Twitch streamer Sweet_Anita may quit Twitch because the "mental toll of being at the mercy" of strangers sexualizing her is not "survivable," according to an interview in a HuffPost article published Monday.
"These people are literally ruining my experience of streaming," she told the HuffPost. "It's basically like having millions of people be your boss, and your boss is allowed to sexually harass you every day."
Anita is a British streamer with over 1.7 million followers on Twitch. She began streaming in 2018 and became known for broadcasting herself playing video games like "Overwatch" and "Among Us."
She has a form of Tourette's Syndrome with coprolalia, which means she experiences tics where she cannot stop herself from uttering obscenities, she told MEL Magazine in an interview.
Anita, who has never published her real name online due to privacy concerns, told HuffPost that in June, she discovered a "not safe for work" (NSFW) Reddit page dedicated to compiling GIFs of tics where she made sexual remarks and screenshots of her cleavage, thighs, and other body parts from streams. She said there were pictures in which she was digitally manipulated to appear naked.
People also shared links to other forums on messaging apps like Discord and Telegram that had more explicit content, Anita, who streams full-time, said.
"No matter what I do or how I dress, they do this to me," she told HuffPost. "I haven't ever even taken my clothes off in front of the camera and yet I'm still a successful porn star."
"Sexual harassment is a societal ill that is never acceptable in any form - be that in the physical or the digital world," Twitch told HuffPost in a statement. "Further, community safety is not an end state, and we must, and do, continually evolve our safety policies and tools to ensure they are comprehensive and account for emerging behaviors."
Anita, who did not respond to a request for comment, has previously spoken out against online harassment. Last summer, she said in a livestream that a stalker had threatened her, followed her for months, slept around her area, and waited outside her house.
If she leaves Twitch, she may return to working in wildlife rehabilitation, which she did before becoming a professional streamer, Anita told HuffPost.
In addition to Anita's Reddit page, there are numerous other NSFW subreddits for female streamers such as Pokimane, LilyPichu, and Valkyrae.
Many users on Twitch - which has a 65% male user base, according to the data-analytics website GWI - are "lonely men and socially inept boys" who have a hard time empathizing "with the people they're attracted to," Anita told HuffPost. "And so you get this behavior in a really concentrated level on Twitch."
Amanda Cote, an assistant professor of media and game studies at the University of Oregon, previously told Insider that streamers who don't fit the male gamer mold often face "really strong backlash."
In June, the popular Twitch personality CodeMiko broke down on stream after receiving an onslaught of offensive comments about her clothing from viewers. Early that month, Twitch streamer Amouranth, who's known for her ASMR videos and "hot tub in a bikini" streams, told Polygon that she faces harassment from viewers and has thought about quitting streaming.
