rampant sexism—some things never change—like when guys who heard you liked to game, they felt the need to rapid-fire quiz you on every infinitesimally small detail about said game and its history, things they would never expect a fellow guy to know, things they'd probably needed to Google themselves, to take you even half as serious as they took the male gamers.
But, once I got myself past that, earning my place and the respect that came with it—at least for the most part—then came the guys who thought they had a right to have access to you, to get answers from you, to demand things from you, just because they consumed your content.
I guess I didn't understand it because I'd started out as a fan as well, as everyone usually did. I found game streaming channels when I was in my early twenties, finding them soothing, using them to help me calm down on hard days.
But I'd never felt like any of the content creators owed me. I never felt like we had some kind of "connection" just because I watched their channel.
I guess that kind of shit always came back to the patriarchy, though. Men who thought they had a right to you and your time just because they wanted it.
I'd actually banned Patrick—whose avatar was a picture of Patrick Star from SpongeBob—from my Patronage-Only because I thought that was why he'd been so pushy. He'd had the highest package for a while, which meant he got to game with me on occasion. And it had just started to get too weird. So I'd banned him from that site while claiming I had no idea why he couldn't be a part of it anymore.
It seemed to simmer him down for a few months.
I still saw him in the comments section, but he kept his comments on the game instead of on me.
Then I woke up to check the comments on my new video to find him talking about how pretty my lips were.
And, as you can imagine on the internet full of the world's most vile male specimens, all the comments in reply to his were about what I could do with my mouth. It spiraled even worse from there, making me need to delete Patrick's original comment to try to make it stop.
It didn't seem to matter that I had never seen these people, that I never would see these people, it still felt skeevy to see those things about me. It was like being catcalled just without the immediate danger of possibly being raped and murdered for my rejection.
-- That asshole.
That was the response I'd gotten from KitKatTalksBack, my only real friend in the gamer sphere, who responded when I'd messaged her about Patrick.
- I know. I've tried blocking him, but he just keeps making new profiles. It's obnoxious.
-- I know it sucks for the algorithm, but you can turn your comments off.
Kit played the same games I did. That was how we'd "met" originally, in a thread about our favorite game and the book series it was based on.
I liked most of my viewership. And since I lived by myself in the middle of nowhere with no actual friends, interacting with these online people was the most socialization I got in my life. It was my lifeline in tough times. So I was willing to deal with a couple creeps to keep that small connection to the world.
In retrospect, maybe moving away from my old life had been a mistake. My apartment had been within walking distance to all the shops and take-out places I liked to frequent, which gave me a sense of normalcy.
But it was also close to family. And mine could be of the invasive sort. Always trying to swoop in and "save" me or "fix" me, even though over a decade of therapy had never managed that before I finally decided to quit working on the whole exposure therapy thing, and just accepted that car avoidance was a part of my life.
I guess I had figured it wouldn't be a big deal. I wasn't a people-person by nature. I liked being alone. That was still true. But I guess there was something therapeutic about seeing the faces of people every couple of days that helped keep your social coffers full.
It had been a week since Jones had visited, since I had met the hulking Huck.
I'd been crushing out more videos than usual, just wanting something to do to fill my time. Especially