this article originally appeared on breshvic’s substack
One week ago, the ‘Sis-athon’ began on twitch, featuring not-actual-sisters Valkyrae (@Valkyrae) and Cinna (@cinnabrit). The end of the girls’ marathon happened to coincide with the advent of Women’s History Month (the marathon had been planned for another time before a snafu with the airbnb changed things), likely the first of its kind.
https://clips.twitch.tv/embed?clip=MoralManlyMouseTriHard-wKrVL6aOYkvvF5w
Viewers like myself could tune in to the “sisters” throughout the week, enjoy their humor and dynamic, or catch up on the clips or VODs later on. My own knowledge of twitch is still fairly nascent; until recently I had primarily used it to watch and learn more about tabletop roleplaying games. Although, I had been wanting to get more into twitch or even start retro gaming there. I was recommended a number of awesome chill streamers, and wanted to get a better understanding of the craft. These included some of the bigger names like Emiru, Valkyrae and Cinna. As a certified *old*, I have streamers to thank for keeping me connected to younger culture: I know now when something is “mid” as opposed to when it is “peak”, or that what I’ve been doing most of my life could be considered a form of “rizz”, or that what I do nowadays is closer to the concept of “aura farming”, and of course all the various ways to assure someone you are not lying (no shot, no cap, fr, etc). I’m quite happy to see the youths still wish each other “GG” after multiplayer games.
When I started watching parts of the Sisathon on Day One, I actually had very little familiarity with these streamers despite their immense fame. I had seen their streams a few times each, and had maybe commented once or twice. The Sisathon quickly established the dynamic for the duo and their friends: relatable, wholesome energy and entertaining banter at times far, far better than most scripted sitcoms, complete with special guests (hint to television producers). Despite not being blood-related sisters, Rae and Cinna fell into their roles naturally and nearly immediately. Valkyrae as the older ‘put-upon’ anxious sister (and being an older sister irl), and Cinna as the boundary-testing ‘annoying’ younger sister (also being a younger sister irl). Anyone with siblings or a large family would recognize the two playfully poking at each other, both rhetorically and, at times, literally. Valkyrae and Cinna’s two dedicated assistants (Emily and Rosii, respectively), are clearly more friends than coworkers. Across the week, Rosii and Emily bust each other’s chops, and the group of four effortlessly demonstrated incredibly quick dry banter and semi-faux-bickering, including lots of harmless trolling between friends, and lots of gassing each other up.
Like many viewers, it reminded me of my own friend group at that age — or even the many family squabbles between cousins and siblings.
Their week was packed with activities; cooking streams, a cooking lesson, gaming (naturally), IRL streams, boot camp, shopping, crafts, rollerskating, podcasting, late night music, and live sleep streams (which were new to even Rae, who’s been in the business for over a decade). The daily morning ‘get-ready’ portion of the streams really educated a clueless old guy like me of the demands and tribulations of hair and makeup, as well as the many pressures and expectations put on women, especially those in the limelight.
It felt like being invited to glimpse a weeklong camp complete with sushi, fast food, face masks, scary movies, puppies, video games, and teasing about embarrassing old DMs or chat logs. All innocent fun that, personally, transported me back to memories of my 20s and early 30s.
Cinna accidentally created an unintentional product placement on Day One, with led to recurring jokes about a sponsorship deal being sprung on Valkyrae (also known as the ‘Ludwig Method’). We learned Rae’s ‘4 Holy uns’ of her own pop culture engagement: “uneducated, uncultured, unaware and uninvolved”. There were late night confessions about the very real difficulties of living with anxiety or realizations about overthinking — including heartfelt discussions on the worries the pair had about (actually) upsetting one another, insecurities about keeping viewers engaged/entertained, and their responsibilities to each other as fellow streamers in a marathon, as women and as friends. They were making sure that everyone understood (audience as well as themselves) that dry humor and banter aside, these friends genuinely love and support each other.
https://www.twitch.tv/valkyrae/clip/ScaryShinyFriesWholeWheat-AoVoCo1Bx0vrZOaM
Halfway into the marathon, Pokimane made her guest appearance so the trio could become a curly-haired girly squad. Poki, fresh from Paris, brought the classic middle sister energy involving equal parts mediator and instigator, while (mostly) remaining above the fray. The CPR (Cinna-Poki-Rae) combo included more fun and bonding, and a near-miss with giant spider-folk. Rae commented later during the Sisathon that she and Poki had a special bond, having had to face very similar and unfounded online hate in the past.
Rae and Cinna briefly parted ways during the Marathon on Saturday to stream separately. Valkyrae had a previous engagement to join Ludwig’s stream for twelve hours playing every Mario Party in reverse, its own marathon within the marathon (Ludwig and Rae’s team won). Cinna, Rosii and Emily, unstoppable, went to see the real Mario World at Universal Studios, and were subsequently roasted by Megatron. Adorably, the duo of bickering ’siblings’ missed each other during those twelve hours, despite having spent days irritating each other. Rae, with the realization that one can “only take so much of Ludwig”, found a deeper appreciation of the Sisathon, and Cinna had purchased two bouquets of flowers and a Bowser plushie for Rae (never mind whose idea the Bowser was). Even more adorably, the trio of Cinna, Rosii and Emily conspired to withhold info of their trip from Rae, with the noble intention of preventing fomo. And somehow even more adorable still, Cinna stayed up late on stream to wait for Rae to return, entertaining the chat with her playlists past 3 am.
Late on Sunday, the Sisathon’s Day Six, special guest Emiru arrived to join the girls and puppies (and Rosii). More adorableness ensued when they discovered that Emiru had traveled to L.A. *just* for the Sisathon. Emiru seamlessly fit in with the banter, upping the ante with her own wry responses.
Rae and Cinna recapped recent adventures, gossip and events for her, and they went out to create some new memories and content together. What followed was absolutely surreal to live viewers, so I can hardly imagine how the women themselves must have felt, living through it. What was intended to be their penultimate night of marathon fun instead revealed something disturbing and all-too-common in our culture.
I really don’t think it’s something cis men like myself *can* fully understand at that level. Not necessarily out of any moral failing, but simply enculturation. Academically we can comprehend, sure, but not viscerally. It’s almost equally hard for women of any walk to *not* know and feel such threats on a cellular level. For the briefest of moments much earlier on Day Six, Valkyrae tried putting her anxiety aside (“I’m done wondering about what-ifs!”) before Emiru’s arrival. Of course, this very healthy new outlook has likely also been threatened by the events that followed…
Earlier in the week, online trolls from the cesspool that once identified as twitter took it upon themselves to criticize the Sisathon. Wouldn’t you know it, at random times when checking on the stream, the duo or their guests could be seen… sitting. Actually sitting. That’s right, these *women* had the audacity to sit down on their stream, while streaming from their computers for thousands of viewers. If you’re struggling to scratch out one iota of comprehension from this, just one crumb that would make this make sense, that is because you are sane. Even if we accept the absurdly shallow ‘critique’ that a streaming marathon is somehow lesser or invalid because two women sit down, this is especially incoherent given the list of activities we’ve seen were jammed into just six days. Women are mocked or gaslit every day on multiple platforms for simply gaming, modeling, and now… sitting.
“Dang, it really doesn’t matter what I do in life, it doesn’t matter how many achievements … it doesn’t matter how successful I am, it literally doesn’t matter how long I’ve been in this industry, I feel like some people will just not respect me. It’s so discouraging and the comments … they just hate us, they just hate women. And it’s so discouraging but … if you’re a girl here starting streaming, this is just a testament to, you know, you just have to keep doing what you enjoy. Keep at it because no matter what, you won’t be able to change people’s minds, some people will just hate you no matter what you look like … it doesn’t matter how much cool stuff you do … I think that’s why I really pushed myself for many years to do really cool things because I value respect so much. I just want to be respected by my peers, and at the end of the day, I will never be respected by some people.”
~ Valkyrae, Day Six
Women on every platform regularly receive hate, denigration, threats, and inappropriate and overtly sexualizing messages, overwhelmingly from a segment of male viewers. (Often to baffling degrees, to quote Katlynn Simone as ‘Tina’ in the Blindspotting series: “Okay, sir, now you know that makes no fucking sense.”)
Women gamers are still shaded with implications that their gender makes them fake gamers, to this day, despite full decades of ‘girl gamers’ being quite common, now a full decade after Gamergate, and despite them having logged hundreds or thousands of hours in some of these games, including tournaments, sponsorships and partnerships. Just earlier in the week, a popular Apex Legends streamer was mocked by ignorant twitter accounts who thought she was a first-time player, when any small modicum of research would show that she’d streamed a staggering 5,550+ hours of the game.
It would be easy and simple to blame this on jealousy. I once believed that jealousy as the impetus for such behavior could be adequate explanation, though I’ve also heard that sort of claim from narcissists. When I was younger, I gave the jealousy explanation undue credence, then later believed it to be an oversimplification, and then when I was older still recognized it as one nuanced part of a web of self-delusion from haters of all kinds. In truth, jealousy is *often* part of the story, but not the full story. Young men who may feel inadequate dating or flirting, or even just in skills where they must compete with highly skilled women, are finding physical reality at odds with the cultural mythologies that women are proscribed to be less competent to nearly useless. When delusions come into conflict with reality, cognitive dissonances abound. These dissonances are not always resolved on the side of factuality.
We have to let go of these notions. It should be noted emphatically that the existence of a pro-sisterhood girls’ stream, at no point in the six days, ever did anything to harm or foul the lives of any men. This is an Earth-shattering bombshell to those who have long assumed any moment of female empowerment or even simple camaraderie merely exists as a way to impugn the delicate feelings of men. Unless those men ventured far afield to twist a benign reality into a fictive attack, there was no there there. The tropes surrounding this are so entrenched that Cinna was able to joke about a potential “think piece on Rosii’s treatment”. The predictable forms of attack are so tired and clichéd that they’re memeable.
As much fun as twitch can be, even to an older newer viewer like myself, the vitriol aimed at women goes far beyond anything that could even mistakenly be construed as humor, or teasing, or banter. Those sorry examples of men, if they truly believe that’s what they are engaging in, need a serious boot camp of their own in what humor or teasing or banter *actually* is. Perhaps if they had paid closer attention to the marathon, they would have gotten a Master Class. Twitch and other platforms (especially twitter) have been fairly criticized for not doing enough to prevent such hate against content creators. At the same time, what platform can realistically handle this widely indoctrinated level of hatred, let alone any one streamer or their chat mod team. It is enculturated, and political, and scary.
This Women’s History Month, are we left once again to helplessly worry about the safety and the very freedom to assemble for women? Lone ‘white knights’ are about as sufficient to handle the problem of ‘lone nuts’, as egomaniacal billionaires are suited to solving world hunger. Men are the driving force behind these problems, time and again, and then women are saddled with solving yet another of the world’s problems aimed squarely at them.
Should we also spare any thought for the male victims of such toxic misogynistic tropes and cultural coding, even during Women’s month? Young men and boys are indoctrinated early to believe that the most parasocial behaviors are acceptable, even to be encouraged by grifting influencers who recognize a readily prepared chicken to pluck. Such myths and grifts leave these boys lonely, and vulnerable, terrified of rejection, and confused about society and their own identity or masculinity; it can even land them in jail after acting on these noxious beliefs.
For women, it leaves them terrified for their lives, for the safety of their loved ones, and taints what should be otherwise fun and carefree adventures in life.
Entire round tables of podcasts and other online content are dedicated to calling women stupid, or shallow, or promiscuous; you know, all the same ones women have been dealing with since the first apple tree. Women are still the butt of such lazy, hackneyed “take my wife” slop, but they aren’t really the main target. The target, damn the consequences, are confused and impressionable young men who often just don’t know how to properly be. If you can’t see the tangible throughline between calling Amouranth a ton of filthy names, and the violent attack against Amouranth inside her own home, you really ought to be seeking out a professional to help explain it.
Mere minutes before the incident, Cinna, Rae, Emiru, Emily and Rosii were enjoying the Santa Monica ferris wheel (even if you’re not in Southern California, you’ve seen it in GTA). They were all characteristically teasing one another and visibly having a lot of fun. Even Emily, despite her fear of ferris wheels.
The plan was to finish their visit with some churros. I was personally excited because I had ordered birria that day, and had a churro waiting for me in the other room. I could eat a churro at the same time as these creators! Note: This is the extent of my own parasociality.
Unexpectedly, a kneeling individual interrupts them as they walk to the churro stand near the exit. He’s confusedly referencing a proposal. Was he a busker? An awkward fan? The group of streamers wondered similar things aloud as their audience expected this random encounter to end like any other. Instead, things escalated quickly. The creep threatened to follow them (Emiru, in particular), transforming from a random strange person within a few short words into an obvious stalker. Had he been watching their livestream, in order to intercept them? Or was this just one of the many dangers lurking for women, even in groups, in public, or on a livestream?
The women surround Emiru and moved with speed and a higher safety in numbers. Hoodie changes in line outside the churro stand provided makeshift disguise, but this wasn’t enough. The stalker indeed followed through on the threat to follow, then threatened to fight, then threatened to kill. ‘Brazen’ isn’t even an adequate word, given his threats were directly to a livestream of thousands, automatically recorded as a VOD. It was genuinely shocking. Was he so stung by rejection? Had he come with every intention to do harm? We currently do not know such details, but those countless possibilities that Rae’s anxiety could list for us are clearly not borne of nothing. (UPDATE: There may have been a possibility of mental illness in this individual, though this alone does not sufficiently explain his decisions. Studies show that mentally ill individuals are more likely to be victims, not perpetrators, of violence. Whatever role his condition may or may not have played, he still exists as an individual within a culture rife with venomous culture codes.)
Emily and Rosii defended their friends by putting their own bodies in way of danger, and Valkyrae and Cinna were seen protecting Emiru. Then, as the creep drastically sped along his own arc into definite physical violence, viewers were left in the dark, and shock, with the marathon instantly (and understandably) cut short. Within hours, both Valkyrae and Cinna took to social media to let fans know they were all safe, and that the final day of the Sisathon would be rescheduled.
QTCinderella, xchocobars, xqc and other high-profile streamers soon commented on the events, denouncing the stalker, and in some cases denouncing our institutions that have failed in these areas. This cancer runs deep.
Can we lay all of this at the feet of the haters, misogynists and incels? This individual was one man who made choices, but we can simultaneously see this vast culture with all its current events and tropes. Being blind to it is just plain stupid. None of this exists in a vacuum, but rather, a gradient. It’s a *goddamn pipeline* that has been endlessly studied and described and exists, change my mind.
Who will teach these young men not to turn into monstrous weirdos?
Whenever they feel the compulsion to automatically hate or snarl at or denigrate a woman’s achievements.
Whenever they feel entitled to a total stranger’s life and privacy and boundaries, because they’re famous or pretty, or for essentially no reason at all.
Whenever they allow toxic narratives to take hold, from the de facto assumptions about fe-male inferiority to the grandiose delusions of personal connection to them.
Yes, chats allow streamers to interact with their viewers, so it’s not as one-way as other celebrity engagement. But this is no excuse for the behavior we have seen.
There are men who arrive in chats to thoughtlessly spread lewd, horny, desperate, lonely comments with no regard for consent or decency. Again, not a majority of comments by any stretch. But still perpetual, a daily occurrence. For some, multiple times a stream, mods rushing to delete messages NSFW, as these streamers do their actual jobs.
Consider, many men reading this will discount these concerns, for a myriad of fabricated, self-soothing reasons.
They’ll say streaming is not a real job (it is), but then what reason is that to produce profoundly angry statements in any case? Celebrities are this and that, so we shouldn’t worry about them, because of all of the this and all of the that. But streamers are people (like any celebrity, what a shocker), and the relatable and seemingly accessible nature of their streams into their homes doesn’t make them belong to anyone like property. Rather, it showcases what the people who pay attention already know: this can and does happen to anyone. Deciding to buy a streamer setup doesn’t put you into some novel category where you don’t deserve basic safeties or considerations of human decency. Neither does presenting as a woman. This also happens to women and girls of any age or occupation, all over the world, simply for existing.
Maybe you’re a young man who doesn’t discount this particular incident, so stark and disturbing, since it went too far beyond the pale. But interrogate your own beliefs and actions towards women; did you handle rejection so poorly that it made you hatefully lash out, instead of inspecting your own triggers for such insecurity? Have you employed harsh double standards for women, in their careers, relationships and sexuality? Have you ever had a knee-jerk negative reaction to the success or happiness of a woman? Even Sabrina Carpenter is facing a ‘backlash’ of negative comments from largely men, for seemingly no real reason at all. If your optical nerves and nervous system interpret Sabrina Carpenter as “ugly” and you felt compelled to share this objectively insane opinion online or elsewhere, you are suffering from a bananas form of brain rot.
If you’ve said some ignorant shit about women online, how do you think that will enculturate the next generation of boys who can read your comments? If anyone’s particular goal were to indoctrinate children into an ideology of hatred, magical thinking for seething losers, then such a person would decidedly be a bad person.
It is equally insane to have to mention this, but it’s tragically certainly relevant somewhere online: These young women were wearing hoodies on a cold night on a boardwalk ride. They could have worn anything they damn well pleased, and it should not have mattered. This was very obviously not faked, nor were they overreacting, and none of this should even need to be said. But the very inevitability of the victim blaming once again punctuates the pervasive ways that society has stacked the optics and argumentation against women.
For all the talk these days of deep state conspiracies and ‘mind viruses’, it’s noteworthy that we don’t see these same culture warriors battling the myths and pathologies that truly have had so many of us bamboozled at one point or another. Too many are blindly accepting of the bigotries and assumptions that can and will inspire monsterdom, and leave men sad and alone and emotionally destitute. Unless they’re one of the grifters cruising and profiting off of these vacuous mythologies and false-promise ideologies, that is. Ask the Tate brothers how things are going for them in our current culture, then check in on the average fan of the Tates to see where they fall on the happiness index.
Briefly in middle school, long before streaming existed, I found myself with a sad inner refrain as I mentally fought what I would later recognize as pernicious, omnipresent cultural infections. I would repeat to myself silently, “women are not objects, women are not objects, women are not objects” to deprogram, before I knew what that even meant. Even after wrestling this demon in the mirror, each year brought new revelations and psionic battles about the mistreatment of women by society at large, by specific men, and even unconsciously at times, by myself. I existed in that fragile state well before the Manosphere as we know it; but it could easily have been me.
Boys: Just know that when you can see through the sales tactics of con artists and these mythologies of bigotry, it’s like a superpower. The pillars are revealed as invisible. The shackles are cultural constructs. The creeps have no clothes.
I’m both devastated and proud to say that other men I know have verbally expressed their recognition and struggles against their own internal sexism. Dismayed that it was necessary to do so, and heartened that we have the actual masculine fortitude to address this headlong and put in the work. Any man who claims to know what these problems are, but does nothing to address it in themselves and others, might as well not identify as a man at all.
Who will instruct these young men, for the betterment of women, society, and themselves? They are not predisposed to listen to women. The programming’s directives prevent it. Should women be expected to carry this weighty responsibility as yet another burden? It’s up to any with the knowledge, empathy and patience to address this within our own numbers. The hateful calls are coming from inside the house.
I don’t know the specific action steps to ‘fix’ this. Do we need a lecture series to combat the grifter agitprop? Full classes? A traveling road show? Do we need an experienced lecturer and revengerist to help? I’m down, btdubs.
Cinna, Rae and crew were looking forward to the final day, Monday (today as I’m writing this), and a brunch with all their friends and streamers aplenty. They were planning future events (never mind who came up with what idea) for a Streamer House and All Girl Camp. Like many, I genuinely hope we get these, and that the future safety and security of any IRL streams mean they are not discouraged or terrorized into avoiding things that have every right to enjoy.
Until then, send all the love and support and appreciation to Emiru, Valkyrae, Cinna, Emily, (and any women in your life while you’re at it) to let them know that they are seen, appreciated, and have allies that outnumber the gaslighters and haters and stalkers; people who recognize these creeps for what they are, and that women of any age or orientation or background should be able to simply be.
Year after year, hot take after hot take, men are told that we must do better, and still such incidents occur. We can certainly feel grateful for any men who acted appropriately in that situation, but again I am most struck by the images of four young women protecting each other. I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t slept. It was as natural to them as breathing, or sitting. Not blood-related, but sisters in every other way.
It’s a bond forged from more than just gender or gender identity, but by a twisted and all-too-real form of shared trauma crossing cultural and national borders. Missing indigenous women in Canada, trans women violently attacked for their identity, students stolen from their schools in Nigeria, or massacred in Pakistan, and women feeling near-constantly in danger in the public streets of Paris, Mumbai, London, Chicago, Houston, NYC, Los Angeles, and all around the world. Abusers, stalkers, sex traffickers. Women have far more to be alert about day and night than your average cisgender man, and any whiner who says otherwise is not even serious enough to stop and wonder why.
This is not to say that there haven’t been women stalkers, or that men have never been targets for such heinous realities. I’m all-too well-aware of that. But it’s also simply a recognition of reality that women, still, in this modern Current Era, have statistically far worse and more common risks, dangers and outcomes. Many of these streamers have spoken about their hesitance to do “IRL Streams” due to concerns for their safety. Pokimane has previously spoken about avoiding IRL streams for being too dangerous, and near the beginning of the Sisathon, Valkyrae also mentioned not usually doing IRL streams. The event that ended the marathon could potentially limit the number of IRL streams we see in the near-future, which would be a shame but also completely justified given safety concerns. It’s a shame not only for audiences, but frankly as an unreasonable concession to the terroristic elements of our dysfunctional, at-times uncivil society.
Another streamer recently recounted on their Just Chatting stream their strategies for avoiding violence from unknown strangers in public who demand a phone number but cannot sanely handle rejection. She doesn’t just give a fake number, but has to ensure that it’s only one number off; so if the insistent man with no sense of boundaries calls the number *right there in front of her*, she has a safe excuse to fall back on; once again always motivated by the very real possibility of physical violence. We saw a variation of this only days later in the Santa Monica pier stream, with Emiru diplomatically trying to defuse the situation by saying she “doesn’t have a phone”, and even that incredibly respectful and light rejection being refused as an answer.
In another stream, I personally witnessed a chatter feeling bold enough to write something to the effect of “you’re so fine, I’d **** your mama’s ****.” Their first message to a total stranger. Points for creativity, I guess? But exhaustingly predictable at the same time.
Here’s another prediction. At no point in this article have I encouraged anyone to hate all men. But that won’t stop the mentally lazy or terminally brain-rotted from claiming that was secretly the whole point, all along. They didn’t make it this far, I’m guessing.
Women, you deserve your flowers for enduring all of this with such grace and strength when you never should have had to, simply for existing and wanting to live, work, and *have fun*, as the song famously said. Like any human being (which of course they are, don’t @ me), women deserve safety, and support, and understanding, and not endless anxiety. Women’s History Month is one-twelfth of the year despite women being over half of the world population. Men have their own day, and a mental health awareness month as well, which the chuds rushing to ask “why don’t men have a day/month” would know if they ever cared about men’s issues in any context other than to detract from women’s issues when they arise. You never see the word ‘misandry’ thrown around as much as in response to an attack on a woman.
You deserve better than all this, and it shouldn’t be up to yourselves to fix it. It’s not up to so-called white knights, either. It’s up to *all* of us to continue to educate and intervene and push to break these broken narratives once and for all.
It was badass Sisterhood that protected these women, as much as the badass Rosii and any helpers on the pier. I don’t think I’ll get those images out of my head for some time, as these women in a horrifying situation placed their own selves in harm’s way for one another and employed deeply ingrained and necessary survival strategies; from the polite rebuff of the initial awkward interaction, to the impromptu disguise, to abandoning their churro plans entirely, to physically grabbing and moving each other out of harm’s way.
For safety and well-being, including emotional and anxiety, it makes total sense to end the marathon early. Fans may get the 7th day at some point in the future. But creeps like this should not be able to rob streamers of their fun, nor their audiences of the same, with their rotten maladaptive behavior that hurts people in severely traumatic ways. Even of the viewers; how many watching live have been in similarly terrifying situations? How many were forced to confront that terror during what should have been a lovely enjoyable outing? No one deserves this. Women, you don’t deserve hatred and objectification. You deserve basic human decency and respect. Shocker.
You also deserve churros, and I hope you are treated to them soon. Churros are peak.
“I think I just have a lot of faith that most people do not have bad intention.” ~Cinna
“Most people don’t, but it just takes one person.” ~Rae
on the possibility of aggression during an IRL stream, Day 4 of the Sisathon.
Absurdist Noir 