Real Life in Real Time

The cultural ramifications of online live streaming, including its effects on identity and power in digital spaces.

Some consider live streaming—the broadcasting of video and/or audio footage live online—simply an internet fad or source of entertainment, yet it is at the center of the digital mediation of our lives. In this edited volume, Johanna Brewer, Bo Ruberg, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud present a broad range of essays that explore the cultural implications of live streaming, paying special attention to how it is shifting notions of identity and power in digital spaces. The diverse set of international authors included represent a variety of perspectives, from digital media studies to queer studies, from human-computer interaction to anthropology, and more.
While important foundational work has been carried out by game studies scholars, many other elements of streaming practices remain to be explored. To deepen engagement with diversity and social justice, the editors have included a variety of voices on such topics as access, gender, sexuality, race, disability, harassment, activism, and the cultural implications of design aesthetics. Live streaming affects a wide array of behaviors, norms, and patterns of communication. But above all, it lets participants observe and engage with real life as it unfolds in real time. Ultimately, these essays challenge us to look at both the possibilities for harm and the potential for radical change that live streaming presents.Foreword: Broadcasting Our Lives, Broadcasting Ourselves ix
T.L. Taylor

Introduction: The Revolution Is Streaming Live: Cultural Perspectives on the Age of Live Streaming 1
Bo Ruberg, Johanna Brewer, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud

Streaming Beyond Video Games
1 How Camming Made Streaming: Retelling the History of Live Streaming through Webcam Modeling 27
Bo Ruberg
2 "Calling All the Cattle": Music Live Streams during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil 41
Gabriel Pereira and Beatriz Ricci
3 Mental Health Live: An Ethnographic Study of the Mental Health of Twitch Streamers during COVID 57
Kelli N. Dunlap, Marie Shanley, and Jocelyn Wagner
4 Live Streamed Surgeries, Medical Media's Racial and Gendered Logics, and Patient Agency within Misogynoir 73
Olivia Banner

Tackling Toxicity in Real Time
5 "Breaking News: Streamers Don't Wanna Do the Horizontal Tango with You": Creative Responses to Toxicity 89
Olivia Rines
6 How We Learned to Stop SWATing and Love the (Zoom-)Bomb: A (De)predatory History of Disrupting the Live Stream 103
Arun Jacob and Christine H. Tran
7 Precarity and Privilege: The White Politics of Board Game Streamers 117
Aaron Trammell
8 Toxic Community Policing: Weaponizing Moderation Tools on Twitch 131
Andrew Zolides

Broadcasting Gender and Sexuality
9 The Friendly, Funny, and Bizarre Queer on Live: Queer Live Streaming in South Korea 147
Jin Lee
10 Tip the Queens! Black Girl Magic in Live Streaming 163
Christopher J. Persaud
11 BabyRage: Playing while Pregnant in Live Streaming 179
Amanda L. L. Cullen
12 Shout-Outed: Pronoun Hazards in Live Streamed Esports Events (A Conversation with Sasha "Magi" Sullivan) 193
Matt Knutson

Designing the Live Aesthetic
13 "We Play Dungeons & Dragons!" How Actual Play Live Streams Have (Re)shaped the D&D Gaming Community 203
Emma French
14 A Year in The Arena: Academic Live Streaming and Competitive Play 217
Evelynn Kersting, Janelle Malagon, and Casey O'Ceallaigh
15 "Thou Shall Never Use a Fire Stone on Eevee": Twitch Plays Pokemon and the Articulation of Game Brands as Cultural Texts 231
Michael Anthony DeAnda
16 Emoting Culture on Twitch.tv: The Removal and Reinstatement of PogChamp 245

Revolutionizing Cultural Production
17 Live Streaming as a Cultural Industry 261
18 Cultures of Precarity and "Grinding" for Audiences on Twitch.tv 275
Charlotte Panneton
19 Games Done Quick, Organizational Presence, and Speedrunning Identity 289
Robyn Hope
20 Seeing Like the Streamers: Reprogramming the Panopticon 303
Johanna Brewer

Contributors 321
Index 325Johanna Brewer is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Smith College and the Director of Research at AnyKey.

Bo Ruberg is Associate Professor, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Irvine. They are the author of Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press).

Amanda L. L. Cullen is User Researcher at Blizzard Entertainment. She received her PhD in Informatics at the University of California, Irvine.

Christopher J. Persaud is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California.