Over the weekend, streamers from across the globe converged at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles for the fourth annual Streamer Awards, an event created by streamer QTCinderella back in 2022. Despite attendees looking sharp and having so many accolades to celebrate, fans have slammed the show, calling it a ‘dumpster fire’. And viewers were left speechless at different points throughout the ceremony over several cringeworthy moments, which included misogynistic behaviour from streamers on the red carpet, production flubs during the ceremony and disturbing anti-Black microaggressions. 

 

Early on in the night, while guests were arriving, a streamer named Rakai, along with two friends, attempted to make advances on Christina and Amber, a lesbian couple. Rakai and his friends can be seen plotting on how to approach them, despite one friend repeatedly saying they were lesbians. The three of them then approached the women and inquired about their sexuality. When the women revealed they were married, one of the boys asked to see a ring.

 

Christina and Amber are being lauded online for how they handled the situation, which is one I imagine they find themselves in a lot in this line of business. But people are highlighting the threat that underlies this kind of behaviour – namely for queer streamers who should feel just as safe as anyone else when attending these events.

At one point during the ceremony, production panned to the wrong streamers while their names appeared on screen. In this clip, you can see the camera operator confusing PlaqueBoyMax with Deshae Frost, two Black streamers who look nothing alike. Throughout the evening, this would happen a total of three times with other Black streamers, who took some serious jabs from hosts, including Kai Cenat, arguably one of the biggest streamers in the world. 

 

When host FanFan gave him a shoutout for breaking a record for the most expensive haircut in 2025, she added on an insult that implied he was Diddy.

“Congrats on your new documentary with 50 Cent. That was you right?” she said to a booing crowd. 

This prompted some backlash, with another streamer, Tylil, grabbing the mic from FanFan and coming to Kai’s defence, saying that if someone was going to be making jokes on the mic, they need to be funny.

“I thought it was funny,” she said, doubling down.

And as if that wasn’t enough disaster for the night, to top it all off, India Love pulled a Kanye and stormed the stage to have this embarrassing moment where she shared her thoughts on who she thought should have won Breakout Streamer of the Year despite no one, and I mean no one, asking. 

Apart from the chaos, there were still some really touching moments. For example, a grandmother named Tiffany, who started streaming a few years ago when her kids created a Twitch account for her, was announced as the winner of the Hidden Gem award. She goes by the username ‘Ijustlovepuzzles’ and streams herself putting puzzles together on the platform. 

Through tears, she said that the creation of her channel changed her life. In a YouTube video posted three weeks ago, she responded to the nomination, humbled by the recognition she was receiving. And in the days leading up to the ceremony, she was receiving donations from fans to help fund the cost of getting her to L.A. Many fans are saying that even with so much mess at the show, moments like this were the highlight and the reason streamer QTCinderella started the event in 2022. 

 

But even QTCinderella is being heavily criticized for how sideways it all went. From her refusing to disallow known homophobes and problematic streamers to a monologue where she made jokes about fat people and Asian people, most of it seemed to be not well-received by the audience or the online viewers. 

A few days prior to the ceremony, QTCinderella revealed the second thoughts she’s had about her decision to go into streaming. Leading up to the awards show, she spoke to the BBC, saying she’d be a ‘happier person’ if she chose a different career path. Despite having amassed an impressive 1.2 million followers and saying that she feels ‘incredibly lucky’ to have captured the attention of so many fans, the constant scrutiny and concerns over her safety makes it hard to enjoy being a streamer.

"If I could go back and never experience some of the things I've experienced because of this job, I do think I would be a happier person overall," she told the outlet. “The biggest thing I wish I could do, if I went back and was able to whisper in my ear, I would say, ‘don't do it’."

For women and marginalized people, the threat level they experience is heightened. Over the course of 2025, several female content creators have sounded the alarm about the realities of being a streamer, particularly in public settings. In March, three women were doing a week-long stream when a man threatened to kill them. In October, a video of a female streamer named Emiru, who was one of the targets of that threat in March, was grabbed by a man who tried to kiss her without her consent. After the incident, she revealed that her bodyguard who had protected her in a similar situation previously had been banned from Twitchcon, compromising her sense of safety. She said the on-site security team waited hours to detain the man who assaulted her. Twitch disputed her claim. 

 

All of this brings up the question of how, despite streaming being a relatively new industry - with young people leading the charge on what that space looks like - and one that is mostly digital, are we seeing the same biases, exclusions and threats that mostly impact women and marginalized people? Why has there not been a solve put in place for this?

Based on much of what I’ve seen, this is the behaviour that gets rewarded. The clip of Rakai and company harassing Christina and Amber has more views than the wholesome acceptance speech from grandma Tiffany. The numbers don’t lie in what they reveal about the appetite for different types of content. People want scandal, they want salaciousness, and those are the clips that are most likely to earn them spots in the feeds of pages like Hollywood Unlocked and The Shade Room, which both offer massive boosts to follower count based on something as simple as a repost.

Then there’s the production aspect – from genuinely unfunny hosts to the inability to identify streamers before panning to them. Why did the show fall so flat? If I could sum it up in one post, it would be this sentiment:

 

These streamers are people who, in a lot of cases, have thrived from making content in environments of their choosing. There is an element of control. Even in scenarios where there will be variables, they can exercise control over where they stream from and who they stream with. But we’re starting to see how only some of them thrive when they are put into real-life situations and environments, not only like the Streamer Awards but in other settings, too, like talk shows or podcasts. All of this pads the case that social media user was making about the difference between being funny on the internet and being funny in real life. What does it mean when the humor and skill that you hone in your life as a streamer doesn’t translate to other settings?

The skillset it takes to succeed in streaming is pretty niche – and pretty narrow. And unless you do the work to expand that skillset to be applicable and tasteful in other settings, how can you expect to experience the same level of success outside of streaming? When you turn your camera on and document your day, you are entertaining people who willfully consume whatever content you create. Streaming doesn’t call for a certain sense of decorum, or discernment, nor does there seem to be any sort of code of conduct. Streamers get views and subs no matter what they do and say – and sometimes, the more vile they are the more viral they go.

But as we’re learning, not all streamers know how to turn that approach off and pivot to being more appealing humans in real life. That’s why we see the behaviour we saw from Rakai on the red carpet. It’s a one size fits all approach, no matter the setting, where they assume the same behaviour they display online is acceptable off-stream. And in situations where you’re dealing with an audience that isn’t mostly your Twitch fan base, these people are in for a rude awakening. And so are the production companies that are increasingly depending on Twitch influencer agencies to onboard them for projects and overestimating their ability to pivot and experience the same levels of success they have on platforms like Twitch. 

Truthfully, a majority of the general public has no idea who these streamers are because we didn’t grow up in that generation. There’s a huge gap there – and the million followers on social media are part of a very small segment of the population that consumes this kind of content. 

I think that’s why it was so devastating to see Kai Cenat catching unnecessary strays. Because he is one of very few streamers who, in addition to being so philanthropic, has truly worked on being charming outside of his life as a streamer. He’s become well-known outside of his career as a streamer. He’s sharp and witty as a streamer and in real life and as we saw throughout this show, his adaptability is just not a talent that everyone has. 

With content creators like the ones we saw this weekend quickly filling the voids left by traditional media, which is dying at an alarming rate, we’re at a crossroads with much to be answered and accounted for. How do we account for the lack of transferable talent that render these streamers worthy of attention, let alone fame, when they’re moving through the world? And more importantly, how can we guarantee the safety and protection of women and racialized streamers? Maybe instead of putting together another year of this awful award show, streamers should get together and have a convention to sort out a better way forward instead.

Photo credits: thestreamerawards.com

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