As one of the largest streamers on German Twitch, Maximilian “Trymacs” Stemmler (28) is virtually live daily in front of thousands of viewers. He appears confident and self-assured. However, privately, that may not always be the case: During a stream, he spoke about his own shyness.

What was that stream about? Trymacs reacted to a video by his brother Nicolas Stemmler, who runs a YouTube channel under the name How to be Human, where he addresses psychological topics. This time, it was about introverted and extroverted people.

In this context, Trymacs suddenly recognized himself.

Trymacs prefers to send his brother in first at the restaurant

Where did Trymacs recognize himself? In his video, the YouTuber clarified a common misconception: Introverts are not necessarily shyer than other people. Shyness, on the other hand, is actually a form of social anxiety; you feel tense and uncomfortable during social interactions.

At this point, Trymacs stops the video: “I have that, I have that full throttle.”

How does it manifest? The streamer adds that his viewers wouldn’t understand this and describes various situations while dining out:

• In the past, when he went out to eat with his brother, his brother always had to reorder a drink for him – and it’s still like that today: A glance would suffice, and his brother would know to order a new cola for both of them – even if there is still something in his own glass.
• Even with steak, Trymacs prefers wild broccoli as a side dish, which he actually doesn’t like, rather than having to talk more than absolutely necessary with the waiter, and instead asking for more beans.

In short: The streamer simply has “zero interest” in conversing with strangers in any way.

And indeed, his brother only a few seconds later introduces him in the video as an example of shyness. You can watch the whole video on YouTube; we have embedded Trymacs’ reaction here:

Viewers feel understood

How is that received? At first, it may seem funny to some that Trymacs, who averaged 20,000 viewers simultaneously in the past 7 days (via sullygnome), is so reluctant to talk to strangers away from the camera – after all, that’s basically his job.

But many viewers can identify with this too – or have been in situations where they had to take over such conversations for others. That such a prominent Twitch streamer addresses an issue many deal with is well received:

I think it’s great that a man speaks about it in public. Especially as a man, one is quickly judged by society if one doesn’t take the lead. Many more people should raise awareness about this, generally for everyone, but especially for us men, with the underlying pressure behind it.

Ribery088 via YouTube

By the way: even though introversion and shyness are not connected, Trymacs describes himself as both introverted and shy. On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 stands for introverted and 10 for extroverted, he gives himself a 2.

Twitch streamer Trymacs wants to entertain at the expense of others – But suddenly it’s about himself

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Imane “Pokimane” Anys is one of the biggest female streamers on Twitch. Unfortunately, those in the public eye often receive many unpleasant comments. Now the streamer explains why she notices so little of it.

What is the deal with the comments? Anyone who has a large online reach eventually faces hate comments and trolls. As one of the few women at the top of Twitch, Pokimane is particularly often confronted with hostility.

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During a stream on January 31, she briefly mentioned a tweet she had posted shortly before. In it, she called for people not to sexualize others against their will. Apparently in reference to a website with fake pornographic recordings of major female streamers that had come to light at the end of January.

Viewers speculated that the list of people she had muted on Twitter must be constantly growing with the responses under the tweet. Pokimane then revealed how she deals with hate online: That is one of her biggest secrets.

Out of sight, out of mind

What is Pokimane’s secret? The streamer explains that she “posts & ghosts” constantly. That means she makes posts, for example on Twitter, and often ignores them for hours, maybe because she has appointments.

The comments under such posts can sometimes get out of hand. But Pokimane is unaware of this:

If people post weird stuff in my comments, I don’t see it 90% of the time.

How does she manage that? Pokimane has a team that is logged into her Twitter account and blocks people who make inappropriate comments. This way, the streamer doesn’t have to look at the hate at all.

Pokimane is visibly amused by the idea that Twitter users might take pride in being blocked by her – because then they would probably have gotten through to her. In truth, it wasn’t her at all, and she doesn’t pay any attention to them.

We have embedded the relevant clip from the stream here:

Unfortunately part of the job

Is this something special? Actually not, because moderating comments is quite part of the job description of social media or community managers. Prominent people or those with a large reach often have a team that takes care of their accounts, but very few talk openly about it.

This can mean, for example, that content is strategically planned or reviewed by a PR team. With Pokimane, it seems that she is responsible for the posts on her Twitter account herself. She only lets her team sort out the unpleasant comments.

How is that received? On Reddit, where the clip circulated in r/LivestreamFail, the largest community for streaming, many comments showed understanding: Being constantly exposed to negativity must be quite burdensome for mental health, so it makes sense not to deal with it at all (via reddit).

Unfortunately, it is also part of the job. One person wrote: “I think this is a good example of something that goes ‘with the territory’. […] Public figures should be prepared to spend part of their wealth to protect themselves from a lot of sick stuff.” (via reddit).

Others provided examples with their criticism as to why such a team is necessary for someone like Pokimane: She lives in a bubble, censoring the world to protect her fragile ego: “The definition of privileged and soft.” (via reddit).

Some Reddit users also point out that the strategy is not so unusual: It’s not much different from the mods that almost every streamer needs from a certain size on Twitch. It remains to be seen whether other bigger streamers will expand the moderation to their other social media channels.

Pokimane seems to be doing well with her strategy. In 2022, the streamer already said she wanted to focus more on her mental health and even took a longer break from Twitch and social media altogether.

One of the largest Twitch streamers in the world explains why she wants to stream less

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The German opinion streamer Staiy often discusses current topics and other content creators. Now he has taken on Twitch itself and draws a pretty devastating conclusion, as Twitch mainly revolves around advertising.

What kind of streamer is this? Staiy has been on Twitch since 2013 and is therefore very familiar with the platform. During this time, he has built a considerable community and is currently ranked 20th among the largest German-speaking streamers with over 5,000 viewers (via sullygnome).

Although the Swiss national makes part of his living from Twitch, he does not mince words when it comes to criticizing the platform.

What has Staiy looked at now? On January 25, Twitch published an “open letter” to the community. In the post, Twitch reflected on 2022 and provided an outlook on the changes that are to be introduced in 2023.

However, it seems that the Amazon platform is primarily concerned with one thing: plenty of advertising.

In 2022, Twitch went from very bad to bad

How did the past year go? First, Staiy mentions that streamers reportedly earned more than one billion US dollars in 2022 according to Twitch. Although that sounds like a lot of money at first, with 7.3 million active streamers, that means only about $137 in annual revenue per person.

Since large streamers earn significantly more than $137 a year, this implies that many small streamers have hardly earned anything at all: “Don’t be blinded by these numbers,” Staiy urges.

At least Twitch has made some concessions to small streamers by lowering the minimum payout amount to $50 in 2022. Thus, 300,000 streamers would have received their first payout. Staiy immediately puts this into perspective:

That’s good, but it’s still bad. So, it’s something good, but it makes it go from something very bad to something bad, if you understand what I mean.

After all, this would only show that many streamers had not generated enough money until that point to withdraw any funds – and for that long, Twitch simply keeps the money.

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How much money do “normal” Twitch streamers earn? Who can live “well” from Twitch?

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Little money for a lot of advertising

What other changes were there in 2022? According to Staiy, some changes are actually not changes at all. For example, the “Guest Star” system introduced by Twitch, which is supposed to protect streamers from penalties if a guest misbehaves during their streams, has actually changed nothing.

Other innovations are viewed rather critically by the streamer: individually customizable tags could especially lead to harassment by malicious viewers, especially when streaming with an LGBTQ tag.

Tools for analyzing one’s own content are indeed useful, but they could also become a mental burden for streamers if they focus too much on their viewer statistics.

There was also criticism of the reward program for advertisements. Twitch claims that streamers would achieve convincing results through this, but Staiy sees it differently. He shows what offers he received from Twitch for the month of February.

The result: For 2 hours of advertising per month, the streamer would receive $564, thus working “far below minimum wage”. For double the amount of advertising, there is just $63 more. This is exploitation, according to Staiy.

Ironically, he would earn more money if he did not run any ads at all and only showed the ads forced by Twitch. As long as Twitch runs ads in such a “disgusting manner”, he would therefore promote ad-blockers, according to the streamer.

Because ad-blockers are the only way to give the platform the middle finger, says Staiy.

The entire detailed analysis has been uploaded by Staiy to his YouTube account. You can watch it here:

Will Twitch make the turnaround in 2023?

What is planned for 2023? For this year, Twitch has set itself several goals. It’s all about advertising three times: streamers should be able to advertise their streams better, switch ads more easily, and the placement of ads in the stream should be improved.

These are the things Twitch has announced for 2023:

• More ways to earn money
• New tools for stream advertising
• Easier and better ad placement
• Improved ad placement on Twitch
• Improvements to Guest Star
• Tools for “viewer appreciation”
• Better insights and analysis for streamers
• A dedicated messaging product for interaction with the community
• Better ways for viewers to discover content

What does Staiy think of it? Overall, not much. Some changes are not really new, or should have been implemented a long time ago. The streamer also has the impression that Twitch keeps repeating itself in the individual points; apparently, they didn’t really know what else to write.

The focus of the innovations is on earning more money and increasing advertising. However, Staiy positively highlights a long-awaited change: a picture-in-picture format for advertising is to be introduced, allowing the stream to be watched even while ads are running.

In addition, viewers should be better informed when an ad break is coming, and ads should be able to be paused.

A change that Twitch does not mention, but that Staiy has noticed, relates to the handling of inappropriate behavior. Since mid-2022, hardly anything said on Twitch has serious consequences.

He has seen hateful comments from right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists for which Twitch has not imposed any ban. The streamer also criticizes that the platform has not drawn any consequences from the notorious gamescom brawl involving 3 larger creators .

Conclusion: a complete disaster

This is Staiy’s conclusion: The streamer has some pretty harsh words for Twitch after he has dealt comprehensively with the blog post, which he considers “a complete disaster”: “I am so disappointed by so many things.”

While Staiy still holds hope that those responsible will critically question some issues, it is more likely that the future on Twitch will revolve around the keywords that keep recurring in the post: advertising.

Staiy feels particularly sorry for the viewers. If he could, he would gladly forgo the advertising revenue and provide his viewers with a completely ad-free experience.

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