Pokimane reveals one big reason she actually regrets Twitch streaming career
Twitch: PokimaneImane ‘Pokimane’ Anys has stunned fans by revealing she often regrets dedicating her early 20s and the last eight years to Twitch streaming, despite her huge earnings, millions of fans, and ever-growing online fame.
Pokimane has become a very rusted-on part of Twitch streaming these past few years, and clocks in as the platform’s third-most watched female content creator.
The 25-year-old star exploded onto the scene in the mid-2010s, and really hit the big-time streaming League of Legends and Fortnite. Her star continued to rise on the purple platform heading into 2020, when she well and truly secured her future with a rich multi-year deal to stay on the website exclusively.
Her triumphs, however, are also Imane’s biggest regrets.
According to the Twitch streamer, dedicating the last eight years of her life to her career has left her “confused” and struggling to figure out who she really is.
Twitch: PokimaneAnys revealed on January 4 that she’s been battling with the feeling she’s “wasted her 20s” by focusing on the “Pokimane” role. The revelation, sparked by the pandemic, has rocked the stream-queen.
“I don’t know myself anymore,” Pokimane admitted.
“The weird thing is I just woke up one day, and I had this immense feeling. I grew up streaming, I started streaming when I was 17 years old. And I never really allowed myself to have a normal life. One day I woke up and “Boom!” I was 25, and I’d never really done the things I had planned to do.”
“In your 20s, you’re supposed to explore yourself, the world, all that, and I felt like I’ve been static. All that basic sh*t. I thought, f**k, when do I get to live life?”
Anys admits she “lost touch with everything that made [her] feel good” as she immersed herself in building followers and business partnerships. Now she’s focusing on figuring herself out, before anything else.
She continued: “I’ve really had to properly rebuild myself.”
“I looked at my closet, and I was basically just like “Yuck!” and chucked everything out. It really was like that for everything. I took a step back and had to figure out where I wanted to be mentally, personality-wise. It’s why I’ve been streaming less, doing more things with people, trying to get a grip on who I am.
“I don’t split Imane and Pokimane too much, but I’ve been trying to. I’ll take more breaks, travel more, all that kind of stuff that I think I really need to be doing.”
Related segment begins 1:23:46 in video below.
Pokimane took several breaks from streaming on Twitch last year, each time citing her mental health as a major reason behind the unplanned disappearances. That is likely to be the same in 2022 too, she warns.
“It feels like I’ve had years of my life stolen,” the 25-year-old said, “so I am going to make more of an effort to do other things. More of a sense of normalcy, really.”