My Twitch harassment/stalking story is live now at Rolling Stone. It’s an intense read but I’m proud of it. Thank you to the women (and man) who spoke to me for this piece. You’re brave and bold and badass! www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult... - ThreadSky

alyssamerc.bsky.social • 1 day ago

My Twitch harassment/stalking story is live now at Rolling Stone. It’s an intense read but I’m proud of it.

Thank you to the women (and man) who spoke to me for this piece. You’re brave and bold and badass!

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/valkyrae-cinna-emiru-women-twitch-streamers-harassment-1235289509/

Comments

nomorehandlesok.bsky.social•1 day ago

https://bsky.app/profile/iman-32.bsky.social/post/3lk75ksoyld2q

antlervel.vet•1 day ago

Great piece, Alyssa

katie.bzky.team•1 day ago

great article

slocrnt.bsky.social•1 day ago

It's assaults on all fronts. How do we band together against this when the issue is so engendered!?

elthesensai.bsky.social•1 day ago

A reminder of how we treat a lot of our women. Shameful. It’s why I worry every time my wife goes out on her daily runs around the park.

serenityrune.bsky.social•1 day ago

This also applies to some streamers of spaceflight video games i encountered.

avgrankings.bsky.social•1 day ago

Excellent article. Thank you for not treating these incidents as aberrations, but as predictable outcomes with deep structural roots. Highlighting this is how we make the world a better place for both men and women (and NB people!).

moxxi.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks for writing this. I'm nowhere near the level of these amazing ladies but it's too often that we're told we're over exaggerating a situation and when we DO share, we're "making things up". It's frustrating that we don't have more of a support system.

marlie.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Excellent article, thanks

shuchancellor.online•1 day ago

I saw the Hasan coverage on that stream. Harrowing, to say the least. All power and solidarity. ✊🏻

constantinedtw.bsky.social•1 day ago

That this goes on, and does so with such frequency, is insanity. Yet Twitch just seems to let it be. To say that they are inconsistent with their discipline is kind at best. For instance, I'm going to have been banned for a year. They say I did something off platform which is not true at all.

arelith.bsky.social•1 day ago

We have had repeated threats against our female voluntary server DMs over the years, in addition to all manner of foul posts. To be clear our community (I think) is better than most, but misogyny in gaming? It's rampant.

Anything that shines a light on the issue is most welcome.

marktsneed.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Congratulations. It's crazy that Rolling Stone has become a trusted journalistic source. Again, congratulations.

sam.robotsfightingdinosaurs.com•1 day ago

This is incredible, Alyssa. Incredible, heartbreaking, and important. Something has to change.

anxiouspepper.bsky.social•1 day ago

Wow... I only watch 3 channels on twitch regularly... 2 science channels and rifftrax. Those 3 have always been very strict with their rules and will not tolerate harassment of any kind. I'm sorry to hear other twitch channels are such shit.

johndavidson66.bsky.social•23 hours ago

And incels wonder why women won't have sex with them.

feenixfire90g.bsky.social•1 day ago

Ffs see it's gotten no better since I left the Mixer streaming scene... this is why I never went solo.

taylorjrioux.bsky.social•1 day ago

These men are sick and even more become infected each day. I'm not really sure how to solve it without big changes from the very top of our government on down.

writualmagic.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thank you for this work, even though I wish this shit didn’t happen. Hope you’re nurturing yourself where you can, bb. 💜

coldcomfortt.bsky.social•1 day ago

Real men must call out misogyny/sexual harassment everytime, everywhere.

Silence is complicit

spoonbill.bsky.social•3 hours ago

Jesus. Toxic AF

anniemgc.bsky.social•1 day ago

Can anyone share a gift copy of the article?

jimorian.bsky.social•1 day ago

The embed link on discord seems to lead to a different author. (Definitely sharing this in lots of places).

bigmanfanelli.bsky.social•1 day ago

He’s the editor at Rolling Stone, he puts the articles into the system, but the right author is always on the site itself. Happened to me a couple of times too, just a weird backend thing.

jimorian.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yeah, figured it was just a weird way that the embeds pick up the data for things like this. Thanks for the explanation!

helpitsagain25.bsky.social•1 day ago

If enough women flag your account as abusive you should be blocked from commenting on womens posts and get a little warning label so the other dudes know your full of shit

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•11 hours ago

I kinda like the idea of publicly shaming perverts with a scarlet letter, or at least shadow banning them and putting them on a watchlist. It shouldn't just be for streamers- we need to protect women and girls (and anyone else) from this kind of harassment that clearly threatens their safety.

pig-guy.bsky.social•23 hours ago

We love to see a successful queen 👑

pnwpirate.bsky.social•1 day ago

Let’s talk about my experiences with the Weinstein/Epstein/Trump crew soon. Please!

shininokage.bsky.social•1 day ago

I've long advocated for bannings to actually mean something. Accounts being banned from Twitch shouldn't be a simple 'oh, just make another account'. There should be IP/hardware bans.

Yes, I realize this doesn't change -in person- stalking, but Amazon/Twitch could absolutely do something more.

shininokage.bsky.social•1 day ago

If they gave a shit.

Which they obviously don't.

adminspotter.bsky.social•1 day ago

If you aren’t a large shareholder, AMZN doesn’t care one bit about you.

shininokage.bsky.social•1 day ago

Absolutely true. This is true of -every- publicly traded company for the most part as well.

shininokage.bsky.social•1 day ago

Well, lemme rephrase this:

Companies care when their financials are impacted. So if people want Amazon/Twitch to take harassment seriously -- stop using Twitch. Stop subbing. Stop buying bits. Stop streaming on there (I say while being a Twitch streamer, admittedly)

It requires a concerted effort.

adminspotter.bsky.social•1 day ago

Right there with you. Even though I worked for those psychos (AWS) for a while, I haven’t even had an Amazon account since the 90s, before they were fully into wielding their one-click-ordering patent.

foulharpy.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thank you for writing this story Alyssa!

susanarendt.bsky.social•1 day ago

Fantastic article that's also truly depressing because nothing has changed. You could've written this a decade ago, nearly verbatim. Nothing has goddamn changed.

caegcraft.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'd say it's gotten worse tbh

sybilte420.bsky.social•1 day ago

injushe.bsky.social•15 hours ago

There's a streamer I liked who completely disappeared online 6 months ago (no word on twitch, twitter, instagram, reddit).
I'm really hoping she's just taking an extended break, but the lack of any contact and that searching her name on twitter brings up endless posts of revenge porn has me worried.

yumyumtumtum.bsky.social•1 day ago

If you had told me in 2016 that nearly 10 years later, Keemstar would still be relevant enough to be in a Rolling Stones article for being the exact piece of shit he always has been… I’d probably have believed you 2016 was a pretty bleak year.

Still, dude should fuck off.

end-sky.bsky.social•1 day ago

I mean, he's basically YT's Rush Limbaugh, so that's to be expected.

technogourmet.bsky.social•1 day ago

Hi cousin, great work.

This bothers me: "... whom Rolling Stone has chosen not to name."

And this "...We take security at our events extremely seriously, full stop."

Full stop used like that is weasel word BS.

Great article, providing more evidence of US deep rooted misogyny, and corporate BS.

kasparknusper.bsky.social•1 day ago

Hi,
You would reach more people, when you add a good description into the Alt-text field.

That is pretty easy, especially, when your image just contain text.

This way, you support visually impaired people and everyone else, who rely on a good filled Alt-text.

#accessibility

itjustcametome.bsky.social•1 day ago

Nice!

Did they pay you as I know they weren’t doing great on this point a while back?

illuminatusprime.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks for bringing this forward!

hooliet.bsky.social•1 day ago

Excellent reporting Alyssa!

eliasgreek.bsky.social•1 day ago

I know twitch app
Its alternative mini social media

Sad

🇪🇺🇬🇷
Here yesterday a man killed his wife in north greece and then he suicide

We need anger management or
To forget women
Or buy a doll of silicon
500€
Or a fleshlight 45€

sugarvenom.bsky.social•1 day ago

That would fix things if violence against women was about sexual desire.

eliasgreek.bsky.social•1 day ago

🇬🇷🇪🇺🇬🇷🇪🇺🏛️☦️👑🇬🇷👋🙏👋🌹🥀❤️
Then its about ego
Or control her

Like society got mad
With hypatia Alexandria
Zandarc france

Marie Antoinette

Farkhunda Afghanistan

Maybe we hate when women have opinion
And talk back
Or want to be free

Who knows
Unfortunately
Most of us see you as property
Even now 2025

soundsgoodtome.bsky.social•1 day ago

There are assholes online?

littlemissemmet.bsky.social•1 day ago

Don't use twitch.

....Being subjected to stalking and harassment for being a vocal woman tho: ✅️

oddevens.bsky.social•1 day ago

Great article. Out of scope here but I think it would be interesting to look at this with vtubers because they make up a large share of female/lgbt streamers and get subjected to the same harassment even though anonymity and barriers between online/irl are much greater parts of the appeal

pmuck.bsky.social•19 hours ago

You may not know, but @ultia.bsky.social , a French streamer, won her case in Justice against her bullies/harasser. It may interesting to relate her story.

goshzilla.bsky.social•1 day ago

This didn’t get much coverage in the US, but just yesterday a live streamer was murdered on stream while out doing an IRL.

vancemaverick.bsky.social•1 day ago

to add the obvious, a female live streamer was murdered by a man

dasein12.bsky.social•14 hours ago

adding the obvious indeed, for reasons typically motivated by a resentful sense of "look, more evidence that men are a plague on women"

Men are more disagreeable than women: a biological fact that causes the disproportionate crimerate in men (80%); but women are not at all willing to address it

bogwytch76.bsky.social•13 hours ago

We've BEEN addressing it! We've been screaming about the issue for 10k+ years!!
Men are the ones that refuse to "address" the problem. What else should we do? Wholesale murder???

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•11 hours ago

You're not actually as naive as to think "men" as a monolith actually have any control over this, right? Most of us don't stalk twitch streamers, and I'm not accountable for the actions of this guy the same way you're not responsible for Anne Coulter and Candice Owens. It's not 2014 anymore.

bogwytch76.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Yet you seem to be naive enough to believe women are a monolith & haven't been addressing this. Your statement is called victim blaming. Men, as a community, have to address men's behavior. Y'all don't listen to us. Your response highlights this very accurately. Thank you for being the example👍🏻

dasein12.bsky.social•12 hours ago

Demonzing and complaining isn't addressing it." Men are overwhelmingly compelled to do the most work to eradicate workplace inequality; also a biological factor as women are more agreeable, thus less willing to negotiate for themselves; so men are expected to fix "crimes" they didn't commit, too.

bogwytch76.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Yes, men are compelled to correct PATRIARCHY! The irony that you don't see the inherent flaw of your "logic" is one of the main issues here. We don't demonize or complain. We point it out & y'all call it demonizing & complaining. Fix your own community. We're done trying to do it for y'all.

elemjay.bsky.social•1 day ago

That's such a depressing (excellently written) read.
"No, means no" seems to fall on deaf male ears to a disturbing degree.

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Since when? Last time I checked, the overwhelming majority of men weren't assaulters.

carameske.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Oh, so you've checked the majority of men have you? Has it occurred to you that actions most men don't consider assault, actually are assault?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis%C3%A8le_Pelicot

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•10 hours ago

For the record, I agree that SA is a terrible thing and a huge feminist issue that men and women both need to play a part in fixing. Much should be illegal which isn't and a lot of offenders go free that shouldn't. But blaming men generally is ludicrous and evokes apathy.

carameske.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I think what's falling down here is "men aren't listening" doesn't mean "all men aren't listening", and being a man that argues when you read that sentiment makes you *look* like one of the men who aren't listening. Women need to be able to talk about violence against them without being lambasted.

carameske.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I also would have agreed that it was a small minority of men, but honestly every day I see more and more proof that certainly not all but actually, possibly a majority of straight men would assault women if they felt they could do so without repercussion.

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•10 hours ago

For the record no one is lambasting you for talking about SA, I agree the voices of survivors and women in general should be heard on that. You're being lambasted for accusing "men" monolithically and not assaulters or misogynists. It's not a lot to ask for you to just be accurate in your portrayal.

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•10 hours ago

No, it makes me look like a man who's took baseless accusations in the general direction of straight men laying down for over a decade and sees it as being equally sexist as negative stereotypes affecting women. This is a huge reason so many young men shifted right. I chose not to- still you accuse.

shmurdabilly.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Have you considered that this is extremely 2016 brained and people are literally so apathetic to this clearly divisive and half true rhetoric that they were willing to flip parties over it? Hold your L. Most men aren't creeps and your hyperbole played a big part in radicalizing people. Let it go.

gingerbeardman.com•1 day ago

🙌 well done and congrats for stepping forward! As somebody who has suffered harassment in recent times it is all too often ignored.

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