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The lines between personal and public life are blurred in this digital age. Without receiving a diagnosis or treatment, in America, millions of people have a mental illness. And where are these people? They’re everywhere, but not in the most conventional places. They’re on your phones, your iPads and your desktops because many of them are streamers or at least many of them seem to be struggling in some way. Although these digital entertainers are seen by many viewers, they are still confined to one location year after year as if they are prisoners in isolation. There aren’t any psych evaluations required to go live, so how do we know why some of them fly off the handle? Some of them do tell you why like Adin Ross has and so had Desmond Amofah aka Etika, but he took his own life. Live streaming encourages performance-based validation, parasocial pressure and constant exposure. It’s very common to feel burnout, dissociation and breakdowns.
A Kick streamer like Layla Jenner will act erratically with sexual exploits to match as well as appear like she’s having a mental breakdown, but at the same time, it’s hard to tell if it’s staged or if she’s playing a role. As a viewer of great and fun channels like PerriKaryal and DJMissile on Twitch, Mhyochi on Kick, and KoalaTea Reacts on YouTube, I am deeply concerned about the mentality of these digital entertainers as a whole on these platforms and I am concerned about herd mentality as well. Streamers like Pokimane and JustaMinx have had streams with chat-amplified toxicity and coordinated rage. I once followed and supported a streamer named Julien Hemmendinger. He had assumed that I already didn’t like him because of his feuding or beef with The Chat Attack, a Twitch channel led by Nick Diaz that I also follow and support, yet I knew nothing about the beef, but I did hear some things about him being irritable. I like to make my own decisions about individuals and not let others plant seeds. Hemmendinger tried to inject me into this beef by telling me when he felt attacked. I just wanted to be neutral and stay out of it.
One day, Hemmendinger was having a conversation with someone in his chat about Jim Carrey and the Ace Ventura movies. The movies or parts of these movies were genius to Hemmendinger. The chatter didn’t agree and I honestly didn’t agree either, and that was it, my opinion, nothing more. Not too long afterward, he messaged me via Facebook that I wanted to get a rise out of him and others in his community felt the same way. I was surprised and I didn’t agree, so I unfollowed his channel and that was that. Sometime later, he messaged me again to confess that he made it all up. In his own words, “I was uncomfortable and was too afraid to tell you directly.” So, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with him after that. This streamer invented social tension and falsely claimed that others were against me. It made me wonder how many others he has done this to. Hemmendinger wouldn’t leave me alone though. He would constantly reach out to me in different ways like when Twitch streamer Chris J. Herman went live. I told him several times to leave me alone. At this time, which was a few years ago, I heard that he had harassed and stalked supporters in the Double Toasted community and others online, and I am aware of an incident that was specifically told to me. Before Herman left, he and The Chat Attack were part of Double Toasted, a podcast on Twitch. Nowadays, I hear that Julien Hemmendinger tells people not to deal with me and some of them have. He is also a co-host on Double Toasted now. The irony.
When I first learned about Kiana Gabriel or Kianarama on Twitch, I thought she was a standout streamer, but I did notice some chinks in her armor. She would often cancel streams, one or two in a row, due to something emotional happening to her or begin a stream crying with her feelings about whatever it was that was bothering her like the most recent presidential election and how she cut off people who voted for Donald Trump. She could become condescending at times to individuals in the chat when it was that time of the month or when the community voted on a game that she didn’t want to play like Marvel Rivals. I felt like she had some bitterness toward me earlier this year and I stepped away from her channel. She messaged me via Discord a few weeks later to see why I wasn’t around and I explained to her that she made me feel like I wasn’t part of her community with an explanation why. She apologized and said to me that I was more than welcome to come back so I did come back, but there was a part of me that felt hesitant. As a form of goodwill, I even sent her a gift in the mail of my latest published works.
Recently, I was banned from her channel and her Discord group, Cult Of Rama, after I shared the pronunciation of the word omnipotent that she just spoke on her stream. This wasn’t the first time I shared a pronunciation of a word or shared the meaning of a word. Maybe it’s the author side of me, but to get banned for that is absurd especially when she has a follower and former streamer named OmarFromQueens, who is openly gay and who sexually harasses men, including myself, in her chat on a regular weekly basis. She never did anything about him because generally, men’s emotions are ignored. OmarFromQueens’ behavior warranted moderation that never came. And it didn’t stop there; these channels, XaydLove, JelaniHendrix, Sayawada and KJAhavah, have all banned me because of Kiana Gabriel. Not because I did anything personally to them, but just that herd mindset which should be an instant deletion of his or her channel for any streamer practicing it. It’s silent violence. A coordinated quiet ostracism. Streaming should be steezy with style and ease. I’m not here for the kids games like Duck, Duck, Goose. What now? Nothing as far as I can see today. I guess the problem is I don’t have any answers, just left with questions. I lived the consequences nonetheless. Maybe my words can help a new viewer who encounters these streamers or other streamers, or help the future of the streaming world because your online presence is real, your existence has weight and maybe respect should be the true currency of engagement with streamers.
#parasocial #storytime #mentalhealth #herdmentality #sexualharassment #silentviolence
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