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Model and Twitch streamer MissBaffy took a break from playing League of Legends to point out an alleged double standard on the streaming platform, which she felt was sexist.
While coming up with a description for her stream, MissBaffy decided to play around with variations on “crazy British woman”. She tried “woman”, “woman”, “girl” and “lady”, all of which were forbidden to be used. MissBaffy then typed in “crazy British man” and the description was approved for use.
MissBaffy was quick to call the double standard sexist, but members of the Twitch community felt torn over the situation.
On Reddit, gamers and streamers tried to find out the reason for the targeted censorship. Some pointed out that this is a way to “protect” women from male streamers who want to use the term “crazy woman” to target them for harassment. But others found it insulting how much women were coddled on Twitch, saying women were treated like “disabled children.”
Still, many women have spoken out against sexism in the streaming community, especially after Imane “Pokimane” Anys was overcome with hate and SweetAnita revealed multiple stalkers. This could lead to more safeguards against potential sexism and harassment of women on the platform.
Some in the streaming community wondered why Twitch couldn’t just let people use the term “crazy woman” to weed out the sexists and harassers instead of banning all possible uses of the phrase as some women want to use it to be funny to be. While it may have originally been intended to “protect” women, it actually appeared to limit or speak for women.
However, it was quickly pointed out that the forbidden terms were probably not the work of a real person.
“I very much doubt that anyone thought of it. Seems like an algorithm came up with combinations of keywords that got a lot of reports and just prematurely decided not to allow those words in that order,” said Reddit user urismcderp.
But even that frustrated some in the streaming world. One response noted that Twitch often follows the same pattern, claiming that they need more moderation but seem unwilling to pay for a system that uses real people to determine what is truly racist or sexist. Instead, Twitch will go for the cheaper option of using an automated system that does “stupid shit” and ends up being “completely unfair.”
As the incident drew the attention of some, MissBaffy tweeted that she was actually just being sarcastic about Twitch’s “reverse sexism.” She added that she was “trying to be funny” and actually didn’t care about the situation at all.
“It was only for memes,” she wrote, laughing.
While MissBaffy may have been just a joke, the topic was clearly a touchy subject for many in the streaming community due to Twitch’s inconsistent terms of service and penalties.