Ninja has taken a look at the state of Twitch and doesn’t like what he’s seen, expressing as much in a tirade on July 17—and lamenting the streaming of a seemingly bygone era.
The Twitch star started streaming as a hobbyist in 2011 before eventually turning it into a full-time gig and exploding in popularity. Many people associate Ninja with Fortnite, as it’s what led to much of his success from 2017-on. Even now, during the stream where Ninja talks about missing what Twitch used to be, he continues to play Fortnite.
His July claims came after a viewer attempted to provoke Ninja, writing “First Sketch, next is Ninja.” The Twitch star immediately pushed back on the idea, stating: “It just seems like people are looking to cancel anyone and everyone at all times.”
He then added, “every day, it’s something new” before noting nobody of note had every really asked for the input on streamers’ personal lives that viewers, people on social media, and colleagues seem so ready to provide—mainly in reference to the recent Sketch drama that took the internet by storm.
Ninja followed up these muses and statements by asking his Twitch chat if they “remember when we used to just play video games?”
Ninja was among those who joined the streaming world when gaming was exploding, transferring many of his Halo 3 pro skills into Fortnite gameplay. Ninja’s prowess wasn’t only in gameplay though; he also built a veritable fan army. Even now, he picked up nearly 20,000 followers on Twitch last month, according to StreamCharts, and boasts 19 million followers overall.
Although he still has relatively big numbers though, Blevins’ following has dropped in modern times. Many consider the peak of Ninja’s popularity to be when he streamed with Travis Scott, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Drake in 2018. Funnily enough, that was the same year Twitch introduced the Just Chatting category, which now continues to reign supreme with 449,000 viewers at the time of writing.
These numbers stand in comparison to scattered gaming categories like Fortnite, which has 53,000 viewers today. Other big games like League of Legends and Elden Ring have 78,000 and 38,000 respectively on Twitch—and even if combined, most of the gaming categories together wouldn’t hold a flame to the talking page.
Although the Just Chatting streaming category isn’t the same as snooping into people like Pokimane’s private lives, it indicates what turns more heads.
Lately, viewers seem to be significantly more invested in the ideas and beliefs that define a person than what they’re doing on stream. Much of Just Chatting makes up political commentators like Hasan Piker, who have since branched out from discussing politics alone, and aside from that, the drama rarely even comes from the streams themselves. Ninja noted on stream that the way he sees it, he has anywhere from one to five years left on Twitch. The number seems to change based on the way the wind blows. Perhaps streaming will become even more fractured and specific, but maybe it will evolve beyond the legacies of people like Ninja. The prospect seems bewildering to many, including him.
