Sexualized culture on livestreaming platforms: a content analysis of Twitch.tv | Hacker News Reader

Sexualized culture on livestreaming platforms: a content analysis of Twitch.tv

nature.com

74 pointsMrJagil56 comments

Everyone is focusing on the fact that there are more sexualized women streamers than men - that's an obvious conclusion though because men are far more motivated by sexualized women than vice versa.

The interesting thing to me in this article is the amount of women streaming that are sexualized:

>However, the majority of women (71.4%) wear attire ranging from moderate necklines to bikinis or minimal clothing and use the focus of the image to show their full body (76.2%). In addition, more than half of these streamers evoke a sexual act (51.6%), while two thirds of them insinuate such acts or seduce with their mouth (32.7% + 34.7%).

So 65%-75% of female streamers on Twitch are overtly sexualized. Overall, I think this is a complete race to the bottom. I understand the incentives that govern it (it's a male dominated audience, therefore sex gets attention, more sex gets more attention, and now we have an arms race) but this seems really unhealthy and disappointing for people on both sides of the thing.

Twitch is a disaster and needs to do something to reclaim its identity if it doesn't just want to turn into yet another porn site. I don't have a problem with porn but I do have a problem with the ubiquity of it. I don't think it's healthy to have it in every single social setting because it sucks all the air and value out of everything else around it. Keep porn on porn sites, and let people differentiate themselves in other, more creative ways, elsewhere. Porn is generally the least interesting thing a female creator can do in the attention economy and it just reinforces existing gender stratification.

Also, I have no idea why this submission was flagged, it's a reputable source and of real interest to this audience.

Sadly I think that ship has long sailed into the sunset.

When I used to follow twitch years back I always thought it was amazing that it felt very easy to get temporarily banned on the gaming streams but there was a whole universe of softcore streamers.

I don't have any qualms with it but I always thought it diluted the brand by also having softcore within the same company.

softcore by day on twitch

Porn is very lucrative business, the crafty ones use it as an opportunity to advertise their other streams.

The other female streamers are pressured to compete for limited audience.

So unless Twitch goes after it its a race to the bottom.

Well you should be happy since the internet has made a concerted effort to eradicate porn/erotica from increasingly large swaths of the internet in the last 10 years.

I'm not even talking about Pornhub deleting most of their catalog. I'm talking about shit like Tumblr banning all porn for no good reason. Tumblr is a shell of its former self. Gen Z and the Fujoshi crowd will never be the same.

> Porn is generally the least interesting thing a female creator can do in the attention economy and it just reinforces existing gender stratification.

i believe i kinda get you intention, but this sounds just wrong given that data.

> Also, I have no idea why this submission was flagged, it's a reputable source and of real interest to this audience.

both true, tho the research is more of an analysis that confirms popular sentiment and works with a lot of preconceptions instead of investigating alternatives or history.

> Porn is generally the least interesting thing a female creator can do in the attention economy and it just reinforces existing gender stratification.

This thinking is just divorced from reality.

Generally, women are able to use their sexuality to their advantage more so than men.

This is not new. The research here is not novel. We’re discussing something that 99% of the world intuitively knows and is basic human behavior.

I don't really see the contribution from this study. The paper looks fine: quality writing, ample research, statistics are probably fine. What I mean is I don't see any non-obvious insight here.

Also, I think this study would have been much more interesting on more generic video sites like Instagram or Tiktok, which (I assume) have more balanced creator and viewer populations. I don't personally take Twitch seriously, and so it's hard for me to embrace a social study that samples from Twitch.

couldn't agree more.

maybe be starter for more elaborative studies, given the citation festivities within, or just a jab at amazon.

If they had broken out results by category it would have been much more interesting. Instead it amounts to "Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches" is mostly sexualized women, while "Video Games" is mostly nonsexualized men, which is not informative.

TikTok can’t really be researched as a generic site: Everything about the user interactions (scroll/not scroll, how long before scroll, whether a comment was left, whether comments were open, etc, etc, etc) informs the content that is pushed to that user.

Simply investigating a sexualized video will make it much more likely to get sexualized videos throughout the use of the app.

I hadn't thought about that, but I think you're right. In fact, any recommendations engine could be a difficult confounding factor in any study of social media.

I'm thinking of how the machine might even be aware of the user's IP address or User-Agent, which could bias recommendations.

I hear this feedback a lot when people think the results of a research study are "obvious", but anecdotally 'obvious' vs. evidence supported conclusion hold an intensity different weight!

But firstly, this can't really be obvious. There's no real way one individual would be able to reach this conclusion without falling prey to their own biases. Especially online where most platforms create user-tailored echo chambers which distort an individual's perception of the entire platform.

Having this conclusion be evidence supported also means it can now be built on top of. If I was a twitch employee, this research would be convincing enough to make me put in place interventions on the platform if I was inclined to prevent this kind of behaviour. It's incredibly unlikely someone would put into play an expensive project with potential risks to the platform based solely on "well some people think it's obvious". But with actually numbers and a method to measure progress, that's way more feasible.

It also means people who want to do research in this space can use the methods of this study in other platforms or on different slices of the twitch audience, and then they have a baseline to compare against!

So overall seems like a decent contribution.

This entire thread is missing what the study is actually saying.

> Based on these criteria, the top 10 videos were selected from the daily world ranking within the selected categories during 32 consecutive days. Within the Videogames category, the three most popular clips of each day were selected (n = 960) and within the IRL category, clips from the subcategories JustChatting (n = 320), ASMR (n = 320) and Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches (n = 320)

Anyone focusing on the idea that women are sexualizing themselves or that most women on Twitch are just softcore porn / taking advantage of lonely men / whatever the narrative is today misses it entirely. This study is saying that of all the women on Twitch, the overwhelmingly male audience chooses to watch the ones that sexualize themselves. This is a study about Twitch's mostly male-viewerbase and who they choose to watch, not a holistic sample of female streamers.

You can't measure this by popularity for the simple fact that the women who play games on Twitch are far far less popular than men who do. And any woman who cultivates an audience of primarily other women will be an order of magnitude less popular than that.

It's really funny to me that because Twitch started as a game streamer, most of its ads are from big "clean" consumer brands. But usually there's (edited) 3x as many people streaming the softcore porn "Just Chatting" section as any individual game. The only reason Twitch still has these kind of big advertisers is because they havn't noticed what the platform actually is.

I actually like Twitch as it is, I think it serves a good niche on the internet. Most of the female streamers seem to basically use their streams as inspiration to work out (like, if they get 50 new followers they do more sit-ups or w/e). It seems pretty harmless. It's just makes me laugh that the advertisers have no idea.

Do they have no idea or do they have plausible deniability?

This take just seems disconnected from reality. The advertisers know at some level what's going on there, but until the general public changes its view of what Twitch is, they can advertise there with zero consequences. If and when some scandal emerges about the sexualization of the content of Twitch, they can all publicly do their pearl clutching performance and pull their ads.

And the idea that "most female streamers seem to basically use their streams as inspiration to work out" is really cute.

I've worked with brand quality teams at big companies. I promise they would freak out if they knew, they care so much about dumb stuff like this.

> usually there's 10x as many people streaming the softcore porn "Just Chatting" section as watching games.

This isn't true - e.g. right now the Just Chatting category has 380k viewers, while e.g. Valorant by itself has 180k viewers, let alone the rest of the gaming categories.

I wish they did a better job of partitioning twitch between the two though - twitch uses its recommendation engine to try and push Just Chatting streamers on people, with no way to opt out

This is a sensitive topic, but an important one. I would like to engage in discussions, apologies in advance if any of this offends and makes people uncomfortable. I will try to learn and be respectful.

First minor point - 3 million daily viewers worldwide is WAY less than I thought twitch has. We keep talking about gaming becoming mainstream, but 50+million people watched friends finale in USA alone. Twitch is not as big as I thought.

Second:

"The sexualized representation of women in the media shapes gender attitudes, dehumanizes women, and legitimizes violence against them"

I haven't realized and I'd need some convincing that line between sexuality and legitimizing violence is so straight, firm, and one-to-one. My hope for future is that women and indeed any gender, can choose to display and engage, with any level of sexuality (including "none" and "lots") as much as they damned well please. It feels... "Wrong" to indicate that "sexual display legitimize violen". Am I too easily triggered that this feels slightly like victim shaming?

Third, As another commenter points out, genders are equal but not necessarily the same, biological and often culturally, and their target markets are different in their preferences as well. Is that morally good or bad? The paper appears to assume it is. I'd like more discussion on that.

50 million viewers in a completely different environment/entertainment culture - no streaming, a small number of TV networks available to everyone, etc.

TV shows generally don't get 50 million viewers now and there are plenty of online events with viewership numbers comparable to those of major TV shows, eg a Fortnite event with 10+ million viewers.

> 3 million daily viewers worldwide is WAY less

Twitch was suppose to be child friendly streaming service. Now it is soft-porn streaming site. So I assume kids (who like Minecraft, not porn) left and moved somewhere else. And other kids (who like porn) moved to some *hub that matches their preferences.

Other points are kind of irrelevant. Bobie streamers are not harmed, are self-employed, and are "sexualizing" themselves. Many of them are former sex workers, they can make more money on streaming. You could even say, Twitch reduces overall violence.

Well, given that Twitch is 13 years old, it also seems likely that many of the kids stayed on Twitch through puberty, and found new content (in addition to, or instead of, their Minecraft videos).

i think you're on to something there

I'm not particularly knowledgeable on this either but it strikes me that women (or woman-presenting) are on average more sexualized in media and are expected to be sexualized. Whereas men and male-presenting people don't have the same expectations so they aren't sexuality-first, person second.

So I think there's some ideal there in your statement that's on the nose, anybody can express their sexuality without some societal baggage, but that's not how it is today.

> "The sexualized representation of women in the media shapes gender attitudes, dehumanizes women, and legitimizes violence against them"

Nah, that's total bullshit. Dehumanized by sex? That's literally what made us human!

Immodesty is not violence.

The dehumanizing part is commercialing it. I am not saying I want it outlawed or banned, but like, it is very unromantic.

What does romance have to do with sex? There is plenty of sex happening without it.

I meant romantic in a more general sense than romantic relationships. Only Fans is to sex what McDonalds is to hamburgers ...

i tend to agree that commercialization dehumanizes society, otoh this process is very non-discriminatory in nature and hence somewhat "fair"

And with gig economy commoditization, for extra flair.

Twitch has mostly male viewers, many of them like watching sexy women, not so many like watching sexy men. Makes sense then that popular sexy content on twitch is mostly women.

I think this is a bit reductive because it glosses over the fact that the two trends you cite (more male viewers and more sexual content catering towards larger audiences) aren't independent; how do we know that the reason there aren't more female viewers isn't related to the fact that content (sexual or otherwise) isn't attempting to appeal to them? I think it's a fair question to ask whether more sexualized content from men would cause the distribution of viewers to change; if it wouldn't, I think it's also a fair question to ask why that's the case.

It wouldn't, and there are all sorts of marketing data on why that is. Advertisers and marketers don't study these things for science, they study it for money.

Romance is a different thing, but that's something that doesn't lend itself to a Twitch stream.

I don't think it makes sense trying to attract female audiences by constructing the exact same thing that appeals to men but hoping to just switch the polarity. It didn't work for Hollywood (women stayed away in droves from the female superhero movies because... it turns out... they're just not that in to them), and it wouldn't work on Twitch.

I didn't realize that the audience skewed so heavily male (65%/35%). Since women are the majority of gamers, it really seems like leaving money on the table not to attract more women as viewers.

> women are the majority of gamers

you mean like all games?

ime twitch is mostly pc-gaming and pc-platform is male-heavy

>women are the majority of gamers

Only if you include the likes of Angry Birds and other casual phone games, none of which is streamed on Twitch.

Twitch is console and (as geraldhh said) PC gaming, which is mostly men.

Mobile gaming is nearly 50/50. https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/mod... So is PC gaming. https://www.circana.com/intelligence/infographics/2023/what-... Among consoles, only the PS5 has more than a 10-point spread.

i guess we were both wrong

I would be interested to see if the 'committed gamers' category from this model, which on mobile is 50/50 between genders holds for PC and console gaming. I would expect men to have higher average hours engaged in gaming and watching gaming than women for non-mobile games.

Happy to be proven wrong though as this may well just be a bias.

Breaking it down by time, men spend close to twice as much time on leisure computer use and gaming. Nowadays most people play a game once in a while, whether that's Farmville or Wordle, so time provides a much more useful measurement than simply "have you played a game".

https://www.statista.com/statistics/502144/average-daily-tim...

I think you see this dynamic anywhere young women and older teenage girls are trying to build an audience through video, not just Twitch.

I don't see any obvious way to change it. How do you police the line without seeming fundamentalist religious?

I know this may come as shock to some people, but cultural norms surrounding the modesty of women aren't just a patriarchical conspiracy to oppress women. They are a solution to this race to the bottom problem among women competing for mates. In the same way we have a cultural norm against stabbing people so the people who are best at stabbing don't kill all the other men, a culture of modesty prevents harlotry from being an effective strategy among women.

I agree about what seems like a refusal to address concerns about the most fundamental social problems of civilizations. However, the fundamental problem to other women is that they don't charge enough, not that they charge.

In that sense, is a burka mandate in the best interest of women? With it, women would only be judged on their actions and not their physical appearance.

There's a middle ground between encouraging women to sexualize themselves, and forcing them to wear a burka.

Furthermore, veils & cie are but a superficial implementation of the parent's idea, which is to encourage humility (it goes without saying that we should encourage men to behave accordingly at well).

I've saw so many young Muslims women wearing hijabs, with little to no such humility. The most amusing ones wear at once a hijab, heavy make-up and skin-tight clothes.

I think (personally) that while it's acceptable that the site functions as a softc*re site, it most definitely should get regulated as such, require an 18+ tag and so on.

It is not that different from onlyfans.

It seems obvious to me that there are more 'sexy' female streamers than male.

You could argue that they are 'forced by the market' to be more sexualized. Or you could argue that they are taking advantage of the market and using sex to sell.

I mean the whole thing is asymetric, you can't expect men and women to behave in exactly the same way, they have different needs, desires, and affordances.

There’s also an overlap between porn and streamers, eg Indiefoxx.

til

fwig the indiefoxx brand is a slutty-chatty dumbo that got banned for showing her belly button

idk whats going on anymore

The obvious solution then is to force the marketplace to crack down on sexualization, even the playing field so to speak.

Sure, but why stop at 'sexualization'.

Surely mere good looks, for either sex, are an unfair advantage, or ripe for exploitation.

An attractive, comforting voice?

What about having something interesting to say?

I believe you have decided to start talking with a man of straw. Unless of course, there is no difference between simply existing while being attractive and sexuality for you.

Not wanting this on a website ostensibly aimed at children should be universally agreed upon. Obviously NSFW: https://arazu.io/t3_18mrp5s/

Where does the idea that Twitch is meant for/aimed at children come from?

probably a lot of minecraft streaming happend there in the early days

Well years ago everyone was screaming that it was misogynistic to not want sexual content on the platform ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just leave this here https://booba.tv/

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