A bunch of high profile Twitch streamers are calling out ‘Hot Tub’ content as “trash” and “obviously sexualised”.
The ‘hot tub meta’, as some are calling it, has arisen in the ‘Just Chatting’ section on game streaming site Twitch. It sees streamers, primarily women though not exclusively, sitting in hot tubs while talking to people in their chat.
Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel posted a tweet expressing his disagreement with this type of content, going as far as to call it “trash”. He says:
“I’m gonna be honest, this hot tub meta is by far the most pathetic thing we’ve seen on twitch in forever. What a sad reality. Please get this trash off the frontpage.”
xQc is known to be rather over the top with his reactions to controversy, but his sentiment remains.
Other streamers have seconded this opinion. Anne ‘AnneFushia’ examined one case in which a streamer was performing yoga exercises while dressed in a cosplay of Final Fantasy VII’s Tifa.
AnneFushia says:
“Normally I’d be a bit like “I can’t show this on stream” but this is on Twitch. And it’s so obviously sexualizing. We’re meant to see this as normal, like this is no big deal, right. That means when you have actual porn, it has to become so much more hardcore to be counted as porn.”
QTCinderella also weighed in on the conversation. She says that women posting hot tub content on Twitch makes life harder for other successful streamers.
“I’m like “yes, Queen. Do the hot tub stream,” but please don’t do it on Twitch, because it makes my life miserable,” she says. “Because then I have people coming from your chat where they see your hot t**s covered in bubbles to my chat asking to see mine. But we don’t do that here. It’s so frustrating.”
“It works for a reason”
On the other side of the conversation, 100 Thieves co-owner Rachel ‘Valkyrae’ Hofstetter praises those who partake in hot tub streams. On a recent stream of hers, Valkyrae spoke about how she doesn’t think that type of content is an issue on Twitch if it isn’t hurting anyone.
She said:
“It’s like, what, why are you so angry at her, you know, it works for a reason. You know, like what you are getting at, it’s free for you. You don’t have to donate or subscribe, isn’t this a good thing? Isn’t that what men want to see for free?”
Kaitlyn ‘Amouranth’ Siragusa is one of the streamers who partakes in hot tub streams. She’s one of the most popular women on Twitch with over 2.6m followers on the platform.
In a recent interview, Amouranth discussed her stance on the hot tub meta [via Kotaku].
She says:
“This hot tub meta is like a Twitch Rorschach test. People extrapolate their own agenda onto the meta. There are two re-occurring themes that people go back to: 1) Twitch is for gaming or 2) Twitch is unfair towards male streamers—alternatively, Twitch is more lenient on female streamers.”
Another two streamers who stream hot tub content are spoopykitt and xoAeriel. They told Kotaku that they don’t feel as though they wouldn’t consider themselves ‘hot tub streamers’. They feel that ‘variety streamer’ suits them best since they also stream other content like Call of Duty, Fortnite, hula hoop dancing, and cosplay.
Twitch is yet to make any sort of statement regarding hot tub content. It’s usually fairly swift with taking action on content that violates their community guidelines. Last year, xQc was banned for streaming an NSFW hentai game.
[Featured Image Credit: YouTube/CorpseFans]
Shop with GameByte!
Don’t forget, you can find some of these great games and more through the new GameByte Shop! The GameByte Shop is stocked up with the latest games, merch and accessories. We might even have a new-gen console or two! Sign up for our newsletter to be notified of our console drops. Please note the GameByte Shop is available for UK customers only.