If You Stream It, They Will Come: On Nathan Grayson’s Stream Big

We are all online. Reading, watching, typing, and increasingly living. Soft and poignant reminders that the “real” world is increasingly being lived inside screens are known to cause brutal shocks to my psyche. Maybe it does to yours as well. The disappointed luddite in me often wonders how the hell we got here.

Yet, it is not all ennui. For those self-aware enough to readily admit that they are forever online, embracing all the ways we can communicate – usually under some sort of anonymity – with other fellow onliners (yes, I’m keeping this) is a sort of collective superpower. Being the borg has its perks. One can spend hours watching a stream and blissfully typing away in the chat. A perfectly pleasant afternoon for many. Streaming for that matter might be the most online activity one can partake in – the going outside and touching grass of being online. An isolated socializing if you will. Watching someone talk, mainly about videogames, while dozens, no hundreds, no thousands, type questions and snarky comments at a streamer, sounds rather sad when explained. So, maybe it is all ennui? Again, this is a luddite speaking.

Journalist Nathan Grayson (co-founder of Aftermath) has written a new book on the champions of being online, the streamers. Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen (Atria Books, 2025) chronicles the careers of streamers on the Amazon owned platform Twitch. The streaming giant owned by Amazon is interactive media, akin to videogames, the medium the platform attached itself to the hip when it began as Justin.tv back in 2007.

Grayson focuses on nine streamers: Marcus “DJWheat” Graham (an early streaming pioneer and esports announcer); Emme “Negaoryx” Montgomery (she went viral and used her new found fame to pursue other work); Tanya “Cypheroftyr” DePass (a Twitch streamer and activist); Youna “Code Miko” Kang (a VTuber [virtual YouTuber] whose virtual avatar Code Miko is a talk show host); Ben “Cohhcarnage” Casssell (a no-frills videogame streamer and one of the most successful at that); Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa (a superstar, the most popular female streamer on Twitch); Dream (a Minecraft streamer with a history of scandal); Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti (a controversial trans political streamer); and Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker (the leftist political streamer and one of Twitches biggest stars). Some of these names remain relatively unknown outside small circles. While others have gone on to become very famous and, like Siragusa and Piker, rich and culturally influential.

Photo courtesy of the Author.

Grayson’s focus on these individuals serves as an entry point into the wider subject of streaming. For those acquainted with the world of streaming you won’t be surprised with the pervasive parasocial relationship resulting from chatters (the audience) watching a stream for hours and acquiring a false sense of familiarity with the streamer. Stream Big, which is composed of many interviews conducted by Grayson, takes this and other topics head on. Throughout, each chapter is laced with context and slight observations from Grayson, though ultimately, Grayson allows the interviewees to tell the central story.

For Grayson the success of Piker was the origin of sorts for this book. As Grayson recounts, as “a creator who’s managed to quickly amass over two hundred thousand followers talking about politics on a videogame website, Piker would seem to be an ideal subject.” When telling the story of Piker and others, Stream Big doesn’t reinvent the wheel and it doesn’t need to. Instead, the book, like Grayson – a good listener – tells a story as told by those whose labor made Twitch a multi-millionaire dollar company. Twitch is not only big business, it is also a place where millions get their news, and for better or worse, socialize.

Now a little about some of the streamers spotlighted in the book and some of Grayson’s insights. As Grayson notes, “On Twitch, chances to ‘make it’ are few, far between, and most importantly, fleeting. There are around 7 million streamers on the platform… success on Twitch is ephemeral.” Montgomery capitalized on a thirteen-second viral clip of herself; and nevertheless, chose to dance to the fleeting melody. She is not alone.

DePass overcame a lot of adversity to achieve success on the platform. She is black and queer and in 2016 founded the non-profit I Need Diverse Games (it shuttered in 2024). Grayson uses his time with DePass to investigate whether or not someone with a job like streaming can have even a fulcrum of privacy? And if so, what does that look like? Grayson says, “For many Twitch streamers, the border between personal and professional is porous…. But the illusion must be convincing. Some streamers spend just as much time on camera – thousands of hours per year – discussing their personal lives as they do playing videogames.” DePass understands this and tries to place boundaries with her audience. They cannot refer to her by her real name in chat. This appears like a healthy medium. Yet, for me questions linger. How does one build a community off a persona? And what type of community can be built around a single charismatic personality?

Grayson has similar questions. “What happens when communities are the product of platforms engineered first and foremost not to bring people together but to turn a profit?” Let us get Butlerian and Frankfurt Schoolly. The ongoing collapse of the public sphere into what can best be described as parallel dimensions brought by social media has left us a more fractured society. Within the crevasses what has emerged is “community” as a stand in for a persona’s following. Twitch strives in this convulsion. Charismatic streamers can also.

One thing that stood out for me throughout my time with Stream Big is Grayson’s extreme deferentiality to his sources. This at points felt like he is promoting their work instead of doing a more serious dive into streaming as a wider cultural phenomenon. This might be unfair of me to say, and maybe Grayson is just doing good journalism by not burning his bridges with his sources. To his credit, the chapters on Dream and Sorrenti offer a more critical eye. Both streamers experienced parasocial love and hate.

The chapter on Dream, titled “Responsibility”, is a cautionary tale on notoriety and fandom in the Twitch age. As Grayson notes, “online creators are far from the first winners of the social lottery to profit off other human beings’ intrinsic need for connection; they’ve just streamlined the process to the point that it’s harder to ignore how uncomfortable it all is.” On the other hand, Sorrenti was a target of harassment from Kiwi Farms and other online forums. As a result, she was forced to move from her home.

Sorrenti began streaming video game playthroughs on Twitch in 2020. In 2022, she switched gears to political commentating. She adopted a more confrontational approach as a result. This chapter titled “Survival” is the best chapter of the book. It shows the full promise of Grayson’s vision and I wish more of the book was like this. Grayson provides his most thorough reporting here as well. He is critical and asks questions that peel the persona from Sorrenti. Other chapters in turn come off as too uninquisitive to the people that he interviews after reading this one, though many of the other subjects present themselves as one dimensional. I don’t know why Grayson affords the time and seriousness to Sorrenti as opposed to others. Maybe it’s because Sorrenti through her actions has burned so many people, though this is not to minimize the real threats Sorrenti faced.

With Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen Grayson gives us a lucidly written and accessible look into the world of Twitch and streaming. The book does not mirror the sensational and bombastic style of the streaming world, which makes the book much more effective. When read in tandem with the academic text Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) by Mia Consalvo, Marc Lajeunesse, and Andrei Zanescu, one can easily come away with the view that “damn, we are all online!”

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A review copy of the book was provided by the publisher.

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Luis Aguasvivas is a writer, researcher, and member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. He covers game studies for PopMatters. Follow him on Bluesky and aguaspoints.com.