After a more than month-long (and seemingly healthy) hiatus from social media and content creation, Twitch star Imane “Pokimane” Anys has returned to uploading content. But now everything will be different. Pokimane dropped a new youtube video today she describes her time off the internet and talks about what she learned and what her viewers can expect from her. Overall, it serves to illustrate just how “creatively unfulfilled” Twitch’s second largest female broadcaster has found the livestreaming business of late.
Pokimane has become a household name on Twitch, Amazon’s live streaming platform. With 9.2 million followers there, Pokimane is second only to Amouranth. However, she has been broadcasting herself and playing games for almost a decade, starting when she was 17. She turned her streaming hobby into a full-time job around the age of 21, appearing on video for several hours at a time at least six times a week. This can get exhausting, especially when you’ve been doing it for almost 10 years, and that’s exactly what Pokimane felt like.
So in July — and this is her habit now and then — she ditched all forms of parasocial connectivity to focus on herself. She didn’t specify exactly how long she would be offline, but after over a month’s absence, Pokimane has returned to say that, in short, she won’t be sticking to her previously suggested schedule of streaming about four times a week. Instead, she told her audience that she would “see you when I saw you,” which she estimates to be about two to three times a week, if that. And when viewers see them, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on Twitch.
Pokimane said she doesn’t realize how much she neglects her own needs while streaming full-time, like finding nearby grocery stores or establishing good routines. In other words, “basic human stuff” has been put on hold in favor of live streaming, and the job has, as she sees it, affected her ability to take care of herself. These are burnout-style symptoms that many pro streamers have cited over the years as common problems that come with the job. In Pokimane’s case, it drives her to make a bigger, more permanent change. The problem, as she describes it, is that sticking to your habitual way of working is like remaining in a kind of stalled development.
“And obviously, as humans, we just flush and repeat what people like,” she said, addressing content creators’ willingness to play with trends in order to succeed. It sucks, she argues, to play in front of crowds especially when you’re young and still figuring out who you want to be. “I feel like, especially as a content creator, whether we want to admit it or not, we obviously want people to like what we do.”
Pokimane went on to say that she often doesn’t have time to think about anything in her life other than work. She said it’s hard to make time for yourself when you’re “stuck to a screen for eight hours just reading comments about what people think of you.” Instead, she wants to direct how she grows and changes as a person, rather than having that done for her.
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“It feels like I just don’t really want to be a part of the rat race that’s being streamed,” Pokimane said after letting out a deep sigh. “It’s so hard for me to say that because I feel like … I don’t know, I have this fear – this feeling that people might be disappointed when they hear these things. But basically, today, when I wake up, I don’t want to run to my PC and play games for eight hours at a time.”
Crucially, one of the things Pokimane notes during her explanation is that grinding streams doesn’t feel like it used to because the games themselves aren’t beating like they used to .
“I’ve played almost every big, trending game,” Pokimane said. “I hope not [seem] Bigheaded of me to say that, but these days when I see things on Twitch, it kind of feels like I was there, did that. I’m not really excited or passionate about much aside from general chatting and connecting with people.”
She enjoys off-stream games more than on-stream, she said, which has eased the pressure. And she still loves games like Appreciation, of course, but not at the “pace or frequency” that streaming requires. It certainly doesn’t help that the streaming itself feels kinda bad.
“Whether you [all] Whether you realize it or not, streamers are under such pressure to follow every trend, capitalize on viewership, and stream longer than they do [person] next to them or the [person] who they share similar viewership with,” Pokimane said. “It’s just an extremely competitive industry, but ultimately I’m saying this because I’m at a point in my life right now where it just doesn’t feel creatively fulfilling to get into. It’s been fine in the past because I either really enjoyed the games or something within streaming felt new to me. But right now it feels like I still want to be part of my arsenal, I just don’t want to feel the same pressure that I kind of have to feel as a ‘full-time streamer’.”
So Pokimane is stepping back from the side she built her huge audience on. She’s interested in venturing to other platforms, which she’s already done on places like Instagram and TikTok to explore fashion and other lifestyle content. It’s a pivot, but nothing unexpected. The key difference now is that while she remains focused on diversifying her content, she wants to forego the viewer, corporate, and contractual pressures that come with streaming full-time on Twitch, or fully tie her brand to video games, that revolve around constant updates.
“The most important part of this, and also the hardest part for me to talk about, is honestly grappling with my evolving content desires,” Pokimane said. “What I mean is that my hiatus has really cemented this feeling in me that I want to do a lot more than just stream.”
my box asked Pokimane for comment.
Around the same time, Pokimane announced that it was diversifying its content, one of streaming’s biggest names, Ninja, tweeted that he “needs a break”. With more major streamers waking up to how endemic burnout has been on the job in recent years, it’s clear that professional streaming is facing some sort of reckoning.
“I think I just wanted to talk about it so I can mentally relieve that pressure and just feel free and happy to make any content I want to make anytime, about anything,” Pokimane said during her video. “And use whatever media and platforms I see fit in this moment … if people have been following me for so long, they may only be interested in what I have to say or my life.”