Sweet Anita considering quitting Twitch over “mental toll” of creepy streaming fans

Sweet Anita reveals she may “one day” be forced away from Twitch by creepy fans, many of whom idolize and sexualize her far beyond her gaming streams, as the “mental toll” of her internet fame continues to weigh on the star.

Anita, who has Tourette’s syndrome, is ⁠no stranger to being sexualized on the internet, especially — and unfortunately ⁠— by many of her 1.7 million followers.

The 30-year-old first started streaming in 2018. Back then, her Twitch channel was just an easy way for her to share Overwatch gameplay with her burgeoning friends list but it soon became so much more; by 2020 she had cracked over a million fans, and become one of the platform’s bonafide stars.

Sweet Anita is considering packing it all in, however.

The Twitch fame Anita has earned over the past four years has been, in her words, “incredible,” but with it comes something sinister too. Among her 1.7m followers, many see the UK star as a sexual object, rather than just a streamer.

Her constant battle with creepy fans takes a heavy “mental toll,” the Twitch star admits, so much so that Sweet Anita is tempted to scrap streaming and step away.

The breaking point, Sweet Anita told HuffPost on July 20, was uncovering a new “NSFW” forum page on Reddit. The subreddit, which Dexerto will not identify, was filled with men who shared images, collages, and videos of the streamer.

While Anita has never livestreamed nude, many of the images on the forum were digitally edited to make it look like she had. Others were slowed-down Twitch clips.

On the linked Discord channel, things were even worse too.

There, some Sweet Anita ‘fans’ shared videos of them ejaculating onto livestream screenshots, printed out images of the Twitch star, and edited photos. The anonymity of the Discord channels ⁠— and their invite-only access ⁠— meant the content shared was beyond what Anita had found on the original Reddit forum.

“No matter what I do, or how I dress, they do this to me,” she said.

“I haven’t ever even taken my clothes off in front of the camera and yet I’m still a very successful porn star. These people are literally ruining my experience of streaming,” the Twitch star continued. “It’s basically like having millions of people be your boss, and your boss is allowed to sexually harass you every day.”

• Read More: Sweet Anita: How I accidentally became Twitch famous

Anita says she’s attempted to have the Reddit forums and Discord groups shut down since discovering them in June but has, so far, been unsuccessful.

There are other reasons too. Perhaps the biggest was the UK-based streamer’s ongoing struggle with a Twitch stalker who regularly slept outside her house, would follow her to the shops, and often threatened to kill her.

And so, Sweet Anita is now toying with the idea of eventually stepping away from Twitch; she still loves streaming, but all the baggage it comes with is just “too much”. Before she was an internet celebrity, the 30-year-old had a steady career in wildlife rehabilitation. Her plan is to return to that, once she leaves Twitch.

• Read More: Sweet Anita “helpless” after police ignore stalker

“I’ll probably end up going back to [that],” she said. “The mental toll of being at the mercy of these people for the rest of my life would just not be survivable.”