Although Toph, an American, had friends and a relationship in Japan, he found living there for the past eight years to be oftentimes quite lonely.
When he discovered Twitch in 2016, it seemed like the perfect way to meet others with mutual interests while he spent time gaming. So Toph, who was working as a teacher abroad, started to build a community on the platform.
He prided himself on the “soft, comfy vibe” of his streams, during which he played games like Animal Crossing and Kirby and the Forgotten Land in front of a virtual audience. Twitch served as a respite for him when things in the real world were getting tough. So last week, shortly after returning to live in his home state of New York, he was looking forward to streaming. He’d broken up with his partner and uprooted his entire life, and it would be nice to forget about that for a while.
Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way. “In that moment, someone came in and trauma dumped about a breakup from an abusive partner who’d cheated on them. And of course, my community is very sweet, so they started responding, and it just kept going and going,” says Toph, who has 33,800 followers on Twitch. (Toph does not disclose his full name or age to his audience.)
The emotional purge, which took place in the text chat of his stream, went on for 11 minutes and put Toph into a sour mood — the very state of mind he’d been hoping to escape. He’d been in a similar relationship to the one described, and although he says the conversation didn’t “trigger” him, he felt defeated and canceled his stream for the day.
“So much is going on in my life,” he says. “Twitch and streaming are some of the only things that take my mind off it. And now it's getting taken away from me. Why can’t these be my safe space, too?”
Toph is one of many Twitch streamers worried about the issue of trauma dumping, the act of offloading emotional problems without invitation. According to content creators on the platform, viewers are increasingly bombarding stream chats and their accompanying Discords with their IRL problems, which streamers are often not equipped to deal with.
The issue has become so prevalent that some streamers have started speaking out on Twitter. One influencer even put out a guide to dissuade people from trauma dumping on her streams.
Trauma dumping is a problem that affects streamers at all levels. Rob Logan is a variety streamer and podcaster from Massachusetts who has been broadcasting on Twitch for the last seven years under the name @theRobLogan. He has under 800 followers, but still deals with the issue.
“I had one viewer who just vented every time they were in chat,” Logan says. “They never really contributed to the conversation that was going on. They just derailed whatever was happening to talk about their problems.”
Logan recently went viral on Twitter after he tweeted a message to viewers — “PLEASE stop dropping your insanely depressing news into chat” it began — motivated by Toph’s trauma-dumping experience. “Even this morning, I was watching someone raise money for Ukraine in a charity stream, and somebody came in and said, ‘I’m pregnant. I just found out, now I’m sad,’” Logan says. “Everyone else had to stop the conversation and deal with it.”
Toph echoes Logan’s sentiments, saying that the issue often impacts the entire community. “There was a member of the community who kept talking about their dead pet. I asked them kindly to stop and take the conversation private instead, and after one of the streams, they posted a graphic picture of their sickly pet in the Discord,” he recounts. While Toph sympathized with his viewer, having previously lost a pet himself, he didn’t want other followers to feel triggered or upset, and he deleted the picture.
“I was trying to be there for them while making sure everyone else was comfortable and safe, but they immediately got angry at me,” Toph says. “They told me that I was in the wrong for deleting it and that I was heartless. They left the community after that.” Power dynamics
Twitch insiders believe the growing problem of trauma dumping stems from the combination of viewers’ access to and power over streamers.
“It’s a problem for bigger Twitch streamers because people will pay to have their messages read out, and they’ll share the minutiae of their problems,” says Terrence Wiggins, a 34-year-old part-time streamer, podcaster, and coin photographer from Virginia who streams as @TheBlackNerd on Twitch, where he has just over 800 followers.
“It’s the whole parasocial relationship thing, where people view the streamer as their friend, when really they’re not. [The streamer is] being paid to listen to whatever you have to say. It’s extremely unhealthy.”
Mental health Twitch streamers are struggling with 'trauma dumping'
Viewers are derailing chats with their personal problems, and streamers feel ill-equipped to deal with their issues.
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