What is art? Is it a painting? A sculpture? Is it a simple banana, recontextualized into an artistic environment with a single piece of duct tape? Or is it live-streaming hole to millions of followers live on the internet?
Now, it’s Twitch’s job to make that determination. Yesterday, Twitch announced that it would be allowing some — some! — nudity onto its platform. You can go full nude, but it has to be “artistic” in nature. Excuse me, Twitch, but aren’t we *all* works of art in the eyes of God?
What is going on at Twitch? pic.twitter.com/NeDxnS56BR
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) December 8, 2023
“Under the new rules, ‘artistic’ depictions — meaning they are drawn, animated or sculpted — of ‘fully exposed female-presenting breasts and/or genitals or buttocks regardless of gender’ are now okay, if creators label the content as containing sexual themes,” reads a piece in Variety.
“Twitch still does not permit streamers to be fully or partially nude,” the piece continues. “But it is now allowing content that ‘deliberately highlight[s] breasts, buttocks or pelvic region’ as well as ‘body writing’ and body painting on ‘female-presenting breasts and/or buttocks regardless of gender’ with a Sexual Themes label.”
No one knows why Twitch decided to clarify all of this right now, but it may have something to do with a new “topless” meta in which users with breasts stream without a shirt on. The camera, of course, cuts off just above the nips. Hey, beats a real job.
Twitch changed their rules….. so it’s time for a new kind of #DUCKISTREAM SEE Y’ALL IN 1 hour… https://t.co/khlech1KfZ pic.twitter.com/wwnsRDOx6V
— Ducki ️⚧️ (@dxckiii) December 14, 2023
As one might expect, telling people that they can get naked online, even just a little bit, led to a lot of people testing the limits and patience of Twitch admins. People pushed all sorts of 18+ content, ranging from hole reviews to hentai games to everything else under the sun that could possibly be categorized as “artistic.”
If Twitch is going to allow "artistic nudity," these stream thumbnails should be censored or blurred by default.
— Surfer (@SurferRBLX) December 14, 2023
Just scrolling through just chatting, younger audiences can encounter 18+ art just by viewing the thumbnails.
Something really needs to be done about that,… pic.twitter.com/MI3jonLlL5
WTF IS THIS TWITCH, I’m the one who censored it btw, everything is out in the actual stream. Artistic nudity my ass, this is literally porn pic.twitter.com/06kHmozO3i
— Rise Ducky (@RiseDucky) December 14, 2023
Of course, this isn’t likely to last. Twitch knows that one of its main benefits to advertisers is that it caters to a younger audience with cash to spend — and flooding the site with on-the-line adult content and Rule 34 Pokemon imagery may make execs at places like Delta Airlines reconsider their advertising investment.
Twitch went from a GAME streaming focused platform to this. I have to say that this meta of nudity everywhere is already being embraced
— Gekyume (@gekyume1021) December 14, 2023
X, instagram, now twitch pic.twitter.com/jVrvoR9oOc
But for the time being, head on over to Twitch to see some live-streamed sideboob. Or, you know, just go to one of the millions of adult sites that populate the internet. We won’t judge.
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