I’m in the Glitch Theater at the San Diego Convention Center during TwitchCon 2024, watching a drag artist dressed as Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head lip-sync to a nu-metal song on stage. The crowd is a mix of high-profile streamers like Central Committee and KaceyTron, smaller Twitch affiliates, and fans—and all of them are living for the third annual TwitchCon Drag Showcase. JuiceBoxx, a streamer and one of the hosts this year, has her face plastered all over the convention center. Ru Paul’s Drag Race superstar Trixie Mattel has a makeup space on the show floor where employees are offering beauty tips and touch-ups, and at an off-site Capcom party, several drag queens mill about, their hair nearly grazing the ceiling of the bar. Pronoun pins are available for attendees to display on their badges, and non-profits like TransLifeline have booths on the show floor.
TwitchCon 2024 was very gay, a testament to how the platform has cultivated and supported queer creators and their fans—even in the face of higher-profile streamers getting banned for saying slurs on the platform. It seems like the company, which was once the only real option for live-streaming but now faces stiff competition from YouTube and more right-leaning platforms like Kick and Rumble, is embracing the marginalized folks who use its platform. I got a chance to speak with Twitch executive Rachel Delphin as well as drag streamers Deere and JuiceBoxx about how they use streaming to spread awareness, cultivate an inclusive community, and serve cunt, of course.
Cultivating a diverse space at TwitchCon 2024
The annual TwitchCon drag showcase is a great chance for streamers to show off their live performance skills, which are traditionally considered the cornerstone of drag artistry. But for some, this is their first time performing in-person, which can be daunting—the production value is high, there’s a camera following them around on-stage, several huge LED screens flank them, and, of course, a big crowd of people is watching. Luckily, this crowd is loud and loving, chanting and whooping and yas-ing with gusto, urging the performers on with their exquisite vibes.
The Angel, an LA-based queen who tells us “my God doesn’t condemn gay people” after lip-syncing to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” struts out to squeals in a head-to-toe rhinestone Princess Peach catsuit. Tharona Shade, who streams League of Legends, says that though she “gets trans hate every single day” while streaming, she proves a point “by playing the game and saying ‘I belong here.’” Smile Mortis, a horror streamer who does SFX makeup, creeps out on-stage in the aforementioned Pyramid Head cosplay and host JuiceBoxx yells, “I’m turned on!”
One by one, a variety of drag performers take the stage, giving us burlesque shows (that carefully do not violate Twitch’s Terms of Service), lip syncs, and fabulousness. The final performer, Jax from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, gets a standing ovation after performing an incredibly athletic number. As the crowd filtered out of the performance, grinning from ear to ear, excited chatter spread amongst them—this space does feel rather warm, safe, and queer, and I’m somewhat shocked by it. And though the TwitchCon Drag Showcase was the best place to see the breadth and depth of the platform’s LGBTQIA+ community at the convention, the entire show floor was full of queer folks donning cosplay or pride flags, bucking gender norms, and otherwise existing—itself an act of resistance.
“We are the place that brings people together, but the reason that people love being here and returning is because they know people,” Twitch chief marketing officer Rachel Delphin tells me. We chat about the Trixie Cosmetics installation, and she tells me that there’s a K-pop dance class scheduled for this weekend. “I think that’s part of creating a space that is genuinely reflective of the people who enjoy Twitch, which often defies the stereotypes that get associated with us and gaming,” Delphin explains.
TwitchCon, to her and the rest of the team, is meant to be an extension of the community that they’ve created online—that community “has rules,” according to Delphin, and the team is “very intentional about what it is and isn’t allowed” on the platform. “We’ve never claimed to be a place for free speech,” she points out.
“The way that we market ourselves, it is very intentional, to make sure that when we are telling the story about Twitch, that we’re telling a really diverse story that properly captures the people who are here, the kind of content that they create, and the kind of vibes that exist on the service,” she insists. That content includes a rich tapestry of drag artists, who stream horror and cozy games while dressed to the nines.
Drag and Twitch
I’ve written about drag streamers before, and how many turned to Twitch during the pandemic when they could no longer perform at in-person shows at bars and nightclubs—the main way to make money in drag. Though JuiceBoxx was lucky enough to be a contestant on the first season of Canada’s version of Drag Race, the combination of covid restrictions and her early exit (“spoiler alert, I was out first,” she tells me as we chat on a couch in a TwitchCon media room) severely limited her ability to expand her fanbase. So, she turned to Twitch.
“I saw a lot of people who were starting on Twitch and I was playing a lot of video games I was so fucking bored. Eventually I was just like, ‘you know what? I think I’m just gonna make the leap and I’m gonna do this,’” she says. That was in 2021, and she quickly reached affiliate status, then partner, the higher tier of monetization for Twitch creators.
“I remember at the beginning I was making little posters for every single one of my streams…I would promo them like in-person drag shows. And I would sit for like three to six hours playing these video games. I was really intense at the beginning and I was always in drag. And then, as things started to open up and as things started to get more lax, then I just was like, can I be a boy?” Now, JuiceBoxx primarily streams out of drag, and puts on her wig, paints her face, and shaves “from the nipples up” for in-person shows.
“I thrive on stage, my heart is being on stage. So for me, Twitch is a way to connect with my fans more closely,” she explains. “Twitch has become a really good place where I can have a really relaxed atmosphere with my fans and with the community. You know, it’s like, ‘I’m gonna play on Wednesdays, we’re gonna sit and I’m just gonna chat and hang out with you for as long as I want.’”
But for drag performer Deere, whose face is also plastered all over the convention, Twitch has been the ideal place to showcase her art since even before the pandemic. “I wanted an expressive vehicle to put my drag onto…I wanted to be a drag queen and I wanted to do it in a way where it mixed all my interests—my love of pop culture and fashion and makeup and hair and all that kind of stuff. But mix it with nerd culture,” Deere tells me at the convention, while decked out in head-to-toe daisy print like a 7-foot-tall Twiggy.
“I think that any way that drag can be put into the forefront—I don’t want it to sound like I’m like hating on nightlife, but drag exists in nightlife because it was too taboo to exist in the daylight…drag being a destination at something like TwitchCon is just so transgressive.”
We talk about how the team at Twitch wants the platform and the convention to feel like an inclusive space, and Deere agrees. “My face is on the wall, but other people can just walk in and there’s more drag people…TwitchCon is very queer, and you can be comfortable being yourself. Whether it’s quietly breaking outta your box or being loud and proud, everyone is embraced here.”
She continues: “I feel bad for the homophobes ‘cause they must feel very, very, very, very uncomfortable. But they should feel uncomfortable.”
.
Leave a Reply