Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that streamer Summit1g is one of the most enduringly popular personalities on Twitch. Even his fanbase, however, has its limits. By streaming a few Fortnite matches with YouTube pariah Jake Paul over the weekend, Summit tested them in a big way.
The stream, which took place on Saturday, came as a surprise to Summit’s fans, many of whom share the larger Twitch community’s disdain for Jake and his brother Logan, of suicide-filming Japan arsehole tour fame.
While the Jake Paul stream itself wasn’t super eventful, Summit’s chat was more unruly than usual, saying things like “I hate that disneycunt. Hope KSI beats his arse.” Their behaviour prompted Summit to call his fans out on stream.
“I’m a little disappointed in the chat, to be honest with you,” he said at one point. “I thought the 1g squad was a little bit different. Thought some people had a little bit thicker skin.”
After the stream, however, things really blew up. Followers and subscribers threatened to leave because they felt like Summit had turned his back on longtime fans. Referencing Jake Paul, one viewer tweeted at Summit, “U lost me as a fan for this. He’s trash.”
“Sounds like playing with him was worth it then,” replied Summit, setting the tone for the rest of his responses. “Helped take out the trash.”
Summit went on to take a sarcastically defensive tack with his audience, saying things like “For all you ppl angry tweeting me. I just want you to know I’m pooping while I reply” and “You know what Twitter? YOU disappoint ME. Sup. I expect apologies raining in quick now.”
On Summit’s subreddit, there’s a thread full of people saying that Summit’s response – not the Jake Paul thing itself – is what’s convinced them to leave. Eventually, Summit declared a “truce” and asked that fans “don’t let my channel die more.”
At this point, it’s tough to measure exactly how many followers Summit has lost as a direct result of all this. Jake Paul, hate him or hate him a lot, brings big numbers with him wherever he goes. Controversy breeds curiosity, so subsequent Summit streams have had healthy 20,000+ concurrent viewer counts.
Overall, Summit’s new follower count has increased over the past couple days, though only at a rate of a few thousand – less than you might expect given Jake Paul’s multi-million-strong following. That could mean a fair number of people have also left, but again, raw numbers never tell the full story.
Other Twitch streamers are questioning the long-term effectiveness of Summit’s dalliance with YouTube royalty. Maybe he gained some new followers and subscribers for the moment, but will it cost him a chunk of longtimers in the long run? And will these new folks even stick around, or are they just kids chasing YouTube trends and Twitch Prime Fortnite loot?
“If you’re going to look at it from a business perspective, playing with them [the Pauls], it ain’t good for you,” said popular streamer Sodapoppin, dismissing the Pauls’ allegedly young-skewing audiences.
“Who gives a fuck how many subs they have? They’re fucking kids, are they not?”
In response, streamer Destiny weighed in, saying that Sodapoppin’s take was “a dumb comment.” “Who cares if subs are kids or not?” he asked. “Money is money.”
He added that he doesn’t understand why people are angry about Summit streaming with Jake Paul specifically, given that many streamers in major Twitch cliques have also “been involved in some pretty dumb, stupid, immature, kind of malicious shit.” Why draw the line here?
Notoriously disgraced Overwatch League player (and now full-time streamer) xQc latched onto the conversation, answering, in effect, that it’s about the sort of audience streamers want to cultivate and the effect a torrent of Twitch Prime subscriptions can have on that.
“If you have a horde of kids who come because of Fortnite, your sub mode becomes completely cancer,” he said. “Your entire environment and channel becomes garbage.”
It goes back to a common refrain on Twitch: that mainstream attention – which has come as a result of characters like Dr Disrespect and, more recently, Ninja, as well as the popularity of Fortnite – is a foreign invader, a community pollutant.
Twitch culture is a very specific thing, mired in memes on top of memes, and some longtime users feel like it’s being assailed on all sides. Jake and Logan Paul’s fresh new Twitch accounts are, to hear these users tell it, evidence of that. But does that theory hold water? Or is it just panic born of a scene finally being forced to examine itself? Those are questions that, much like the tangible results of Summit’s playtime with Jake Paul, will take time to answer.
Comments
15 responses to “Twitch Streamer’s Community Revolts After He Plays Fortnite With Jake Paul”
You didn’t like me doing a thing and I replied with “Fuck you I don’t need you” but it turns out I do need you and I’m not sorry but let’s all just forgive each other for our (my) bullshit.
Also, my followers are not a community to me, they are a faceless revenue stream and I will publicly talk about them that way. This can only end well.
Seriously, I thought Summit seemed like a pretty switched on and nice enough guy. This behaviour makes him come off like a cocky douche who has very little respect for his fans.
The question is: do the fans deserve that respect? If they auto-unsubscribe when he does the first thing that they don’t like, they know that they are holding him hostage to their will or they’ll be quick to punish.
I don’t know or care for this guy at all, but if his “fans” cannot take easy the fact that he wanted to play a game with X person, why do they deserve any kind of respect back from him?
His reaction aside, the fact that his viewers made such a big deal of it in the first place is pretty ridiculous. He only played like 5 matches, didn’t tweet it out for a publicity stunt or anything like that. He was just playing some chill games with somebody, it didn’t need to be made into a big deal.
His reaction to it, while completely inappropriate is not really surprising after the amount of hate he received for something that is really not a big deal!
For the record, I think it’s a big deal. But fair enough that a lot of people don’t.
But big deal or not, this is PR 101. Anyone who has ever held a job should know that your company spends a lot of time and money trying to make people feel special, wanted, and personally linked to the product. He has flat out told everyone who pays his salary that they are not special, not wanted, and any personal feelings they may have about the product are entirely one way. It’s utterly shocking how bad these Internet Celebrities are at this.
“I handle your criticism via foul-mouthed whining and GTFOs, but it’s you guys who are thin-skinned.”
The Puel bros are shit heads. There claim to fame is being assholes to people and then apologizing for it. Hell, my 12-year-old bro re-named his channel to ‘Dogen Paul’ and is ripping on them for the month of April. Like, there a joke. They think people are loling with them, but in reality, there loling at them. And the cult-like sensibilities of there follows only goes to show that there a danger to not just Twitch, but Youtube as well.
The way they talk about kids is disturbing. There doesn’t seem to be any thought on complexities of whether or not it’s ok to take money from children in this way. Their issue with it seems to be elitism. Kids are stupid so your sub count doesn’t count?
I was gonna comment on the same thing. One side arguing that they are easy money, while the other side argue that they’re worthless numbers. Pretty fucked up, really.
I also can’t comprehend that these millions of kids have millions of parents who can’t/won’t find them something better to do than watch these fuckwits.
I find most if not all of the top twitch streamers so uninteresting douchebags. The handful of streamers I watch don’t even have a quarter of this dude’s viewership yet they so much more charismatic & entertaining.
The smaller guys also tend to (not always, but often) have more mature chat communities, so that chat doesn’t descend into endless “Your Mom” slanging matches.
“You must denounce these people if you wish to have a community”…. That’s not a community, it’s a mob mentality dictatorship.
Nobody is kicking in the door. There’s no dictatorship, here.
The community has made it clear that they do not want a particular person as part of their entertainment. As a content creator, you can either change your behaviour to suit, or not. As a viewer, you can watch or not. Everyone choosing to do their thing freely is not control of any kind.
If you associate with c****, people gonna think you a c*** too
Dont get mad when people call you out for hanging with scum, your reputation dies by association
complaining about that fact that weve known since people stopped living in caves just makes you a whiney infant who cant handle reality
I watched Summit once for like 15 min. Wet cardboard has more personality than this guy no idea how he even got so popular in the first place.