Graphic by Essence Quigley
The online live-streaming site Twitch has seen a recent influx of new creators who consistently rack in upwards of 200,000 concurrent live viewers. They found unlikely success by taking their explosive TikTok audience and converting them to live streaming. A lot of them have brought a new audience to the platform like Kai Cenat’s broadly black viewers or Jynxi & CaseOh’s younger audience. However, one creator has recently made headlines for his past and present content: Sketch.
Sketch is a Texas-based streamer who only began his career a year ago in 2023 but now has 1 million followers. He achieved his fame by playing Madden 24, a game franchise that is also responsible for many of his peer’s success. His platform transformed from playing a virtual football game to, at times, covering actual E-Sports competitions. His catchphrases like “What’s up brother?” have been emulated by professional sports players such as Kyle Tucker of the Houston Astros; he’s partnered with the Houston Texans to announce draft picks and appeared in a Fortnite commercial. In just a year, he has turned into an online sensation.
This type of content appeals to a definite audience. If you look at the demographic of Sketch’s peers, their audience is full of young, straight, malleable men who have been bred in this toxic online gaming space. When Sketch’s sexuality and past content were revealed to the public, his viewers and other creators turned on him. The gaming community is known for rampant misogyny, harassment, and insecurity, but this leak would inspire a broader conversation about rampant homophobia online.
What Happened?
Early in July, Sketch was outed for producing past OnlyFans content with another male creator. Youtuber Pocketbook leaked the screenshots in a broader 17-minute video titled “The Real Sketch.” The creator stated they felt comfortable sharing the photos as being LGBTQ is not a career-ender, but others have questioned their motives in posting this, especially as other streamers and viewers began to slam Sketch for the leak. Some streamers called him the f slur, encouraging his downfall, and viewers dealt out heinous messages.
Sketch live-streamed for around ten minutes following the news to explain his side of the situation. He stated he was “in a dark place” at the time and opened up about his addiction issues. He explained that he had been under threat of this information coming out for the past two years and had been debating on how to deal with it. He also alluded to how hard the messages online were to handle, stating if he “had been alone while these videos leaked, he probably wouldn’t be talking.” Fellow content creator Faze Banks and Sketch’s family may have saved his life.
While streamers like Sneako continued to call him out for “lying about his life,” many of his peers called out just how silly of a situation this was. Sketch’s sexuality and past in adult content were treated like drama and drove him to the point of questioning his life. Kai Cenat demonstrated how obscene it was for “grown men” to bully Sketch, and Jynxzi cried on a live stream, expressing how sad it was to see his friend in such a bad mental state.
Homophobia is still very present in online spaces, but for fellow content creators to attack such a popular and beloved figure was shocking. Why should he have to apologize and be harassed when he did nothing wrong? It’s not just homophobia that caused this uproar but an anti-sex work sentiment that, when coupled together, shows a glaring problem within internet culture and general discourse.
Why are we so against sex work?
Twitch itself has struggled with the conversation of sex work for a while. Many creators have been outraged in the past at OnlyFans creators being able to livestream on the platform despite them working within the guidelines of Twitch’s policies and terms of service. They often use the site to convert live-streaming viewers into paying subscribers and will showcase their assets while playing a video game or working out. Creators like XQC and Trainwrecks have expressed their frustration with this type of content, especially when relating it to the banning of gambling on the site. The reality, however, is that gambling is one of the most deadly addictions, with the highest suicide rate of any addiction, according to the National Institutes of Health. Promoting such a harmful act cannot be equated to hot women showing off their cleavage or making lunges.
In a broader context, anti-sex work sentiment and homophobia are both developed from our patriarchal understandings. Sex work in history, especially regarding women, defies our societal structure. In Karen Green’s “Prostitution, Exploitation, and Taboo,” she writes, “Within this older characterization of society, the prostitute symbolized the antithesis of proper womanly conduct.” Women were supposed to be virginal, proper beings, and the image of sex work, as Green states, underpins that ideology. This taboo was raised in Christo-patriarchal beginnings and carried over to the modern adult film industry.
Many feminists are against the porn industry, claiming it’s exploitative, but so is their everyday job. An office job, a fast-food job, and virtually every career are all exploitative under a capitalist economy. Your wages are undermined, and your feedback and expertise are undermined – all to fulfill the company’s bottom line, but no one calls for the destruction of these industries. You could even argue America’s laws against prostitution make it much more dangerous. According to Yale Law School, “the evidence shows that criminalization, whether full or partial (the latter only targets buyers), makes sex work more dangerous; drives sex workers into more isolated locations; impedes the use of safety and harm reduction strategies; makes it riskier to report violence and abuse from clients, managers, and law enforcement; and increases the risk of exposure to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.” If you want the industry to be safer and less exploitative, then you should work against this societal taboo.
The homophobia Sketch faced is also a product of the same structure. Homosexuality, similarly to sex work, defies our understanding of “what a man should be.” Men are raised to be protectors of their wives and children, to fuel competition between men, and to maintain the power dynamic that has been set for centuries. In our Christo-patriarchal understanding, gay men don’t fulfill that role. Compared to twenty years ago, the broader population is farther removed from this toxic standard, but the Sketch situation shows that many still harbor these feelings.
In reality, Sketch didn’t do anything wrong; instead, it is in the middle of drama created by our longstanding taboos and toxic societal structures. He didn’t hurt anyone; his actions don’t outwardly affect anyone – all it does is confront our disdain for sex work and gay individuals. We must collectively move past these sentiments we possess because no one deserves to question their life and security in their friendships over something so inconsequential. If you find yourself disgusted by his actions, look within yourself, address your biases, and work to fix them.
