One of Twitch’s most popular streamers, Pokimane, has chimed in on the discussion around the recent “ASMR meta” that’s been a hot topic on the platform over the past week.
Evolving from the “hot tub meta,” this new style of content on Twitch has seen some of the Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches category’s largest creators move into the ASMR space where they’ve been providing “ear licking” ASMR content while flaunting their physique on camera.
During her most recent stream, Pokimane explained why she believes these kinds of metas will continue to pop up on Twitch, saying the issue stems from Twitch’s lack of categorization for sexually suggestive content.
“When we talked about the hot tub meta, I said, ‘listen, Twitch, it doesn’t matter if you make a new section for this or you ban these individual people or if you ban hot tub streams indoors, they’re gonna find another way to push the envelope,’” Pokimane said. “It’s not specifically hot tubs that were the issue. The issue is that Twitch has no way of categorizing sexually suggestive content, and on a platform where the top or most viewed channels are extremely forward-facing, you’re creating an inevitable time bomb for yourself essentially.”
Pokimane also said even if Twitch continues to add specific sections for this kind of content on the platform, these creators will still find ways to push the boundaries.
“They essentially implemented a band-aid fix as opposed to treating the root cause,” Pokimane said. “It’s not about your symptoms, it’s the root cause, which is your TOS and your lack of content organization and labeling. You just need to basically give your mods the power to label certain channels as sexually suggestive.
“I think that if a stream is labeled as sexually suggestive and it’s something that you don’t want to ban off the platform but also don’t want to incentivize, then channels like that just shouldn’t be shown in the discovery feed or in certain categories. So then at least the followers of the specific channel can see it but random kids can’t.”
In a clip taken from her stream, Pokimane explained her sympathy toward creators who have been making regular ASMR content on the platform after having these other creators enter and rise to the top of the category.
As of now, Twitch hasn’t formally addressed this new meta, but the platform did take action against two of the largest creators who have adopted this style of streaming. Right now, Pokimane and many other creators on the site fear that this kind of content could lead to the platform losing advertising support, which would affect all creators on the platform—not solely those participating in these new metas. For now, there isn’t a lot that creators can do other than wait to see how Twitch addresses this issue.
