no that title is not clickbait you need to as a streamer and content creator ban chatters if you
want to grow active chat is at that sometimes the most active chatter in your entire stream needs to
be banned many of you are making a massive mistake by not using that big beautiful ben button and for
some of you it is the reason why you aren't growing or for others it might be the reason
why you are miserable when you go live let's talk about that hey i'm Eljay and i ban chatters very
quickly and i won't apologize for that because the fact that i ban people and time people out
so frequently is part of the reason why my chat is so active engaged and welcoming to new users
which i know it sounds like i should have nobody left i get asked daily in fact i get asked dozens
of times a day by new creators new streamers about how to deal with viewers or chatters who break the
rules maybe cross lines make them uncomfortable or make jokes that you don't find funny so i am going
to cover why your hesitation to warn time out or ban someone could destroy your channel in fact
after this video you will probably as a creator be a lot more willing to use the ban button as well
but i will explain all of that in a second first something you should already be willing to use
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and support them with the link in the description it really helps us out first we have to talk about
how every community on twitch essentially has different rules and different boundaries that
they think is okay everything you do as a streamer will impact the type of community you create
the jokes you make the way you act the way you treat others these choices will attract similar
types of people to view your content for example animal crossing streamers make choices for their
branding overlays and the type of content that they make will reflect what appeals to them
and their audience and the same can be said for call of duty streamers
they're different demographics you all set an example for what is okay
and what isn't and then slowly as a community builds around your content and they start all
being in chat together that chat tends to reflect the streamer as a big cyber blob
and if you are sat there right now thinking to yourself gosh i really don't like my chatters
or i wish my chatters wouldn't do x then you need to take a step back and look at your own content
because clearly it appeals to that type of person on this topic one of the most common complaints
that i get is from new streamers saying that their content seems to get a lot of kids watching it
and i say to them well that means your content appeals to kids if you don't want that to happen
you need to make a change a chat reflects the streamer that is a fact when streamers step
outside of that norm it can cause whiplash for the community or when a chatter steps outside it can
be weird and off-putting and it is so important to take action whether that is warning a timeout or
a straight ban now i know what you're thinking oj it's easy for you to say if you ban someone
it's nothing to your 100 150 viewers but for me it's half my audience and you are so wrong for
small streamers not taking action is detrimental to their growth and i'll explain that in full
in a second first i want to give an example of where each individual creator draws their line
to help you find where you draw your line some communities are okay joking about serious events
in history being edgy and generally a bit dark but personally that isn't for me and because i don't
make those jokes my chatters won't or shouldn't either some communities are sadly also okay with
using words such as gay or words that describe others who have disabilities in negative ways in
fact some of the largest creators on the platform do this but that is never okay in my chat and
my community knows that and they won't use those terms and the people who use those terms aren't in
my community normally if your chat is reflecting you then these issues won't happen with your
regular community a newer chatter might come in and they will say or do something like this just
once the chatter is warned then by the mods they either leave because the vibe isn't for them or
they realize they've read the room wrong and stick around but don't make the same jokes or much more
likely they try to argue insult you and then get banned because that's a twitch chatter all of that
is the first step that i want you to think about your community your content and what you want your
chat to reflect and then you need to also consider where you're going to draw the line in the types
of jokes and conversations you allow once you have those things it's important to understand
that there are a lot of different ways that a chatter can step out of line for example there are
the clear ways such as breaking the rules that you have in your panels like spamming slurs self-promo
all the normal ones these are obviously met with appropriate warnings timeouts and bands
whatever you feel is the action you want to take in your community and works for you and your mods
personally spamming is a timeout slurs are a band and self promo is usually a ban as well for me
because anyone who self-promos is under the terms of service age to be on twitch but what happens
when there are things that aren't directly rules being broken but start to cross the line you've
set like edgy jokes or the words i mentioned earlier or maybe a viewer isn't breaking a rule
but it's clearly not reading the room for example often chatters come into smaller streams like mine
but they're actually used to xqc or ludwig they don't understand that posting random lines of 15
emotes over and over and over again is well spam because to them it is normal behavior amongst 5
000 viewers compared to my hundred to 150 who are just trying to chat with me these are much more
difficult and the line is a lot more blurry for example something that smaller streamers get a lot
that can cause a lot of trouble is when you have a viewer who keeps asking to dm you play games with
you or add you as a friend this happens a lot with smaller chats because every message tends to get
read out because chat is slow and by the way small streamers please close your direct messages and be
very careful with stuff i give this advice to someone daily it feels like at the moment people
just leave their dms open and accept anything you can't encourage a parasocial relationship just for
the sake of growth they are a viewer you are an entertainer direct messaging is inappropriate and
closing them is very important i hear constantly that someone with five viewers had their dms open
and they received a massive message about how a viewer was depressed and in a bad way that just
ruined them for a week or worse they get sent a dick pic which is just obviously uncomfortable
but that's what happens when your dms are open you can call me a dick all you want but
you are not a therapist a savior or anything else to these viewers you are a content creator
and it is not appropriate for viewers to trauma dump on you and if you are a content creator
who encourages power social relationships or tells people your dm's are open to talk about
their life troubles then you need to realize how dangerous that is another good example is when
a chatter simply makes you feel uncomfortable or for lack of a better word they're just being weird
what do you do in these situations where people just can't read the room when they aren't breaking
a direct rule but instead they're just crossing a line that you have set well you can warn them
and ask them to stop sorry mate do you mind not spamming or sorry i don't add viewers as friends
and if they continue well you have to time them out if they come back after the timeout and keep
repeating the behavior that made you uncomfortable well then you have to escalate it this escalation
can either be a massive timeout or just a straight ban i actually have a fantastic example for you
take this chat up they joined said hi engaged in chat for a bit and then asked me for a 1v1 in cod
while i was playing an indie game called 12 minutes which is a puzzle game and it's nothing
like cod so i ignored the message they then posted why you sexy but not me which is a really weird
question and kind of uncomfortable because what am i supposed to say to that though i ignored it it
isn't worth timing out and it isn't breaking any rules it is just uncomfortable and because my chat
is fairly active it scrolls away fairly quickly but then they posted it again so i just said
hey i'd appreciate it if you didn't say stuff like that it makes me feel uncomfortable i drew my line
and politely asked them to stop they then said you juice i'm out but i ignored them because i'm
trying to make entertaining content and talk to chatters who want to actually watch that content
and they didn't actually leave obviously because nobody ever does when they say they're leaving
he didn't take his toys and go home like some little toddler they added in just for
that reason i'm out which again i ignore and i admit at this point i probably should have
timed them out or banned them but i didn't have mods active and i was trying to focus on the game
and because i made this mistake of just letting it scroll past and not timing it out
it meant that he was able to go full nice guy mode and that meant i had to ban him because
he was being weird and making me uncomfortable he clearly didn't understand the vibe of the stream
now you're thinking oh it's okay he's a complete random it doesn't matter he'd only been in the
chat for the first time no he'd been watching me for about eight or nine months since march of 2021
and he was a paying subscriber let me be clear here you can see the messages on screen and i
didn't ban him because he insulted my mustache i banned him because he was making my chat and
myself uncomfortable it is a massively common joke in my chat that my mustache has a giant gap in the
middle i joke about it all the time it literally looks like two caterpillars trying to have a
conversation while socially distancing but the way he was acting made my other chatters uncomfortable
and ruined the vibe you can see the line i draw in the situation the person crossed it i politely
warned them and they continued the thing is though bands are reversible so don't start freaking out
about losing chatters a chatter might go oh [ __ ] i was having a bad day i am so sorry
and submit an unban request so let's go ahead and look at the unbanned request he submitted
well the unban request is great as well because it actually lets me talk about something you guys
need to understand viewers and chatters can speak their mind they want to have the freedom to say
whatever they want go nuts they can do that but as a streamer don't worry they have to also face
the consequences streamers of all sizes if you can take anything away from this video let it be this
you can ban whoever the [ __ ] you want from your chat whether they are breaking a rule or not it
is your space if they step out of line or ruin the vibe get rid of them now i know what you're gonna
say and i mentioned it earlier lj easy for you to say your chat is bigger you have 150 viewers
banning one person doesn't impact you like it impacts us it hurts us much more to lose a viewer
wrong just absolutely wrong it is the opposite it affects you so much worse to not warn or ban
someone a weird message for me disappears i can ignore it and watch it fly away because my chat is
fairly active but for you that weird message that ruins the vibe will sit there and stink up your
chat and it can be incredibly off-putting to your other potential chatters but also not removing
weird messages sets an example of what is okay and what isn't if you let people get away with
something others will think it's okay and very quickly you will have a terrible toxic community
and you will hate streaming and that ladies and gentlemen is why i banned pokemane this was a
bit of a weird video but i'm still very sick and i wanted to talk about banning people because it
seems like small streamers refuse to ban anyone if you want to learn more about streaming i recommend
clicking here it's a really good video and i think it will really help you out specifically
don who's watching this click it john click it and also subscribe i'll see you guys next week