Imane Anys has experienced a turbocharged version of the ostensibly good and undeniably horrible that can come from being a star in the world of online content creators. (It’s itself a turbocharged version of the volatile, attention-hungry digital world many of us live in.) Better known by her screen name Pokimane, an approachable and mischievous on-cam presence, Anys is the most-followed woman on Twitch, a favorite live-streaming platform for gaming enthusiasts, which has amassed more than nine million views. followers. She also has more than 23 million followers on other social media and video platforms, who eagerly consume her posts about her emotional ups and downs, her responses to fan prompts and, when the moment calls for it, her endearing attempts at viral dances. . That’s the good thing. The downside is that she has been a frequent target of misogynistic comments and a lightning rod for gossip and, even more egregious, was forced to suffer the indignity that occurred when another popular gamer was caught streaming while his internet browser displayed that I had been watching pornographic videos. Deepfakes of Anys and other players. “It’s very easy for people to burn out or lose touch with themselves,” Anys, 26, says of the psychic cost of building a career as an online personality. “Trying to figure out how to make this feel more sustainable is very interesting to me.”
The way technology and our culture go, your experience with misogyny online it’s probably just one heightened example of something more and more women and girls will be grappling with in the future. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time, if it’s not already happening, before sexually explicit deepfakes of classmates seep into the social lives of school-age children. So, as someone who’s been dealing with this stuff for a while, how do you navigate it in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling downright cynical about gender dynamics online? Honestly, there are people in the streaming industry who don’t find misogyny deplorable, who don’t think it’s a big deal, who don’t think deepfaking should be punishable in any way. It’s almost like they’re trying to trick you into thinking that something that’s so damaging to one’s mental health, you just shouldn’t think it’s a big deal. For me, it’s been invaluable to have other streamers who know what I’ve been through, who can validate my feelings. Having people there to tell you, no, it’s not okay, goes a long way to keep you from driving yourself crazy thinking that what you’re feeling is wrong in some way.
Do you think being immersed in the world of gaming has given you any insight into young men’s attitudes towards women that other people might be blind to? At first seeing all the misogyny was a bit confusing and surprising. I was like, have young people always been like this? But the accessibility and anonymity of the Internet allow these things to happen. One very cool thing I’ve experienced: there’s something on my channel called no-ban forms, which is basically if you get banned because you say something weird, you can submit a form where you say, “I apologize. Could you please unban me?” The number of young children who say something when they are X age, then three years later say, “I’m so sorry, I have no idea why I said that, and I’ve changed a lot”? It leaves you wondering: Was it puberty? What happened there? It feels like they’re testing things. Like: I’ll say the craziest, weirdest things and see what happens. All of this is still unprecedented territory, so young children need to be taught how to treat people online. But as I’ve seen people realize that the things they were saying weren’t right, it makes me think there may be more redemption stories out there.
Imane Anys being honored at the Shorty Awards in 2018.
Craig Barritt/Getty Images
He’s been doing less streaming lately and has instead created more content for YouTube and TikTok, where the demands on your time aren’t as taxing: you don’t have to sit around playing a game for eight hours a day like you do on Twitch. Is it the hope that making content for those platforms will feel more manageable? I don’t see things as if one platform is better than the other. are different. For example, Twitch, you have positive and negative live comments. So the highs can be higher than they are on a positive YouTube comment because someone is interacting with you in real time, and those lows can potentially be lower because you can have hundreds of people coming into your chat and you’re being reprimanded by these people at once. But I’m not making this change because it’s easier or better on other platforms. It is what my heart longs for. In the past, I was Trying to fit my life around all this work but now I want to see it from the perspective of adapting my work to my life. If I want to travel, let me take you. If I have a particular interest in ceramics, please let me showcase that instead of just focusing on gaming and streaming. I want to evolve as a person and not limit myself so much, and share that evolution with my audience. I want to develop a sense of self, values, morals, and then attract an audience based on those things, rather than almost the opposite way, where I see what audiences are responding to positively and then indulge.
Where have you felt a disconnect between who you are and who people see online? That definitely happened when people have pushed these negative narratives about me like, oh she’s fake, oh she’s a bitch. Or people who think I’m just trying to make money off my viewers.
That’s a fun thing about being a content creator though, right? You are trying to make money off your audience, and obviously sometimes you have to behave in ways that you wouldn’t behave if the audience wasn’t there watching you. You and your audience are supposed to operate as if that were No the case. Yeah, it gets very meta. Of course, we need to make money, and you’re doing that by getting in front of so many people. So sometimes when I’m not really happy, I try to appear happier than I am. Does that make me fake? All human beings, at some point you could say that they are acting in a false way. There are times when I try to be nicer than my emotions or instincts really want me to be, and that may seem disingenuous to some. I get it, but I feel like it’s part of the job.
Anys streaming on Twitch this year.
Twitch screenshot
Earlier, when you were talking about wanting to grow as a person, you said that you wanted to develop your own sense of morals and sense of values and then be able to attract an audience based on that. You also said that if you wanted to try something like pottery, you wanted to be able to attract viewers. In both cases, you were talking about personal development stuff as a means to professional ends. For you, are they ever No? I understand what you mean, but my confusion is why something like the pottery example looks like the end of a run. In my perspective, I am prioritizing interests and natural hobbies that, if I choose to share, I can. The way I used to lead my life is that I spent almost all my time streaming or working on streaming related stuff. Now I will work if I want to, and then if I want to pursue an interest, I will, and if I want to share it, I have the opportunity.
I guess my question is really do you draw any lines between your offline life and your online life? Or maybe that doesn’t matter. There is definitely a line that needs to be drawn. Relationship issues, family issues, those things that I don’t normally share. When it comes to personal interests, what I try to do is have work days and rest days. If I just take a day off and go do something with my friends, if it’s pottery, if it’s riding a bike, it’s a day off. I’m not going to film it. But the other way is, for example, ceramics is something that I mentioned to my audience and I think I featured it in a vlog. So I was thinking of making a video with it, but when I went to make the video, I noticed that having a camera on would take me out of the flow that’s required when you’re making pottery. So yeah, it’s partly a learning process and partly some things that you just know to keep to yourself. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose your sense of self. I think sometimes the way I separate the public me from the private me is a kind of defense mechanism. Like, the things people say are about Poki, not me. But obviously what I posted is connected to me. I work on myself as a person so I can put out cool stuff like Poki, but I still have to consider, even from a PR standpoint, how would people perceive me doing X, Y, Z? Is rare.
It’s very easy to see the world of streaming gamers as basically one big social and emotional minefield. But can you tell me about the good side? What do the critics miss? For me, in high school, as an immigrant, coming from an immigrant family there were certain values that we stood for. To some extent, I felt that my home was a bit, unquote, stricter than other homes. It wasn’t so acceptable to stay out late or go to parties or do these things that I saw my friends do at school. One of the ways that I was able to cope was to play with other people online and socialize that way and have fun and build friendships without having to do things that my parents didn’t agree with. Not only that, but grow up in the city I did, maybe I knew another girl in my entire high school who liked to play video games. Being able to connect with other people who are interested in the same things that you are is very valuable. That’s the best you can get from the internet – you can find like-minded people. That’s such a beautiful thing because human beings, at the end of the day, all we want is to belong.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain on leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley on a dumber America and Cal Newport on a new way of working.
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