human relations instead so they're forced to basically do shit like this, but there are also streamers who do actively cultivate cult-like situations like these to profit from and they just don't want the potential downsides from it.
So it's this blend of blame from the platforms and to the influencers. Just keeps getting filtered down to the bottom rung where people are screamed at for not reading the community wiki before posting because it's the only means of control they have left.
its a simply issue of punching down instead of up. streamers are almost always not litreally but almost probably better positioned then some random worker with no friends nor family they can reach out to. they can afford a therapist and time to make friends and confidants. many cant
Parallels here to strippers, hair dressers, and bartenders who end up being unofficial therapists to lonely, alienated people.
When under capital the only close relations you have are people you give money to serve/entertain you and therapists would cost close to a entire down payment on a used car for a few sessions.
I'm surprised by the sentiment here. What, like you shouldn't stream unless you consent to people unloading all of their personal baggage on you at any given moment? You wouldn't do that to any other kind of performer and it shouldn't be a precondition for streaming to have to take responsibility for people's emotional wellbeing. That's super fucking unhealthy for everyone involved.
Some people do make room for it in their communities and streams, and that's great for them, but it absolutely has to be predicated on consent and mutual understanding of boundaries. Don't force people to do emotional labor for you.
It's alienating to the point that the only people that seem to really thrive in it (and get rich) are those that narcissistic enough to live the "influencer" life nonstop and treat their own followers like members their own private cult.
Lots of people who aren't :heated-gamer-moment: are just trying to get by and make a living and pay some bills and that's perfectly understandable, and the fact that there are vanishingly few ways to actually do that and ladders keep getting pulled up year by year really sucks.
There really isn't a truly good answer for what should be done about "trauma dumping" on a general basis. It's symptomatic of alienation and desperation from one side of the parasocial connection and often economic coercion and dilemma-laden precariat struggles on the other.
There's a reason the article never addressed the intrinsic cause of trauma for all these people. This shit cannot go on. Something is about to give, hopefully it's the boot on our neck, but let's be honest, they're not going to stop.
i mean unloading trauma is a natural thing to basically any chat based service, not just a streamer thing. its just shit to expect a particular person to respond
like if someone came to me asking advice for ptsd issues that were exactly similar to my ptsd issues, i could help them in vague terms but i absolutely could not discuss it in full with them without ruining my own day (or potentially week). but if they came to me expecting an answer from me specifically id think thats pretty mean of them. like all my irl friends know specific problems i have with specific things and give me a heads up before i interact with those things, and i do the same for them. but you dont have this same quality with a parasocial relationship
dont force people to do emotional labor for you? then who does? no one. these "trauma dumpers" will suffer and either hurt themselves or crack. you do not understand the sheer depths of pain people go through. being overworked to hell and back is only the start of it
therapists cost money and loved ones tend to either be outright hostile to your existence if you're LGBTQIA+ or too far away due to the normalization of moving away from family.
the fact that decent mental health resources are inaccessible to a section of the population is awful and is a systemic problem. The streamer is just an individual. I'm just repeating the parent comment now because they said it so well, but taking responsibility for people's emotional wellbeing should not be a precondition for streaming
i never said they had to. just don't use the term 'trauma dumping' and don't villainize people who are suffering. and i dont give a fuck about the 11 minutes of discomfort some random streamer goes through. i go through 24 fucking hours of discomfort.
dont force people to do emotional labor for you? then who does? no one.
the way I see it, this statement implies that streamers have an obligation, or at least an expectation to do emotional labor
The article doesn't use the term 'trauma dumping' in a derogatory way, nor does it encourage villainizing people who are suffering.
if you view someone begging for help as an obligation then that's your issue. everyone should treat public chats like streets. if you see a beggar on a street, you don't attack the beggar for "poverty dumping". and i hate to fucking say it but unless you're also a beggar and they're trying to screw you over somehow you're not being "hurt" by them at all. sure, their presence might make you uncomfortable, and that's valid because poverty is a terrible thing, but it isn't the fucking beggar's fault. it isn't the mentally ill's responsibility to make you feel comfortable about the world.
You want that sweet streaming money, you better be ready for parasocial relationships
Pretending to be the close personal friend of a lot of alienated lonely people :porky-happy: :brrrrrrrrrrrr:
Having to act like the close personal friend of a lot of alienated lonely people :porky-scared-flipped: :elmofire:
On the bright side, once you get enough subs, chat will be going too fast to even care about the plebs. Remember to like that channel and subscribe! And remember, the streamer is the center of all attention, and only they can trauma dump. It's a one way street, and you gotta pay for it
Most cases where I see streamers traumadump they just get gangstalked and bullied into worse and worse mental health, but maybe thats because I mainly pay attention to trans streamers.
Idk, in general I think all of these takes treating streamers like some sort of machiavellian social manipulators are weird, 99% of streamers arent fucking porky. Its fucking weird to go "Thats what you fucking get" at someone experiencing mental struggles due to the shit they have to deal with making a living, it just comes off very similar to "Boo hoo go get a real job building brick houses if playing video games is too hard for you" takes from shitty reactionaries IMO.
Word. I'm surprised to see people here being shitty about one of the most concrete examples of capitalist alienation and social disintegration in the modern world.
It's more that it's shitty for everyone involved, and I don't believe that within our current paradigm that it is going to change. Go ahead and ban the viewers sharing stuff, all it means is that theyre probably just going to keep struggling mentally. I don't see any real solutions for this
I mean yeah, but it still feels misguided to start making snide jokes and mocking the streamers themselves rather than the greater structures and platforms, like theres at least a couple of mid to high profile suicides among streamers every year basically.
Sure they might make a living out of doing streaming, but someone makes money from the transaction in pretty much any industry that pops up to handle social alienation and crushing loneliness. If streamers are working to try and make sure that their conditions are at least more bearable and less stressful then that seems like a good thing to me.
The rich and influential Epic G*mer streamers, the kind that sic their fandoms on other streamers and especially on trans people and other vulnerable groups, are Porky Jr. :heated-gamer-moment:
Ok but its not fucking Pewdiepie, Ninja and Destiny being interviewed here, its some guys named Rob Logan and Terrence Wiggins with less than 800 followers and who already take anxiety meds, and would like to be able to stream without having to be a therapist for people that unfortunately cant separate "casual hangout" with "closest friend Ive ever had"
And without having to then pay for a therapist of their own to avoid having a mental breakdown on camera and getting put on /r/livestreamfails to get gangstalked for it by some of the same poor lonely alienated souls.
/r/livestreamfails is lowkey one of the most hateful and vile places on :reddit-logo: , that's for sure.
Theres some real fucking kafkaesque stories of streamers who absolutely despise streaming and feel like its worsening their physical and mental health, but who are kept into streaming by the fact that enough people think its funny to spend money provoking them and watching them lose control of their emotions to clip and edit into funny montages so it remains the best financial option they have, essentially directly incentivising them to constantly decay and spiral further out of control.
The entirety of the exchange, no matter how economically necessary for some precariats' livelihoods, is so poisonous and damaging that it really does seem that the only people that truly enjoy it and thrive in it are the already-rich narcissistic ones with cults doing their bidding.
I don't have good answers here for the well-meaning and exhausted streamers. It just sucks.
I feel called out because this is my exact relationship with reading the news.
Yeah, the really successful "influencers" just have avalanches of Pepes and Groypers flooding the chat box. :agony-minion:
The fabric of society is fraying and ripping right before our eyes, but the real tragedy is some dipshit streamer might have to feel obligated to actually perform the bare minimum amount of emotional labor for this new age busking.
This breaks his illusion that things are okay. Why can't his stream focus on what matters - him and what he has to say.
I want community but it has to make me money and also there can't be any obligation on my part is a perfect summary of neolib everything.
Back in my day, you just sat there and watched your buddy play through single player Goldeneye in stone silence!
:grillman:
Back in my day, you just sat there and watched recordings of swedish 20 somethings squealing bloody murder while being chased by shittily rendered monsters made up of exactly 20 pixels on youtube.
this is as honest as I will get about this: I feel for the people in chat who are suffering. I understand it, but at the same time you cannot delude yourself into thinking that a twitch streamer is not doing a job interacting with you and others in chat. they literally get paid by being a surrogate friend.
that goes both ways though. if you are not setting firm boundaries in your chat and enforcing them all the time, you set yourself up for this. it's not sustainable to be a friend for hire to dozens of people. you are inevitably going to be the shoulder they lean on, and if it's not yours and instead falls to the "community", this is what happens.
If people want to know why full time moderators - like any other fucking job - should be paid, this is one great example.
exactly, that's my big gripe with twitch streams. those people wade through a river of turds every time they do it, sometimes enough for it to be a part-time job. kick those people a living wage for that bullshit
And I think not only the streamers, but the platform could be taking steps to prevent the amount of unhealthy parasocial relationships that get reinforced in those situations, and lead to people not getting the help they need and workers being affected by people sharing really grim shit with them, when they don't have the training to deal with it.
Of course, fighting parasocial relationships is bad for engagement and therefore business, so it's never gonna happen
you're exactly right about twitch as a company reinforcing parasocial relationships for engagement. what would twitch be if not for the paid friend aspect? public access television, most likely
A streamer that I sometimes watch had to tell chat that saying shit like "you're the only reason I haven't killed myself" is not cool. Like don't put that shit on people
I mean, I think that's what your SO is there for partially at least. Friends, significant others, and family is there to support you. That being said it's a lot to put that on people you don't know . But if you can't lean on friends and they can't lean on you... that's not good
holy shit. it's wrong to say you're depressed? that's part of you. it's literally an illness you cannot remove. is it wrong to tell someone you have a broken back? to use a wheelchair because someone might notice it and be uncofmortable and feel responsible for you? i hate this. i hate all of you.
honestly. i dont fucking care. again. for the last fucking time. you're not the one dealing with constant suicidal thoughts. don't blame people for latching onto streamers as a source of meaning. the lack of empathy displayed here is astounding.
It's abusive towards the streamer. You're essentially telling them that if they stop creating or if they don't keep what they're doing they're going to be responsible for someone's death. It's something people do in an abusive relationship to enact further control. The fact that someone is so alienated that they only feel like a streamer is the proper place to vent these feelings reveals significant issues in that person's life. Just because you have mental illness does not mean that you're free from consequence from your actions. The article also brought up how these sorts of things will interrupt the flow of the stream and impact other people. When I'm watching a streamer to relax and zone out I don't want to hear people sending in messages about triggering shit.
so it's absuvie for a poor man to say to a kind charitable person that they're the only reason they're alive? i don't acre. i don't care if they "feew wesponsible uwu". the suffering people who 'trauma dump' go through is much worse than any vague guilt. this selfish mindset is unbelievable.
Just because you have mental illness does not mean that you’re free from consequence from your actions.
IT LITERALLY FUCKING DOES. THE DEFINITION OF FUCKING MENTAL ILLNESS IS THAT YOUR BRAIN DOESN'T FUNCTION RIGHT. SHOULD I SHOOT PEOPLE WITHOUT LEGS BECAUSE THEY ACCIDENTALLY TRIPPED ME BECAUSE THEY FELL OUT OF THEIR WHEELCHAIR AND I SPRAINED MY ANKLE? OF FUCKING COURSE NOT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
WHERE'S THE LINE? WHERE DOES IT BECOME OKAY TO HURT AND BLAME AND ATTACK PEOPLE FOR BEING MENTALLY ILL? BECAUSE IF IT ISN'T HERE IT'S FUCKING NOWHERE. HAVE AN OUNCE OF FUCKING HUMAN COMPASSION FOR ONCE IN YOUR SELFISH FUCKING WESTERN LIFE AND CARE ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE.
i don't care. deal with the discomfort fucking normie ass. fucking therapist priest of capital.
again this completely misunderstands my point. i know it's not optimal to do this. but attacking and villainizing people for it is beyond vile.
and the point about their interests is true, but meaningless. if they are inherently that evil then we shouldn't even care about how comfortable these streamers are.
10k plus words to say, "people are alienated, society is crumbling, and the world has more mental health concerns than anyone realizes".
with bonus victim blaming! which is echoed by leftists on this very website
Thesis : "the problem is that 'people' with mental illnesses dont know when to shut their diseased filthy mouths the fuck up and let me enjoy muh heccin treats/muh streaming grift #grustle, bcuz
its bad for business and it exposes me to messy reality, sorry uh i meant muh personal responsibility"Antithesis : "even though we know theyre small business owners looking for a quick buck on the #grindset, every streamer should magically somehow alleviate the core mechanics of capitalism to provide therapy services to their 1000s of viewers, publicly, also despite us all being alienated atomized units of production viewers should somehow magically be there and act as a collectivist community to provide care for those who need it. they should be the ones to bring about human connection through the power of doritos and muh friendship"
Synthesis : "its capitalism's fault"
Unironically, this isnt an isolated incident. Like the microprocessor production crisis and microplastics, mass human alienation and its vagaries is a simmering problem that heralds a slowly decaying, rotting society based on a cruel socioeconomic force for evil. The leading cause of death amongst young people in the imperial core is suicide, rates of depression are skyrocketing, and less people are engaging in romantic relationships, let alone meaningful friendships (within north america), all because fundamentally neoliberalism doesnt value human life at all. We are all automata to be segmented into individual niches within a system and worked into overdrive to produce maximum profits, human connection or social needs be damned.
This issue is bigger than what this article makes it out to be, and thus there is no quick fix solution nor any reachable party to righteously impune. Its all a sign of a deep sickness within the superstructure which reflects the core inhumanity of the base. I feel the utmost compassion for the poor souls who have nobody to go to, no community to help them, no friends to speak of, desperate to the point of having to air their grievances to some hapless random stranger on the internet in a system which harvests attention for profit.
This whole situation is utterly disgusting, an "insult to life itself".
You wrote an excellent reply that could very well be stretched into /c/effort material.
People who are very online can be weird and possessive after basic interactions, so any streamer should really be mindful of that
absolutely disgusting behavior. it isnt there fault the kid was like that but they could at least pretend to have sympathy for their fellow human beings
I'm really sorry that happened to you. Parents are literally responsible for their children's health and well being.
I'm really :kombucha-disgust: with the comment elsewhere on this thread that thought it was somehow hilarious for some streamer to scream about how he doesn't care about his subscriber's problems.
It was so aggressively pushed by some online games I played ("watch this Twitch stream for free in-game items!") that I instinctually was put off right away. Anything pushed that hard sounded sus to me.
Even in my 20s there was some active happening stuff that I passed on, most of all early voicechat stuff.
I rarely raided because I really didn't want to hear :le-pol-face: and :stupidpol: flinging slurs back and forth while calling everyone who isn't as hardcore as themselves "garbage" and "terribad" and so on and so on. :zizek:
The sights and sounds you must have experienced. To me it'd be like taking a tour through the Event Horizon, except with more nasal screaming and slurs.
Maybe I just had bad luck with my guild, pick-up raids outside of it, and/or the server itself was especially toxic.
But "terribad" and "shitter" and stuff like that was said back then, absolutely. Also, homophobic slurs were considered both chummy for ribbing purposes but were also used to describe things that angered or enraged them at the same time, much the same way that :reddit-logo: after that claimed that c--t was just chummy AussieScotsBritish buddy talk yet also freely used c--t as an insult and put down, including as a reaction to people uncomfortable with the use of the word to begin with.
That's definitely what you missed from guilds that didn't have interviews but still raided.
I didn't want to treat the game like a job, so I didn't even try to get into interview-mandating guilds.
My experience was worse, a lot worse.
"Terribad" wasn't directly a slur or anything but it was said a lot, much like "garbage" was, and was usually said in the most condescending and elitist ways, often with suggestions for people to commit suicide for not having their meters high enough.
Noticed this disturbing trend for a long time, I used to regularly watch a Dead By Daylight streamer and his viewers would disturbingly treat him like a personal therapist instead of actually seeking professional help.
I understand the impulse, I really do. But it's not on other random strangers to be your personal therapist, there's a point where if you can't afford medical help and don't have a basic support network based on personal relationships, you really have to deal with that shit yourself and not rely on strangers as a crutch. It not only won't solve your problems, it's unhealthy for both parties.
I feel like posting on this site is much better than posting in a twitch chat, where I assume the subject of discussion would be what the streamer is up to
Also we have a community designed for asking for support and advice in regards to mental health. That com and this website in general is a space for leftists dealing with capitalist alienation and all that it entails. It's very different to post that here rather than some random video game streamer's game playthrough
