QTCinderella spoke with ET about navigating her response to the deepfake porn scandal of which she was a target in January.
Twitch streamer and YouTuber QTCinderella spoke with ET this week about navigating her response to the deepfake porn scandal of which she was a target in January.
Earlier this year, QTCinderella learned of a non-consensual pornographic video that surfaced on a website that has since been taken offline. Though she said the attack still "triggers a lot of feelings and emotions," QTCinderella said she's been able to work past the challenge with the support of her boyfriend, fellow YouTuber Ludwig Ahgren, and by focusing on her work leading the Streamer Awards, a ceremony she founded in 2022.
Catch up on everything the star gamer told ET below.
ET: The Streamer Awards viewership increased 150 percent this year, congratulations!
QTCinderella: People don't realize I'm very, very critical. And so, like, the very next day, I rewatched the entire program, and I have three pages of notes of things that I'm changing for next year. I think the most frustrating thing is I do have to wait a year, every single time before you make changes, right? Usually you burn your hand on the stove, and then you don't touch it again. I have to wait a year to have that test. So it's a little frustrating, but excited to do better every year.
What were some of this year's ceremony's biggest challenges?
I'm the director and I'm the host, and my mic to the production team wasn't working this year. And so we had a big, big issue where I was saying, "Hey, we need to roll this, we need to do this." And it's a very interesting concept -- that a lot of people haven't had to figure out talent and production at the same time. So we're learning together. But that was a huge thing. A huge hurdle that we have to change next year, is we have to make sure my mic is working in the production team. Because otherwise, you know, I didn't know what was going on sometimes.
What is your favorite part of the Streamer Awards?
It's a family reunion for gamers every year. Gamers are really, really isolated people that stream on Twitch. You don't have your 9-5 where you catch up over the water cooler. So the purpose is to get as many people together as possible. However, streamers don't have managers most of the time, and they don't have teams that I can reach out to. So instead, I have to coordinate all of this individually. And I do most of it just through Twitter DMs.
You've said you invested close to a million dollars in the Streamer Awards. Do you have a breakdown of those expenses?
Somehow I don't really know how this happened. It was too late for me to catch it. Everything this year ended up being tripled than last year, I went bigger and better, but then, so did the bill. But production just costs a ton. Especially having the infrastructure for live streaming, you have to have a lot of backups. We had to get a special truck, we had to get a lot of things and it just all added up. ... The goal someday is to make money off of it. For now, it's just a passion project. And I like doing it.
Can you talk a bit about about your experience with the deepfake scandal?
When I first heard about it, I kind of had the thought where I was like, "Why would I care?" But then you see it and you're like... it's just this realization of it, just triggers a lot of feelings and emotions. It's just very confusing. But actually, the streamer who leaked the website has done a lot of work on the back end, it's been really impressive. You see a lot of people make these mistakes, and then do nothing about it, and come back. He's done a lot. I tell people I'm trying to forgive. I'm also healing from it. And he's really shown that he's trying really hard. He's partnered with a different AI company, actually, as ironic as that is -- an AI company that combats taking these deepfakes down by using AI to find them and delete them. So, you know, sometimes your worst enemy is your biggest help.
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