Caroline Kwan is tired, but you can’t tell. On the final day of the conference, the political fundraiser, actress, and Twitch streamer sat across from me in the TwitchCon conference room. Wearing a pink jumpsuit and sneakers, her hair slicked back from her face, she looked clear-eyed and alert. .
“This year it’s like, oh my God. Day one: debater Rehearse, meet, greet, return debater Enjoy a show followed by a business dinner. It’s too much,” she sighed.
“I told my community I was going to try to stream on Saturday, I was going to try to stream on Sunday, and then I realized I didn’t like streaming at TwitchCon,” she admitted. Her community is impressive: 134,000 people, all gathered for Kwan’s rather specific live streams, which blend pop culture and politics and deliver them with biting humor and even more pointed commentary. Whether in person or on air, Caroline Kwan is a force.
Level Rowling Method
Kwan utilizes her rather unique background in her Twitch streams, covering major pop culture events like the Oscars and Emmys, and incorporating political and historical context into her commentary. Although she belongs to the inner circle of streaming royalty like Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker, Austin Show, QTCinderella and Will Neff (the latter of whom is her partner), Kwan has forged her own path.
“When I started going live, I didn’t want to get into political trouble with my relationship with Hassan, you know, personally, I’ve known him a long time and dated Will,” she said. “I don’t want this to be an ‘Oh, female Hassan’ thing… I want to do something on Twitch that no one else has done, which is why I rely heavily on pop culture, especially pop culture and politics. cross.
This intersection is perfectly reflected in Guan’s reporting Writers Guild of America 2023 strike. “I am a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) [Screen Actors Guild] And the WGA, when the strike happened, it was my first year on the air, so I was on the picket line,” she explained. “I cover them every day and explain to people this is about labor. I know this is Hollywood and people think only celebrities want more money. But most of the people in these unions are not rich. They may be Work hard for your income but they can’t afford health insurance… They deserve better working conditions, better pay… That was my first year of streaming and it really helped define me career.
Even though Kwan’s “bread and butter” is her awards show show, she still injects political and cultural commentary into her coverage. “I talk a lot about representation, I talk about the impact of movies on society…After 9/11, there was an influx of more anti-Muslim depictions – like everyone in the Middle East was a terrorist, ” she said. “It’s used to influence the American people and how they feel about what the government is doing there. Literally, the Department of Defense has a Bureau of Entertainment, which was established after World War II.
I mentioned call of Dutyand How similar games are also influencing people’s perceptions of the Middle East. She nodded. “So much of pop culture is propaganda. Some of it is very subtle. Some of it is not so subtle,” she explains. “So the key is recognizing when something is propaganda. Like I always say, ‘Look, I’m not saying you can’t enjoy a TV show that’s obviously very pro-police or whatever, you just have to recognize That, right? Just know when to be influenced by popular media.
The price of being a woman online
Naturally, our conversation turned to the pressures she faces as a woman in such a male-dominated space, and the various negative emotions she faces while streaming on Twitch.
image: Alyssa Mercant/Twitch
“As a woman online, just by existing online, you become a target, which is why things like AI deepfakes are primarily targeted at women,” she said. Twitch Deepfake Porn Scandal last year, of which A famous anchor accidentally revealed He was on hand to watch altered porn that featured portraits of his peers.
“This is just one example of how misogyny is at the heart of deepfakes. When I tweeted [the scandal] I got private messages and comments saying, ‘You’re next, we’re coming to you next,'” Kwan explained. “Just because I said ‘This is not right’. Don’t do it. Women don’t agree with that. And then I put the laser on me because it’s about energy. It’s about control. That’s what’s right Sexual abuse of women. Artificial intelligence deepfakes are digital sexual abuse.
For a few minutes, Kwan and I traded back and forth horror stories about the DMs and comments we both received, and how steeped they were in the tired misogyny of the internet, GamerGate, and angry young people. “Sometimes someone joins the chat [to be mean] I’d say, ‘Look, if you’re going to insult me, you’ve got to be creative,'” I said, laughing. “Please don’t come in and do the same boring stuff that I’ve heard since elementary school… get new material.”
I asked her about the extra pressure many women, queer people, and POC feel in online spaces to portray perfection. She nodded vigorously. “As someone who has been working with [perfection] For a long time – I’ve also wondered, is it just because I’m a half-Asian girl growing up in a predominantly white suburb? I’ve become ingrained in the idea that you need to always be right? Because there are always eyes on you, there is always a spotlight on you, and you have to be perfect.
But Guan said the fear of imperfection that was imposed on herself at a young age wasn’t enough to stop her from speaking. “I realized early on that I couldn’t help but talk. I had to speak – were you silent or silent? Neither! We laughed loudly at her Oprah meme reference.
“Then streaming comes into the picture, it’s real-time, there’s no editing, it’s happening on the fly… As attention started to get on me, I also got bad attention… .and [the bad actors] Go through everything and they’ll take it out of context and they’ll say ‘Oh, you’re a stupid bitch,'” she said. “It doesn’t matter how much energy I put into my stream. It doesn’t matter how I talk about it publicly… I don’t know everything. I make mistakes, we all make mistakes. I think when you make a mistake it’s what you do It better describes what kind of person you are.
She told me that younger members of her community have taught her a lot, and she always tries to focus on marginalized people who are directly affected by the issues she covers on air. As our conversation came to a close (it was by far the most enlightening of my weekend), we both sighed, realizing that we were two women fighting a seemingly never-ending tide of hate.
“No, not many female anchors would do such a thing, [political streamer] denim I do this with most of our content. I understand why. It’s a difficult situation because I wish more women would speak out because there’s strength in numbers – every fool here has an opinion on something… and they have a huge audience,” Guan complained. . “For women, because of the barriers we face just being online and being public figures, there are a lot of women who have just decided not to have a voice — and I totally get it! It’s too bad!
She thought for a moment, apparently contemplating her own impact as a non-white, non-male high-profile anchor.
“I started streaming to create a community and have a platform to be able to share my voice and advocate for things that I care about that I think are important and try to be a good role model on that platform,” she pauses. “On a positive note, despite all the obstacles and challenges we’ve talked about here, I look at my community and look at how quickly I’m growing on Twitch. I’ve been doing this for two years… and the truth is, I have some really great stuff and it’s been growing, apart from the people that I’ve been closely involved with, and it shows that what I have to say and what I’m going to do on it resonates with people.
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