I went to TwitchCon by Cami M. '23
and met so many people!!
Back in October of 2022, I flew from Boston to LA and drove two hours to San Diego to attend TwitchCon 2022. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, I’m a huge fan of streamed content and consume a lot of it! Games, IRL stuff, what have you — I try to always keep a tab on what’s going on in the streamer world because I find the notion of livestreaming (specifically game livestreaming) so fascinating.
I went with my best friend of 14 years, Ethan, who is a student as UCSD and he kindly let me stay over at his place for the weekend.
For those who do not know, Twitch is video live streaming service that primarily focuses on video game live streaming. It’s been around for a while (I’ve actually been using it since its initial launch believe it or not) but I would say it blew up quite large over the quarantine period.01 It was actually big back then too but I think this is around the time where the concurrent viewership started to blow up to the 400,000+ range.
TwitchCon is a semi-annual gaming convention to celebrate Twitch as a live streaming platform! Content creators from all over the globe come to TwitchCon to hang out, party, throw events, make content together, and more. Vendors and sponsors like gaming companies, hardware vendors, and more also come to show off their stuff and give away freebies. It’s ultimately a really fun and exciting time. There’s also a lot of panels talking about being LGBTQ+ in gaming, being a content creator of color, or being disabled in the gaming space and how to make Twitch and really just gaming in general a more open and accessible field. One of my professors, T.L. Taylor, was also at TwitchCon to attend some of these panels.
Coming in to the weekend I knew it was going to be incredibly hectic. I tried to make a list of events I wanted to go to and creators I wanted to meet. I knew I wanted to go to the Minecraft Youtube meet and greets to meet people like Sapnap, GeorgeNotFound, Dream, Quackity, and others. I also am a huge fan of OfflineTV and had my eye on their meet and greets and booths as well. I made sure to pack a polaroid, some film, and a Sharpie because I had a really cute idea of taking photos with all the content creators I met and having them sign the polaroid.
I met so many fucking people. These are just the polaroids. Niki Nihachu was incredibly sweet and I told her how much it meant to me to see women in the gaming space. I also LOVED meeting xQc who has been one of my favorite content creators for a long, long time (maybe since 2016 or 2017?) He’s such a sweetheart in person. Alexandra Botez complimented my skirt which made me cry a little. I also loved meeting Syd and Peter and they’re just so gorgeous and stunning in person I was shaken to my core.
I also got a lot of photos just with my phone.
Meeting Steve was such an important meeting for me because I’ve been watching this man literally since I was in middle school and his dogshit humor influenced me a lot. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Hi, I’m so sorry I’m nervous but I’ve been watching you since the fourth grade and I’m like a senior in college now
Him: Yeah you seem really nervous that’s so embarrassing for you
Me: Right yeah I’m just gonna go shit myself out of embarrassment
Him (this is a reference to how he had to leave in the middle of the panel to “poop”): Hey shitting myself is a very sensitive topic for me
Me: Yeah you should’ve just shit yourself on stage
Me: Is it okay if I take a selfie with you and pull my mask down?
Him: yeah for sure
Me: Yeah don’t worry I’m just gonna cough all over you
Him: Perfect good thing I’m antivaxx
Me: Even better
I was so happy to have :’) successfully bantered with literally one of my favorite people ever and it was just such a good and wholesome interaction.
Meeting Toast literally made my whole TwitchCon. I have this sequence of photos where I tell him that my mom told me to go to TwitchCon just so I can meet him because she loves him (true story!) and I was able to get his genuine reaction to that on camera. Scarra and Michael also giggled and it was a great time. I wish I could’ve told Michael how much MIT students adore him, but Nisha was able to tell him so do not fear!
I also won a ton of swag from this event, like some keyboard caps, a free gaming mouse and mousepad, and a really nice RGB keyboard. It was overall such a great time and I’m so happy I went! I would 100% go again next year and it was so nice to have a break from the MIT Bubble.
- It was actually big back then too but I think this is around the time where the concurrent viewership started to blow up to the 400,000+ range. back to text ↑