These days, it’s not easy to stand out on Twitch, the wildly popular game streaming platform. As of writing, there’s more than 7 million streamers who use the service to share live looks at their gameplay, paint a new piece of art, or try to activate viewers’ autonomous sensory meridian responses (ASMR). That’s a lot of competition. Then there are the goliaths, the folks whose names are almost synonymous with the platform itself, like Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker, Kai Cenat, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, and Imane “Pokimane” Anys. How can you get seen in such a massive sea?
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If you want to become a successful Twitch streamer, you’ll have to dedicate a ton of time and energy to regularly stream and build an audience—but you’ll also probably benefit from doing a bit, establishing a character, or just having an absolutely stellar sense of humor. (Think Dr. Disrespect but not an asshole.) You need to stand out, to make yourself more noticeable than the 7,000th person streaming Call of Duty.
The streamers gathered here all do something uniquely funny during their streams, or they’re just downright hilarious. They make it feel less like you’re watching a gameplay walkthrough and more like you’re sitting at an improv show. Here are some of the funniest, most unique Twitch streamers you should check out ASAP.
Ebonix
Ebonix is the co-founder of Black Twitch UK, a service that highlights and elevates Black streamers on the platform—and she leads by hilarious example. She often streams her mod-heavy The Sims 4 sessions, which have in the past included a man dying of an aneurysm (she hit the “emotional damage” soundboard sound for that one) or a recreation of those Maury “you are not the father” episodes. When she’s not on The Sims, she’s nearly breaking her microphone screaming at horror games (or her own chat’s audio jump scares), or dancing in and out of her gaming chair. She’s a delight to watch, like a liquid shot of pure dopamine.
Oh, and did I mention she makes her own mods for better Black representation in The Sims 4? It’s an immediate follow, for me.
Inertia
There are few things I love more than drag queens, so a gaming drag queen will always have my attention. It’s basically mandatory that a drag queen is funny, so they make great streamers. I interviewed Drag Trashly, the Bimbo Mage of the Lands Between, back when I was at GamesRadar+, but today I want you to meet Inertia. Inertia is a drag queen streamer who often plays horror games while wearing some wild looks. Whether it’s screaming their head off in full snowman drag or casually eating a sandwich in clown makeup while Resident Evil’s Ashley Graham gets dragged away by a baddie Interia’s streams are always hilarious. There’s a brilliance in their reactions to NPCs, a genius in how they play with the sandbox handed to them that makes their streams feel like a RuPaul’s Drag Race episode.
Jaden Williams
I first stumbled across Jaden Williams on my TikTok For You page and was immediately sold. Williams does a very specific bit—he plays Beam.NG, a vehicle simulation game, but as a stressed-out, middle-aged Southern father. He yells at the kids in the backseat, he speeds to get them to school, he talks shit about their mother, and he frequently gets in car accidents, which are the best part of his streams. Whenever Williams skids off the road, or rear-ends another driver, or flips end-over-end into a ditch, he violently moves his body around in his gaming chair to mimic a driver in a crash, often knocking his glasses or headset off in the process. He’ll then lay back, mouth agape, as if he’s been knocked out in the wreck. I could watch him do this for hours on end.
Luxie Games
Luxie Games is always hilarious, but it’s her Peggy Lou streams that really get me. Luxie streams Truck Driver Simulator in character as Peggy Lou, a powder blue eyeshadow-wearing, bedazzled trucker hat-loving, gum-snapping girl boss driving a big rig. As Peggy Lou is apt to frequently remind us, “she may be small, but she’s got a mean streak wider than the Mississippi River and a road rage hotter than a jalapeño pepper.” Every time Luxie hops on stream wearing that blown-out blonde wig and candy pink lipstick, I know I’m in for a hilarious session. And the best part is, Luxie’s whip-smart wit is often deployed to shut misogynists up in chat, both in and out of character.
Macaw45
Macaw45 isn’t high-concept. He’s not playing a character or doing a bit. He’s just an Australian dude who really loves games. He especially loves older games, and one of the pleasures of watching his stream is getting to see him do a kind of cultural anthropology, bringing super-obscure old DOS games and games for machines like the PC-88 into the spotlight and often sharing details on the people who made them and the history surrounding them. But what makes watching all this so entertaining—and very often funny—is his sincere, intense enthusiasm for these games, and the very real, off-the-cuff reactions of appreciation, awe, disbelief, exasperation, and rage that occur as he makes his way through them, encountering whatever surprises they have in store. Just watch him react to the presence of a BIG JOHN LITHGOW SPRITE in the SNES game Cliffhanger and you’ll have an idea of what I mean.
Macaw45 has developed a modest but devoted following, myself included, who love watching him play games that are totally “ULTIMATE,” which can mean games featuring BARBARIANS (or sometimes games that are just called BARBARIAN), or games with art inspired by H.R. Giger, or whatever defining principle or whim he might be organizing his stream around on any given day. If you also want to see old games given the appreciation they deserve, you won’t find a better, more entertaining place to do it than on Macaw’s stream. —Carolyn Petit
The Jay Broski
Normally, I’d balk at the idea of a streamer cosplaying as a cop. But The Jay Broski satirizes the concept, dropping into Call of Duty: Warzone 2 with a riot shield while wearing a fake mustache IRL—plus he’s Black, so there’s an added layer of satire here. He’ll use the proximity chat to warn enemy players that “it’s the police,” before busting the door down and screaming “STOP RESISTING!” Sometimes, he’ll flip a switch and blare “Bad Boys” from his speakers—you know, the Jamaican reggae song from Inner Circle that became famously associated with the ‘90s TV show Cops.
The results are often hilarious, with confused Warzone players yelling in fear or frustration when Jay Broski bursts into a popular camp spot, screaming “It’s the police! Put your fucking hands up!” over a reggae beat. Jay does a number of personas, but Officer Broski is my fave.
Ashley Roboto
Ashley Roboto knows the ins and outs of comedy, and she shows off her knowledge in nearly every one of her streams. The Canadian-based streamer and voice actor often uses clever visual gags (like zooming in on her face during jokes) or pitch-perfect timing (like walking into a bathroom in Silent Hill and asking “anyone pooping in here?”) to ensure you’re getting a healthy dose of laughs with each stream.
There’s an effortlessness to her humor, an ease, that makes her a joy to watch. She can easily elicit a surprised cackle from me, and she does so often.
Jynxzi
Jynxzi is, upon first glance, a very typical gamer dude. He rages, he screams, he salivates over e-girls—what does he provide that can’t be found a million other places on the internet? But if you watch enough Jynxzi (and I, a 33-year-old woman, do), you’ll see the layers of comedy at play. Not only has he adopted a strange speech pattern that requires him to needlessly roll letters that don’t require rolling (he says “bad aim” like a series of machine gun pops), but he also beats the absolute piss out of his low-quality webcam. He punches it, he slaps it, he picks up both of his flip-flopped (or bare) feet in a surprisingly nimble move and brings them crashing down, breaking it.
Jynxzi isn’t old enough to have been a gamer during the late aughts, but it feels like he’s in-character as the kid who shoved the remote up his ass. He plays Rainbox Six Siege with incredible precision on Xbox, with a controller. He rapidly pulls up the Xbox profiles of enemy players just to send them a voice note of his uncanny Joker impression. He reacts to viewer-submitted clips, which are often accompanied by a profile picture that’s a crude Photoshop of him in some unflattering manner—which always makes him punch his webcam, of course. He asks his mom to help him open up Rainbow Six packs, in the hope he’ll get an illusive Black Ice skin. It’s fascinating stuff, so low-brow it’s high.
If you’re gonna watch a Jynxzi stream, though, I’d recommend you lower your headphones.
Expat Brat
Expat Brat is a Scottish woman who roleplays in Star Citizen, a currently in-development space trading and combat simulation game. Expat Brat uses her webcam to map her facial movements onto her in-game character, and will often sweep the game camera around onto her avatar’s face while she gives a little monologue. Her Scottish accent coupled with the somewhat wonky facial tracking (one eye frequently gets so lazy it’s asleep) makes for hilarious streams, and Expat Brat’s quick wit doubles the humor.
I popped into a recent stream and told her I worked for Kotaku and was going to feature her in this precise piece. She pulled the camera out of first-person view, swung it around to face her, and loudly went “Do you work for KO-TAK-U!?” while her avatar’s mouth struggled to keep up.
“Everything you see on stream is entirely built into Star Citizen, including my humor. Oh and the sexual innuendo is totally not my fault, it’s Star Citizen,” she said, right before I left the chat.
Is there a funny, unique, or bizarre Twitch streamer we’ve left off this list that you believe deserves the spotlight? If so, let us know in the comments. Until then, I’m going to try and get Jynxzi to do an interview with me for the 10th time.
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