Influencer faces backlash after she calls her followers 'broke': 'So outrageous'

A Twitch streamer is facing backlash after telling her followers that they shouldn’t be watching Twitch if they can’t afford to pay a subscription fee.

Twitch is a streaming service that primarily hosts people playing video games live, as well as eSports competitions. As of early 2020, the average concurrent viewers on Twitch was around 1.4 million.

Due to the popularity of Twitch, certain streamers have become celebrities and pull in money from affiliate links, selling their own merchandise, sponsorships and subscriber donations.

Subscriber donations are a way for viewers to “thank” the streamer they enjoy their content enough. By subscribing and donating monthly, viewers can access exclusive clips and content that those watching for free cannot.

29-year-old InvaderVie, who offers a full subscription package for $4.99, has 144,944 followers on Twitch (for context, the top streamer, Ninja, has more than 14 million followers and has an average of 41,000 people tuning into each stream).

During a stream on April 14, InvaderVie (whose real name has not been made public) encouraged viewers to subscribe to her channel, claiming that everyone should be able to afford the fee and support her career.

“It doesn’t matter how broke you are. If you have time to watch Twitch, you have $10,” InvaderVie said. “If you don’t have $10, you probably don’t have time to watch Twitch, because you should be working, you should be trying to earn money.”

A viewer commented publicly that they were unemployed and had to channel all of their money towards absolute necessities like food and shelter.

“No one’s going to convince me that what I’m saying is so rude, or so unacceptable, or so outrageous. It just simply isn’t,” InvaderVie replied.

InvaderVie continued to say that her subscription price range of $5 to $10 was less than the price of a full meal, so she wasn’t asking for much. She went on to say that viewers who could not afford the fee were “irresponsible” with their own finances.

“What you mean to say is, ‘I’m so irresponsible with my money, I can’t support the entertainment that I enjoy,'” she said.

Around the same time InvaderVie was making these comments, Business Insider reported that the world was on the brink of a worldwide economic crisis and the U.S. unemployment rates were approaching Great Depression levels.

InvaderVie’s comments are now faced with backlash from people on both Twitch and Twitter.

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